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 

Well I really have the sale-ing fever lately, I’ll tell you what. 

Erin and I hit up a crap-ton of garage sales on Thursday (as you may have already seen on our Instagram (follow us!)), and that just made me hungry for more. 

I found a sale in Brighton, which is about 40 minutes away from me. It looked to be jam-packed with holiday decor and other treats, and the person appeared to have good taste. I tried to get Erin to come with me, but she had to do some family activities instead. So I ventured out there alone. 

When I arrived, I had a good feeling about things. 

Punnnnkiiiiinnnnns!!!!! 

But then I saw the price tags. 

Some things weren’t THAT bad but… most of them were. It was a real bummer because there was some really cute stuff! They also had swaggy teens stationed in the rooms to prevent you from shoplifting their overpriced wares, which is a real vibe killer at a sale. It always makes me feel like if I spend too long looking around or sorting through things, they’re gonna get suspicious.

Anyway, here are some more pics of the cute things there:   

But again, look at these prices:  

Am I missing something? Should a ziplock bag of tiny vintage trees really be priced that high? As far as I could tell, the trees were not made of solid gold. 

Despite the pricing disappointment, there was some cool stuff to look through. The homeowner was super into Scottie dogs. 

I really loved that table. Anyone have a spare $600? 

That is an ENORMOUS roll of wrapping paper. I really wanted it but it legit weighed like 50 lbs. I could not carry it out along with the other things I wanted, I didn’t have Erin with me to bully into helping (not that she’d be much help because let’s face it–she’s pretty weak), and I was starting to sweat because it was hot and humid inside the house. So it got left behind. 

As usual, there were some “things that make you go hmmm” (Erin wasn’t even a fetus when that song came out, I’ll bet) inside the house, so here ya go: 

(I thought that thing in his hand was a gun but now I think it’s… a horn? WTF is it?) 

(That is Matchbox car sized and yes, it says twelve dollars.) 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I did find a few goodies, though: 

Let me give you the rundown: Vera Bradley laptop case, star wars lunchbox ornament, camper ornament (my son is obsessed with all types of vehicles–he’s gonna love this next xmas), a new hand-made vintage tree skirt, embroidered santa ornament, cool book that has a bunch of envelopes inside with things like puzzles and other books, etc., Spaghettios bowl, and a Halloween beanie baby bat. I also got this cool cast iron sheep. 

It wasn’t priced so the swaggy teen at the register charged me a dollar. It was probably originally priced like $20. Score! 

-Sarah 

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