Posts filed under ‘garage sale’
>Opping sans opshop.
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Punk & I mooched over to Gran’s yesterday & discovered that she’s in the early stages of planning for a garage sale… I have been waiting for this!
I spent ages making a big mess of all her carefully packed bags & compiling a nice mountain of goodies to bring home with me, lovely. I love how she’s priced every little thing, even if that means writing 10c on a little circle of paper & sticky taping it on (I should get her some sticky dots…), & how she’s justified the ‘steep’ prices, like writing ‘Very Old’ before the lofty $1 on a box of dominoes (which I bought…).
I left her with strict instructions to keep any new bags of goodies aside for my perusal, promising in return to help with the garage sale when she holds it. Like I said I have been waiting & waiting, she’s not had a garage sale since we moved here, and since she’d been taunting me with stories of rather regular sales beforehand, well, it’s about time!
I remember hanging about at her garage sales when I was little – and lugging a tonne of stuff back inside ready to take home with me, the best find being a massive box of my Uncles’ old ‘Mad’ & ‘Cracked’ magazines – god I loved those & read & re-read them for years!
Even if she does nae go ahead with the sale, as I have a sneaking suspicion she might not, it was so fun laughing with her about all the weird stuff she’d found, not to mention coming home, yet again, with a bunch of cool Nanna plunder.
>Stuff, baby.
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Oh how I love thee! So much so that I am always more than a little suspicious of those who don’t love you so much, or don’t have so much… how do they get their addictive flashes of nostalgia, or that warm fuzzy feeling that only a cute birdie egg cup can give…?!
My favourite & my best find this week came in the form of a GORGEOUS, DEVINE, ABSOLOUTELY AMAZING, vintage Virgo coat, picked up at an oppy after Gymbaroo for a ridiculous $3. Yep. $3. Even The Boy was impressed with this find. It’s a wee bit too small for my ginormous & ever growing girth, but I am keeping it out, on display almost, as my ‘after bubba goal coat’…. waaaaaaaaaaaaaay after…
Even though there were heaps upon heaps of garage sales yesterday I didn’t hold out a whole lot of hope – I felt I’d had my glorious find of the week & none of the gazillions of listed garage sales sounded all that great to me on paper, so we went, The Punk and I, but grudgingly, and shivering as it was DAMN COLD yesterday morning…!
Just as I suspected, there wasn’t much of anything, although Punky managed to find herself a little sumpin sumpin at virtually every stop.
But then.
There was this;
And these;
Bringing my stuff quota up for the week & making me marvellously happy.
For more Flea market finds visit the ever lovely Miss Sophie… I know I will!
>Phone home.
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It’s a sad state of affairs when you are all revved up to go garage sailing but the local paper informs you that “Sorry, there’s only one on; and it’s going to be picked bare before you even get there because, well, there’s only one on.”
It only adds to the sad state of things when you finally make it to some second hand dealers the next town over, because your MIL is visiting & not adverse to that sort of thing, and two of the four have decided to take the day off.
It’s all you can do not to chuck a big girlie tantrum when, by chance, turning into a street you normally have no reason to go down (you’re only going that way because the bakery didn’t have the bread you wanted), you spot the tell-tale balloons & hand drawn sign…
Fate. Naturally.
My mind is abuzz with the possibilities this wee set up could have – I could string the phone cord between our room & Miss Punk’s – I could ring her when I hear her up to no good & tell her to get back into bed. I could get her to bring me a mandarin (sounds like an odd choice, but it’s the only thing she can reach…) or run in for an extra good night kiss.
$5 well spent… even if they don’t work, they’re so darn purty.
Head to Sophie’s for more fateful finds…
>Pleasure & Pain.
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Pleasure:
Massive vintage trunks, $3 ea.
HUGE dollhouse, $5 (You should have seen me wrestling it into the car…)
Kitchy cute figurines & planters, 50 cents ea.
Enamelware & cake tins, $3 the lot.
Old mirror, matching teapot to last week’s tan one in orange, potholders…. $2.50
More potholders & pyrex $2.
Pain:
Being THIRTY SECONDS LATE for a vintage picnic set in a briefcase, marked $10 but sold to the (#$%^@!$) picky woman for $5 because “…it’s not a complete set.”
I could have cried.
I almost did.
If you ever come acrosS one kids, think of me won’t you, if you’re not the vintage picnic set in a briefcase type? I’ll love you forever!
>Ahoy Matey!
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That’s what successful garage sailors scream from the bough of their ship on their return voyage, while defending their bounty from mutinous shipmates.
I almost didn’t go garage sailing today. I was tired, The Boy had the car, we already have enough stuff, I’m trying to pack & purge not buy more, we’re poor… but I ended up going anyway. I had to. It’s a sickness.
I only went to two, we were pretty late when I could resist the sultry siren calls no longer, the first was more like a “potting shed” sale, and was a little too picked over; one glance at the lidless Tupperware on the foldaway card table and I knew we were too late. The second was a Mecca of all that is good about garage sales.
We wandered around the back, Le Punk & I, admiring such treasures as a $10 laminex kitchen table (if I’d had a ute, we would now own 2 laminate kitchen tables and have nowhere to put either) & 70s bar utensils, when we were encouraged to head inside too. The woman that lived in the house was headed to an aged care home & her family were tidying up. I’ve only ever been to one similar sale, in the Blue Mountains, an estate sale where there was stuff stacked upon stuff in a tiny little house, and I was oddly fascinated by the whole thing.
It’s rather strange & a little unsettling to walk into a house, somebody’s home, and be able to buy whatever you see there. Everything had a price sticker, or “Make an offer” scrawled on it in red marker.
In the kitchen I saw a Breville Professional Juicer for $20 & had to have it. It was exactly the same as the juicer The Boy bought me once that I didn’t want at all, but I hadn’t been turned on to the joys of orange, carrot & ginger juice then, so he gave it to his mother after it sat unused in the cupboard for a year or so. To his credit, he wasn’t as annoyed as I thought he’d be when I revealed I’d bought another, probably because I already had a tall glass of delicious fresh juice waiting for him.
In the hallway there was a huge box of fabric, different kinds separated into little plastic bags & neatly labelled, the box said “Make an offer per bag” so I asked the lady how much she wanted for the whole box, obviously her mother’s modest stash, and she said “Make me an offer”. I had no idea, I was thinking $20 but then I was thinking “No, she won’t take that…” so all I said was “I would but I don’t think it would be enough!”, she looked at the box again & asked “Would $10 be too unreasonable?”.
No.
$10 would be very reasonable. Thank you.
After getting my treasures & The Punk home, I sorted through the fabric (lots of knit & rib, will have to become better acquainted with my overlocker eventually) and did some washing up, all the while thinking “I didn’t look at everything! I was so excited by the fabric I forgot about everything else!”, so, as tragic as I know this sounds, I went back.
Punk stayed with The Boy’s little bro while I dashed over again (I also had to get oranges for juicing… so… like… I’m not THAT bad….) to have another look.
The family were so lovely, asking where Le Punk was & how old she was, the guy outside showed me an ice-cream container full of old rubber & wood mounted stamps. The price tag said $8 but he said he’d give them to me for $2. He said that his brother inside had told him “You’ll never get $8 for those!” so if they asked me I had to say I paid $8, just to prove him right (nobody asked, mores the pity). I also got a recipe book stand/holder (That’s what I’m calling it anywho, but I’m pretty sure it used to hold a bible…) for 20 cents, but latent guilt about my fabric stash steal saw me force $1 upon the sweet lady instead.
Experiences like this do nothing to help my addiction.
I am doomed.
>Garage Sale Finds.
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punky & me 