We are Thing-finders, Pippi & I

Last Saturday morning I was out yard saling, of course! My little youngest brother had asked to come with me. The last of us four siblings to leave the nest, he was looking for some cheap kitchen basics and furniture to stock his first apartment and he wanted my help scoring some good deals. My hubby decided to join us since, according to Craigslist, there were lots of books for sale out there. So by just after 8am, the five of us and my cooler full of juice boxes and snacks were all packed liked sardines into my little Corolla (with a broken AC) and off we went with our hit list.

Along the way we ran into a few familiar faces who were also out treasure hunting and we ended up stopping at three friends houses en route too. By 12:30 we pulled back into my driveway, each successful enough to have made the trek worthwhile.

One of my favorite finds was actually a book I scooped up for the kids because it brought back such great memories from my own childhood - "Pippi Longstocking" by Astrid Lindgren. Do you remember Pippi's full name????

Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim's Daughter Longstocking

As soon as we got back into the car I started flipping through the book to find Pippi's full name because I was 97% sure I still remembered it after all these years but I wanted to verify. I never could find it in the book but later confirmed my good memory via Google. However, in the process of paging through the book, I came across a paragraph that caught my attention and brought a smile to my face. Turns out, Pippi and I have something in common.  I read this paragraph out loud to my carmates:

"I don't know what you are going to do," said Pippi, "but I know I can't lie around and be lazy. I am a Thing-finder, and when you're a Thing-finder you don't have a minute to spare."

"What did you say you are?" asked Annika. 

"A Thing-finder." 

"What's that?" asked Tommy. 

"Somebody who hunts for things, naturally. What else could it be?" said Pippi.... "The whole world is full of things and somebody has to look for them. And that's just what a Thing-finder does," she finished.

I love it. We're Thing-finders. And speaking of things, following are just some of the items that our caravan picked up Saturday morning, besides the Pippi Longstocking book.

For 50 cents I picked up a lamp shade that I've needed for a while:

Years ago I found this lamp at a yardsale - I loved the color, shape and size. However, the shade that came with it (next to the lamp) is kind of strange and dated, made of hard plastic, smells funky when it gets hot from the light, and is now really dingy and cracking. We use this lamp on our porch when we sit out there in the evenings and I keep saying I gotta pick up a new shade. Well now I have, and it just happens to be perfect for the lamp. My wallet thanks me for waiting all this time.

For a quarter, I scored a brand new in-package Pampered Chef citrus peeler, which I also needed:

And for anyone that ever wants to order Pampered Chef products or host a home or catalog party, I highly recommend my consultant friend Kathy.)

For $2 I found this funky wooden necklace:

I probably could've bartered her down to a buck, but I love it even for $2.

I found a huge lot of beginner readers (my oldest is starting to learn to read - so fun) as well as a few other kids' classics I remember reading like "Charlotte's Web", "Where the Wild Things Are", and Beverly Cleary's "The Mouse and the Motorcycle". The new readers will supplement all my Dick and Jane books nicely. Gotta start her on the classics. :)

From the same sale, I also got a couple of new kids activity books including a Holly Hobby paint with water....dated 1978 with an 81 cent price tag from Child World...memba that place?

For more on my love of Holly Hobby treasures, read a prior post.

How sweet is that? I might have to tear out my favorites first to paint myself and frame...hmmm...for baby's room...might be on to something!

If there is one thing I swear I will never buy at a yard sale it is a stuffed animal. I am totally sceeved out by the thought of taking home any used, plush, unwashable item from someone I don't know. Every time my kids ask for stuffed animals at yard sales, I just tell them we have no room for any more in our house (which is so true...we also tell Great Gram to stop buying us new ones). Well this week I finally broke down after my oldest, who LOVES Shrek, discovered a big stuffed one. Hoping to eliminate her desire, her dad asked if she wanted to pay the $1 out of her "Florida bank" (for over 2 years she's been saving loose change for plane tickets to go back and she's got over $300 so far!). To our shock and awe, as she lovingly hugged Shrek, she said she did want to pay for it. That was a first. So of course her little sister wanted to have one too and she quickly attached herself to an equally large stuffed Nemo. As hubby would say, I folded like a cheap suit. This was after carefully considering the personal appearance of the sellers, the cleanliness of their other items for sale, and the curb appeal of their home. I also prayed that the characters didn't carry bed-bugs or lice. The girls rode the rest of the hot humid morning packed into our no-AC-car with their new buddies on their laps - I'm sweating just thinking about it.

They haven't stopped playing with their jumbo plush dust-collectors all week.

I think hubby said he bought over 15 paperback books. I'm just thrilled that he finally recently agreed to get rid of this type of book as fast as he reads them. There is a place for displaying books in bookshelves, but I draw the line at paperback novels. Find a place to hide them or get rid of them.

My bro scored a free futon and paid $5 for a coffee table, $2 for a pottery crock chuck full of serving utensils, spatulas, wooden spoons, etc, 75 cents for a boot tray, a quarter each for a few random pots & pans and $5 for a pair of Pfaltzgraff serving bowls.  When I saw the price on the bowls, I told him to talk the lady down to $3. Her response to his request was "Oh... I don't know...they are Pfaltzgraff. Have you ever heard of that?" I just laughed because the ugly pattern had to be 20 years old and she acted like she was selling a highly sought after collectible, or Lenox bone china or something. And yes, lady, unlike most single guys in their early 20s, my brother is familiar with Pfaltzgraff. After all, he comes from a long blood-line of Thing-finders. :)

And speaking of brothers, my other one has a passion for both music and cooking. He collects vinyl so the past few weeks I've scored him 15 classic albums he didn't have yet (he's got quite the collection so that's tough) for $1 each. I also found this wicked cool cutting board for him recently at Sally's.

Blogger is giving me a headache and refuses to flip this picture around the right way so I give up, you get the point.

This Saturday I take a week off from yard sales and turn my efforts to a new and different bargain-hunting adventure - a used curriculum/book sale. I'm attempting to teach my oldest Kindergarden at home next year so I'd like to find some cheap used materials if I can. The organization that puts on the sale describes the experience like shopping for wedding dresses at Boston's Filene's Basement. Any normal person should be threatened by a warning like that, but not me, I welcome the challenge. I'm a Thing-finder!