In order to break up the seemingly endless monotony of working on my paper, I gave myself permission to do one of my favorite weekend activities-- flea marketing!
KC came to my parents' house with me for Fourth of July weekend and since he tends to be my flea market partner in crime we ended up going to the one near their neck of the woods on that Sunday. KC is currently on this succulents-and-interesting/unique/strange-planters kick so he got some of those and I bought a little wooden shelfy thing (that I actually left in my parents' garage because I intend to sand and paint it). I also, well, erm, ended up paying $3 for this little guy.
For some reason I've been recently liking fake animal head art (?) pieces. It probably has something to do with the fact that I want want WANT NEED
THIS and would totally buy it but alas I've emailed the seller twice and she never got back to me and probably thinks I'm a crazy stalker lady (but, come on don't say 'email me for special orders' if you don't meant it)? ANYhow. I'm going to put the little cow up on a wall somewhere. I'm not quite sure where yet-- the man who sold him to me said he was for hanging towels or jackets but I'm not so sure. I think he's meant for staring blankly and wondering why on earth I buy such wonderful
ly tacky items.
On the way back from the flea market, we kept seeing these big, bright orange signs for a BARN SALE in town. Even though we were hungry and tired and it was way too hot we decided to stop. It was actually pretty cool-- apparently several different people had decided to combine their yard sales into one big BARN SALE. There were big pieces of mismatched furniture strewn about the yard, rows of tables holding glassware, rows of boxes containing who knows what, cartons of photos, doll clothes, appliances, figurines, handmade jewelry, bedpans, you name it.
KC picked out several bowls and planters, asked if the lady would take ten for all of them, and then offered a couple extra bucks if she would let him snap off a piece of her big succulent plant. She said she would take the ten dollars and that he could have a piece of the succulent for free, as long as he didn't think it was Aloe, because it WAS NOT.
I came home with these.
I don't know how well you can make out the orange and yellow flower pattern but I am a firm believer in bright orange and yellow and I do enjoy having different canisters for my various pasta shapes. I paid $5 for the two of them, plus a wooden spoon.
Last weekend we headed over to the local SF flea market. I don't usually buy books, ever, actually. I just don't have room for any more in my shelves, plus the closest Borders went out of business and the library is now closer than a bookstore. And free books are better than books of any price, usually.
But then this one caught my eye and it
was only a dollar.
Plus, is pretty and actually has a lot of good information and tutorials and I like its old-timey look.
I also picked up these two Breyer horses for $5 total.
That was probably the best deal I've gotten on Breyer horses-- usually they run between $5-$20 each, depending on whether or not the seller knows what they are and how stealthily I can check for the Breyer stamp on the underside of the horse. Also, I would like to point out that I HAVE been giving them to my nieces as gifts and they get particularly excited about the vintage ones. I buy them as GIFTS... I just happen to have a backlog of them on my shelf at home.
While KC picked up a couple of records (Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, The Sugarhill Gang), it was apparently container day for me at the flea market. I got all of these for a total of $7.50.
Six dollars for the poppy ceramic jar (with no lid) and the yellow and white metal canister, one dollar for the daisy cup, and fifty cents for the avocado and yellow canister. I've put the poppy jar on my countertop, for holding wooden spoons and whatnot (replacing the jug in
this photo). I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the other canisters. I might use one of them to hold electronic cables that aren't in use (but I'm saving JUST IN CASE), because right now they're in a basket and it is kind of a tangled mess.
At $10, this matryoshka doll was the most expensive thing I purchased.
But! She has four other dolls inside her, so that's really like two dollars per doll! ... which I guess is still kind of a lot (especially since she's purely decorative). But matryoshka dolls seem to be kind of expensive, from what I've seen. Recently they had a matryoshka (if I type it enough, maybe I'll learn how to spell it) doll display at Costco and the cheapest one was $30. Although I did enjoy the fact that the
really expensive big ones had many many little dolls inside them.
