Last Thursday I headed out with opK (that’s oar painting Karen) to check out some garage sales in neighboring Stillwater.  But before we got to the garage sales, we stopped off at a vintage sale that I’ve been to off and on over the years.

In fact, I even shared a couple of blog posts about it back in 2016 and 2017.

They always have awesome vintage stuff, although I don’t usually buy much.

This time around I picked up some pretty bark cloth fabric from the ‘bargain tent’.

I thought this would be perfect for upholstering the seat on the vintage child-sized green wicker chair that I picked up a while back.  The chair is the perfect shade of vintage green and I loved the authentically distressed arms, so I didn’t paint it.

After soaking the barkcloth in some oxy-clean and letting it dry in the sun, I ironed it and then stapled it over some batting and a thin plywood seat that Ken cut to fit the chair.

This thing is so stinkin’ cute you guys.

I really struggled to come up with a way to show the size in my photos, it’s only 22″ tall, 18″ wide and 16″ deep.  The best I could come up with was adding a typically sized step ladder into the photo.

I also purchased a set of metal plant i.d. stakes.

I used to have a handful of these and earlier this spring I decided that they’d be perfect for labeling my herbs, but I couldn’t find them anywhere.  I then shopped around my local nurseries and hobby stores looking for more, but didn’t have any success.  So I was happy to find some at the barn sale.

The tricky part about these is finding a good way to add a plant name temporarily, but not so temporarily that it washes off in the rain.  I’ve discovered that painting them with some of Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky, and then writing on them with a chalk pencil tends to work out great.

You’d think that the chalk pencil would wash off, but it really doesn’t.  Of course, we’d also have to actually be getting some rain in order for that to be a problem.

After checking out the barn sale, we headed to a few garage sales in Stillwater.  I didn’t find a whole lot, but I seemed to find just one thing to purchase at each sale starting with this enamelware coffee pot.

It’s missing the glass percolator thingie from the lid, but that makes it perfect to use as a vase.  It also has some sort of really heavy crust built up inside it.  I’m not sure what that’s all about, but for that reason I chose to add a glass vase to hold the water and flowers.

After adding one of the French Labels from re.design with prima to the pot, I filled the glass with water and placed it inside the coffee pot.  All that was left was to fill it up with some flowers from the garden.

At another sale I picked up a small, vintage rake for $2.

It’s quite petite, but I’m not sure it’s small enough to have been a child’s toy.  I could have left it yellow, I’m not totally opposed to the rusty patina.  But I’m not a big fan of yellow, so I decided to paint it green.

I painted it with a coat of chalk style paint first, to help my milk paint stick.  Then I painted it with Sweet Pickens In a Pickle.  Once the paint was dry, I sanded lightly to distress the edges, which brought back some of that yellow.  Then I gave the entire rake a coat of Dixie Belle’s Big Mama’s Butta.

This rake could be purely decorative, it would look great just hanging on the wall like the pair of kid sized tools I have in my potting shed.

But it also would be totally functional.  I have a small rake like this that I use to pull leaves out from between perennials in the garden.  It’s super handy.  And yes, this rake is for sale if any of you are interested (check my ‘available for local sale‘ page for more details).

At the next sale I purchased this little metal conversion chart.

When I turned it over, it still had the original Hearth & Hand logo on the back, and the Target price tag of $7.99.  But I really thought it was cute, and I found a spot for it hanging in front of my cutting board in the kitchen.

Last, but not least, I picked up this … thingie.

Do you know what it is?  The newspaper is a clue.

When I first glanced at it, I thought it was part of a ringer washer (it has a crank on the other side).  But that definitely wasn’t right.  Whatever it was, I thought it would make an awesome planter.

It didn’t have a price tag on it, so I asked the proprietor ‘how much?’ and he said $3.  Sold!  He also told me that it was a newspaper log roller.  These were once used to roll newspapers into logs for the fireplace.  Sure enough, I googled it and there are plenty of them out there.  I even found a YouTube video on how to use it.

After hitting up the garage sales, we stopped off at Abrahamson’s Nurseries and I picked up a few plants to put in it.

After giving the roller a good cleaning and then protecting the wooden handles with some clear wax, I even went so far as to plant them up.

But I quickly realized that even though it looked great initially, most of those plants would grow much bigger and totally envelope the newspaper roller.  In addition, I don’t think the roller holds enough dirt to keep them happy.

So I pulled them all out and filled it with succulents instead.

I hesitated before doing so because succulents have to be brought inside for the winter here, and this ‘planter’ will be difficult to water without making a mess.  I may just pull the succulents out in the fall and put them in regular pots to save them over the winter, we’ll see.

But for now, I love the way they look and thus I’m calling this my find of the day!

Not bad for 3 bucks, right?

I’m curious, what would you have picked as the find of the day?  Leave a comment and let me know.