Garage Sale Finds for Entertaining

Yesterday morning I awoke to the sound of cars pulling up outside and chatter. All of my bedroom windows were closed, but I could still hear that something was going on. I took a peek and it turned out that two houses on our street were having garage sales.

I don’t normally do garage sales. I lived in a very petite home that had virtually no storage space for a long time and grew accustomed to the notion of keeping “things” at a minimum. And also? I don’t like bartering and half the time there is no price on the stuff. Although I am probably more comfortable bartering than tipping.

But I went over with Stella and we poked around. Mostly because I was in need of a bike and hoped to score a vintage one. One garage had some interesting pottery pieces that caught my eye. (It also had some great Lego and MegaBlocks, but it was $50 for the lot of them. I thought garage sales were supposed to be rock-bottom prices?)

The lady of the house noticed me admiring some small pottery cups. They reminded me of some red wine cups that Hubby and I used to have, but have long been gone due to chips and cracks. I guess you could say we had loved those cups to death. There were six cups and a pitcher in the set. I could not resist. Here is what they look like:

It was hard for her to sell them to me. They brought back fond memories for her of all the good times with friends that had been shared. Apparently she’d been offering them to her daughter for ages, but she wasn’t interested. (Why do imagine my mother might be saying the same thing about me at a garage sale one day? Mothers and daughters have a funny relationship, don’t they?) As they say, one person’s trash is another’s treasure! To me, these are a treasure. And Hubby and I will be sure to give them lots of good use and carry on their tradition.

They were made in Romania and have a pattern that, to me, looks like a moth’s wing. I can’t stand moths — they really creep me out for some reason! — but they do have interesting patterns on their wings!

At this same garage, I also came across a groovy serving dish that was divided into two portions. It is marked as made by Red Wing USA. A quick Google search tells me that there are a lot of Red Wing fans out there and that many pieces are collectibles. I don’t think these are (I went back to get a matching sugar container because I just loved the lid and the overall shape of it) but it doesn’t matter — I can see us getting tons of use out both of them.

How about you? Do you do garage sales and have you ever found any great scores? It is fun to poke around, isn’t it? It makes you feel like one of those people on the TLC’s line of “Picker” shows!