I'm Still Here!!!

I've been soooo busy outside lately! Every spare minute has been going to the yard. I've been to a couple of sales here and there and will show you what I got soon-but right now I thought I'd show you what I saw the other day as I was taking a break from the back-breaking work.

I was in the hammock-my favorite place in the world- when these guys hopped our fence and were about 100 feet from me. It was pretty awesome!! Good thing I had my phone!!

I'll be kinda of scarce for the next few weeks--have lots of yard work to do for the big grad party on the 24th of June. Since Kevin's decided he doesn't want to do any of it, that means more for me and the boys...we'll get it done, but I won't be spending much time online.

Have a great Memorial weekend!! I miss seeing what you've been up to!!!

Monday, Thursday and Friday...Great Days for a Treasure Hunt!!!

I got to take yesterday off work because I've been working so many extra hours and because next week I'll be working a ton more! It was a nice day to be out searching for treasures!! Kevin was off too, but he decided to stay home. Which was fine by me-I like to be able to take as much time as I like or as little time as I like. Sometimes he gets tired of waiting, or sometimes I get tired of waiting on him!

It seemed like I mostly found linens yesterday. At the first stop of the day, the seller had a big box of linens (neatly folded) but you had to dig through them to find out what was in there. I found a couple Christmas tablecloths, 4 magpie dishtowels, 2 mammy dish towels (that she said she couldn't part with once she saw them-rats!!!), and a couple doilies.


At another sale, I picked up an apron without a price and was told ten cents! Then I asked about a piece of Christmas fabric and was told twenty five cents. By  the time I walked the 10 feet to the check out table, the thirty five cent purchase turned into a fifty cent purchase! Oh well...it still was a killer deal-so I'm not upset, but I am still chuckling over it!!!

I seemed to find something at every sale I went to. Here is what I picked up yesterday...

 A vintage folding yardstick and an old stocking dryer.

 A hat for a friend's hat collection.

 I think this might be Manhattan-gotta love that price!

 A trinket/keepsake box.

 Two excellent condition Christmas tablecloths.

 A deep retro daisy tray.

 Four magpie (what I was told they were) dishtowels, and 4 doilies.

 Any idea what this is? It is vintage material with a rod pocket at the top and two rows of pockets.

 Ten cent half apron.

 Twenty five cent piece of material that ended up costing forty cents.

 Painted on one side washboard and three embroidered dresser scarves fifty cents each!

Keeping the purple one...what a surprise-huh?

 Rainbow doily.

Roses doily...as you can see I am keeping both of these.

Today we were both off work and we headed out together to a few sales this morning. The first sale was an estate sale, in my own town! It was in a very big home of a single older woman who was down-sizing. I didn't see anything I couldn't live without, but Kevin found some metal file drawers. He's been stocking up on old metal file cabinets and drawers and has been using them in his wood shop to store his tools. They had 11 of them and they were $1 each-he offered $10 for all of them and they accepted.

When we were taking them to the car, we realized they were full. My first thought was, "great, now we have someone's junk to throw away on top of hauling it all home. The homeowner told us they were full of pictures of homes from our county and all of the surrounding counties. She got busy with someone else, so we couldn't ask her why she took pictures of so many houses and filed them according to street name.

I'm wondering if it was for insurance purposes, or title purposes...we even found our house from 1993! Talk about weird!!! I bet if people knew she was just tossing out pictures with addresses of their homes they probably wouldn't like it very much!! The oldest looks to be from 1991, so they aren't what I would consider old, but they aren't new either.

We'll look through them once we have some extra time. Right now we are so swamped with stuff to do (I shouldn't even be blogging right now-I'm supposed to be cleaning the house because Kevin's family is all coming over for dinner Sunday!)! We have Eric's graduation open house to get the yard ready for, a volleyball tournament tomorrow-with a potluck that I'm in charge of (and haven't bought anything yet-YIKES!!), and as I mentioned earlier, Kevin's family is all coming over for dinner on Sunday-after I get off work!

After the discarded pictures sale, I found a Pyrex bowl and another gossip bench!!! This one was even cheaper than the first one! I can't wait to paint it and change out the seat material! Since I have two, I might need to keep one for myself! I was just thinking yesterday that I wished I would have bought 2 of the little kiddie grocery carts, one to sell and one to keep!

Do you ever do that? Buy two of something so you can sell one and keep one?? I'm thinking that might be the way I buy things now-if there are ever two of something available. I've had seller's remorse many times over selling things that I would have liked to have kept. I didn't realize it at the time I put it in the booth. I realized it after the item(s) sold, and then it's too late!

We ended up out in an area where another estate sale was going on. I had seen the advertisement on Estatesales.net, but made up my mind that I wasn't interested because they used words like "quality antiques" and "fine antiques". Plus, when I looked through the pictures, I wasn't impressed. I thought I'd have better luck driveway shopping at garage sales.

Since we were right there, Kevin wanted to go. Boy am I glad we went!!! I am thrilled with my finds!! There was soo much stuff. I wish I would have gotten there earlier!!! There was incredible stuff in people's "hold" piles! I snoozed on this one and I lost out...but not too badly-I did find a few great things!

We stopped at Rocket Grilled Subs for lunch-it seems to be our new favorite place! When we went a couple weeks ago I commented that the lady working there must have been having a bad day because she wasn't very friendly. Today she was very nice and very friendly-I'm glad we gave it another try!!

After lunch we went home, changed into grubby clothes and finished putting up the stone on the lower walls of our sunroom. We even started putting the cement/grout between the stones that we put up last weekend. We spent about 4 hours in the baking sun working on it, when wouldn't you know it, we ran out of cement/grout!! I am soo disappointed (heavy sarcasm here) that we had to stop!

Actually, I am so sick of this whole project I could scream! I keep getting reminded that it was my brilliant idea to use stone-so I think everyone else here is just as sick of it as I am. We got so engrossed in our job that I forgot a vet appointment for our little peanut Lucy. I just hope they don't have the same policy as our dentist with a missed appointment fee!! They seemed really nice about it when I called them back-we'll see how much they charge when I go on Monday though.



Here are my Friday Finds...

 I just love old tins-can't get enough of them!

 This was at the estate sale up on a shelf wayyy in the back in the garage, behind a ton of stuff.

 This is a number game on one side and word game on the other-pretty cool for fifty cents!!

 This is about 3 feet by 4 feet with HUGE yo-yos. The younger woman running the sale said it was one price and her mother jumped right in with a lower price! 

 This quilt was at the estate sale. It didn't have a price on it and when I took it to one of the workers (who looked bored out of her mind) and asked the price, she said one price and I offered another and she marked it my price! First day too!!

 From the estate sale.

Another estate sale treasure.

On Monday I went to Ann Arbor for a doctor appointment so on my way home I had to make sure I stopped at Treasure Mart-I LOVE that place! The parking stinks, but I usually end up with treasures. This is what came home with me...

A 1958 Holt Howard kitty string holder with the tag still on the bottom! 

 A couple of glove boxes (one missing a lid), and a hanky box.

A straw dispenser, complete with straws that I'll be throwing away-you never know where they've been!

So I've had a wonderful junkin week! Good thing I got it in early because tomorrow and Sunday will busy with other things! How did you do this week? I can't wait to see your finds!! 

I guess I've stalled long enough...time to get back to dusting, laundry, sweeping, mopping, bed making and everything else that needs to be done before the in-laws come...off to work...but first I'm running over to your blogs to catch up real quick!! ;)

Busy, Busy Sunday!!!

Yesterday was Dealer Day at the antique and collectibles mall where I have my booth. It was the fastest load-in/reorganize/clean-up/straighten job I've ever done! We didn't get there until 10:30 because of church and we were walking out the door at 11:40!

I had a bunch of broken glass under a table that I had to clean up. Someone broke a casserole dish and the lid-even though it was in a metal stand. I was surprised that the mall employees didn't vacuum it up-I would have if I worked there. Oh well, it was under the table-so no one could see it until some other stuff got moved. The vacuum was clogged and didn't work so Kevin spent a good half hour unclogging it. Probably the next time we go there, it will be clogged again!

I had my car packed floor to ceiling from behind the front seats all the way to the back lift-gate and we got it all in!! I think it is a little too full, but it all seemed to fit in with plenty of room to walk around, so it all stayed!

When we got home, we immediately got working on the stone on the lower wall of the sunroom (outside) and worked on it until we ran out of cement (thank goodness!). The good news is---the next time we work on it we only have about 1/3 of the wall to do...the bad news is---we have to work on it again! It is very time consuming with a lot of bending and stretching and the cement is really rough on your hands. Even though I wore gloves, I ripped through 2 pair and my hands are still raw.

Now we are vegging out-too tired and sore to do much else. I'll show some pictures of the rock walls once we are all done. For not having any experience or training, I think we are doing a great job-and we are saving a ton of money by not hiring someone to do it for us!

Here are some pics of the booth...

While we were working on the rocks, I got a call from the antique and collectible mall where my booth is and they told me that a woman was going to buy my set of 6 ceramic egg cups, but dropped one and refused to pay for it so they took the price I had for 6, divided it by six and subtracted the price of the one egg cup and she bought the other five.

I can't tell you how many times over the past 20+ years I've broken something (not too many), but every time I PAY for my mistake. What's up with these people who break stuff and refuse to pay?!?!? I seriously hope that every time she looks at her uneven number of egg cups, she feels a pang of remorse for not doing the right thing and paying the couple of bucks for the one she broke!

Man...that sounds mean-doesn't it?!? I'm just frustrated...it seems like something is getting broken or stolen every couple of weeks and that is all starting to add up. Hopefully I can make it through the rest of the month without anything walking away or getting smashed to bits!!

M-15 Heritage Sale and Goodrich Flea Market...

Late Friday afternoon, I was going through some papers that I had printed out a couple of months ago, but never took the time to go through them and I noticed an ad for the M-15 Heritage Sale on Saturday. The sale was actually Friday and Saturday, but I missed Friday. The Goodrich Flea Market was also on Saturday...and it was on M-15!!

Before I left home, I was debating whether or not to take my granny cart to the flea market. In the end, I decided to leave it at home and take a bunch of giant bags to carry because the granny cart would take up too much room.

As I pulled in, I was sooo discouraged! There were only 6 vendors! I was soo looking forward to a great flea market because one of  my blog buddies recommended it. Since it was the same day as the M-15 sale, I figured I'd just zip through the 6  vendors and hit the sale trail. The selection and prices were GREAT!!!

As I was walking around, I smelled fresh kettle corn!! You know that is my favorite, so I had to head up to where it was being made. As I got there, I noticed people coming out of a building and then I noticed that the flea market was also inside!!! YAY!!! There were probably another 20 vendors inside!

I am sooo glad I followed my nose to the kettle corn!! Otherwise, I might have totally missed the inside vendors! I bought more treasures inside and talked with some very friendly sellers. The told me there was an antique mall in the building behind the flea market! BONUS!  It was a cute little mall too!

This is what I picked up from the flea market...

Yes...more linens...I'm afraid my family is going to have an intervention soon if I pick up any more! Look at the bright colors-I couldn't pass them up $9 for all three!!!

After the flea market, I started going south on M-15 and after about 10 miles and very few sales, I decided to turn around and go north-that way I could travel south on my way home. It was a lot of driving but it was so much fun!! If I would have ventured off the main route, I could have hit a ton more sales, but I decided to stick to just sales that I could see from the main road. It was more than enough too-I was exhausted when I got home!!

 Santa was only a buck!!

 This is all metal-nice and heavy!

 Amber carnival glass punch bowl with 12 cups in a box under a table-I almost missed it!

 More hankies!! I couldn't resist-they were a quarter each!!

 This little shopping cart was just too cute! I wish I would have gotten one more-they had 5 to sell!

Don't you just love the handle?!?

I drove just a little farther north than Frankenmuth and ended up driving through downtown Frankenmuth on the way home. I stopped at a little antique shop in Millington called Mike's that I really liked on a previous visit and enjoyed my quick stroll through again. I almost bought a Grandma's Flower Garden quilt...except it wasn't old. Someone has a booth there filled with gorgeous brand new quilts that are hand quilted. They were only $89 with a 20% off sale!!! I decided to hold out for an old one, but boy was I tempted!!

I would very highly recommend the M-15 Heritage sale. Even though I went on the second day, there were plenty of sales to visit (my car was packed!), the sellers had big sales with LOTS of stuff, and for the most part, the prices were really good. 

I would also recommend the Goodrich Flea Market. It's small but packs a lot of treasures with pretty good prices. I think I will take a trip to Goodrich again-maybe a couple times this summer. One of the sellers told me they hold auctions in the building too, so who knows, maybe I'll check out an auction there this summer!

I'll make sure to add the M-15 Heritage Sale to my list of sales to visit in 2013. Maybe next year I'll get to go on the first day, and maybe I'll be brave and venture off the main road to check out some more sales. I'll have to get a new GPS to do that though. The one I have keeps dying on my when I need it most! I think there is something wrong with the electrical system in my car and I don't think it gets enough juice so it dies. So far, it has come back on each time it dies...it just takes a couple of hours for it to come back on.