A Three Day Weekend In The Middle Of March

Warning! This was a completely unsuccessful saling weekend and if you are looking to see some great treasures we may have found or looking to see the insides of some great houses we were inside, turn back now! You have been warned!

On the weekend leading up to St. Patrick's Day, we decided to plan a vacation day on the Friday to make it a three-day weekend. There was no particular reason for it other than that we each have four weeks of vacation each year and in those months that do not have a built-in holiday, it is good to create one. This was March's creation.

We hoped it would be a Friday that might have some estate sales as Friday has become a very popular day for estate sales and, under normal circumstances, we do not get to go. So what happened? There were no good estate sales on Friday. In fact, there weren't much the entire weekend. We had some errands to run on Friday and we figured we would supplement those errands with trips to two thrift shops nearby. The first was in town (technically, the next town but we live three minutes from the border). It is only open on a few days during the week and we rarely get to go. We have, occasionally, found good things there. As we pulled up, we saw the "closed" sign on the door. As it turns out, they are no longer open Monday, Wednesday and Friday. They are now open Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. This was Friday. No good. The second thrift shop is a newly opened one in our town. As we pulled up, we saw that it was closed, too. They open in the afternoon on Fridays. We arrived in the morning. Oh well. We went home and Monica cooked the corned beef, cabbage and potatoes. It is a four hour process and so we spent the remainder of the day at home. It was delicious and we have enough leftovers to last the weekend!

On Saturday, we had three sales on our list and none appeared to be run by estate sale companies. Like Friday, none of the major companies were advertising sales of interest to us. None of the three sales had pictures to accompany the ads. We would be going in blindly and we would be hoping for the best.

The first sale was less than fifteen minutes away and was advertised as a "50 year accumulation". That sounded promising. Seeing pink elephants sitting on the porch excited us a little that there might be some odd things inside.

The house had a number of rooms but there was not a great deal of things in any of those rooms. This was the basement which we had to access through a storm cellar door from the outside. It was, obviously, in use at one time as it had a fireplace. 

If we were on an archaeological expedition, we would have been very successful here as we evidence of large dinosaurs. Unfortunately, our purpose was saling and dinosaurs were not on our list of things we wanted.

One day too late to obsess over The Ides Of March so this stayed right where we found it. We left empty-handed.

This was the second house on our list. It was described as "all must go" and listed "antiques" and "holiday decor" amongst the items for sale. There were several rooms. There were lots of books, albeit newer books. There were some older items though we nothing of interest to us. The only thing we picked up was an unopened Boris Karloff DVD for $1. Oh, and a fifty cent bag of sugar cookies which the daughter had made and was selling.

Our third and final sale was advertised as a "big garage sale with hundreds of household items". This was exciting simply because it was a garage sale and it would be the first garage sale of 2019 to us. Sometimes, you can find a buried treasure at garage sales and, of course, they can stretch out a saling day when worthwhile estate sales are few and far between. There were some old things here. We saw a box of Life Magazines and a few would have been of interest to us if sold separately but they wanted $25 for the box. No thanks.

After a very uneventful saling day, we visited Monica's dad for a few hours and then went home to relax. On Sunday, we had one sale on our list and it was run by a major estate sale company and, for the first time all weekend, there were pictures to accompany the sale. It was not a very interesting house and there were only a few things of interest. We arrived just after its open to find about 30 people on line waiting to be the next round of people to get inside. We cut our losses, turned around and went home where we had breakfast, did some food shopping and managed to get a few things done around the house. It may not have been a great saling weekend but it was three days off spent together and that is always what counts most. Oh, and...

...we will have this DVD to watch in the future!