Two Days of Some Interesting Finds...

Being an airport chauffeur for my parents yesterday turned into a fun treasure hunt in an area of older homes with several sales. There were about a dozen sales and only one was all kids and baby stuff! I enjoyed being in a totally different area-one I've never been to before, and probably will never get to again.

These are my treasures from yesterday...two of the things I picked up are things I think a certain Chicken's Auntie might like...

 This is for Christmas cards. It's a little over 2' tall and it was fifty cents. I'm thinking of spraying it-maybe black...or red...

 This is the best find of the day. It is the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus. It's a chalk ware T.V. lamp and it was only $3. I can't find any online to find out what they are worth or how much to list it at other than the worthpoint website, and since I don't have a membership...I'm out of luck!

 A bunch of old bottles and decanters-a quarter each!

 An old soybean flakes sack.

 A Teacher's Highland Cream Whiskey box-can you see the price? Yep! $1. He had others that were $10-$15, so I don't know why this one was so cheap-but I'm happy it was!

 An old dog biscuit sack.

 Five pairs of old gloves for $1.

 A couple of old photos and a few old prints.

Stuff on England and the Royal Family...hmmm..I wonder who might like these...?

 A couple of vintage glass soap dishes, an etched glass, a tin, an A & W mug, a couple of atomic pedestal flutes and a Gooseberry Pyrex dish-all of this for $5. See the lovely trunk interior? Pretty interesting-huh?

Yes (sigh), another trunk...I just couldn't walk away! It was $20 and it had the interior tray...

 A brand new, never used vintage tablecloth from Japan.

 A pair of Russell Wright chartreuse dinner plates, and some aqua swirl glasses. I got the plates, glasses and tablecloth at a church barn sale.

Today I had company! Auntie and I were finally able to get out and do some treasure seeking together! It's been a month since we've gone to any sales together! We drove all over the place and went to quite a few sales-most of which were good ones! Between the two days, I only spent $39-including the trunk which was $20. What do you think about the interior of the trunk? The lady holding the garage sale said it was the original material from the 1920's...I'm not so sure...what are your thoughts??? It feels like something between a polyester and a rough cotton.

Last week my sister-in-law went to a sale at her church and was a secret shopper for me. I kept getting picture texts from her asking if she should buy this or that for me. This is what she got me...

A vintage Yellow Pages letter opener, a couple of vintage half aprons, a pile of hankies, and an old scrabble game for ten cents. Total cost last week? $3.


The boys and I spent a good couple of hours hanging the tongue and groove pine on the ceiling of the sunroom this afternoon. It's very long and tedious job-and it was very sticky today-it got up to 82 very muggy, hot degrees here in Michigan. The deck is almost done on the sunroom, and once the ceiling is done, then we can do the drywall and tile the floors. We decided with all of the traffic coming in off of the sand volleyball court that the wood, although warmer, would take a beating from the grit of the sand-so we are going with super tough porcelain tile.

Tomorrow is the end of the season potluck and blind draw tournament for our Saturday volleyball league-whew! The last one is finally ending and we can stop running so much! Although we LOVE volleyball, by this time of the year, we are ready for a break. Tomorrow I'll show you the shirts I designed for the tourney...I forgot to take a picture earlier and I'm too hot and sticky to take one now! Our air conditioner won't turn on and our house is 78 muggy degrees right now-it's gonna be fun sleeping tonight-ugh!!!

Trunks # 4 and # 5

Yesterday afternoon, I pulled out trunks number 4 and 5 and actually started working on #5 for a while. It is going to take a LONG time to get this trunk cleaned up. The outside looks pretty good, it's the inside that the previous owners glued either industrial wallpaper, or a tablecloth of some sort to.

Trunk #4

Trunk #5

Whatever they lined it with, it is really tough to remove. It has all kinds of stringy fibers under the plastic coating.  This is the only trunk of the five that has an inside shelf.

Trunk # 3

This is trunk #3 from last summer's unplanned trunk spree. I'm not sure if I will clean it up and paint the inside, or if I will pass it on to my mom. She needs to come down for a visit and choose between this one and another one that is very similar. She has always wanted a camel back trunk, and these are just sitting up in our barn, needing a home...

What do you think? Should I leave it as is? Or spruce it up with some paint???

What would you do?

If you remember from earlier posts, I've hinted at an inadvertent trunk collection that we somehow started last summer. It seemed every garage sale we went to last summer had awesome trunks for sale-and cheap too! This is one of those trunks. It isn't anything fancy-it is pretty worn and a little rusty. The reason we couldn't pass it up...the price! Look at the sticker (yes, sorry to say, it got hauled to the upstairs storage area in our barn and there it has sat for a year-but it is down now, ready for a new life.). It even has some neat paper labels on the front.

When we asked the person having the sale why it was so cheap, she told us that she just recently bought the house from a woman who came into an unexpectedly large sum of money and she left everything behind. So, rather than throw it all away, the new owners decided to have a garage sale to try to make some money so everything was incredibly cheap at this sale. I don't think I could just walk away from my stuff like that...could you? I tend to develop a personal attachment to my treasures, and even if I won the biggest lottery to date, I can't imagine walking away from everything...some things, yes no problem, but other things-no way!

Would you add a fresh coat of paint, or leave it like it is? I think I'd like to sell it, because in a small house, you can only have so many trunks and 5 is wayyy too many. This is one of my least favorites, so it won't be too hard to let it go. The only question is leave it alone, or spiff it up with fresh paint and new wallpaper inside...let me know what you think-I'm on the fence.

Friday -Antiquing and Thrifting...

Since it is finally warming up here in Michigan and today was my day off, I decided to head out to Livingston Antique Outlet for a little mindless wandering. I was hoping to find some vintage linens at bargain prices! I was very happy with what I found...

My very first vintage tablecloth! It is huge and in really great shape...and it was a GREAT bargain!
I LOVE it!!

I know this purse isn't old, but it is cute and the price was right!

 Cute little embroidered napkins!

Then I had about an hour to kill before I had to pick my youngest son up at school, so I stopped at our local Salvation Army Thrift Store. It was really packed today! I didn't realize they were having a 50% off kids clothes sale until I got in there and heard them announce that you had to be in line by 2:00 in  order to get the special price. I was afraid I'd get stuck behind a million moms and be in line forever! I checked out at 10 minutes til and none of them were even in line yet-whew!

This is what I got:

Easter egg candy dish (minus the M&M's).

Not sure if these are candy dishes, or what they are. I kind of thought they'd be neat turned upside down and used as a pedestal to raise up other dishes...

When I got home, I got the bug to do some spring cleaning and decided to move a recliner out of the living room (it hardly gets used), and move in one of my antique trunks so we could enjoy looking at it. Of course, that meant having my snarly oldest teenage son (almost 19) and his friend move them...after about 5 minutes of him complaining and telling me he hates my trunk-I reminded them who buys their pizza every Friday, and that ended that discussion really fast!

I love this trunk! I got it at a garage sale in Ann Arbor last summer when I went out garage sale shopping with my friend Pam from work. I actually left without it, and went back several hours later, because couldn't get it out of my mind and regretted not getting it, and thankfully it was still there! It was painted white on the inside and had a bunch of Christmas cards glued into the inside of the lid, with what looked like wood glue! It actually was pretty easy to get all the cards and glue off with Kevin's electric scraper.

I touched up the black and brass colored paint. The wood was already in great condition.

The inside I lined with hydrangea wallpaper I picked up at our local Habitat for Humanity Store. Notice my little paint boo boo? I didn't realize the paint ran into the inside until it was already dry. I'd like to add some finishing touches to finish it all off and to try to hide the paint drip.

I'll have to take some pictures of my inadvertent trunk collection and post them at a later date. For some reason last summer, every garage sale we went to, just about, had an antique trunk for sale from between $3 and $20. So, not being able to pass up such bargains... we ended up with 5 trunks!! No more trunks for us!! We both love them all, and probably won't end up getting rid of any of them. We'll spend some time fixing them up and use them around the house...I might give up one...my mom has always wanted a camel back trunk, and we really don't need 2 in the same size.