Saturday, March 28, 2009

A Rummaging We Will Go!

Yesterday I went to my first rummage sale of the season. Holy smoke! We (Mom and I) arrived just two minutes before the sale was scheduled to begin and there must have been close to 200 people waiting in line. At 10 sharp, they swarmed like locusts and entered the church.

Talk about a free for all! I estimate half of the furniture was snapped up in less than five minutes. (Luckily, I didn't see anything I wanted -- until it was too late, of course. A darling little plant stand for a buck!) I was looking for rose plates -- and naturally, there were none to be had. But I did find a few nice things.

The first thing I grabbed (and the most expensive item) was a (very dirty) Tupperware cake carrier. (I popped it into the dishwasher and it came out sparkling clean. Thank you, Mr. KitchenAid!)

Next up was some gorgeous wrapping paper Giftwrap(for a quarter--in it's original packaging). One of the packets (a Monet painting) came from an English store--as indicated by the price sticker of one pound/35P. The colored tissue paper (for a quarter--also in its original packaging) was a steal, as well.

Since I was looking for roses, I think I spied the only "rose" oriented item in the entire sale: Some gorgeous rose paper napkins (in their original packaging), originally sold at Napkinsthe Victoria & Albert Museum in England. It came with an ivy-napkin holder (wonder why I chose that?). And to make sure I got full value out of the napkin holder, got some Christmas napkins in their original packaging.

MS EntertainingLast of all, I snagged a first edition copy of Martha Stewart's ENTERTAINING for 50 cents! Truth be told, I already have a first-edition copy of this book. But I figured it would be swell to have an extra copy at our family's summer cottage. Who knows, I might want to throw a beach party one day!

In all, I dropped the vast amount of $5 -- such a deal!

On the ride home, we spied an estate sale. It was a lovely home (the basement was finished with a full kitchen -- the perfect in-law apartment, that is if you're a vampire and don't want to see daylight), and surprisingly, most of what was left had NOT FOR SALE signs on it. (Some really nice furniture.) Xmas Salt & Pepper

I did find something, though. I collect kitchy 1940s/1950s Made In Japan Christmas figurines and grabbed these Napco cuties for $2 for the pair. It's rare to see these figurines with a price tag less than $10 these days, so naturally I grabbed them. As it happens, I already had the little girl, but that's okay--I've got more than one duplicate. To have the pair is really sweet.

Anybody else go rummaging this week?