The Busy Summer Continues

We are still a week behind on our blog but we are almost caught up! This post is about the third weekend in July.

The summer seems to be moving along so quickly. It seemed to take awhile to get to the summer weather but it's been around all month and the weekend outdoor activities have not been ruined by rain. Of course, we have been very busy making frequent trips out east to continue the cleanup of Uncle Bobby's houses in anticipation of their sale within the next year. This weekend would see us making another Saturday afternoon trip after an abbreviated Saturday saling schedule. We have been keeping the list short knowing that we had to choose wisely. We had three sales on our list on Saturday and we hoped to get to all three of them. An early start was required. An early start we got!

Our first sale was about 45 minutes away from our house and was being run by a tag sale company that we like but don't get to see as often as we would like. They run a majority of their tag sales on Fridays and, since we work monday through Friday, we miss a lot of their sales. This one was a Saturday and was described as a "huge estate sale with tons of vintage stuff". It sounded good to us. The pictures in the ad supported their claim. There was one picture that caught our attention immediately.

In the upper left corner was a large set of dishes from the Metlox Poppytrail set; a vintage set that we love. We have a few pieces from it but, based on the picture, we could quadruple the size of our set, easily, if we could get to this first. The sale began at 8:30am and we would have to leave our house at 7:45am to get there at the open, if traffic cooperated. Of course, if we could see the set, so could the dealers and this set sells. So, realistically, we would probably have to be on line two hours before the open, 6:30am and leave our house at least 45 minutes earlier to even have a shot at getting these. The odds were against us. We decided not to wake up that early to make a trip that probably would result in failure. We, instead, left early enough to get there just after 8:30am and feel rested. We did not get the dishes. We did not even get a look at the dishes. Our instincts were correct.

The house was cool. The kitchen had so many great things going on that it is hard to name them all! 

An old pink and blue bathroom.

The wallpaper in the bathroom was very unique and very busy!

This old table desk, in one of the bedrooms, was pretty cool.

We found this mounted pencil sharpener during our visit in the house. It wasn't perfect (nor was our visit here since we didn't get the dishes) but it is almost always a good sign and we did not leave the sale without some finds. Some books, some records, a pink plastic toilet brush holder and a great hat for Monica. We are saving the story of the hat for a little further down this post.

After getting some breakfast, we made our way to sale #2 which was near the first sale and listed antiques, vintage Christmas and vintage board games among the items there. Unfortunately, with our saling time limited, we could not afford to wait too long and after twenty minutes of not moving any closer to the inside, we had to leave.

Our third and final sale was an easy choice. It was in the town where we live and that put us close to where we needed to be. It was listed as a moving sale which lots of vintage stuff. Everything here was either outside, in the garage or on the patio. There were definitely some vintage items here and we worked quickly to find what we wanted. We left with some records, one book and a great vintage cooler.

It was close to noon and our saling time had run out. That was okay because we knew we found a few fun things. Here is what our Saturday morning brought to us:

James Bond paperbacks

More books and a vintage matchbook from Dino's Lodge 

Here's the back of the matchbook

Some records

More records

A few more records

Christmas records

Some old picture frames

A vintage pink poodle toilet brush holder. We already have the identical one in black. We will have to add an eye.

A great vintage cooler

An outfit for Monica which may have once belonged to Carol Brady

Monica's new hat. She has always wanted to find one of these "in the wild".

Made in Italy, it is a "Joni Je".

Years ago, at the famous "cat house" sale, Monica found this one but it was damaged beyond any hope of repair. The "cat house" sale was at a four level house of a woman who passed away at 104 years old. She had many cats and it is rumored that the remains of one was found on one of the upper floors when the tag sale company was getting ready to run this sale. The house smelled of many cats and the windows had to be kept open to allow us to breathe. We spent hours at that sale and took home so many things. This hat was not one of those things.

Monica made her own a few years ago! 

She wore it well. Now she has a second one! 

We soon made the trip out east to Uncle Bobby's house with Monica's sister, Monica's dad and Uncle Bobby's best friend, Janet, and made some real progress after hours of hard work.

Of course, breaks were taken to walk quickly around the property to see the sights. The abandoned car from the 1940's still sits way back on the property.

We were not the only ones there. These wild turkeys were wandering around the property, too. They had three babies with them but they were too short to be seen in this picture.

We had another successful day of getting things together for the future estate sale but we did pull a few things to bring home with us...

Lawrence Welk records

Tropical records

More records

A few more records

We couldn't resist taking these 7-inch records home.

Vintage seed and bulb catalogs

Some books

Archie comics from the 1940's

A 1951 calendar and a 1924 shoe store ad

Two pin-up calendars. On the one on the right, you change the page each month. All of the pages are behind the one shown.

A fish can opener, an old plastic Indian and horse, a pair of Ken L Ration cat and dog salt and pepper shakers, a ceramic chef shaker (missing its mate), a small squeak dog, a vintage plastic Thanksgiving turkey and an old plastic snowman

It was a great Saturday but a tiring one and we spent lots of Sunday relaxing in between the necessary chores. Rob barbecued Sunday night which is something he likes to do every summer Sunday. 

We always enjoy that Sunday barbecue and it relaxes us. Monica's pickle, on the other hand, looked nervous.