Flashback - The Second and Third Weekends In September, 2019

Although the calendar said it was September, there were few signs of the upcoming fall season at least not in our garden. The garden is a place we spend considerable time when we are at home. 

We've groomed our morning glories to run rampant around some garden poles. It's controlled chaos to keep them from overrunning the rest of the garden. It's a labor of love as is our estate saling. During the second week of September, we did some gardening and we had some estate sales. Well, really just one estate sale so we were hoping it would be a good one. 

The sale was run by a fairly new estate sale company whose sales we had not yet experienced. With "hoarder's paradise" in the description and some old pictures in the ad, now was the time to introduce ourselves. We got an early start, took the 35 minute drive to the sale and got ready for the opening. We were early enough to know that we would be in the first group let inside.

Once inside, we saw that there were several floors and lots of old stuff. 

We were intrigued by the teapot at the back of this table but, in the end, we left without it. 

One of the upstairs room was filled with dolls. No, that's Monica on the right! 

Hundreds of dolls. They didn't come home with us but we did take a vintage stuffed Easter Bunny boy from this room and lots of other items from this house including some Christmas things, some hand puppets and more. It was a really good sale! 

 With lunchtime rapidly approaching, we chose to go to My Hero. It is a hero delicatessen renowned for their heroes and has been around since 1970. If you ever drive by this place around lunchtime, the line is out the door. We were there when it opened at 10am and enjoyed a great lunch! 

When we got home, we had a chance to see what we brought home and this is what we saw:

Some cocktail stirrers

A book

Two old hand puppets and one vintage Thanksgiving cake topper

A Family Affair paper doll set

Inside the Family Affair paper doll set's box

A coconut monkey, a vintage teenager doll, a ceramic man from Mexico on a burro (made in Japan and an addition to our Cinco de Mayo decorations), a vintage penguin shaker (missing its mate), a ceramic Indian (made in Japan) and a vintage squeak toy

A vintage squeak toy, a vintage Easter Bunny Boy and an old dog trophy

Christmas things! Two creepy Santas, a ceramic angel, two Gurley candles, a ceramic Santa house, an old Christmas book and a silver reindeer. The Santas and the ceramic pieces are marked Japan. 

With the weather behaving like summer, we went to one of our favorite places to eat, All American Drive-In, for dinner on Sunday night. Since 1963, it has been serving the best burgers, fries and shakes! 

Warm weekend nights are for enjoying with the one you love! 

The third weekend in September found us with four sales on our list for Saturday. We were hopeful and we decided to get a nice early start. The first sale began at 9am and we were determined to get there nice and early. Although there were no pictures in the ad, we suspected that "massive diggers and pickers sale" and "entire contents of a lifelong collector's home" would spark interest. It did with us. Add "Christmas", "postcards" and "baseball stuff" to the list of items described and we knew this was our primary target. 

We were here an hour early and amongst the first few to show up. We would definitely be in the first group to be allowed inside. We had a suspicion of who might be running this sale and, once inside, we found that we were right. This tag sale company remains low key but there sales are always amongst our favorites. 

The backyard had lots of boxes to search and search we did! 

The garage had lots of things inside of it, too.

There were lots of collectibles of interest here but none of these excited us. 

The kitchen was small but old. The metals kitchen cabinets were great. It was on a table in this kitchen that the baseball items and the postcards were laid out but they were not our style. We didn't leave empty-handed. We found vintage grapes, some squeak toys and one reindeer. 

Sale #2 was a multi-family garage sale listing records, collectibles, vintage toys and baseball gloves as being up for grabs. This one was a bust. There was nothing for us.

Sale #3 was a private estate / garage sale listing antiques and vintage Christmas items as being available. We didn't get anything here either. There were a few vintage Christmas items but every one had some noticeable damage and they were still overpriced. 

Sale #4 was of great interest to Monica. It wasn't the description "contents of home". It was the house itself. This house went on the market a few years ago and the pictures of the inside of the home showed a great vintage house with a great vintage kitchen, two great vintage bathrooms and an amazing attic! We would have loved to have walked through it during an open house but we never saw one and it was sold almost as quickly as it was listed, Now, we could see the inside of the house for ourselves! 

The living room was large and had lots of potential

One of the bathrooms retained much of its original pink color.

Look at that great vintage countertop pattern! 

Unfortunately, this is where our excitement ended. They redid the entire kitchen and that great vintage kitchen we saw in the pictures a few years ago was gone. The other bathroom was redone, too. As for the attic, it was not for viewing so we could only hope that nothing had been done to ruin it. We didn't get anything here and we left disappointed at what once was greatness. We had to console ourselves with looking at what we found over the weekend and it wasn't much.

A reindeer

Vintage glass grapes

Some cool party favors and a cocktail stirrer

Some vintage squeak toys

We spent Sunday running errands, doing chores and getting in some relaxation time. Although we were disappointed in what happened to that house, we still enjoyed our weekend together. There would be more houses and more adventures to come. We'll catch up with you soon!

Hey! This is also our 300th post! We hope you'll stay with us for the next 100 posts and beyond!