Brrr...Windburned Cheeks, a Few Good Finds, Sparkling Cherries and a Sale Filming for HGTV!

Yesterday my friend Auntie (because her original blog is called "Thoughts from the Chicken's Auntie"...check out her new blog!) and I left before the sunrise to go to the east side of the state for an impressive list of 8 estate sales! Can you believe 8 estate sales in January-in Michigan?!? All within a 23 mile radius of each other-too bad they were over an hour from our hometown!

The first sale was at the home of a former Chrysler executive. When we got there, it was single digit temperatures with a 15 mile an hour wind. We waited outside for about a half an hour. My cheeks are still red and sting a little bit today from getting windburned!

The company hosting the sale pretty much just piled the junk stuff wherever. It was almost like an episode of hoarders-there was so much stuff! They only priced a small amount of stuff, and the rest of it was up for interpretation (meaning they look you over, they look the item over, and they set a price based on what you look like you mind spend on it.). My least favorite way to shop sales!

I picked up a few things, and when I went to pay and was told the prices, I said a few times, "no thanks-I don't want it that bad". The owner/cashier then came back with lower prices and I ended up with everything I carried to the check out-and at prices I was willing to pay. Hopefully other shoppers didn't just accept the Interpreted prices! I hope they dickered a little bit!

For some reason, I've been drawn to vintage thermoses ( I picked up 5 at the first sale yesterday!). I think that it's Shara at Monekybox's fault-LOL! I saw a photo of her thermos collection and ever since, I've kind of been drawn to them!

I also got a bright green Glasbake jumbo mug and a red Carlton cake saver/carrier, and a few hankies with crocheted edges-sorry...I already got them cleaned up, priced and packed in the bin to go-otherwise I'd show you the pictures!

The next sale we went to was just 5 miles from the first one, and it was in an old mini-mansion. It had really high ceilings with crown molding, dressing rooms, servants quarters, a grand oak staircase with 3 levels. A servant's staircase to the second floor and third floor as well as to the basement. It was a gorgeous house-I'm bummed that I forgot my phone in the car-otherwise I'd show you!

After the cramped, hoarder quarters at the first sale, this sale was wide open, very well organized everything was priced and clean-and best of all...there were LOTS of workers. Even the check out line went really fast! I will definitely be interested when I see sales come up from this company!

At the mini-mansion, I got a pair of adorable little red leather baby shoes all scuffed up, a glass punch ladle, a yellow Pyrex loaf pan and a Kate Spade purse (looks like new-for me!). Everything but the purse is the same place the other stuff ended up. I'll take pictures of the booth once it is all set up and I'll try to remember to show you what I bought.

Here's the purse...I thought it was something fun and whimsical for a cold, dreary, winter day!

 After that we went to some other unremarkable sales and then to a sale where they were filming for HGTV. I've seen ads for a few months for sales that say they are filming for HGTV, but from the pictures on estatesales.net, I haven't seen anything worth the trip to one of those sales. This time, since we were in the area, we decided to stop and check it out.

They were filming for the show "Cash and Cari". We both really didn't want to be on camera, so we were glad to be able to sneak in behind the cameraman while he was filming Cari at the checkout table, but a few minutes later, he caught up to us and another woman in the kitchen. As soon as I saw him, I turned away and tried to squeeze past him and out of the kitchen. Unfortunately, I didn't see the giant black camera equipment box on the floor and smashed my shin into it and now have a scrape and bruise as a souvenir of my time at the estate sale filming for HGTV!

We ran out of time and weren't able to shop the last two sales on the list, but that was OK, by me. I had a lot of wrapping and packing waiting for me at home. I have about 90% of my stuff for the booth priced and now 90% of that is wrapped and in bins ready to go!

The new stuff from yesterday is cleaned, priced and all tucked into the last bin. All that is left is to paint the display shelves (Auntie has offered to do this, because I hate to paint!), load the stuff into Kevin's truck and my car and head out to the mall on the first! That and hope that I didn't price my stuff too high, and that it's stuff other people would want to buy!

Ok-so this price tag thing...

...is so not working! It took me 2 days to make tags and price 49 items. Last night I switched to the pre-printed tags that I bought from the antique mall and I was able to price 55 things in about 15 minutes! The white tags aren't as cute or inviting, but they sure are a heck of a lot easier and quicker!!!

I'm off to clean and price more junk beautiful treasures for the booth before I have to leave for my volleyball match tonight! February 1 can't get here soon enough!! I'm ready for my house to get back to normal!

Last Friday while Auntie and I were out at a couple of estate sales, she found two wooden shelving units for FREEEEEE! Sorry about the quality of the pictures-I've misplaced my camera. Not surprising though with how torn up my house is will all this stuff all over the place!

They both have giant plastic zipper bags stapled to them for some reason...

Over the weekend, Kevin and I went to Lowe's and got some wood to make some more cases, and then a couple of weeks ago I got a small oak bookcase at a thrift store for $8-so we are well on our way to having or display areas all taken care of!

He made two identical cabinets with differing shelf heights.

The two freebies are going to be painted the turquoise-ish color. The two new ones will be painted white, and the small one will stay as it is because it is solid oak. It actually looks like the top half of something-doesn't it??

Price Tag Options...

We've been trying to come up with ideas for our price tags for our new booth at the antique mall. Auntie has been busy working on a logo for us. I thought maybe we could use scrapbook paper in various designs (one for each month to help with rotating inventory and to coincide with seasons and holidays). If we get the paper that is white on the back, we can use a rubber stamp with our logo.

This is what I was thinking...

I thought this would be a fun color/design for February/Valentine's Day. What do you think? Do you think it will end up being too much work? I bought black thread, thinking it would go with just about anything, and it was a step up from the white thread that all of the generic tags that everyone else uses has.

I got 35 tags out of one sheet of scrapbook paper. I moved the hole for the string in a little further than I wanted, because I thought it would give it a little bit more stability and would be less likely to rip or tear.

I already have tons of scrapbook paper in all kinds of designs/colors and patterns so it wouldn't end up being any more expense-just more time to do it this way rather than buying the pre-made white generic ones at the mall.

With all of the options out there for scrapbook paper-I think the possibilities are endless!

 What do you think? What do you do for your tags?

Estate Sale Thursday...

I've been working so many hours the past couple of weeks, just trying to keep everything moving and on track, that I got to leave early today! Things have been kind of stressful at work the past 5 months. We have 2 new directors in our area and a new intern, so there has been a LOT of extra work, and now our intern has moved on and we are in the process of hiring a third director. I'm thinking another new person means more stress and more work...that's why when the weekend comes and estate sale time comes....ahhhhh-rejuvenation!

Since Kevin was off today, he agreed to go with me to a sale in Detroit. From the pictures, it looked like it was packed full of stuff! Boy, was it a longggggg drive! It was a really dirty house with really dirty stuff, but I was able to find a few gems amongst the dirt and dust.

An Anchor Hocking Savannah covered oval casserole-new in the box and a vintage tablecloth! I've been collecting Savannah for several years-I just love the pattern, and I have a hard time passing it up.

As we were leaving, I noticed that Auntie called, so I called her back and she told me of another good sale on the way home in Beverly Hills...or Franklin if you wanted the GPS to pick up the address, so as she shared the address, I was relaying it to Kevin to type into the GPS while I drove. He decided to wait for me in the car this time.
I had only been inside for about 5 minutes when he came in and said, "We have to go-the well drilling company is going to be at our house at 3:00!" We've been having a stinky water/low pressure issue for a few months and after doing everything we could possibly do to fix it and getting it tested for safety, I finally whined complained begged enough for him to contact a well drilling company to look in to it. So, 2 1/2 hours later-it's all fixed and we have wonderful pressure and best of all-no more sulfur water!!!

I did good in my 5 minutes...this is what I got at the second sale...

I got the 3 larger boxes of bulbs at the first sale, a couple of really badly stained tablecloths (one is already Biz-ily soaking-these are the "before" shots-I'll show you the stain free pictures (hopefully---these are probably the worst I've ever bought) in a few days. Another thermos and a couple of fun glasses.

Not a bad day, but not enough stuff for the drive. I think I'm going to pass on any more Detroit sales-it's just wayyyy to far to drive...but I'm sure if I see a boat load of Fiesta or Pyrex in pictures at a Detroit sale-I'll change my mind!

Doing Some Research...

Look at the wealth of knowledge I found at the library! I have been really enjoying each and every one of these books. They all have something to offer, whether it's history, pricing, or wonderful pictures-or all of it-they are worth the read!

Fun Times Finding Stuff for the Booth!

Yesterday Auntie and I went to a couple estate sales and a couple thrift stores. When we left it was snowing like crazy and the roads were really bad. We almost turned around-that's how bad it was! I'm glad we kept going, because about 20 minutes away from our meeting place, it wasn't even snowing and the roads were just wet.

The first sale was full of vultures! I've never been to a sale that was so bad. The estate sale company let people in early (we got there 10 minutes early and they were already let in). She didn't have anything priced-just signs around the rooms-and they didn't even list everything. There was only one cashier and she was frazzled. The shoppers were plowing into people-I got a door slammed into me, and they let too many people in the house at one time.

I think this was the first time we had shopped this estate sale company-I'll have to give some serious thought as to whether I'll shop her company again. I suppose it would have to be a sale loaded with Pyrex or Fiesta for me to consider it-LOL!

The second sale was very nice! They had less people inside, but more workers. Nothing was priced, but the owner was super nice and super cheap. I already went to his website to look for future sales!

I picked up lots of stuff for the new booth-now I have to clean it up and get it priced. We don't take possession of the booth until February 1st. The waiting is already killing me! I'd like to have it painted and all set up and ready to sell by the 4th. So that mean's Auntie and I will have to hustle and get our acts together to pull it off. Luckily for us, we are just painting over the border at the ceiling and not the whole wall!

We're going to paint it with black chalkboard paint so we can change it out with the seasons. We're going to call our booth "Kitschy Vintage" after Aunties Etsy store. I'm hoping that making our own tags will be easy enough to do, so that we can have a design or picture on the back-to kind of brand our booth-to set it apart from the other 299 booths in that mall.

This is what I picked up yesterday:

We did it!!!

Yesterday my good friend Auntie and I went in and put a deposit on a booth at a local antique mall! We are going to share the booth and give it a try for 6 months. If after that time, we find out we aren't doing so well, we'll close up shop-but hopefully we'll be having so much fun that we'll want to keep going!

It's very exciting and a bit scary because we've never done anything like this before!

We really like the location of the booth-it has an overhead light right above it and although the booth is in the back room, you can see it as soon as you enter the door!

We have to go back next week to sign the contract and get all the rules and such-but we are on our way to becoming "dealers"!

One Step Closer...aaaaackkkkk!

Thanks everyone for your kind words and encouragement on my last post! I can't tell you how much they meant!! I think I am one step closer to finally selling some of the junk treasures,that I've been hoarding collecting at all of the estate sales and garage sales that I've visited this past year.

There's a new twist in my hand wringing/should I or shouldn't I saga...the possibility of opening and sharing a booth in a local antique mall with my good friend and fellow treasure seeker Auntie! Believe it or not, this option doesn't worry me nearly as much as selling on Ebay and Etsy.

Auntie called the mall yesterday and got prices and found out that a few booths are becoming available as of February 1st. So, today we ran over to have a look. When we got there, we found out all the small booths were already rented and there was only one booth left and it was a big one (which means it also costs more).

Just when we were wondering if that was our sign that this wasn't for us, we started talking with a worker who has a few booths there and she introduced us to a guy who has a few booths there. He must have talked with us for over a half an hour. He was a wealth of knowledge, and really gave us a LOT of good advice and tips.

So now we are crunching numbers, scanning through our junk potential inventory, and praying for wisdom. If you are a praying person, I'd sure appreciate it if you'd send up a prayer or two for us for wisdom and patience in making this decision!

Thanks for listening!

Why am I worried about this?

I have been wanting to sell stuff on Ebay and Etsy for a long time now, but I have been overwhelmed with fear about doing it. Why? (That's the same question Auntie keeps asking me, and the same question I keep asking myself!) I am afraid of the shipping, and all the issues that come with shipping (lost package, broken items, dishonest customers saying the packages were lost or damaged, etc.).

 Auntie has promised to help me through this excuse  fear, and help me list one thing on Ebay to kind of get my feet wet. I have a million and one things to list! Now the issue becomes...what to list!?! If I was running a garage sale or estate sale, I wouldn't hesitate one bit on what to sell, how to display it, what to price it at and what the minimum would be I'd take for any given item. So why is this so hard? Am I over thinking worrying about it?

I'd also really like to rent booth space at a local antique mall and try my hand at that. I think it would be a fun way to support my treasure seeking addiciton adventures, but there is always the fear of losing more money than I can make.

Are you an Ebay or Etsy seller? Do you have a booth in a shop or mall? How did you get started? Did you just jump in feet first, or do you have some tips and tricks that might help me out? I'd love any advice or tips you can give me!

New Year's Day...Not a Good Day to Look for Treasures!

Today ended up being a wild goose chase! Auntie and I took off to the north a ways, hoping to find some great deals, and uncrowded shops. The shops were all closed! We did manage to stop at at couple Goodwill shops, where Auntie picked up a few things for her Etsy shop.

I didn't find anything to buy, but it was a nice break to be out and about looking for vintage treasures with my treasure seeking friend!