I finally got out to do some serious garage saling this past weekend.  I started out on Thursday by myself.  It’s a new thing I’m trying, going by myself.  I just wanted to spend a couple of hours, and then move on to do other things with my day.  The jury is still out on whether or not going out alone is going to become a thing, we’ll see.

I went to the city wide sales in Roseville, MN.  I probably made it to about 20 sales, and I came home with just one thing for myself.

Yep, that’s it.  A vintage doll crib.  I have a fun plan for it though, and you’ll see that here soon.  But um, yeah, Roseville was pretty much a bust.

Then on Saturday my sister and I went to the Nokomis neighborhood in Minneapolis.  We always try to make it to that one because our parents both grew up in the Nokomis neighborhood, so it’s fun to take a trip down memory lane and drive past the grandparent’s old houses.

I have to admit, I didn’t have high hopes for Nokomis.  Last year it was a total waste of time.  But lo and behold, this year we filled up our vehicle.

I found some really fun things, but I also made one sad, rookie mistake which I’ll share in a minute.

But first, the good stuff.  I found a pair of kid sized wooden chairs.

I’m always on the lookout for these.  I’ll put them away until Christmas, and then paint them up for the holidays like these …

I’ll also hang onto the sled until the holiday season, when it will receive some sort of paint/stencil treatment.

And of course I will remove that bright yellow polyester rope and either replace it with something more appropriate, or just leave it off altogether.

I even came home from this sale with a piece of furniture to paint.

You can sometimes get the best deals on furniture at garage sales.

This next item was one that I just couldn’t pass up.

There’s just something about vintage dollhouses that speaks to me.  I only have a few memories of my aforementioned grandparents, but one of them is of my grandpa storing my mom’s old dollhouse in the rafters in his garage and bringing it out for us to play with when we visited.  It seemed quite magical at the time.  Plus, this one was priced at a mere $5.  How do you walk away from that?  I think it will be perfectly charming with a good cleaning, a couple of repairs and a fresh coat of paint.

I purchased the next item, a slightly cracked stoneware bowl, for one specific reason …

to house those blue and white bocce balls.

I’d had them for quite some time and had never found just the right ‘container’ to put them in.  I thought the stoneware bowl would be the perfect size, and so it is.

I added a small segment from one of the I.O.D. Traditional Pots blue transfers to the rim.

And it all goes perfectly with the grain sack fabric that I also purchased at the Nokomis sales.

Next up is this pretty trio of watercolor prints.

It’s really hard to read the titles and signature in the bottom right corner …

I had to take a photo and enlarge it on the computer to read it.  But eventually I could see that one says ‘Højbro Plads’ and another is ‘Nikolaj Plads’.  I couldn’t read the third one at all though.  I thought that perhaps the signature was something like ‘Mads Stage’, but I didn’t think that could be a real name.  So I googled it figuring I’d find something close, but in the end it actually is Mads Stage, who apparently was a Danish artist from Copenhagen.

I’m not sure what I will do with them, I may re-paint the frames, or I may just leave them ‘as is’ and sell them on.

Tucked in behind the prints is a pair of large gold frames.

I plan to just try selling those as is, with nothing in them.  One could hang them on the wall, and then hang a smaller item inside the opening like in this example I found on pinterest.

I also grabbed these three urns at the sale that had the gold frames.

They are a bit on the small side, but still pretty fab.  I am planning to give them the rusty look.

That sale also yielded this little pile of goodies.

You gotta love a good tray, and a good crown.

I’m not sure what I will do with the three crowns, although you never know when you may need to crown a gargoyle.

I think my love of zinc crowns can be traced back to Jeanne d’Arc Living magazine.  Are any of you fans of that one?  If so, you probably know exactly what I mean.

In fact, I’m going to call the crowns my find of the day because I simply love them.

Unfortunately, this sale is also where I made that rookie mistake that I mentioned earlier.

I purchased this sweet little angel perched on a sphere.

I thought he would be totally amazing with a rusty patina.

It wasn’t until I got him home that I realized he was missing a wing.

Dang!  How did I miss that?  I really should know better!  I’m so disappointed that he isn’t whole.  I may still rusty him up and put him in my own garden, but I won’t be able to sell him on with only one wing.

Hey, maybe if I add a crown no one will notice that he’s a one-winged cherub.

What do you think?

So, tell me, which of my finds would you have picked as the ‘find of the day’?  Leave a comment and let me know!