Garage Sailing

When I was little I loved going to garage sales on the weekends and seeing what treasures I could find. We used to hold a garage sale about once every year or so with our neighbours which was a lot of fun. I'd get really excited about setting up my own table and selling my books and toys for 20c to $1 each. Some of the smaller bits and pieces I would wrap up and put in a lucky dip box. And of course I loved counting up all my loose coins and seeing how much I had made at the end of the day :)

Since the emergence of op shops, we haven't really been to many garage sales. When we do, they all seem to be selling either kid's or baby stuff and can be a little disappointing in comparison to what you can find in op shops now. Every now and then though we do strike a good one, like today (while on the way to the op shop haha). The owner was moving house and had held another four garage sales prior to this one. I really wish we had known earlier because he was a vintage collector and it was like garage sale gold! I can only imagine the great furniture and other items we could have picked up, but we were still lucky enough to come away with a few things :)

The first thing we spied was this sweet floral hat. There were a couple others but I really liked the colour and arrangement of the flowers and netting on this one. I would love to find an old hat stand to hang this and some colourful coats on. I also found this old story book with cute fairyland creatures on the front. It reminds me of the Shirley Barber books I used to read when I was little.

There were lots of little knickknacks to rummage through and we came up with some old keys, a small black and gold bag, an Avon cream perfume jar and atomiser, and an old set of paints from the 1950s. The owner gave us the wooden tray to hold everything in while we looked around and he ended up throwing it in for nothing which was nice.

I ummed and ahhed about this old biscuit tin but decided to take it in the end to use for keeping in the laundry to store clothes pegs (plus everything was cheap as chips but I shall get to that soon). I wish biscuits still came in cute tins like this :)

And of course, how could I resist these colourful drinking glasses? They'll go nicely with my growing collection (here and here).

Finally, my favourite find was this nifty wooden deer which is actually a salt and pepper shaker! The pepper goes in the head which comes apart from the neck (a little morbid perhaps!), and the salt goes in the body.

The best part is that all of these finds came to a grand total of $8. The owner mentioned that he may have another sale before moving at the end of the month, so we might pop back another weekend. Whatever he doesn't sell is going in a big skip out the front, which is a bit sad because there were lots of lovely old children's books, bags and kitchen knickknacks still left.

Have you been to any good garage sales lately, or maybe held your own? I would love to hear your stories :)

Life is one big happy picnic

Just a quick post to share some of my recent finds. First up is this glass trinket box with yellow and silver embroidered flowers on the lid. According to the price sticker on the bottom this was meant to belong to a set of 3 but was left sitting on its lonesome on the shelf. I rescued it for $3.99 and it currently resides on my beside table happily housing some bobby pins and hair clips :)

Next is this little cat trinket that I bought for $1 much to my mum's delight- "It's a cat and a mouse with their arms around each other reading a book and they're not meant to be friends!" (I think she was a bit overwhelmed by its cute factor haha).

And finally, my favourite find (also a dollar) which is this old "Smarty Pants" notepad by Paula Presents. Each page of the notepad has the same little character in different settings with cute sayings. I've shared a couple of my favourites below and the rest can be found here :)

Penny for your thoughts

I found this little piggy bank for $1 the other day at the op shop. It's one of those old ones that you have to break with a hammer to get your pennies out because it doesn't have a stopper on the bottom.

Upon first inspection it's just a cute little pig with some sweet pink roses on his back. And then...

BAM! Evil pig! Pig could karate chop you with those eyelashes! No robber's gonna pinch my pennies, hah! Despite his crazy eyes I still found this little piggy strangely appealing. Besides, I don't think he's really evil. Just misunderstood.

Show us yer clickers!

I found these old party favours in box when mum did a bit of a cleanout. They're made out of tin and are most likely from the 50s. The beetles and indian man are clickers that have a metal tab on the back and make a delightful KER-CLICK KER-CLICK KER-CLICK noise when pressed and the other two are whistles :) I wonder whose idea it was to include these in the lolly bags of party-going children who are already high on sugar?

Continuing with the party theme I found these sweet old packets of Medallion party invitations at the op shop. I haven't opened them yet but according to the back of each packet one side has "Dear____ Will you come to my party on..." with date, time place etc. and the other side is for the invitee to circle their attendance :)

Renovations

Hello everyone! As you can seen I'm working on redesigning my blog and just wanted to pop in and let you know it may take awhile because I'm fixing up all my old photos so they match the new layout. In the meantime, here are some wonderful woodland critters I seem to have accumulated to keep you company during the renovations.

Oh deer

I used to pine over look at this deer everytime I went to the op shop and was surprised to come home one day and see her sitting on my desk in all her glazed ceramic glory after Mum had bought her for 50c =) I have called her the very original name of Bambi. Here is Bambi frolicking in the violets...

Speaking of violets I also picked up these cute earrings for a couple dollars...

What's everyone doing this weekend? I think for the rest of the day I'll catch up on some uni reading and then tonight I'm going out for Indian for my friend's 21st. I hope there's onion baji and pistachio kulif icecream, yum!