Two of my favorite garage sales took place this past week.

First there was the ‘breakfast meeting’ garage sale.  My friend/co-worker Sue and I go to this sale every year.  We both pass the sign for it on our way in to work, so when we see it we know that we need to head back out for our annual ‘breakfast meeting’.  Shhhhh, don’t tell anyone.  This is our little secret.

I always find some great stuff.  Here is last year’s haul.

Seeing this photo reminded me that I did some fun stuff with a few of those items.

I kept the bucket ‘as is’ and I even used it as a prop in last Friday’s blog post after filling it up with peonies.

The little stool under the bucket was revived with some of Miss Mustard Seed’s Flow Blue milk paint and I’ve kept that so far too.

And in fact, the little watering can in that last photo was also from the ‘breakfast meeting’ sale last year and it got a coat of Flow Blue as well.  I brought that in to Reclaiming Beautiful to sell.  I figure my non-collection of 10 watering cans is sufficient and I don’t need to add to it.

The plain plywood box in that photo went from drab to fab with a paint job and an IOD transfer applied to it.  So far I have it in my giant English cupboard holding all of my photography supplies like extra lenses and so forth.

I still have the chair that’s in the photo.  I’m saving it to pair up with a desk sometime down the road.

The rest of the stuff I purchased that day was sold as is.

At this year’s sale I found another little pile of fun goodies like this pretty pair of pyrex dishes.

And this set of McCoy nesting bowls.

Isn’t this ‘cottage’ doorstop adorable?

With a house as old as mine there is always a need for doorstops.  My doors all have a mind of their own.

I also nabbed this pretty quilt to use in my guest room.

In addition to the ‘breakfast meeting’ sale, the Nokomis neighborhood sales were on Saturday.  My sister and I love to go to those because that’s the neighborhood where our parents grew up.  We always drive by our grandparent’s old houses.

Once again though, this past Saturday was rainy.  If you’re keeping track, this was our third Saturday in a row with rainy weather for garage saling.  As we headed into Minneapolis there was thunder, lightening and a heavy downpour of rain.  But we were not to be deterred.  And this time we had my niece with us, which is a rarity, so we really were hoping to find some great stuff.

We really didn’t have much luck though.  Even though there were around 100 sales listed on the map, most of them did not open due to the weather.  I’m sure many of them planned to have their sales out in the yard, and that just wasn’t going to happen.  I always feel so bad for people when they’ve gone to all of the trouble to get ready for a garage sale, and then the weather doesn’t cooperate at all.

I did find some fun things though, like a bag full of mid-century modern drawer pulls for only a quarter.

You never know when I might run across a mid-century piece that needs hardware.  For a quarter, this was definitely a good investment.

I also came home with some more mid-mod barware.  This set is in pristine condition and has six glasses plus the ice bowl and tongs.

It wasn’t all mid-century though.  I also purchased this ginormous scale.

I really should have taken a ‘before’ photo so you could see the transformation.  This was probably the most disgustingly grimy thing I’ve ever purchased at a garage sale (and that is definitely saying something).  The entire thing was covered in a thick layer of greasy dirt.  It also had quite a few paint splatters on it.  But it cleaned up beautifully with just some Dawn dish washing soap and a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.

By the way, if any of my local readers are lucky enough to have a large kitchen with space for displaying something like this (which would look great with a plant on it, or maybe a couple of ironstone pitchers) this scale is going to be for sale, so be sure to leave a comment if interested.

We finally gave up on the sales at around 11 a.m.  We were driving around in circles at that point and not finding very many sales that were actually open.

So we did what any normal people would do, we drove over to Minnehaha Falls to do some sightseeing and to admire the amount of water going over the falls.

And then despite the fact that we looked like drowned rats, we stopped off for lunch on the way home.  We may not have scored many bargains, but we still had a great rainy Saturday!