I had a fairly unpleasant estate sale experience last Saturday, which leads me to ask the question: why are people who go to estate sales so rude? Not all of them, of course, but I swear to you, if you are looking for a few rude people to feature in a documentary about how manners in this country are going down the toilet, please allow me to direct you to the nearest estate sale at 9 am in the morning.  I had to wait a few minutes to go into this one, because it was a very narrow house, very cluttered, with a lot of people inside. Once I got up to the attic I felt thankful they were keeping their eye on the population because the attic floor was none-too-solid — reminded me a lot of the attic floor in my grandparents’ house, which was prone to al having heavy objects fall through. I didn’t find much — a vintage reader and the vintage bulldog planter pictured below — and I was standing in line, wishing I had found more since this was the only sale I was going to that morning, when people at the door started rioting. Well, okay, not rioting, but being totally rude to the poor woman trying to hold them at bay. They had let a few too many people get inside and were trying to clear the house out a bit, and the folks on the porch kept trying to push their way in every time she opened the door to let someone out. She told them one person could come in and then the group on the porch started arguing with her AND with each other because there were three of them and the one standing closest to the door wanted to go in by herself. She asked those of us in line to confirm that the house was too full and we all did, to which the women trying to get in said, “Oh, sure, of course they’re going to say that. ” Not so smart, to insult not only the person responsible for letting you in but the entire room as well. Finally one of them came in and started mouthing off about how it wasn’t even crowded inside and called the estate sale lady “crazy” for not letting them in. In the middle of this nonsense a woman standing in line two people behind me started yelling about having to wait in line so long and kept trying to throw a couple of dollars at this poor woman minding the door so that she could leave with the coffee press she had in her hands that was unpriced. I really wanted to ask her if the bad behavior of the first group was giving her some kind of social permission to behave badly herself. I don’t like waiting in line for estate sales; I get impatient and feel like I’m wasting my time. But you know what I do? I LEAVE. Without causing a scene. Because I can disagree with it all I want to but that’s the way they’re running their business and they have a right to do what they want. There are a few estate sale companies I avoid because I feel like they’re a little too cautious about letting too many people in the house, which results in long waits, but I certainly don’t show up and start banging on the door and calling them “crazy.” I don’t like the way they run their business so I don’t frequent them. Same reason I hate it when people argue about prices at an estate sale and try to tell the proprietors they’re charging too much money — that’s their prerogative. It’s their business. You can complain on your blog, like I do (HA!), but you’re not going to get anywhere by telling someone their pricing stinks.

Ugh. Rant over. While I was in line listening to all of this and feeling very uncomfortable, I spotted this:

Here’s the cutie pie Bulldog planter I found:

This turned into a four-day shopping weekend for me. You know, because I won the lottery and I’m wondering what to do with all of this cash.

Here are a few of the fruits of my labors. I’ll take pics of some of the other stuff as soon as I get the chance.

I visited Roxana’s Vintage Bazaar stash in her garage and you guys WILL NOT believe what she’s going to have goin’ on in her booth. My mouth was literally hanging open. I came back to my stuff, all piled in the living room, suddenly looking drab and dreary…I have vendor envy, big time. Plus, I can’t decide whether I have enough stuff, whether it’s good enough stuff, and whether the stuff is priced correctly. There’s a lot of stuff worrying going on over here.

So, of course, the solution is to keep on buying.

I mean, there’s a finite number of shopping days between now and the 22nd, so it has to end sometime, right?

I found this awesome side table at the Unique on Howard last week:

Check out the awesome California hankie I got at an estate sale a while back.

By the way, I’m going to be closing down the booth in Fayetteville — what with my pregnancy and my sister-in-law’s pregnancy, neither of us has any business trying to run it for the next year (or eighteen…) — especially me, being 600 miles away. I’m bummed, but it was a really good learning experience for me. I would really like to get a booth up here, but the Chicago booths are so freaking expensive — $300 and up. I’m not in the big time! I can’t afford that! If anyone in the Chicagoland area is reading this and knows about any antique malls in the area that are reasonable, let me know. In the meantime, I’m heading down to Fayetteville as soon as the morning sickness is gone for good to hang a 50% off sign on the booth and pull anything from storage I think may sell at the VB here.

Some more recent finds…

I haven’t been doing a lot of yard saling or thrift store shopping lately…the morning (which is really ALL DAY) sickness is waning but every now and then it sneaks up on me and sidelines me for 24 hours or more. I’m having more and more good days in between the bad, though, so I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and that is SOME RELIEF.

I have been slowly but surely getting all of my Vintage Bazaar goodies together — priced, wrapped, and packed away in tubs that I can store in the garage. I am in a major PURGE  mentality and am feeling totally overwhelmed by the amount of stuff in our apartment. If you’ve read my blog for any longer than a span of two weeks you already know I have a bad habit of buying things I have no use for, no place for, and no business buying…but that I love the looks of. THAT has to STOP. This new addition to our family and apartment is going to take up all of the spare room. I finally got the majority of the VB purchases (purchases made in the last three months or so that comprised the top layer of stuff cluttering our apartment right now)  packed away but now am planning on spending the summer going through each and every room, dresser, and closet and dividing crap into three piles: yard sale (the annual Newgard block sale!), VB, and Salvation Army. The idea is that by August 23, the clutter will be gone from the apartment and I can start getting the nursery together. We’ll see how that plan pans out.

The next couple of posts aren’t going to be very exciting…just some shots of stuff as I packed up the VB boxes. Hopefully, my second-hand shopping will recover soon and I’ll have more interesting things to show you.

I was cleaning up the cool old tool box I showed you from an estate sale a couple of weeks ago and found out that the drawers are all vintage cigar boxes.