freshvintage

Talk about an ESTATE Sale!

I just made a quick after-work trip here. Looks like this family overspent for everything and it is biting them in the ass now.

Coming home empty-handed. Too much $$$ for me!
------------------------- Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

The Results Are In

You voted, and the funniest blog post is the one about my mom playing Boggle on the toilet. Yay for mom! Most normal, dignified people would be horrified at sharing their bathroom habits. Not my mama. She loves it. She is revelling in this right now.

So, I submitted the Boggle post to the BlogHer Community Keynote committee. Even though the hooker story was a distant second, I submitted that one as well. Call me crazy, but I think it is funnier than the Boggle story. I guess I am just immune to 20+ years of constant Boggle shaking. It's like when people ask the children of movie stars, "What was it like growing up around famous people"? And they say "It was no big deal - it was all I knew". I have the same sentiment. When people ask me, "What was it like to grow up in a house that had a Boggle game, notepad and egg timer next to the toilet?", I just tell them "I didn't know any different. But I could never figure out why my friends' moms didn't like to play word games while they pooped".

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It's Friday and I hope you are enjoying happy hour as much as we are right now...

 

Yes, we have a bar built into our deck. The Amish builder thought we were a little strange, but I didn't give a damn. It overlooks our neighbor's barn and the kids' swing set.

That's Chris drinking Sweet Tea Vodka & Lemonade. In a fancy girly glass.

Have you tried one yet?

Happy Mother's Day!

Big hugs and kisses to my mom for wholeheartedly agreeing to let me air all of her dirty laundry on this blog. My blog would be so lame without your embarrassing stories. I love you!

P.S. And thanks to my dad, who sends flowers to all of his daughters each Mother's Day. Thanks for the tulips! AND, thanks to Chris for planting my Mother's Day flowers in the backyard: peonies, roses and hydrangeas. My favorites!

Vintage Luggage Tags & Smoking Toddlers

I've been buying entirely too much paper lately. Here is a small fraction of the 800+ small vintage price tags that I recently bought. I put them in this small fish-scaled planter. It is only about five inches tall. It looks a lot bigger in this picture.

I found these vintage travel tags along with a pair of hotel keys on eBay:

They are from the 1950s to 1970s. I love the cruise line luggage tags.

 

When my in-laws were here in April, my mother-in-law and I went to a barn sale where I found a box of flash cards. There are about 40 sets of small 2" x 3" alphabet cards and one pack of large letters.

On the same day, Mary and I stopped at one of those antique stores that never appears to be open. You know - the kind that is attached to someone's house and you just can't tell if you are going to be raped and pillaged as soon as you walk through the door. And while you are worrying about your safety, you become distracted because the prices are so ungodly high for a place that looks like the living room of that hoarding lady from the Oprah Show. You know that kind of place, right?

Well, this place had a "bonus": a shed filled with antiques behind the shop. There were three reasons why I was unsure about visiting the shed after the owner had suggested it.

1. It was pouring rain.
2. The prices were too high.
3. I like my life and didn't want it to end in a shed, even if it was part of an antiques shop.

Our curiosity got the best of us and we went to the shed. It was crowded with furniture and boxes and other junk. I found a couple of scrapbooks in one of the boxes and paid $30 for both. I usually wouldn't pay that much, but in our brief look at the books, we spotted some cool stuff.

One of the books was filled with Valentines and greeting cards collected by a girl named Dorothea who was born in 1903. She only collected the nicest cards, with doilies and fold-outs and fancy tissue paper decorations.

This is one of my favorites:

Many of the cards are not in very good condition. They have tears or pieces missing here and there. But I imagine that some resourceful and talented artists could use the cards in their artwork.

There was a plastic bag of small floral scrap pieces tucked into one of the books...

...along with 30+ Victorian trading cards. Never glued and in great condition (for the most part). They are all from businesses in the Philadelphia and Montgomery County, PA areas.

Unfortunately, this trading card is in bad shape. The back of the card has an advertisement for a farm machinery supplier in Lansdale, PA.

Nothing says "Buy Our Tractor" like a toddler smoking a stogie and reading the newspaper!