Category: the carriage house.

I meant to take some photos once I had everything all set up for my recent Carriage House Sale.

But, you know how that goes.  You get busy making sure the signs are up, everything is ready for the checkout table, and everything looks good … and next thing you know the sale is all over and you forgot to take any pictures.

Well … regardless … I thought you all might appreciate a recap.

I would say we had a smaller than usual crowd waiting to get in at rope drop, ie. 10 a.m. when we opened.  So, I’ll admit I was a little worried.  But after our usual opening hour rush, we then had a fairly steady stream of customers up until around noon when it turned into a trickle.

The weather went downhill a bit at that point too.  It got really warm (upper 80’s) and super windy.  The wind was a little scary since I have a large tree that overhangs my driveway, and those trees were really whipping around by the time we closed up shop.

Overall the sale was a success though.

My rusty pumpkins were a big hit, they all sold within the first half an hour or so.

My black hat society sign sold …

but none of my other cupboard door signs went.

I did sell all of my toolboxes …

a tacklebox …

and a lunchbox …

so that was awesome.

I also sold all of my painted books.

I also sold this floral cabinet at the sale.

I guess that answers the question of whether or not floral items will still sell in the fall.

I can also answer the question of whether or not buyers are willing to purchase Christmas merch when it’s nearly 90° outside, and that would be no.

None of my sleds sold.

And very little of the other random Christmas merch sold either.

I did whip up a few other fun Christmas decor items right before the sale, so I’ll be sharing some of those projects here on the blog when the holiday gets a little closer.

But for now I need to put my carriage house back in working order.  We’ll need to be able to get our vehicles in there as soon as the snow flies.  You just never know when that’s going to start here in Minnesota, could be next week.

I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled programing with another post about our trip to Canada coming up later this week along with another toolbox makeover that you haven’t seen yet.  I hope you’ll stay tuned!

We’ve been busy all week getting the carriage house ready for tomorrow’s sale.

It looks like we’re finally going to get lucky with the weather this time around.  Well … for the most part.  It’s not going to rain, so that’s good.  And we aren’t going to freeze our toes off, so that’s good too.  Instead it’s going to be in the upper 80’s.  We may actually be hot!

And speaking of hot, we’ve got some hot deals (bad segue, I know).  My rusty pumpkins range from only $12 for the largest to $8 for the smallest.

We’ve got a few pieces of ironstone available again this time around.

We’ve got a sizable Christmas section as well, so I hope some of the buyers can think ahead to Christmas despite the unseasonable heat.

As an avid garage saler, I’m used to buying vintage Christmas items when I come across them in the summer.  It’s always good to plan ahead.

After getting a message on Facebook Marketplace from someone who was annoyed that we don’t accept credit cards, I feel like I need to remind people that we are not a shop.

We are three gals who enjoy thrifting, garage sales and the occasional estate sale.  We find cool vintage items and sometimes we add a little something fun to them.

And sometimes we don’t mess with the original.

I think the best way to think about the Carriage House Sale is to consider it a very highly curated garage sale.

We’ve dug through all of the piles of old stained Tupperware and tacky plastic kid’s toys so that you don’t have to.  We’ve spent hours and hours scouring garage sales to come home with only a handful of finds that will make their way into our sale.

Really, you just never know what you might find at one of our sales, but we think it’s all good.

Nothing here has been ordered in bulk from China, pretty much everything is vintage and one of a kind.  Except possibly the random decorating or gardening book …

and you definitely won’t find any stained Tupperware or half-used toiletries.

So no, we don’t accept credit cards (but we do accept Venmo, and that ol’ standby called cash).

We also don’t package things up in fancy bags, we just recycle the grocery bags we’ve been stashing all summer.

But you might find one or two items for your home that will add to your own special blend of eclectic decor.

Hope to see you there!

Have you got plans this weekend?

Well, if not, can I recommend stopping by the Carriage House Sale?

We’re just a couple of blocks south of highway 36 off Century Avenue.

So when you’re done snapping up some vintage goodies at our sale, you can then continue down 36 and check out the corn maze at Country Sun Farm. or maybe go pick some apples at Aamodt’s Apple Farm.

The weather is going to be perfect!

Hope to see you there!

I returned home from Canada just in time to gear up for my upcoming sale.

Way back when I chose this date I was worried that it might be too cold to have a sale in October.  I certainly never expected that we would still be having summer weather, we are expecting highs in the upper 70’s to low 80’s yet this week.  In Minnesota!  In October!  Go figure.

I’m definitely not complaining, but is the weather going to make people less inclined to buy Christmas decor?  Because I’m going to have a bit of it at the sale, including one of my ornemanistes toolboxes.

I’ll have a number of stenciled sleds available as well …

Unfortunately, I’ll only have a smattering of vintage ornaments.

I wish I had more of those on offer.

I also hope that someone decides to take this bucket home.

It’s not overtly Christmas, at least to English speakers.  But if you were Dutch it would be (it translates to peace on earth and goodwill to men).  I think this bucket would be fantastic with a small Christmas tree filled with vintage ornaments in it.

But maybe you’re not quite ready for Christmas yet (and who can blame you).

That’s OK, because we’ll also have some fall merch like my rusty pumpkins.

And don’t forget about my black hat society sign.

The French flower buckets that I shared last week will be in the sale …

As will the ombre stacked boxes.

I’ve got quite a stash of rusty pots.

I know this isn’t exactly gardening season, but these would be perfect for holding a mum for fall, followed by a winter arrangement of evergreens.

I’ll have a few of my toolboxes at the sale including this one …

And this one …

And I’ll also have some of my floral books.

The sale is taking place this coming Saturday, October 4 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

We accept cash and Venmo only (sorry, no checks or credit cards).

The address is 6041 47th St North in Oakdale, MN.

Hope to you see you there!

Just a quick recap of the Carriage House sale for anyone interested.

The weather forecast for last Thursday was sunny and 75°, at least right up until Tuesday.  Then they added in a slight chance of rain.  Then on Wednesday they said we’d have morning showers on Thursday.  By when I woke up on Thursday they were predicting rain from 5 pm to 8 pm and I started to wonder what I did in a previous life that I was being punished for now.

OK, maybe that’s a bit dramatic.

But it was almost comical that rain was predicted for precisely the time frame of our sale (we were open from 5 pm to 8 pm on our first day).

It was a beautiful afternoon as we were setting everything up.

But we kept most of our merch inside rather than expanding out into the driveway like we usually do.

Sure enough, right around 4:30 we could see the dark clouds massing to the north of us.  The wind picked up and I started to wonder if we were going to have to hold our tents down.

But in the end, I must have actually done something right in a previous life because we only got a few drops of rain here and there.  The bulk of the storm traveled just barely west of us.  In fact, my friend Annie who drove over from that direction said she passed through a massive downpour on her way over.  Thank goodness that missed us!

All of that being said, we had a smaller crowd on Thursday evening than we had last year.  It’s hard to know why.  Did I not do enough advertising in advance?  Did the forecasted rain keep people away?  Were people out of town all week for the Memorial Day holiday?  Is vintage decor no longer as popular as it once was?

The weather on Friday morning, however, was nearly perfect, and we had a fairly steady flow of customers.  Most of them were people who’d seen my signs at the corner and stopped in on a whim.

The award for furthest traveled goes to Julie who came all the way from Duluth.  Thanks for that Julie!  I hope it was worth the drive 🙂

If you’re wondering what sold and what didn’t, I can tell you that my rusty stuff was some of the first stuff out the door.

I knew there had to be fellow rust lovers out there!

I plan to spend a good part of the summer coming up with more rusty creations for our next sale.

I had some sets of vintage kids books that sold really well.

I had them bundled by color and they all sold except for the yellow ones.  I get it, I’m not a huge fan of yellow myself.

I was surprised to find that my decorated boxes sold well.

I didn’t have high hopes for those since they haven’t done particularly well in the past (although they do well really well at the shop).

That being said, the stuff that didn’t sell included anything galvanized.  Watering cans, olive baskets, totes, scoops …

One notable exception was minnow buckets.  I had three of them, and two sold.

Honestly, I never seem to have a good feel for what will sell well and what won’t.  It changes from year to year.  Stuff that didn’t sell last year was some of the first stuff to go this year, and vice versa.

As I was cleaning up after the sale I made four piles; stuff to save for the next sale, stuff to donate, stuff that can go to the shop and stuff that’s slated for a do-over.

Speaking of the next sale, I’m considering adding a fall sale this year.  That will depend somewhat on my schedule since Mr. Q and I have a trip to Canada planned for September.  But maybe?  We’ll see.

Until then, a huge thank you to everyone who turned up.  It was great to see so many familiar faces!  I hope you’ll come back again next time!

Those of you who have followed me for a long time already know about my occasional sale, but for those who are new around here I thought I’d share a little bit about it today.

My friend Sue and I started holding occasional sales out of my carriage house sometime before 2002 (I didn’t start keeping a record of it until then).  We started out as just a slightly above average garage sale, but over the years we began to curate a nice selection of vintage and upcycled home decor items.

Originally we held just one sale a year, but then we started having one in the spring and one in the fall because we had a lot of inventory.  It was so much easier to find good vintage items at garage sales back then!

I once found an entire box of old cameras at a garage sale.

I can’t even imagine coming across that today.

How about this haul from 2015 …

Not just one, but two vintage typewriters … and two sleds.  Plus a couple of tackle boxes too!

I think most of you will agree that it’s getting harder and harder to find good vintage items at garage sales these days.

Anyway, eventually we slowed back down to just one sale per year, and then it all got to be too much for me and we quit having sales altogether after 2016.

At that point I had added blogging to my to-do list.  That plus a full-time job, plus some pretty steady furniture painting kept me pretty busy.

Flash forward to November 2021 when I retired from the day job.  I definitely had the time to host a sale then, but did I have the inclination?  It took me until last year, 2024, to decide it was time to try it again.

My friend Sue signed on again, and my friend opK joined us as well.

And now, they are both back this year as we once again host a Carriage House Sale this Thursday and Friday.

I’ve been so busy getting ready for the sale that I haven’t actually had time to take any photos of the merch.  But once again we will have lots of vintage and upcycled home decor including quite a few of the items that I’ve shared here on the blog, like the flower market tote.

And the vintage camp chairs.

I’ve also got this pretty floral box for sale …

And these pretty french flower buckets.

I’ve got some faux apothecary style amber bottles,

as well as this garden herbs tote.

And so much more!

This year it looks like the weather is going to cooperate, the forecast is 76° and sunny!

So if you’re local, I’ll hope you’ll swing by either Thursday evening or Friday morning … or both!

I’m starting to plan ahead to my 2025 Carriage House Sale.  We’ve tentatively chosen Thursday, May 29 and Friday, May 30 as the dates for the sale.

While on the one hand it’s 7 weeks away, and that should be plenty of time to prepare, on the other hand I have a couple of trips coming up between now and then so it will be here before I know it.

In fact, I don’t think I’ve mentioned it, but I’m actually away right now visiting my mom again (she lives in a suburb of Las Vegas).  This time my sister has joined me, and we have planned some fun stuff like a night staying at the Bellagio.

We haven’t been down to the strip in years, so it will be fun to explore it for one evening.

But once I get home again I’m going to have to get my act together and start getting ready for the sale.  Step one will be to muck out the carriage house.  If I can find the time, I may do some painting out there too.

I will be joined by my old garage sale mentor and Carriage House cohort, Sue, as well as my friend opK for the sale.  I’ve been a little worried that I won’t have enough inventory to justify as sale, but I think between the three of us we’ll have plenty of awesome items.

So, pencil it in if you’re local.  But do just use pencil.  I’m going to try not to change the date this year, but if a tornado is forecast than all bets are off.  Stay tuned for further updates!