Okay, it is officially a tradition: for the fourth time, we bribed someone to watch our children (just kidding, Justin’s mom was sweet enough to come over and stay with them) so that Justin and I could get up at 5 am and drive an hour and a half to the Annual Neosho City Wide Yard Sale event. And for the fourth time, it was totally worth the drive, which is surprising, because, in my experience, as these annual yard sale events go on, the pickings get more and more crappy as the participants just continue to pull out the same stuff that didn’t sell the year before. But I managed to find enough stuff to fill the car once again, so I suppose we will continue on with this tradition!
At this point, the areas are familiar to me, and I’ve got a bit of a plan (instead of just blindly driving around as I did the first two years). I head to Oak Ridge Avenue, with is a big loop that they turn into a one-way street for the sale day. There are always a ton of sales and a church sale where the prices cannot be beat (I got these two filing cabinets, plus a bunch of frames, for five bucks at the church this year).
BTW, here’s an app rec: I use Route4me, and it’s excellent for yard saling. They used to charge a monthly fee to route over a certain number of spots but I don’t think they do that anymore. I haven’t been able to find any other app that lets me type in tons of addresses (it was 47 for Neosho, over 70 for Tulsa) and then maps it in the most efficient way.
The two Asian relief chalk hangings came from a sale where a woman was selling some of her grandmother’s stuff — she had recently passed away. I think they’re really cool and will end up at the college booth.
I also got this keen beverage set from her:
I washed them after I took this picture, and they look a bit more lustre-y and fun.
I got the two little scottie dogs and the two farm trucks, along with a few other things, at a sale on the corner of Cottage and High — I remember them from last year as being a house with a ton of great vintage stuff. They did not disappoint this year, although their prices were a little too steep for re-sale purposes — but, still, lots of fun stuff to look through. One of the women having the sale made the scottie dogs out of vintage wool blankets — I thought they were so cute! I’ll put these back until next Fall. I’ll bet theirs would be a great sale to hit on Saturday, when they’re a bit more flexible with their prices. Still, I will look forward to it again next year.
Can you even imagine if I had found the cabinet these drawers belong to instead of just the drawers?
I got about 25 of them, and the woman who sold them to me had no idea where they were from but we decided they may have been from a type cabinet from a newspaper, because, on the inside, each one has a letter of the alphabet. I have NO idea what I’m going to do with these but they were so cute I could not resist. They would be good display pieces for jewelry, maybe — I will have to see if my BFF Shara can use a few of them.
This is a close-up of a table from the big picture at the beginning of the post, and it’s from one of my FAVORITE stops this year — and one of the biggest-kept secrets of the city wide sale. They were NOT on my list that I pulled from the Chamber of Commerce site, so I don’t know if I just missed them, or if they didn’t submit their sale for the list, but I followed signs saying “Huge sale, Primitives and Junk” about five miles off of my route to find the place (1906 Pineville). The sale ended up being in a big barn-like shed in the back of someone’s house — it was totally charming and professional and adorable and their prices were UNBELIEVABLE. I hit them about 1 pm and I shudder to think what I might have missed. I got this table, the table in the first picture with wheels on it, the cute little step-stool in the picture of the drawers, and this cute kitchen cart, all for $50:
I’m going to take the cart apart and paint it — I did that with a cart I use for display at the Junk Ranch and everyone tries to buy it every year. Now they’ll be able to! That was a really fun stop.
Let’s talk about that saucer chair in the picture up there. I shouldn’t have bought it because I just can’t imagine that I’ll be able to salvage it — the vinyl, as you can see, is torn in multiple places. I was thinking about trying to find some of that patch stuff they used to make for vinyl things — you would kind of melt the patch on the tear with a hot iron? Do they make those anymore? And is it feasible with tears in such a large portion of the chair? I just couldn’t resist it — it swivels! And it’s so CUTE! And it was only $5! But oh, it’s a mess. Advice solicited and appreciated, if you have any. Those old bottles are very cool and were the other thing I got at the cool vintage sale at Cottage and High. They all have their original lids or corks.
The plus of this trip is that, along with vintage goodness, I always pick up lots of stuff for the kids, and this year was no different. I got a bunch of clothes and shoes for them AND a massive amount of Legos. Jack’s eyes were like saucers as I pulled out bag after bag of legos!
We stopped by Joplin and picked up lunch from Big R’s BBQ, which we found our very first year and have eaten at every year since. And dream about throughout the rest of the year. It’s some tasty BBQ, y’all. We intended that for dinner and then drove through a burger place for lunch. Along with the three donuts from breakfast, you can see that I took full advantage of the road trip junk food rule.
Shara went too, but I know she will do her own post, so be sure to pop over there and read her post about it. One of these days we will actually go on an adventure together, in the same car, although one of us will end up tied to the roof in order to make more room for the THE STUFF.
Hope yard sale season is kicking up for you guys, too! Thank goodness they’re back!
by Lara Jo
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