Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Garage Saling and Thrifting

I just love community yard sales, don’t you? My husband sleeps until about noon every day since he works until 3 AM, so I loaded Joel up and we headed out Saturday morning. We walked around for almost two hours and made quite a haul. I got two books about daddies and father’s day, as well as several other children’s books, all for 25c apiece or less. Joel presented his daddy with the books, and he was thrilled. (Well either that or he sat aside the books without even looking at them, but it makes a better story to say he was thrilled).

At one of the first garage sales of the morning, I met a wonderful lady whose daughter is into sewing. She said she owns a company called “Sew What?” I came home and tried to look it up, however do you know how many companies out there that are called “Sew What?” Here a link to a “Sew What” boutique that sells some cool stuff, although I’m pretty sure it’s not her daughter’s shop. She and I got to talking about how toys just don’t leave anything to the imagination anymore. That’s exactly how I feel! Amen, sister! Kids today have to have the latest fifty dollar Transformer toys, etc… whatever happened to just playing with regular toy cars? Playing dress-up? I remember making cities in our basement out of blocks, Lincoln Logs, and basic ole Legos, then we’d add in our matchbox cars and plastic Cowboys and Indians (sorry, I know that’s not PC), and we’d have a good ole time.

I was happy to find these toys for Joel for when he’s a little bit bigger, as well as a pair of cute, barely worn Stride Rite shoes. I hope these toys will spark some good old fashioned imaginative play!

A whole bag of magnet letters and numbers for 25c... there's even a plus sign for practicing math problems!

I was so excited to find this little fire extinguisher. There's a crank you turn, and it even makes sounds. *Squeals with excitement* Now I will have to sew some firefighter dress up clothes. I also found this little treasure chest which will be wonderful for stuffing full of Mardi Gras beads. When Joel outgrows it, I can use it at school because it's our school colors, and our mascot is a pirate :) Both toys were 50c apiece.

Probably my favorite find of the day. I actually found this at a thrift store, hence the odd 90c pricetag. You can't really tell from the photo, but the blue part is wood. Yay, a vintage toy! Now I will have to sew a mailman outfit. Does anyone want to go postal with me?

A box of little boy fabric for 2 dollars. I need to get started on another baby quilt. We just had another pregnancy announced in the family... there's going to be ANOTHER baby boy born this year. That makes three baby boys all born within 10 months of each other! Isn't that going to be fun when they're two or three years old?!

A 25c binkie clip which will probably become a gift for Little One Number Three, an unopened birthday candle for 30c, and a close second for my favorite find of the week... a Wilton Christmas Tree pan, still new in the packaging for 90c. I have been dying to melt down some crayons, and now I finally have the pan to do it with! I was taking the paper off crayons for about an hour last night, and I think I got a paper-cut under my thumb nail. Ouch. There has got to be a better way...

And last but not least, a little something-something for me. Two bags full of sewing notions, mostly vintage and still in the original packaging. This came from the thrift store; each bag was 90c. I was especially stoked to see all the velcro. I love velcro. I'd like to give a big smoochy-smoochy to the man who invented it. *Muah!*

3 comments:

  1. Ok so I have to start by saying I LOVE the fire extinguisher, the treasure chest, and the mail box! HOw cool are those toys? I didn't have anything like that when I was little! You can actually make him an outfit to go with every toy! hehe

    And who is having the third little one? OH MY GOODNESS!!! SO many little babies....

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  2. Great toys! Too true about modern toys being the dearth of imagination.
    You made me remember my sister & I sharing a room that had wooden floor boards. Back in those days everyone was saving up for carpet. Until my folks could afford the carpet, my sister & I had two small rugs; one yellow, one blue. The yellow one became sand and the blue one was the sea and all of our dolls had a day at the beach!
    We played a lot outside. Its hard to get my boys outside. :-(

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