Category: garage sales.

Downward through the evening twilight,
In the days that are forgotten,
In the unremembered ages,
From the full moon fell Nokomis …

Yep, that’s the Nokomis that the neighborhood we garage saled in on Saturday is named after.  It’s also the neighborhood where both of my parents grew up.  And last Saturday it was the site of the most fantastic garage sale jackpot this year!

Where do I even start?  The fabulosity was just overflowing!

Our party included myself, my sister and my friend Mary Kate who I have garage saled with since she was just a wee lass.  The forecast called for heavy rain and thunderstorms, but we are not daunted by such things.  We’re practically professionals, wink.  We just went into it assuming we’d end up drenched.  And the day did start out rainy, which makes things a little trickier because everything is tucked away in garages.  You can’t manage the ‘drive by’, where you look from your car and then just keep moving if all you see are bright plastic kid’s toys and piles of baby clothes.  We hadn’t gotten much yet when we came across an alley sale where the proprietors flagged us in.  They had a parking spot all ready for us and no customers, which made us a little nervous.  As I strolled into their garage, I saw Mary already standing over a pile of something with a look of pure disbelief on her face.  This was the find of the day for sure!  A whole pile of vintage cameras.

The story that went with them was priceless.  The seller’s mother had been a camera collector.  When she passed away, the seller had sold two big boxes of cameras to an antiques dealer and she thought that was all of them.  But while cleaning out the closet to get ready for her garage sale, she came across a third box that she didn’t know she had, so she threw them out for the sale.

Holy garbanzo beans batman!  Just look at them!  Clearly it was fate!

So many cool cameras!  Some for Mary’s collection, and some for mine.

The fun did not end there folks!  I had all but given up on finding great furniture at garage sales this year, but this time I came home with this gorgeous bed.

And a fab pink dresser.

I love the green and white on this wooden melon crate, and found an awesome green jar, a green McCoy planter and a pretty little ironstone pitcher.

Mary purchased this fabulous ceramic hand at my urging.  It will make a great place to hang her jewelry once it’s mounted on the wall.  She also picked up some art supplies.

And last of all, I hope you didn’t miss Uncle Leon’s suitcase!

Yep, the gals that sold me the suitcase said it belonged to their Uncle Leon and he used to travel with it all the time.

You know it was a good day when a fab suitcase gets barely mentioned at the end!

What can I say?  Garage sales can be very hit or miss, but every once in a while you hit the jackpot!

My sister and I ventured out to the Hale, Page and Diamond Lake neighborhood garage sales on Saturday.  The listing showed nearly 100 sales!

We really had trouble finding them though.  I know that sounds crazy, and we didn’t expect it at all.  But many of the sales were in alleys and they didn’t have any signs!  I’m sure people felt like since they were on the map, they didn’t need a sign.  I’m here to tell you, au contraire people!  A sign at the end of your alley is still super helpful.  Especially if there isn’t a lot of foot traffic.  We peered down so many alleys trying to figure out if there was a sale down there.  We’re sure we didn’t hit even half of the sales.

But we still came home with some fun stuff.  The super tall plant stands are mine.  They are really unique and I liked the height.  I’ve already found homes for them, one on the deck and one in the garden.  The little sleigh is my sister’s.  She plans to paint it red and use it to decorate her apartment balcony at Christmas time.  I suggested she put a small tree full of twinkle lights in it.  The two metal corner shelves are my sister’s as well.  They were $3 each!  For that price, how could you pass them up?  They will tuck into corners in her new apartment and hold plants or books or whatever.

I snagged some french cheese plates and a little glass cloche.

And some vintage jars and kitchen utensils.

I’m calling this lovely vintage radio my find of the day.

I just loved the vintage look of it.  Can’t you just picture a family gathered around this radio listening to news from the front during WWII?  Or maybe a sweet young couple dancing to some Glenn Miller on the porch on a sultry summer evening?

It wasn’t a super bargain at $20 (in garage sale terms), but I had to have it.  I think it will definitely make its way into some future furniture photo shoots.  But in the meantime, I’ve made a home for it in the cupboard on my front porch along with all of my old cameras.

After Debbie and I gave up on trying to find more sales, we popped over to Stillwater to get some more annuals for my planters.  We ended up in Rose Floral which unbeknownst to me has a huge selection of fairy garden supplies.  My fairy garden needed a new look for this year, so I purchased a few new plants and a sweet little pergola.

 After revamping the fairy garden a bit, I remembered that I purchased some fairy lights for it a while back, so I dug them out and strung them in my little tree.  Here is a shot I took a little later in the evening to try and get the lights to show up.

For those of you who are new to my blog, my fairy garden is in a cracked bird bath.  It no longer holds water so I decided it would make an excellent fairy garden container.  You can see what it looked like last year here.

I do have a fairy in residence.  Can you see her there in the very front hiding under the hosta?

The rest of my weekend was spent prepping for my upcoming Carriage House sale!  I worked on a couple of fun projects that I’ll share with you over the next few days, so stay tuned!

The Armitage and Kenny neighborhoods of Minneapolis always have their neighborhood garage sale on Memorial Day weekend.  Crazy, right?  And I usually go.  Even crazier.  This year my sister came along to share the fun.  Since it’s a holiday weekend, it is usually a very laid back, quiet sale.  Minimal traffic, plenty of street parking available, not a lot of shoppers.  It’s a different feel altogether from some of the other neighborhood sales.

That being said, this year the pickin’s were pretty slim indeed.  An hour in and all I’d purchased was a bag of plastic spoons (for mixing paint), and some fake tattoos!

I’m not kidding about the fake tattoos.  I told Debbie she had to get one to show she’s a  Minnesotan now, and she said that I had to get one too then.

So we paid $1 each for faux tattoos.

But just as I was joking about how ‘plastic spoons and fake tattoos’ was going to make for a great blog post title, we pulled up to a house with a lawn full of furniture.  Most of it ended up being fairly unappealing, but Debbie honed in on the large table with chunky legs.  She’s looking for a table for the craft room she’s setting up in her new apartment.  This table was the perfect size, it was quite solid, and if you looked past the shiny orange finish, it could be doctored up to pass for a pretty fab farmhouse style table.  Best of all, the table plus two matching benches was $10!  Yep, you read that right, $10 for all, making it our find of the day!

Aside from that, the only other item of note is the shabby chic chair.  I just love the details on this chair.

Initially I was going to leave the chair as is, but the more I think about it, I might have to paint it.  I may put it in my sale as is, and then if it doesn’t go, I’ll paint it.

That’s all I have for today folks!  Hope you are enjoying your Memorial Day.  Here in Minnesota it is supposed to be another rainy day and I plan to spend it in the Carriage House prepping for my upcoming sale!

Last Saturday was the Linden Hills neighborhood sale in Minneapolis, one of my favorites!  And this year I had my sister riding shotgun.

It was fun to get her fresh perspective on the neighborhood sale concept.  She said it reminded her of Halloween.  Lots of people walking around, many of them carrying bags.  Not filled with candy, but filled with treasures.  Everyone in a festive and friendly mood.

The atlas jar belongs to my sister.  She wants to have a collection of vintage jars on display in her kitchen (I think I’m rubbing off on her, just a little).  I’m not sure about the fate of the postal scale just yet.  I may keep it for future photo shoots.

I’m considering this sweet little vintage set of play china to be my find of the day.  I almost passed it by, but then I realized that it will be the perfect prop for an upcoming photo shoot (just wait until you see it!), and then it will make it’s way into the Carriage House sale.  Aren’t those little windmills just fab?

You can also see just the corner of a metal New York souvenir box (at least that is what I’m calling it).  I found another one of these years ago at a garage sale and I’ve been using it to store photos ever since.  I’m not sure what these originally contained, but they have drawings of places of interest in New York City on them.  Here is a better photo so you can see the details.

And I’m sure it didn’t go unnoticed that I found a gorgeous buffet.  It has some veneer issues.  In addition, it’s obvious that someone already completely removed the veneer from the lower drawer because the wood doesn’t match.

It also came with the most hideous replacement knobs.  Those will definitely be replaced.  But it was a bargain, and also our first purchase of the day.  If you want to find pieces like this at garage sales, you’d better get there right at opening time.

The Eiffel tower clock is another of my sister’s finds.  She’ll be using it in her new kitchen, which is going to have a ‘French Market’ theme.

Finally, you might also have noticed the stack of Fusion paint.  No, I didn’t get that at a garage sale.  After the sale, Debbie and I headed out to Farmhouse Inspired in Hudson so we could stock up on Fusion.  There are a few colors I’ve been wanting to try, the Inglenook, the Buttermilk Cream and the Ash.  My sister chose the Liberty Blue for a project we are working on together, I’m using the Soapstone (you’ll see more about that soon).  So stay tuned!

Every spring I really look forward to the neighborhood garage sale season.  It kicks off with Bryn Mawr, one of my favorite neighborhoods in Minneapolis.  This last Saturday dawned bright and sunny.  It was gorgeous, which sounds like a good thing.  But what that actually meant was that Bryn Mawr was mobbed.  Everyone was out enjoying the fab weather.

I was out there with them and I brought home some goodies.

The best find of the day was the aqua phone.  Isn’t it awesome?  And it cost me a quarter!

I loved the patina on this copper planter.

I’ve decided to add some more vintage books to my photo prop stash and I found some great ones in my colors.

Are you sensing a theme here?  I had more than one person comment on how pretty the colors were in my cart.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with these folding chairs, but they fit in with my color story.

I may try to recover the seats with some pretty vintage fabric.

I also found a couple of awesome metal boxes.  The red one is perfect as is.

And its rusty companion has already gotten a paint job using Fusion’s Laurentien.

I didn’t get photos of all of my buys.  I also brought home a gorgeous sisal rug in perfect condition for $20, and a really cool wrought iron window box.  The home owner who sold it to me said she pulled it off her 1940’s bungalow when they replaced the siding and decided not to put it back up.

So now I’ve gotten my feet wet and I’m sure the spring garage sale season is only going to get better from here!

And the award for most fashionable garage sale goes to …. drumroll please … MacGrove!

MacGrove is a charming neighborhood in St. Paul that includes Macalester College and St. Thomas University.  Yesterday some of my garage sale pals and I spent the morning there for their neighborhood garage sale. It has a very collegiate vibe.  They used to hold their sale in August, but for some reason they moved it to September this year.  The most noticeable change was the quantity of students that were milling about near the schools.

Once again, we had picture perfect weather, and we found some great things.  We also came upon the most fabulous garage sale set up of the season.

It was like a party!

And he had some very clever signage.

“These lamps don’t get paid … but that doesn’t mean they don’t work!”

We all enjoyed the festive atmosphere.  Here is the crew, Sue, Jan & Cathy.

I also found my best find of the season at this very same sale.  A fantastic vintage ice cream scale (who wants to weigh their ice cream?  not me!) in my color, aqua.

I will be finding a prominent location in the pantry for this bad boy!

Unfortunately, I was so exhausted when I got home that most of my pictures of the rest of my finds turned out pretty awful.  But here is a picture of a fantastic book shelf that Sue spotted for me, and I quickly snatched up.

Won’t this be a charmer once it is painted?  Those details down the side are just going to pop with a little paint.  I’m still contemplating what color I’ll use on it, but I know it will get milk paint.

Unfortunately, the pic is a little blurry and you can’t appreciate it properly, but the fabric that is folded on the shelf is vintage bark cloth with adorable farm scenes.  I just couldn’t pass it up.

Here, you can see the detail a little better in this photo of some vintage light sconces that I also picked up.

I did come home with a nice little pile of great finds.  Some will make their way into my own home, some will end up in my workshop to be revamped, and some will be headed to the Carriage House sale!

Yesterday my Carriage House Sale co-host, Sue, and her sister Jan joined me for a neighborhood garage sale near Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis.  It was in East Isles, an absolutely gorgeous neighborhood filled with beautiful older homes.  We could have just driven around and drooled over all of the gorgeous houses, but as an added bonus there were also garage sales!  About 40 of them.

I didn’t come home with a giant haul.  Sadly, there was no furniture to be found at all.  But I did find a few gems here and there.  A sweet little child sized vintage wicker chair, another fab suitcase.  It seemed to be the day for original artwork also.  I came home with three paintings.  The one above has that mid-century Spanish feel.  I plan to paint the frame and sell this one at my fall Carriage House Sale (taking place Oct 4, Saturday only, exact time to be determined, pencil it in!)

And something about this painting of a chair just appealed to me.  Perhaps it is my obsession with furniture.

As for this modern geometric, nnK snatched it up as soon as I got it home. The colors in it are perfect for her house.

It was a picture perfect sunny morning with temps in the mid-60’s.  Blue sky as far as the eye could see.  Not even a hint of humidity.

And seriously, how cute is this little chair?

 It’s a little sad to realize that garage sale season will be drawing to a close in about a month.  We are already seeing signs of fall here in Minnesota; cooler temps, earlier sunsets.  It definitely is right around the corner.

Yesterday was the perfect day for a neighborhood garage sale and the stars must have been aligned in my favor because I came home with all of this.

We were in Highland Park, a neighborhood that runs along the side of the Mississippi River in St. Paul.  It is full of gorgeous old houses, many with really lovely gardens.  I should have brought my camera!

We filled up the truck before noon and then stopped off at Cecil’s Deli for lunch.  A true Jewish kosher deli.  It took me back to my days of living in Boca Raton, Florida which might have been the last time I enjoyed a legit east coast style Jewish deli.  I’m not at all sure what makes them so fabulous.  They always have the best pickles, and a fantastic selection of sandwich choices.  I had the “Nosher”; turkey, roast beef and swiss on caraway rye.  We took away some hamantaschen cookies to nosh on later.  Yum!

But … back to the goods.

I found quite a few pieces of pottery.

And I love these old metal glasses.  My grandpa used to make us root beer floats in these when I was a kid.  I can still remember how cold that metal used to get!

At an estate sale I found not just one, but two fab vintage typewriters.

I’ll confess, I didn’t buy the pair of shutters at a garage sale.  I bought them at a cute shop on Grand Avenue.  I loved their crackled paint, and I thought they would be perfect for either side of the window in the photo cottage.  And look, they are!

I grabbed this pair of vintage sleds because I think they make great decorations at Christmas time.

I’m debating painting on them like I did with this one last year.

What do you think?  Would people rather I left them alone?  Or added some fun wording?

I also brought home a couple of pieces of furniture that will eventually get a makeover.  The little mid-century nightstand is already sanded and ready to be painted, but the former owner gave up before the finish line.  I love getting these pieces where someone else has already done the hard part!  Unfortunately she misplaced the hardware, so I’m going to have to come up with some great replacement knobs for this one.

So, there you have it.  A productive day in Highland Park!