Yard Sale Finds

My camera is home!  Oh, yeah, so is my son, lol.  When he got in the car last night, I asked him how D.C. was.  His answer?  ‘A lot of it was kind of boring….the cemetery, the-'  Me, ‘You mean ARLINGTON CEMETERY???  Boring?  Are you kidding me?  Do you even KNOW what that place symbolizes?’  and then I had to stop myself.  Yes, I was a bit peeved that I spent $200 for him to visit these places that have such history for our country and he comes home and says they were boring.  I know, he’s 14.  I do know that he realizes what these sights stand for.  They have been doing research and reports for the past few weeks on the sights they would be visiting.  He is at the age where he ‘gets it’, but he hasn’t quite gotten ‘the whole picture’ just yet.  He did have fun, and I’m sure it was more fun that he was able to take the trip with his classmates rather than his family. lol  It was a lot of back to back sight seeing in a very structured scheduled time, so I can understand that he thought some of it was ‘boring’.  I can remember being that age, and hanging with the friends away from home would have been more fun if they had more ‘downtime’ on the trip.  I’ve forgiven him for that statement and I am glad he went. :)

Okay, on to the yard sale finds.  I mentioned that I had stopped at 2 yesterday and found some good deals. 

I found this cradle for $3

I’ll be sanding it down and painting it for a few prairie dolls to sit in.  Also found a few wooden picture frames and a mirror for a few coins each at that sale.

And this was the thing I had to come home and look up the value on.  I spotted these right away!  Yorktown!

She had them all priced separately, and I quickly did the math….$21.  I second guessed it for just a moment and then thought, what the heck.  They would be worth that to me, I guess.  I came home and looked them up online, and the first listing I looked at was $75!  I told Hubs that they were an investment. lol  There is one little chip on the rim of the #2 but it’s toward the back so it’s not too visible.  The one thing I am not sure of is the lid on the #3.  The handle is not shaped the same as the other ones.  So I’m pretty sure this isn’t a mint set, especially with the chip.

But I still love them!

Hubs went golfing with our neighbor yesterday evening, and his wife called me and asked what I was doing.  She said she was cleaning out the shed (that’s the ‘magic shed’), and she wanted to know if I might want anything that she was getting rid of.  Um, maybe!  So Gannon and I went down.  I can’t remember all the stuff I wanted, but she said she’d start me a pile so we could get it another day.  I know I will be bringing home a box of tile to fix the patio table.  Someone had left me a comment that I could tile a top for the patio table when I mentioned it before.  I had considered it, but I didn’t want to go out and buy tile for it.  Problem solved!  She tried to send home a few aquariums with me, but I didn’t want them.  I did bring home a huge one for Timmy though.  The bird cage she said she thought she had was actually a HUGE cage that would better suit a chinchilla or ferret or some other small critter.  The large fish tank will be easy to clean and still allow him to be able to see us.  When I am done posting, I will be heading out to scrub it up for him.  I’ll show a pic of his new home when he gets settled in :)  She had a small square enamel topped table that she stripped the base down on (8 layers of paint!) and she said I could have that too.  She also had a few other enamel tops that didn’t have bases, and I picked out a white one with a blue sponged edge that I want to build a table base for.  Don’t know where either table will go, but I’ll find a place somewhere.

She was thinking of me the other day when she hit a yard sale that had crocks and picked 3 up for me!  Nothing of great value, but for a few dollars each, she did good!  She did put 2 of her plants in 2 of the plain ones, but said when she finds some cheap planters to replace them, then the crocks are mine. lol  She’s a hoot and she felt bad that she bought them for me and used them :)  No biggie.  This is the one she did give me…the bigger one on the right…

Yep, I was happy with just this one!  lol

She said she hasn’t had any luck so far this year with yard sales, so she wanted to go with me today.  We hit a few and I found a few goodies.

I found this end table for $3!

Perfectly sturdy but a little scratched up.  Know what’ll fix that?  New paint!  That was my deal for the day.

This little pear shaped piece of lidded stoneware was interesting for $1

Don’t know what I might put in it, but it was different.

I found an assortment of (dirty!) stuff along the way…

New candy thermometer-50 cents, small cutting board- a dime, wooden phone shelf- $1, short crock-a quarter, and 2 sets of sconces for 10 cents each.  Oh, Barb bought Gannon the radio controlled spider for $2.  It had batteries in it and works fine- and it amused him while we drug him around with us today. 

And lastly, I found this plant stand for 50 cents…

This is my first ‘firkin’.  I never see any and of course I snagged it up.

All in all, it was a pretty successful yard sale weekend for me.  I felt like the $ was flying out of my pocket, but I only spent $12!  And that was including the $2 spent on hot dogs for us at one place and $2 I spent to get fresh batteries for the spider.  There is always something you leave behind too, that you are kicking yourself in the butt for not getting.  Today, for me, it was the over 100 year old rocker that a guy wanted $10 for.  I know.  $10 and I passed it up!  It had a woven seat and back on it, but that was falling apart pretty bad.  Barb is the ‘chair lady’.  She buys old chairs and works her magic on them back in her ‘magic shed’. lol  She was checking it out pretty good, trying to decide if it was worth it to fix.  He was trying to get her to put number out there, so she said$5.  He said he wanted to hang on to it for $10.  It would have been a lot of work to re do the seat and back on it, but for $10, it would have looked beautiful sitting on my porch the way it was!  Like I said, I felt like I was spending a lot of money by that point, and if I would have reached in to my pocket and realized just how little I had spent, I would have happily thrown him a ten for that chair!  Ah, well, there will be others.

One great thing about going with her is that where I am interested in finding the old stuff that I can decorate with or redo, she is interested in the tools, hunting and fishing stuff, and appliance type things.  She does have a good eye for the old stuff too, but she does not really use it in her house, so she thinks of me when she sees it! 

Thanks for the supportive comments on yesterday’s post.  I kind of went off, and it wasn’t directed to anyone in particular, but it did feel better to get it out.  I was able to put it out of my mind and move on.  The one blog that I will say that I was talking about was nienie.  If you have not read her blog or know her story, she is an amazing individual with great obstacles in her path.  When I first discovered her blog, I spent hours and hours reading past posts of hers- both before and after the accident.  She has been on Oprah and the Today show talking about the plane crash and how she is able to go on with her life.  She is one who mentioned that she gets nasty emails from people.  I feel badly for her that with all of the surgeries and pain that she has dealt with and will still have to deal with for perhaps the rest of her life, that people would feel the need to hate on her!  Her blog is hugely followed, and I’m sure she gets 100 emails a day and most of them are supportive, but she has mentioned a few times that she gets unsavory emails from a few.  If only those haters had to walk a mile in her shoes- if only they had to spend a day with her pain in her body…shame on them. 

Okay, that is getting to sound like I have not yet moved on! lol  I really have and now I need to move on to go get Timmy’s tank cleaned and maybe sand that table down!  Hope you all have a good weekend!