Dig This Treasure!

Sarah and I have been hitting up estate sales and garages sales pretty regularly.  Finding the time to blog, however, is another story.  We have been active over on Instagram though, so if you haven’t followed us already, please do!  Here’s Sarah at a garage sale describing a butterfly she saw:

She’s still kind of salty about me secretly recording that.

Anyway, to make Sarah feel better, here is a tale of my absolute stupidity…

We visited a sale a few weeks ago that upon entry seemed promising.  Everything seemed old and I figured many treasures awaited us.

And this bird mobile?! Omg so cute!  Why didn’t I buy this? I should have bought it.  The better question is why didn’t Sarah buy this? It looks like something she would totally buy. 

And how come we didn’t buy this beauty of an art piece:

I have lots of questions.  Why is this person wearing like a wig of white hair over top of their regular hair?  Or is that an aura? Or reflective light?  Why is this person wearing a jacket with no shirt underneath? Why does that microphone seem very very small? And who is this? Bonnie Raitt?  I’m not good with music stuff.  I once thought John Popper was the singer of Meatloaf.  Turns out that the singer of Meatloaf is Meatloaf.

It started to become clear that this house was just full of “things.”  Not treasure-type things, just things.  Lots and lots of things that had fallen into the bottom of a closet for years or were stuck in a junk drawer.  I have things like this too, so I don’t mean to judge too harshly.

There were also lots and lots of homeopathic medicines and supplements, which was kind of heartbreaking.

Ok, so where does my stupidity come in?  Since this sale was a bust, we headed to another one.  This time, the house was a little more upscale and organized. They had a lot of art and books.

There were still lots of great vintage items.  Look at this dining room set!  Love it.

Like look at this adorable bathroom! I love this adorable bathroom!  If I could’ve bought it I would have. Except for that filthy rug.  Eff that.

Alright, so here goes…at this sale I found this amazing piece of embroidery art.  I loved it so much.  It brought me joy.  Look closely at it and really take it in:

Now I want you to guess what this is an image of.  Even a general guess will do.  Think hard and lock in your guess before you scroll down…

Got it?

Think you know?

Well let me tell you what I thought this was…

I thought this was a picture of mermaids.  I THOUGHT THOSE WERE TAILS. 

I took the picture over to Sarah and was all, “Look at these mermaids!”  She about died.  Apparently this is some sort of Jewish art.  (I am not Jewish so how should I know.) Apparently this is obvious.  Apparently I should have known this was religious in some way.

I mean, I guess I see it now.  I was just super distracted by those adorable mermaid children to even notice.

I left empty handed. Well, except for shame.  I left with some of that.

-Erin 

A few weeks ago, Sarah and I vacationed together in South Haven, MI.  It was glorious.  Lake Michigan was not only surprisingly warm, but super clear.  I’m down with being a lake person, but you bet your ass that I wear water shoes.  In Lake Michigan, I didn’t even need to!  It wasn’t gross at all!  Yay nature!

We spent a lot of time swimming and lounging, but also made time to go antiquing.  The go-to strategy among dealers here seemed to be setting up shop on your front lawn.  We saw a lot of antiques just laying in people’s yards, with little explanation to how they survive the elements or if any effort is even made to protect them from rain or theft. 

It looked like American Pickers, where the dudes just drive around and look for people with junk outside.  They call it “freestylin” on the show, but because I am a disgusting and juvenile person, I kept telling Sarah we were “freeballin.”  We just drove around until we found places to stop.

And boy did we find a place…

The place we found was called something like “Junktiques” which was a fair and honest assessment.  It turned out to also be some dude’s life work of creating arguably insane art.  In true Sarah fashion, she told the guy that his sculptures made her laugh, which the guy reacted to with a blank stare. 

TBH, the sculptures were funny and also totally delightful.  I would put one in my backyard in a heartbeat.

All I bought from this bro were some cookie cutters for Everett to use with Play-Dough. I did not buy this life-size wood carving of Sarah.

Also did not buy this hilarious elephant.

And I did not buy this mask, even though I looked great in it.

We also stopped at a nice little shop inside a house, which was clearly geared towards shabby chic moms (me, basically). 

I wanted to buy that big metal ball and put Christmas lights in it, but decided not to because the woman revealed it was from a wholesale gardening place.  I figured I could find one cheaper online since that was the case.

I did end up buying some cool wooden slats that I plan to put in my garden.

And I got this neat old egg carton to put up by my egg scales.  It was so darn cute and only $8!

Zach and Adam went out shopping too, without us.  Zach bought this giant painting of a dude yelling? crying? who knows…

If someone can identify this man, that would be awesome.  I want to know so badly who he is and what he is doing.  He lives in our living room now.

I am lol’ing hard at the amount of bags I have hanging on the dining room chairs.  Apparently I need two purses, a gym bag, and a backpack to exist in life.

And just for a little life update, here are our dudes!  Everett will be 3 in October! Arden will be 2 in November!

Cheers!

-Erin

Sometimes estate sales are a blast not because you find a bunch of great treasures to buy, but just because they are fun to browse through.  I recently went to a sale like this, and even though I only bought a couple things, it was a really nice experience.  The whole house was like a time capsule.

Better yet, it was a time capsule of only adorable things!  That Holt Howard rooster set used to be very collectible, although prices on it have dropped recently.  If the prices were a little lower at this sale, I would have still tried to flip it on ebay.  I hope this found a good home though because it is so cute.

It is hard to tell in the photo but this faux fireplace was pretty big.  It was made of styrofoam and was obviously really cute, but we don’t really have a place to put it.  I hope someone bought it!

Continuing on with the trend of large holiday decorations I do not need, let me present you this Easter tree:

I was kind of obsessed with this.  It was a perfect mix of hideous, intriguing, and adorable.  I should have bought it and left it on Sarah’s porch.  Or saved it for a white elephant gift exchange.  I am not sure what those brown ball things are near the bottom but I assume they are representative of Easter bunny turds.

There were several wind up toys from the 80s and 90s that I thought about buying, but each one was priced around $10-$15.  Had they been $5 I probably would have bought all of them.  Everett would have loved them dearly, although I would be spending the rest of my days constantly winding them up for him.

The Musical Munching Bunny was a steal at $2 but I still didn’t buy him.  I’m being very disciplined with my purchases lately.

I did buy one wind up toy, which was this seal for the bathtub.  Everett is crazy about him and yells, “SEAL! SEAL!” as he swims around.

I also bought this amazing cat poster from the 70s, which I promptly sold on ebay.  It was $1. 

My last purchase turned out to be a lame one, but it was only a $1 investment.  This stuffed bear is supposedly collectible, according to ebay, but so far it hasn’t sold!  I don’t know what the deal is.  He is a Clifford Berryman bear.

I mean, he is definitely cuter than this thing that I left behind at the sale:

-Erin

It was pretty dreary on Sunday, but Zach suggested we go to the Flat Rock Speedway, where they were having a flea market.  I’m glad we did because it turned out to be lots of fun!

I just looked at the large version of this photo on my computer and there is a giant Confederate flag dead center.  UGH.  I will assume it was a person selling only authentic Civil War memorabilia.  (It wasn’t.)

Man, what I wouldn’t give to drive one of those buses around the track.  They were all smashed up and looked like they had several different rounds of fire damage.  I’d still totally drive one though. And crash it.

Here are my boys.  Aren’t they cute?  I gave Everett a tootsie roll pop to keep him busy.  He sat in silence and ate it for about 2 hours.  Shoutout to tootsie roll pops.

Look! It’s another one of those ICP dolls!  On what planet was someone like, “we should totally paint the doll like this.”  It’s awful.  No one will buy that doll.

There were a ton of these jail mugshots in a ziplock bag.  I wanted all of them.  They were so amazing.  Most of the crimes were gambling and larceny related.  The guy selling these though wanted $4 EACH.  No way.  I wanted the whole bag for $10.  No deal.

I also liked this old “flicker” watch.  It was similar to a hologram.  The baseball player would swing his bat when you turned your wrist.  The guy selling it said it was from the 50s but it looks more 60s or 70s to me.  He wanted $95 for it.  That was out of my range but still very cool to try it on.

Speaking of holograms, how do you say “hologram?”  Zach says HOE-LOW-GRAM to which I promptly called him an idiot.  I say HA-LAH-GRAM.

Here is a hotdog I ate.  It was good as hell.

I only bought three things but they were all great.  This whole flea market had treasures I had not seen before, and everything was priced pretty reasonably.

I got these Gurley Halloween candles still in the box.  They are on eBay now, but I fantasized about keeping them.  They are seriously the cutest. I paid $10.

I also got this Halloween blow mold. It is also cute.  It was $5.

My largest purchase was this gigantic lot of old Sesame Street toys from the 80s and 90s.  Sarah will 100% murder me for not giving these to her.  I paid $15 and put them on eBay Buy It Now for $50.  They sold instantly, which is a blessing and a curse.  It is nice to make a profit, but the fact that they sold instantly makes me think I should have listed them for higher.

Zach bought an old railroad poster that was framed.  It was really neat until he realized it was just a photocopy of an old railroad poster.  The aging on the edges and the slight tears were not real when you looked close, just a copy!  He returned it after we raised a stink.

Zach also bought an amazing old watch here, but only after we went home first.  It was pricey, marked $395.  I could tell it was weighing on Zach’s mind and that he loved it so much.  When we got home, he texted with a watch friend in New York, who valued it around $1200.  A similar one on eBay recently sold for $980.  Zach raced back to buy the watch.

He ended up getting it for $300 which is a great deal.  This watch is a chronograph, which is way more collectible than your average vintage watch.  The brand is Vulcain and it is from the 60s. The dial style is called a “surfboard.”  I think he will probably wear it awhile and then eventually sell it.

That’s all from Flat Rock! 

-Erin