The first estate sale of the year….
Was good. Really good! There have been a few other sales that I didn’t go to. It’d be like one 60 miles away with nothing else going on, so I’ve stayed around home. But Saturday, the itch had just about done me in. I still didn’t want to drive over 100 miles round trip for one sale, so decided to go spend the day with Erin and go to all the thrift stores in her area. They’ve got some good ones. What they don’t normally have, is estate sales. My theory is that since they don’t have estate sales, people donate their estates to the thrifts. Of course that does not explain why our local thrift store is so crappy. We don’t have many estate sales here, either.
On the way, she called and said Chris had been out and saw a house with a sign in front of it. God Bless him! We’d have found it anyway, it was in our line of travels, but he told her about it. We do want to encourage that.

Small, unassuming house.
Looks prim and neat on the outside, doesn’t it? We got inside and, well, there wasn’t a lot of stuff, but the stuff it had was fun. The inside was definitely not as nice as the outside, though. The kitchen was tiny and icky, the other rooms tiny and in disrepair. Those homes always make my heart hurt a little to know someone actually lived there. I suppose it might have been vacant for awhile, but still… And this lady had been a home ec teacher.
Erin and I went in separate directions. I found the book room and left it before looking at the hundreds of books, thinking I’d go back. I forgot. Pooh. Erin, however, found the room with the vintage clothes. She got first pick and I took what she didn’t want.
Something happened to my brain. As I think back now, I wonder what I passed up. Why I didn’t just buy EVERYTHING? What was piled up on that bed? Might it have been good stuff and I was too sale-fuzzled to see it? It had been such a drought and to see all this fun, stuff… My kind of stuff! Are you sitting on the edge of your seat, waiting with baited breath to see what we bought? I know you are. LOL Now, keep in mind, we were 4 hours late, but here it is.
Oh, but first, here’s the trunk and back seat of the car loaded up.


There was an upstairs. One bedroom and an attic space upstairs. The bedroom had patterns and old fashion and sewing books. We think there were 5 boxes of patterns all from the 1940’s – the 1980’s. Erin actually spotted them first, but she didn’t have enough money to buy them all, so we split the price. But, God love her, she toted some of the boxes downstairs before one of the men there offered to help. When we got back to her house, we spilled them out and started sorting.

That’s not all the patterns. We estimate around 200 of them. What else did I get?

An intact, 1941, Art Deco calendar, pictures of what appears to be either a bridal party or something fancy, a fun, little, red plaid, file folder thingy, old box of colored pencils and two Vita Food, brewer’s yeast tins, one holding a small collection of old stamps. I didn’t know this until I opened it right before taking the picture to see what that was softly rattling inside. I though it was yeast. That was a nice surprise.

Most of the books are fashion and sewing related. One 1972, Spadea pattern catalog. The son said he’d sold some old Vogue catalogs on eBay. I’d have loved to have been the one to sell them, but I guess he should have first dibs. Hrmph. In this stack, you can even learn how to make your own shoes! There’s a book on draping design and one or two… or three… on flat design. One on making men’s suits. Some old weaving magazines from 1951 and 52. These will all start going up on auction tonight. I’ll be working hard on them today.

A bag for empty spools. How fun! (And already spoken for.)

One of the vintage dresses. I bought another and a nightgown, but they have stains and are still at home.

A bunch of old crepe paper roses. These are large, like about 4″ diameter!
And what am I keeping out the goodies? There’s always something. This time it’s this:
I can’t decide if the blue is some sort of plastic or if it’s enamel, but one of my spatulas broke and the other is lost. So now I have a cool, blue spatula!
~~~
All that brings me back to the give-away. I’m adding one of the crepe paper flowers to the Vintage Valentine Give-away.

I’m also adding this 1964 letter to a friend:

So now, the giveaway has those two things added to the vintage Valentines and the old, heart, chocolates box.

Remember any and all comments made on any post this month enters you into the give-away. Good luck!


















