Three Day Weekend...Three Days of Saling!

It was the third week of August and this week meant another Friday vacation day for the two of us! We could really get used to this! We found sales to go to on each of the three days off. Sunday seemed to have the best sale of the bunch but we were hopeful that we would find fun things the other two days too. Before we got to the weekend, we had to get through the week first.

Monday was Monica's sister's birthday and we celebrated with Chinese food and chocolate eclairs with birthday candles.

Monica has wanted to design her own pocketbook for a long time. She has formulating ideas and gathering material for awhile now. The pocketbooks above were her inspiration. The above pocketbooks probably came this way. Monica has some like this with shells and she also has some that are blank. She would use one of these blank ones for her creation. 

The pocketbook, materials and glue gun were brought out the previous weekend and Monica got started on her creation. On Tuesday evening, a few glue gun burns later, she had finished! 

Monica's tiki pocketbook! She used real cocktail umbrellas, real cocktail straws and real cocktail monkeys. Both tikis featured on the pocketbook are pictures of two of our actual tiki mugs. They are printed on card stock paper and everything is laid out over a piece of placemat. Once completed, everything was sealed with clear vinyl covering and trim was added. She was very happy with the result! 

Friday arrived and we were ready to start the weekend. There were four Friday sales on our list. All were in the same general area which would make it easy to visit all four. With list in hand, and one day earlier than usual, off we went! 

Sale #1 was listed as "60 years of accumulation" and was run by a tag sale company whose sales we have attended in the past. 

There was a really cool basement bar and we both searched it thoroughly but not before posing for a photo! We searched the rest of the house, too, and did not leave empty-handed. We found some old Tupperware, two records, one booklet and some old cocktail towels. It was a good start! 

The sale we intended to go to second had a long line outside so we passed by and made this sale our second one. It was described as "contents of entire house" and "years of accumulation". The description was accurate but there wasn't a whole lot here for us. We picked up one new baseball book and one record.

We passed by the sale with the long line again and there was still a line outside. It was the first day of a two day sale so we decided we would just try it on Saturday. Instead, we went the remaining sale on our list. It was run by one of our favorite tag sale companies and we were hopeful that this would be the best sale of the day. Despite the "blast from the past mid-century" description, it was not a good sale. There were very few rooms and, aside from some boxes of books, very little searching involved. We left with three Christmas things and a book.

That last house was a block from the water and on the corner of its property was this plaque commemorating this location as the site of the first guided missile on September 11, 1916. We didn't know this! 

The water was beautiful but we didn't stay long. The yellow jacket wasps were not very friendly here! 

We were home by mid-afternoon and went to Monica's sister's house. They were away for two days and we were tasked with watering the plants and feeding their parrot, turtle, visiting feral cat and the wild birds who come by each day for their daily helping of crushed peanuts. This little sparrow is always brave, coming within feet of us. A small mockingbird was pretty daring too. Once we moved away, a blue jay and several other sparrows joined the party.

On Saturday, we had three sales on our list and were anxious to get an early start. Two sales were close by and one was a little further away. We figured we would start with the close ones.

Our first Saturday sale was listed as "entire contents" and "vintage everything". It wasn't. It was an outside garage sale with a lot of junk. We actually went to this very same house last summer. We found one small Santa.

Saturday's second sale was at the house that had a line (twice) the day before. It was a lot quieter today. It was run by a tag sale company that has multiple sales every weekend and was described as a "vintage collectible home". The reason for the line the day before was the trains. The description of the sale (and pictures to support it) featured lots of vintage trains and that brings out both the dealers and the train collectors. With them out of the way, we were free to explore the house. The basement was packed with comic books, records and some remaining trains. We looked through the records but avoided the rest of the basement. The rest of the house was a quick tour. We left with a ceramic elf, a drink booklet, some vintage hairnet packages and some records. 

Our final Saturday sale was described as "an entire vintage house" and "vintage Christmas" was listed amongst the items we could expect to see. The pictures in the ad just featured furniture and they were definitely vintage! We had high hopes for this one! 

We love these cutouts in the wall along staircases or between rooms. This house had two of them.

We loved this a lot but with a $200 price tag, we learned to love it a lot less.

This dresser was also really cool but we would have no room for it and we were afraid to even ask what it would cost. We did not find any Christmas items that we liked and all we did find was a set of ceramic Thanksgiving turkey salt and pepper shakers (made in Japan). When we asked the price of them, we put them down. $10! We have several sets of Thanksgiving turkey salt and pepper shakers (all made in Japan) and have never paid more than $2 for the set. This was an incredibly overpriced sale. We left with nothing. 

When Sunday arrived, we went to the sale that we waited for all weekend. What we didn't expect to find was a line this long. The sale began at 9am and we arrived at 8am only to find that 21 people had arrived before us. The sale was described as "entire contents", "all vintage" and "bought in 1958". This was a very attractive description. The pictures supporting the ad supported this description. Still, we were surprised to find so many people already here. The flea market was open and many of the dealers would be there selling their previous finds. 

There were two things in the pictures that we really wanted...a vintage lamp with a pink lampshade and a very cool vintage ashtray. We weren't feeling very lucky. Amongst the people ahead of us was a fellow saler who we know goes after vintage things (she sells). We know this tag sale company very well and they are one of our favorites. They typically let in the first fifteen and the rest have to wait on line. It didn't take a mathematical genius to figure out that #22 and #23 would not make the first group of fifteen! 

The owner arrived and exchanged their cards (with numbers) for the unofficial numbers that the first arrival started. He knew that we were numbers 22 and 23 now. In talking to some of the people ahead of us on line, we discovered that most were after completely different things than we were but we still had to contend with that fellow saler who was #11. When the tag sale company opened the doors, they decided to let the first 23 in and, as we walked in the door, the owner of the tag sale company said, very quietly to us, "vintage Christmas is upstairs to the left". At this point, we took a different tact than normal. We went in different directions. Rob went for the vintage Christmas while Monica looked for the lamp and ashtray. Rob found #11 has also discovered the vintage Christmas but since there were a number of boxes in the room, there was enough to share (though Rob, in looking out of the corner of one eye the whole time, said that we did much better). Ten minutes later, Monica came up the stairs with two lamps (there were two of these lamps, not just one) and the ashtray. We searched the rest of the house together. 

After finishing our search upstairs, we made our way into the kitchen. The counter top was boomerang! 

Here is a closer look at the boomerang. A search inside of the cabinets helped load our bags. There were lots of Flintstones glasses and one Archie glass.

The basement was the best floor of the house and there were just so many things right about it. Look at the floor! Look at that cool basement bar! 

Here is another view of the basement bar. To the left, you can see a display of beer cans. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of them in this basement. The former owner displayed them all and we were told that many dated back to the 1950's. It was a lifelong obsession and they were highlighted in the sale's ad. We noticed, though, that not a single one seemed to have been taken by the time we left this floor. In a way, it was sad that no one wanted what meant so much to the man who lived in this house for almost sixty years.

The bar top had this great design. Martinis, cocktails, olives and cherries! 

The area behind the bar was just as cool. Records, cocktails, sheet music, piano keys, top hats and more! 

Here's a another picture of the basement with our host posing in front another wall filled with beer cans.

A little kitchen was behind the bar with a vintage table and set of chairs.

Here is a picture of another of the chairs and a matching step stool.

The basement wasn't the only area of the house that was a link to the past. The main floor had this great pink bathroom.

The patio had this great metal awning

The backyard had this great clothesline. Remember when all backyards did?

The back door had metal railings and the screen door had the own metal insert where you could personalize your home's door with the first letter of your last name. We love this! 

There was an old organ in the living room. The tag sale company gently hinted that Rob should buy it. Rob held his ground. We didn't.

On top of the organ was an autographed picture of Chuck McCann and Bob Denver. Their connection? 

They starred together in the very short-lived 1975 Sid and Marty Krofft children's television series, Far Out Space Nuts. We regret not inquiring about the availability of the picture!

This was a really great sale and we were really lucky to have left with everything we were targeting and more! Two lamps, an ashtray, lots of glasses, lots of vintage Christmas and more came home with us.

Here is what we found this weekend:

Some records

Some more records

Some books

A pair of vintage wedding cards

Eight unopened packages of vintage hair nets. We plan on giving some of these away as gag gifts

Lots of vintage Tupperware, all with lids. The two on the right are Tupperware Wonderlier bowls from their 1954 millionaire line.

A pair of old Halloween die-cut decorations

A red vintage cocktail towel

A blue vintage cocktail towel

A green vintage cocktail towel

An old Piels can opener still in its package, an old Schaefer beer caddy (with Schaefer beer sticks included), a pair of old ceramic monkey corks (made in Germany) and some old Schaefer cream ale beer mats 

Four old Long Island Railroad "Dashing Dan" and "Dashing Dottie" glasses from the 1960's

Eight Flintstones jelly glasses from the 1960's

An Archie Comics jelly glass from 1971

A vintage tomato juice pitcher and set of six glasses

A 1963 Treasure Craft pineapple ash tray, a pink "minute minder" timer (which was unused in its box and still had the directions) and a cool vintage ash tray that we really wanted.

A pair of vintage lamps with pink lampshades

A vintage screen door insert. This was in a crawlspace at the Sunday sale. It would have been thrown out if we didn't rescue it. We will use this one day! 

Christmas things: four old die-cut decorations (the one on the upper right is a bank Christmas club promotion), a holiday card holder, a small Santa,a plastic Santa with reindeer, two Christmas monkeys, one Christmas elephant and two small Christmas angels. The mail holder, monkeys, elephant and angels are marked Japan.

More Christmas things: two plastic Santas, a Santa ornament, a clown ornament, a ceramic Christmas candy dish and a ceramic angel. The two plastic Santas were made in Hong Kong. Everything else is marked Japan.

A few more Christmas things: a plastic Santa, an elf drummer, a pair of Santa salt and pepper shakers and a ceramic elf planter. The plastic Santa is marked Hong Kong. Everything else is marked Japan.

Sunday's sale could not have possibly turned out better than it did. We have had sales where we have struck out and sales, like the one on Sunday, where luck (and teamwork) was on our side. It was a great weekend spent together...adventuring and living our life together amongst the ducks.