A Great Junkin Fix!

Today was a great day for sales and a much needed junkin fix! I decided to take a couple of hours this afternoon to check out some of the 104 sales in our local paper. I went to 4 different subs that were having sales, 2 estate sales and 4 or 5 garage sales. It was kind of overwhelming with so many to choose from. It was also very easy to drive past the many sales with all of the baby and kid stuff spilling out of the garages and down the driveways!

The first sale I went to was an estate sale, in a Centennial historic farm house. The prices were great, the selection was very slim...it was actually the second weekend! I totally missed the first weekend last weekend when I was at home breaking my back doing yard work. I was bummed that I missed it last weekend, but happy with what I got today.

 A Manhattan platter for fifty cents.

 Looks great with the quarter bowl I got a few weeks ago!

 Got this for the frame. When she crawled over furniture to get it off the wall for me and said it was a dollar, I felt like I couldn't say I didn't want it when I found out it was plastic.

 Marked Fostoria Studious on the back.

 I just love this funky retro daisy mirror!

 This will be great for hanging hankies in the booth!

Reuseable wipe off placemats still in the box! 

An old laundry cart. The woman running the sale said her mother used to work in a laundry mat and brought this home many years ago.

Kevin also bought a section of railroad track for a dollar while we were at this sale. Total spent...$7.50!!

Then I went to the first sub sale. I only got out of the car twice throughout the whole sub and only went to 3 sales in the entire sub.

 Cute table/dresser runner.

 Fire King cottage cheese bowl.

Excellent vintage tablecloth with purples!

Then everything started running together...

 Doll cradle that needs a mattress.

 Sweet little 70's dolly stroller-I had one of these when I was little...it was only $1.

 Vintage vanity bench.

 The woman at this sale said she used this pot for many years to bowl eggs. She said you get better boiled eggs with a white pot that you do the darker ones.

 This one is staying with me! LOVE it!!!

 Carnival glass candy dish for fifteen cents! The two women at this sale said they couldn't believe the number of people who picked this dish up and put it back-especially with the fifteen cents sticker!!

 I LOVE this vintage mirror...it might need some time to rest at my house before I eventually take it to the booth. It will look great in the new spare room!

 Two packages of foam chair padding for $1-never know when I might need it!

 Vintage folding wooden bed tray. When I walked up to this sale, another woman had this in her hands looking it over. She put it down and walked a couple steps away. I grabbed it and offered them $3 (it was marked $5) and the lady said sure! The woman who originally was thinking about buying it, sighed and then showed me how to fold it up and said she collects them and has them all over her house-one is even under her bed.
I kind of felt bad for swooping in and grabbing it, but she put it down and walked to the next table when I grabbed it. It wasn't like I ripped it out of her hands.

I got a LOT of stuff and paid very little for it all. I'm thrilled with my finds today and my adventure!

A couple of weeks ago, I got a few things that I haven't had time to blog about. Unfortunately, two tables that I got are already at the booth, so I can't show you, but here is the rest...

 Ten cents!

 The hanging board is painted with chalkboard paint and was used by a teacher in her classroom. I'm not sure I can part with this just yet!

 I've never seen a wire teapot before!

 Kevin got these to put on the floor in his barn in spots he stands in a lot when using his woodworking tools. All four were seventy five cents/

 A dehumidifier for our basement-we bought it from a church group raising money for a mission trip to Africa. It works GREAT!!

 My heart skipped a beat when I saw this! I've NEVER seen one outside of an antique mall. It wasn't priced so when I asked, and she said $3...I just about did a happy dance right there in the driveway!!

 Then she showed me the chip and small crack. You can barely see it when the lid is screwed on. The mechanism still works and it looks great on display...what do you think? Would you have bought it knowing about the chip? I think it was worth the three dollars...what do you think??

That's it, I didn't get to any sales at all last weekend-too much yard work. I am happy to report that after about another 2-3 hours it should all be done! Whew! Then we start with power washing the deck, and cleaning the inside of the house-fun stuff! So I may be a bit scarce for a couple of weeks again.

Tomorrow and Sunday I am taking a break from house and yard work and I am going junking!! I CAN'T WAIT!!! Tomorrow is the Midland Antiques Festival in Midland, Michigan at the fair grounds. 80 acres and over 1000 vendors-too bad there is a 40 percent chance of rain!!! Normally I'd skip it with the rain, but it is the first one of the summer (there are only 3 dates each year), I am loading up my granny cart, some cheap disposable rain ponchos and a big umbrella and heading out with my friend Auntie.

Sunday is Greenmead Flea Market-this is only twice a year and Sunday is the first one. I will have to fly through because Sunday is also Baccalaureate and Eric is speaking!!! So I only have a 2 hour window to shop at Greenmead before I have to head home to change and get to the church. Plus my parents are coming in to town for the service-nothing like trying ti cram way too much into a weekend huh??

Hope you have a great weekend!!! If you're going to Midland, send me an email and I'll look for you to try to say hi!

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!!