That's What She Said #8: Can You Dig It (We Can Dig It) Can Ya'll Dig It

As previously discussed (though in not too great detail) I've known Ann @magicsummervintage for a long time.  I mostly know what will make her "Go To 11". She's had some good hits this year, but I haven't seen her out of her mind with the sale feels yet. Until this sale came around.  Day two of a serious digger sale.  Lots of closets, lots of clothes.  The pre-sale photos didn't give much away.  Just the promise of "what if".  

This sale was PACKED to the gills.  I actually remembered to take photos of the cram jammed rooms! Check it! And remember...this is the second day.

Ann and I separated pretty quickly.  I pawed through lots of Christmas and found some great stuff.

Corsages! My favorite!

A few wee things that will make their way into my shop.

Gorgeous bits and baulbles.

Some fun vintage Hallmark.

Adorable pinecone Santy.

I also saw a few great things that did not come home with me.

Vintage foil angel with ceramic head - in pink! (With shoulders like a linebacker.)

 Vintage Christmas apron that has been bedazzled.

Ann kept finding me pawing through boxes of Christmas. She'd pop into the room, say "Dude" quite a few times, pant and sweat a bit, and then leave again to go conquer the next closet. I began to suspect she was seriously in the zone - amassing one of the best piles yet this season!

I went to the basement and dug around for a while.  I found this great planter, but it didn't go with the color schemes of any of my collectors.

I was so excited that this wee lavender egg cup was still there on day two - and therefore half price! The silly little chenille chick in the egg was rescued from a box of who knows what.  I find very few Easter / Spring delights in my travels, so it always feels really special.

I found this metal shelf in the basement!  I'm currently considering A) Where the crap I'm going to find room for it and B) What color to paint it.

These guys are seriously adorable.  Tub / sponge / terrycloth toys!

By this time I was rather loaded down, and had made my way up to the attic.  All the way there I could hear her.  Little sung notes hanging on the air, loud eeps of joy, telling gasps followed by dead silence as something was being hurriedly stuffed into a bag.

I found her in a cedar closet, being carefully watched by and older lady who asked if she "owned the closet".  Not in a mean way - in a way that said "I am so owning this closet right now!"  Older Lady was much amused.

When Ann met my eye - I saw it.  The mania.  The desperation.  The undoubtable certainty that she had already lugged at least one load of vintage dresses down to the checkout counter.  Her expression said "Help me! I'm drowning in vintage and I'm equal parts happy and terrified!"

She showed me the mountain of clothes draped over her arm.  Mostly she was describing them with guttural noises and an occasional actual word.  She was holding an armload of things from the 1940s.  In excellent condition.  That did not smell like moth balls.  Things you do not run across often. And I'd been right.  She had already spirited away quite a few others.

I assured her that she was doing the right thing - saving all the vintage.  I went into the next room and continued hearing her sounds of 11.

I found a few tins.

And some random wonderfulness. (I had to look up the meaning of "pin money".) The black beaded fish number is actually a sewing kit. However, I'm getting rid of the sewing stuff and using it as a billfold. The perfect size.

I felt pretty happy with my very heavy basket of goodies, and went to rescue Ann from the clutches of the closet.  She was debating some lovely blouses, talked herself out of them, and we headed for the cash register.

This is what the damage looked like, in the end.

After all that digging, lifting, and carrying we obviously needed some reinvigoration in the form of delicious breakfast. Sale-ing is one of the ways in which we stay fit!

We got to sit next to the pretty new crosswalks. 💕

We had a wonderful breakfast.

Afterwords, she went back for the blouses.

(I suggest you go read about it from her perspective.)

For more photos of our finds, check us out on Instagram at:

@thesnugbungalowshop

@magicsummervintage

Or if you have a hankering to get yourself some vintage treasures, visit our Etsy shops:

The Snug Bungalow Vintage & Design

Magic Summer Vintage

That's What She Said #7: Dig In

Every Friday you can bet on finding me knee deep in someone else's garbage.  Either at an estate sale, or a church sale, or a thrift store. In the summer, I have company! My friend Ann  (@magicsummervintage) joins me on these weekly adventures.  This year we've decided to write blog posts each week, about what we find.  So after you read this tale, get yourself over to Ann's blog to hear her side of the story.

This week we bucked tradition and went to a sale on Thursday night!  This is a sale I go to every year at a church called Saint Pius X! (Which always sounds like a really snobby X-man. Scott Summers - I'm looking at you.)

Thursday is the second day of the sale.  If you want to go on Day #1, you have to pay $5.  I haven't worked myself up to that just yet, so we go on Day #2.  This year Ann and Heather were with me!

The first thing I realized upon entering this, one of my favorite sales of the year, was that it was totally different.  It got HUGE. It used to be in their gym space, and had often spilled out into the hallway, but this year, it was in all the classrooms and the gym space.  Maybe ten rooms of digging!  I started to get the sale sweats.  Along with the euphoria and the panic of not being able to look through stuff and grab things quick enough. Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about.

While I was riding the sale high, Ann was sluggish.  As if she'd lost the will to sale.  She stayed pretty on top of things in the first room: Jewelry.  But, by the time we'd made our way around the room, she was pretty much done.  Too tired, too hot, just done.  To be fair, the first room was rather large and filled with oh so many jewelry delights!  It was a bit overwhelming.  Especially when most of the prices topped out at one dollar.

It was basically and entire classroom of this:

So good.

I nearly cried when I found these ridiculous flamingo earrings for one dollar!

This is something that I did not buy.  See how strong I am? It's nail polish and flamingos! Two things I love and in "my colors" and I still resisted!  Strength!

These are the jewelry treasures I dug out of the room. The bronzy glitter bracelet is glass!

The next thing I had to do was track down the holiday room.  It was farther down the hall, and Heather was already there, looting the place. She handed me a bag when I walked in.  HONEYCOMB! Score!  It pays to have awesome sale buddies.

The room was large. I tried to move quickly and dig thoroughly.  The first thing I found was this vintage Santa bank! So cute!

I also grabbed this bag of candy-like garland.

And this entire box of Christmas floral picks for one dollar!

 This adorable Easter egg is Lefton and in beautiful condition.  The house is a tin.  Because I can't stop.

Here are the honeycomb balls that Heather found me.  They are my first black...balls...and...er...ummm... SO.  I'm excited to decorate with this stuff for Halloween. 

Ann left soon after I was finished with the holiday room.  But, Heather and I soldiered on! I went into so many rooms and dug through so many boxes, I don't even remember what all I saw.  Which is kind of sad that I didn't take more photos.  But it's me, let's be realistic.

Here are a few vintage Avon and Hallmark items that I scored, along with some toys.

And a close up of the adorable Garfield earrings!

All in all I was there for at least two hours. Probably a tinch more. There was tons of stuff that I could have bought, but we're nearly finished with a bedroom remodel and things are a mess up in there.  I can't want to bring too much more into the house right now.

On Friday we went to one church sale.  It was pouring rain and really early, which is why we look sort of glazed over in this picture.

It was a really small sale, but we'd gotten up early and slogged through the rain to be there, so we took our time and really looked at everything.

This was the weirdest thing I saw:

Being the wife of a dedicated climber (stanky ass shoes) I very nearly bought them.  But the charcoal inserts we currently have seem to be doing the job, so I declined.

I grabbed up these cute little shelves for the large sum of one dollar each.  They've already been painted such a pretty pink, and the scalloped edge! How could I resist?

This was the last thing I found, just as we were walking to the checkout. Totally rad, dude!

For more photos of our finds, check us out on Instagram at:

@thesnugbungalowshop

@magicsummervintage

Or if you have a hankering to get yourself some vintage treasures, visit our Etsy shops:

The Snug Bungalow Vintage & Design

Magic Summer Vintage

That's What She Said #6: Junk In My Trunk

This week our daring dynamic duo (Me, and Ann from @magicsummervintage) ventured to an estate sale and two church sales, plus a special stop to pick up some Muppets!  It was a rather long adventure and at the end we were duly and justly rewarded with lunch on the water. (No worries, I actually took pictures of that part! Priorities!) 

We go out adventuring together and then each blog about it from our own perspective. You can check out Ann's version of events, here.

We started at the Estate Sale.  There was a magical unicorn inside and I was hoping to see it.  The "magical unicorn" was, in this case, a set of very rare Jim Henson promo puppets named Wilkins and Wontkins, from the 50s. They were a mail in offer from Wilkins Coffee.  I figured they'd be too expensive for me to purchase, but I at least wanted to see them in real life.  Something I thought would never happen.

I didn't figure our numbers were low enough for us to get to see the puppets.  There were lots of men in the line, with a lot of nervous energy and no place to put it.  This was definitely a toy sale - a sale with tons of vintage toys. This is not my favorite type of sale even though I collect and sell vintage toys.  It always brings out lots of re-sellers, and the ones looking for toys tend to be men.  Older than me.  They tend to flat-out run through a house, and gloat, and rib each other, and buy all of the things.  I'm much more of a laid back shopper. (Who has stress dreams about estate sales and can't wear bracelets to them because they slow me down and get in the way!) I don't mind finding one great thing here, and another great thing there, over a series of weeks or months. Unless the sale is filled with Muppet items that I don't already have at reasonable prices, I just can't match their level of energy and enthusiasm. It's not about the acquisition so much as the hunt for me.  The hunt and the subsequent databasing and arranging the collection.

A photo of two girls pretending they aren't being eaten alive by a swarm of never ending mosquitos. (You can kind of see the line behind us, snuggling up to the house.  The mosquitos were even worse over there.)

Once inside I went directly to the table that the Jim Henson puppets had been on in the photos.  No dice. As I suspected, they were gone. I channeled my disappointment into shopping energy and went to search the house for treasure.

  A very blurry photo of some of the millions of robots in the house.  This guy also really loved model planes, and had more than one room stuffed full of them.

Rock 'em. Sock 'em.

This is the first room that I found treasure in. I rifled through that baby crib full of stuffed animals and came up with a few winners.  I also found this pink metal shelf thing for three dollars, so that obviously had to come home with me.  Even though I had zero idea what it was supposed to be used for.

After this room I went down to the basement, where holiday paraphernalia is usually relegated to. I want all the holiday decorations!

Look at this gorgeous table of Christmas jumble! Almost everything was a dollar! I swoon! (And dig, and dig...)

Snowman sighting! After collecting quite a bunch of vintage Christmas, Ann showed up to tell me that the person who was originally going to buy the puppets had put them back, and they were up for grabs again. We ran upstairs and I asked her to take my photo with them.  The people running the sale were gracious enough to let me manhandle them and take some photos.  I think they get a kick out of our enthusiasm, which usually hovers somewhere around 11.

Here I am with Wontkins on the left and Wilkins on the right. Quite a fan girl moment.  (They were $200, which is a great price, but also an amount of money I don't really have to spend on a pair of vinyl puppets.)

With my heart still bursting with puppety (Not yet Muppety - as these items were created before Jim coined that phrase for a National audience.) goodness, I went to check out the upstairs.

I found Steve's safari hat, but that was about all.

After we checked out and said goodbye to our Estate sale buddies, we went to two church sales. The first of which was amazing, and had prices mostly under one dollar.  They had an abysmal holiday area, but I forgave them when I found the jewelry area.

This terrifyingly poo-like, hand panted E.T. was lying in wait to startle passers by.

A huge plastic crayon bank that eight year old Sarah would have died over.  I loved crayon themed stuff as a kid!  After I took this photo I plunged into box after box of vintage toys (No line of men to be seen.) and was rewarded with a basket full of goodies!  Ann helped me look and when I was about halfway done, she felt a disturbance in the force.  "I feel like there could be Jem here.  I have to look."  And she did, too!  She pawed meticulously through the barbie stuff and didn't come up empty handed.  You'll have to go over to her blog and see what she found! (She has mutant powers for finding Jem!)

I took zero pictures of church sale #2. (Shocking) But I did get a few things.

After the church sales it was off to my special Muppets pick up location.  Someone I know, saw that someone in town was selling a whole collection of ceramic Muppet items.  I had all but two of the items, and was able to make a deal to purchase just those two.  We picked them up at a yard sale, and low and behold! The lady running the sale had other Muppet items that were not already in my collection.  I bought the extra items for one dollar each!

Kermit creamer and Miss Piggy teapot. I'm just missing the Gonzo sugar bowl, now.

These are the extra items! Surprise Muppets are the best! The Miss Piggy ("Miss Piggy for First Lady...President!" and Kermit ("Wouldn't You Rather Vote For Kermit?") pins will be perfect for the next election year.  I'll trade them out with my Pinky and the Brain ("Put A Brain In The White House") election button.

I had these stickers when I was a wee one!

After all that hard work, we needed a reward.  In the form of lunch and drinks.  By the water.  We went to a place called The Pelican's Nest.

Rochester's waterfront (Lake Ontario) is often overlooked.  It's not super close to downtown, and not many people venture out there for something so frivolous as a meal. Sucks to be them, because it was awesome!

Great food, great drinks, and even wildlife!

(Somewhere my mother is screaming.)

We spent a lovely, warm, sunny, meal out by the water and it was glorious.

#teamsummer

Junk in my trunk! I haven't found this much stuff in one day in a long time! Very thrilling!

See how cute this looks in the light of day? After reaching out to my vintage loving community on Instagram (Perhaps the most awesome community in the world??) I learned that this cute pink item is a metal vegetable keeper.

Used to store potatoes and onions and the like.

Imma use it to hold and display my purse collection. Can you even stand how cute that will be??

All of the following items were purchased to put in my Etsy shop.  I have a backlog of about a year.  So, if you see something you need before then, please contact me via Instagram.

The pup with the Santa hat is Benji! He has a collar with a metal tag and everything. So darn cute.  There is also a Spuds MacKenzie knock off.

So many cute vintage puzzles.

Fisher Price, Sandylion, and Teddy Ruxpin.

I always find a few things for my thrifting buddies, and family members. That Pumpkin pail cost all of ten cents!

 This is the tiny pile of stuff that is for me. Santa is a clip on ornament. Yes, that is a Yankee Candle.  Those things are expensive, and I got this one for a quarter.  The blue velvet ring box is so worn and sweet.  It has a mother of pearl button! I'm going to display it with a ring inside. Don't miss the tiny Scottie dog earrings and the rad neon parrot pin!

All in all a very good day!

For more adventures, find Ann and me on Instagram at:

@thesnugbungalowshop

@magicsummervintage

Or if you have a hankering to get yourself some vintage treasures, visit our Etsy shops:

The Snug Bungalow Vintage & Design

Magic Summer Vintage