Thrift Score Weekend Part 1: Thrift WINS

I was not planning any major thrifting this weekend.  Believe me when I say that I am ALLLLLL stocked up on projects for a good while, and Hubs was busy with preparations for an overnight jaunt to visit a friend in FL.  Still, there were a couple of sales that sounded intriguing, including an Estate Sale (my fave!) that promised lots of vintage items, and a garage sale that promised  free art/building materials (even better!).  What can I say, I am a sucker for free, so I figured I’d spend a couple of hours on the prowl and be back in plenty of time to take over child care duty so Hubs could hit the road.

Note – usually I take the children with me when I go to yard sales.  OK, OK – fine, I usually take the “Sweet” well-behaved child when I can pry her away from Saturday morning cartoons, and take both of them when I must.  But as a general rule, I do not take children to Estate sales because that typically means nothing entertaining for them to peruse and too many breakables for their grabby little hands to destroy.  Hence the reason that I was flying solo on this particular Saturday.

Little did I know that my weekend was going to bring some of my favorite thrift finds EVER!  And of course I have so much to say about all this thrifty goodness that I’ve decided I’d better divide this into 2 separate posts.

The Estate Sale house was packed with people AND stuff.  Aside from some cool vintage goodies, there were many handmade and customized pieces of wood furniture.  Prices were a little high for me, plus everything was so nice that there was no need for me to “rescue” anything, so I didn’t come out with any of those neat wooden items, but for $2 I did find this cutie:

It’s currently hanging on the outside fence for a little rain and sun action, since it smelled like … you know what, nevermind what it smelled like, because I’d like us continue with the illusion that I am a really nice person, and I don’t want to go there, ok?!  And yes, I took this photo while the quilt was actually hanging outside in the rain...in the dark...like, 5 minutes ago. Because I'm a slacker and didn't take the photo in the beautiful Saturday sunshine when I should've. (It's ok, you can totally judge me.)

As I was making my way to the line to hand over my 2 bucks for the baby skunk quilt (ya know, cute but stinky!), I spied this on the giant table of breakables:

I promise you it was not there the first time I walked by, and I may or may not have let out an audible gasp as I snatched it up before one of the other vultures patrons could so much as look at it the wrong way.  I am convinced it was my reward for persevering through the claustrophobic rooms packed with pushy people (ugh). I love it so much I even cleared out the “ugly” corner of my kitchen counter to make a home for it, and for me to deal with *that* fright zone is really saying something! (Although you will note that I haven't managed to find an alternate home for the charging cord snaking behind it and it's totally harshing on my milk glass buzz.  It's ok, though, because cord, your day is comin'!)

Then I headed over to the “free” sale, saw some ok stuff, nothing that really immediately caught my eye.  But wait, what is this? An outdoor iron sofa with no cushions?  Hmmm, Sweet Pea was really getting a kick out of the fancy outdoor sofas we saw on the upper balconies of the houses on the river last weekend…and I did promise her that someday we’d have an outside couch of our own…although sadly not on the upper balcony of a scenic waterfront home. 

One of the Isle of Hope houses I like, similar to the sofa'd bacony ones. 

 Source

Maybe I could even still find some cushions on clearance like the ones I saw at Lowes?  But wait, what’s this?  The FREE pile!  With a couple of outdoor cushions in it!  And scrap wood and old wood and tile and carpet squares?!  Score!!!  So for $20 this came home with me (can you see through the random junk backdrop? I'll do a better before pic when its transformation is imminent):

We seem to have achieved the white trash outdoor sofa look rather than the stately waterfront home outdoor sofa look.  Hmmm. Want to change this by spring!!!

I also came home with some of the free scrap wood, carpet squares for painting on, and some huge terracotta pots that have been begging me nonstop for this paint & graphics treatment, a la Heaven's Walk:

(Patience, girls, patience…there are but so many hours in the day!)

And, the cushions…oh, the cushions.  I actually found 4 total…2 outdoor and 2 that look like they might have come from a 90’s era denim loveseat.  And they smelled like they had been stored in that grody, creepy, Savannah cellar for the last decade.  Think moisture, lots of moisture…and maybe some cats.  Eeewwww. They are bad, but not so bad that I didn’t think they were worth throwing in the *back* of the truck and bringing home for free. I remembered Rebecca at You Are {Talking} Too Much telling us about how she dealt with some nasty cushions, and I thought it was worth a shot.  They, too, are hanging around outside letting the rain and sun work their magic…I hope. 

Cute cushion...too bad you can't smell it!

Cute and enthusiastic cushion-squisher. He didn't smell too great by this point, either!!

And then…do you ever have one of those thrifting moments where it’s like the find of the day was just calling you…leading you to where you needed to be to be united like the kindred spirits you are? 

Surely it can’t be just me???

So anyway, on the way home I was kind of zoned out, probably already daydreaming about what color I was going to paint my cushion-less, white-trash knock-off of a fancy river-mansion outdoor sofa, when I realized I’d accidentally auto-piloted my way toward my son’s daycare instead of taking the more direct route home.  Long story short, this takes me past a mega-yard-sale right off the side of the road, and I spy milk glass.  Powerless to resist, I pulled in to take a look.  Nothing I wanted in the milk glass pile, but I browsed around for a few minutes to be polite.  And then I turned around and saw them.  I’m pretty sure they leaped out from underneath a pile of strewn-about clothing just to fling themselves in my line of sight:

What, don’t  tell me you don’t get this excited about boots?

And not just any boots, but kick-a$$, perfectly worn leather Durango engineer’s boots in exactly Hubs’s size? 

I mean yeah, it would have been cool to find some in ~my~ size, but it is possible that I might already have a, um, few pairs, while my poor deprived husband had to, gasp, ~borrow~ boots to wear in my mom’s Western themed wedding last year.  I mean, really, what kind of wife am I to allow that to happen? Who cares if he’s more of a Vans guy than a boots guy? He knows I think engineer’s boots are the pinnacle of hot, HOTTTT manliness as far as footwear goes, so I’m sure he’ll find them worth wearing every now and again (wink, wink)!

And the best part? I figured I was about to hand over some double-digit cash for these babies, but when I asked how much for the boots the lady said, “Boots?”  (See, I told you, it’s like they fell from the sky just for me! She didn’t even know she ~had~ boots for sale!) “Oh, I don’t know, $5?” I said, “OK!” and she goes, “Tell you what, give me $4.”  Four dollars?! ! I think I might have skipped all the way back to the truck.

And so, arriving home with a few minutes to spare before wishing Hubs a fond fare-thee-well, this concludes part 1 of our mini-series on this weekends thrifty WINS.  Be sure and stay tuned for part 2, and the story of Great Aunt Ardelia’s mirror and a thrifty FAIL!

How about you guys?  Have you ever experienced divine thrift intervention, as I did with the boots? Or brought home items so smelly you couldn’t even bring them in the house? And does anyone care to guess the nature of my FAIL?!