Excuse Me While I Buy This Junk

This week is staycation week for me. And I’m loving every minute of it! I knew I missed being at home all the time, but being here more than two days in a row has really confirmed just how much I do miss it. I mean, who wouldn’t want to look out their kitchen window and see this any time they choose?

This is one side of our driveway. We had the brick wall installed this spring. It’s all so nice to look at. Your eye goes to the right, soaking in the beauty of it all when…. WHAM! You see this!

Now, let me say first that I’m not the outside person. Not that the inside looks any better. Just sayin’. My husband is the man with the green thumb. He grew all the flowers from seed. He’s also the one who started a carport project and hasn’t finished. I want to decorate that little corner. Got a couple of ideas of what to put there, too. And I could even move this stuff if I had the time to work on it, but it seems like I’m always at the shop. Getting more and more despondent because I’m never at home. With the zinnias. And my own projects that need finishing. And dusting more than once every three months.

I was never meant to be a working girl. Thank goodness I married young and never had to support myself. I might not have married money, but I’ve never had to work for us to eat. I’ve always had part time things going on for spending money because I’ve always known how miserable I’d be if I worked full time. So what am I doing right now? Working more than full time and the only money I get out of it is a hamburger every now and then and sometimes finding something I want to keep for myself.

Being home this week had me convinced I needed to get the whole operation back here, knowing what an impossibility that is. I need the storage space. Need the packing room. And yesterday morning when I went down to get a shipment ready, knew immediately that I simply cannot give up the shop. I love having the shop. Adore my customers. But I love home equally, probably more. So, expect to see a days/hours announcement soon. Got to make sure I’m at peace with the plan.

Or:

The Ensuing Hilarity May Or May Not Have Anything To Do With Free Margaritas

Did I use the word tomorrow in the last post? Oops. My bad. Sorry.

Erin and I went to market on Saturday. Week ago Saturday, not the other day. I swung by her house and picked her up. She lives south of Atlanta and takes a different route from me causing a little confusion trying to find a Marta station. Going up I-85…. was that the Marta exit? Darn. Passed it. Turned around at the next exit…. Oh, no! Was that it? Darn. Passed it. Turned around at the next exit. This went on a couple of rounds before we “landed”. Then there was the problem of trying to figure out how to buy a pass. I’d just done it the day before, why was I stumbling this time? Oh, yeah. A security guard did it for me the day before. The last time I’d ridden Marta we bought tokens. Simple, straightforward.

We did get our passes and boarded. Found a seat and a few minutes the train started. Each of us solemnly looking straight ahead, relieved to finally be on our way. About 20 seconds into the ride:
Me mumbling: We’re going the wrong direction aren’t we?
Erin mumbling: Yes, we are.
The giggles have begun. We’d forgotten we started at the second station. She says she was just following me. That she thought I knew what I was doing. OK. If that’s what she wants to believe, so be it.

We arrived at the airport. Not our intended destination. The loudspeaker voice told us we were at the end of the line and for us all to get off the train. We dutifully obeyed then thought how stupid. It’s going to start up again in a few minutes, so we got back on, but in a different car with one other person. One we watched very closely to make sure he was breathing. I do regret not taking a picture, but if you’ve ever looked at People of Public Transit you’ve seen similar sleepers.

First up at market was to take my candle tester program card to the candle people. I don’t think they knew anything about it. They tried to say that it was if I bought $350 worth I got a free candle or two. Hmmm… They’ve always had that offer. That doesn’t sound like a “tester program” to me. But oh, well. Let’s go see if we can find people giving away stuff! (Since neither of us could afford to place orders.)

On the way to free food, while in the elevator, the button puncher guy – yes they had elevator attendants – said free sunglasses right now in building 3, floors 1, 3 and 5. Or some such. Free sunglasses?! Gotta go! Half an hour later we’ve worked our way to that building and were in front of the table with free sunglasses! Groan. They look like cheap, ’80′s flourescent, soft plastic sunglasses with America’s Mart written on the sides. Pooh.

Back to find the vendor who would fed us.

Got our food, wandered around a bit and what’s this? Cupcakes? Free? And….. no way! Free Margaritas?? Woohoo! And they were good. Drinking our yummy drinks, we took off to the temporaries. I wanted to show her the “no photos please” booth and a painted furniture booth. Walking onto this floor, a worker lady asked if we’d had the free Mexican food, yet? OK. Wait. Free Mexican food, too? Where? She handed Erin a sheet that showed the booth numbers with the food. Erin’s looking at the sheet, trying to figure out exactly where to go for this free Mexican food when I heard a clamor. A crash. At first glance, it looked like she was on the floor and I heard the words, Ow, that hurt! She’d bumped into a rusty angel and had tried to catch it, almost hitting the floor, but not quite. Everybody within 50 feet heard it, turned around, and more than one person said, Are you all right? Two raced over there. Then my giggle box got turned over. It was funny, but was it really so funny as to cause the kind of laughter that is so intense it comes out as a wheeze and won’t stop? But I had to stop. Walking, that is. If I’d kept going there would have been a piddle puddle trail following me.

We did get a glimpse of the Mexican food, chips and dip. We passed. But wonder of wonders, there are more free Margaritas!

Next up was the antique and one-of-a-kind floor. Lots of industrial items. Things I was excited to see that I’ve been buying for a while now. Yes! Staying on top of the style.

We did some clothes sample sale shopping and gave up the ghost. It was time to leave. Right at busy Marta time.

Boarding was easy enough, but there were no seats. A kind young man stood up to give Erin his seat and later, when the young man next to him saw what he’d done, he got up to give me his. But, nothing is ever that easy. As we were making our way the 5 feet to the seat, the train started. Erin fell into me, stepping on my just healed, broken, little toe. She was trying not to hurt me which put her more off balance and I had totally lost my balance and was helplessly lying on some poor man just sitting there minding his own business. And there was no moving until what seemed like HOURS later when the train leveled out. Oh, sure. It was only a few seconds, but when you’re lying on some strange man, your daughter is lying on you and some other strange man is trying to help, it seems like a lifetime. I swear, the whole experience, beginning to end, felt like country mouse visiting city mouse.

And this concludes the story of the Atlanta Gift Mart Adventures. In the interest of brevity, several things were left out. Didn’t want to bore you too much.

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I’m spending the week at home this week keeping two of my granddogs. Excited to be finishing up some projects around here and excited to share. Maybe before next week.

The July 2010 Atlanta Gift Mart is in progress as we speak. I haven’t been to a Big One in years. You probably know this, but they have four markets a year. January and July are HUGE. Massive. Impossible to see it all, impossible to navigate without a plan and extremely hard even with a plan. Spring and fall, not so big. I’ve been trying to get over there to sniff some candles. I really like Capri Blue candles. You’ve seen them at Anthropologie and some of you have seen them here in the shop. But I’d never smelled the whole line and I wanted to pick and choose the ones I liked the best and I’d got a card in the mail to present when ordering to qualify for the “tester program”. Sign me up! So that was my main purpose for attending.

Friend Jeri went with me Friday, her first time. I think she’s still stunned. First up, take care of candle ordering. We wandered around the three buildings, trying to follow the signs directing us to the correct building and finally…. finally arrived at the correct spot. Chose the scents I liked, which turned out to be the ones I’d ordered before by either having smelled them before or because I liked the names. We left there in search of food.

Located a company serving lasagna to everyone, no orders needed! Alright! And it was good. Then saw someone giving away Bobbles, waterbobble.com a reusable water filter bottle, the designer sitting there signing them. They were free and yep. We were in line. Oh, did I mention I only had money for candles? There was no ordering to be done anywhere for anything by me. So free was high on the priority list.

Went for a potty break and spotted a card at the sink saying another company was giving away a pair of flipflops. Yippee! We took off to get our flops!

Finally we start to actually look at some of the companies. (The sequence of events may be muddled in my mind.) In the temporaries I spotted a booth that I literally wanted to waller in. Live there. It was a Paris company. I was so impressed with the items and the display I had to try to sneak a couple of pics. We’re not supposed to take pictures in the temporary exhibitors. Got caught. The French accent said, “No pho-tos please, no pho-tos, please!” I said how much I loved their stuff – didn’t say I couldn’t afford $86 for this or $150 for that – but gushed over their stuff and asked if they had a catalog. She handed me this. This, this, disappointing… sheet… that I’d already picked up.

This is about life size. You can click on it to see a greatly enlarged version. So, OK. Better than nothing, but not very revealing. I asked again about a catalog, and she just nodded at the piece of paper. I asked about a web site. She nodded at the piece of paper. I cropped the company name and other info. So I’ve checked out the web site. You cannot enter without being a registered buyer with an international VAT number. I’m just a rinky dink vintage seller. I have no VAT number nor am I inclined to get one. Why do the companies do that? What are they afraid of? That we’ll copy them? Undercut their prices? The people who know how to do that are gonna do it without seeing pictures of their stuff. And they don’t have to give out the prices without a request. I’d show you the pictures I took, but sadly, they were so blurry even I could barely tell what they were.

After that, we did a little clothes shopping at the sample sales. I got a couple of tops. Jeri and I split up while I was clothes shopping and she found a place to buy some watches in bulk. She has a booth and sells a lot of newer type things. She’s burning up the woods right now with the Power Bands.

On the way home I realized I forgot to hand the candle reps the card to qualify for the “tester program”! Horrors! Had to go back the next day.

Part 2 of this post, coming tomorrow, will be sub titled The Ensuing Hilarity May Or May Not Have Involved Free Marguritas

The weekend was not the end of the pickin’ dry spell I was hoping for. My friend Jeri and I went to a few yard sales in her town on Friday, but they were just blah yard sales. Bought nothing.

Saturday fared a little better. Six estate sales. True estates, not pretend estates. Well, except for one. They might have been moving or something. There was no junk. Just the stuff they thought people would want to buy, all throughout the house and with high prices.

So from those 6 sales this is what I brought home. And I had to work dang hard to find these few things.

Standing wire basket. I’ve always wanted one of these. Happy to have found this one!

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Love vintage wedding photographs and have quite a few now that I need to let go of and sell.

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Vintage Chanel #5 that I’m sure I paid too much for. The perfume smells like pure rubbing alcohol, but I can’t find the bottle shape anywhere. Maybe that’ll add a little value to it?

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Art Deco Sessions alarm clock. Sigh. Exciting, huh?

Two antique cook books. The one on the right is from the New Orleans Ladies Aid and Sewing Society. I can’t find this book anywhere on the internet, so does that mean it’s really rare and worth millions? LOL They’re both in horrible condition, but look at the writing in the Ladies Aid book:

Do you love it? I do! Those old recipes written in that turn of the century handwriting is priceless to me.

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And that’s it. Not much to crow about. No, that’s not true. Add to that a pine cone elf for me and an Italian, enamel flower wall hook I gave to Erin. She’s collecting them right now. Once she gets her fill, I’ll be able to sell the ones I find.

Have you “liked” the Facebook page, yet? May I grovel? I can’t seem to get over 229 people. It just hangs there. It might gain one, but lose another. I promise not to bombard you with what I’m selling. Actually, I probably don’t post enough. Click here to see it. Thank you if you’re already a part. And thanks to you if you join!

Could this yard sale in the 1930′s be the first ever held here in Sylacauga?

This was featured in the local paper in 1998, by Beryl Pitchford, one of the children in the photo. Hope she doesn’t mind my sharing it!

Wouldn’t we love to get hold of some of the yard sale junk? I’ve strained and magnified, but have never been able to identify anything in the picture. But the funniest thing is….. What is that kid on the right wearing on his head?!

And here we thought yard sales were a more recent “invention”. My mother actually had the first I ever knew of locally, back in 1973-4.  We knew they had them Up North, but we just never knew of any around here. After she had hers, they started appearing every weekend and haven’t slacked up since.

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So. It’s official. I’ve become The Most Boring Person In the World. Nothing’s been going on around here. I haven’t even been to enough sales to have anything to talk about! Had a few weeks of No Apparent Reason Blues. Took some time off last week. Turns out, I must have been burnt out. I really need to start scheduling time off and taking it whether I think I can afford to or not.

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I’ve added a new security thing for comments. Type the red moving letters. Let me know if it’s too annoying or doesn’t work or something.

Remember this little fellow?

I talked about him here – It’s the Simplest Things.

Well, I couldn’t stand it. He finally came home with me. I don’t know what I’d have done if someone came in and had to have it before I brought it home!

The perfect spot, at the moment, seems to be the small dining room buffet. (We have two dining rooms. Sorta. A little room that is officially the dining room, but our living room is really long and has a big table on one end for all those family and friend dinner parties we so rarely have.) So this is in the little, official dining room.

The cherub lamp came from my mother’s bedroom. 1967. She had a decorator named Gaynell come do our house and Gaynell put this lamp on a dresser in the master bedroom. I was kinda excited when my stepmother didn’t want it.

I’ve been gathering a few brown transferware pieces for that room. I’m not terribly happy with the plate. Too much yellow, but it’ll do for now. Somehow the little sheep fit right in.

As promised, here’s part II of this past weekend’s sales.

Yesterday, I showed the picture of the out building with thousands of ’80′s seasonal decorations. Little did I know that that was just a drop in the bucket of what was inside the house. This lady, God love her, was a shopaholic. And apparently in her shopping prime in the 1980′s. I breezed through the kitchen, and den first, nothing interesting there, then headed upstairs. What I saw took my breath away. Clothes, clothes, clothes! Everywhere I turned — clothes!! And almost all 1980′s, old lady clothes. One attic storage type room, the first I saw, had 8 rows, each about 10′ long, crammed full. One row was full of evening clothes. Sequins. Bright, shiny, sequins. Another would be dresses, another pants, etc. I pulled this out of that room. (Unwashed and wrinkled in the picture – as are all the items pictured today.)

Hmmm… All those clothes and that’s all I could find? I walked out of there and moved to the room on the right. Wow! The walls were lined with more clothes. The funny thing was that there was about 10-15′ of her husband’s clothes here. I did so want to get pictures, but there were too many people. Guess I shouldn’t let that stop me, huh? I’ll try to start doing better. Here’s what came out of there:

That’s just about the biggest crinoline I’ve ever seen!

Some other room, upstairs? Downstairs? I was dizzy by then. And confused. Well, I walked in and saw Imelda Marcos’ shoe collector competition. And I did get a picture of part of the room.

And what did I get from there? These boots.

If this lady had been like the one with the clear vinyl, thigh high boots and sexy nighties, the one they whispered “had parties”,  that I can’t find the blog post on, I’d have racked up. But no. She was a sensible, older lady. Her taste ran modest almost to the extreme. Honestly, I bought the oldest and “flashiest” things there. Except, of course, the sequined things, but they were still old lady sensible. Oh, I did get these gold lame 3/4 length gloves:

Manny earning her keep.

Can you see him? The first sale of Friday had a line and numbers. I got my number, #22, and walked around the property while I waited. Oddly, no one else was hanging out at the fence looking at the llamas. There was another in there over on the right. You can make out his shape if you look close enough. But I enjoyed seeing them. Not something I see every day, especially not close up. They seemed totally unaware there were people milling around not 100 yards away from them. Or maybe they were aware and that’s why they were hiding in their shed.

So I poked around and snagged these bicycle rims off the trash pile of plastic flower pots. All those people who had walked by them and nobody picked them up? Sure, they have no real monetary value – as bicycle rims. But have value because of the multitude of creative and decorative uses. I just haven’t figured them out, yet. I know I’ve seen oh, so clever pictures on some of your blogs, though.

I took those back to the car and walked back up to a pleasant surprise. They had opened the basement doors. And let the few of us hanging around down there in! Before the people standing in line at the front door were allowed in!! You’d think the head start would have been wonderful, but I kinda walked around with that deer in the headlights look. And feeling. I channeled the deer nicely. Couldn’t think. There I was with only two or three other people, men, for competition and nothing spoke to me. Nothing said grab me before the crowd gets down here. And it wasn’t just basement junk. There were nice things there. So I took off to the out building. Maybe I could get inspired there.

This was my first inkling that this wasn’t your average estate sale. That picture is of one wall in the out building that was chock full of seasonal decorations. Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Halloween, even St. Patrick’s Day! But it was all newer. 1980′s. Hmmm… Better go back to the basement. Uh, still nothing speaking to me. Upstairs it was!

Gasp!

But the reason for that gasp will be told tomorrow. What did I buy there? Here’s part.

Yep. Except for the things I’ll reveal tomorrow that was it. A pretty painting, a stack of 30+ colored, aluminum coasters, two Lucite candles.  And last, a metal flower basket the likes of which I’m incapable of resisting.

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So Saturday, I went to a sale up the street from me. I was first! That almost never happens here in my town. There are a couple of people who ALWAYS beat me, no matter how early I get out. Here’s what I got at that sale:

Repro Staffodshire type dog.

Oriental runer.

Three sets of lace curtains and this iron thing:

I’m sure it’s new, but I liked it.

Jewelry. A Mexican silver necklace, whatever that is bottom left. A long necklace, but silver? Maybe? Silver bracelet, a couple of rings, square earrings. The necklace, top right, is a Miriam Haskell. OK. So not the best example of a Haskell, but still. There were also quite a few ear bobs. Clip on earrings of blah to so-so interest.

I spent so much there, I thought I’d just go back home. I did and I tried to stay there. I really did! But couldn’t do it. I felt compelled to go to more sales. There weren’t that many anyway. What could it hurt? First one, I ended up buying all this guy’s tools for $50.00. Turned out to be a good thing. Hubby has been excited all weekend going through them. Keeping some, sorting others, even selling a few at work right off the bat. You know these men get just as excited about their toys as we do ours.

Then another sale netted these things:

A newer, yard long print.

Silverplate coffee set. The silvering has worn off. Just the way we like it, right girls?

This painting that’s on some fuzzy, felty, sorta, kinda like, fabric. Looks ugly in the above pic, but the colors are prettier than that.

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And that’s it until tomorrow.

About a month ago I found a hidden yard sale. It was advertised and actually had a sign in the front, but it was later in the afternoon and there was no sign of a sale. I rode by. Twice. And was about to leave when I saw another car slowly ride by, back up and park. Two ladies got out, looking as confused as I was, so I thought I’d join them. We could hunt the hidden sale together. We were uneasily easing up to the house when we heard a voice say, “The sale’s back here.” Oh! We had to wind around and walk down slippery rock steps. Really charming! The sale was in the coolest “patio” under the back of the house. Like a basement without walls. There were a lot of nice newer things, but a few old items like this. I think he might not have had a good sale because nobody could find it. I consider myself very fortunate to have found this painting on stretched canvas to go with the growing collection I talked about here.

This is my first participation in Show and Tell Friday that Cindy at My Romantic Home sponsors. Love looking at everyone’s posts and I hope to be able to participate more often!

Can you believe it? I got lucky recently. These paper mache rooster plates had just been put out. I’m betting they wouldn’t have stayed long. I sure snapped them up! I tried really hard to use them at home. They’re the right colors, but they just didn’t work for me. Boo! Maybe they’re right for your house?