Today's Treasures

Now that summer has arrived, garage sale season is in full swing! This weekend is our local city-wide sale. (Although, city isn't quite the right size description of where I live.) I managed to get out of the house for a few hours to search for some treasures. I had a few things on my list, but mainly I was out looking for clothing for my kids to grow into, since I barely have anything in the next few sizes. I was able to find some nice kids clothing, a couple of garden tools I've been wanting, and a couple other miscellaneous items. Most of the girl's clothes were 25-50 cents, but pants for Adam were quite a bit higher than that. It's hard to find nice, inexpensive boys clothing when they get to be this age. They wear it all out!

It's so much fun browsing yard sales and uncovering treasures. Sometimes it's fun seeing how people value their junk, too. Like when people try to get $2 for a piece of trash or others who give away things that you might find value in. I prefer stumbling upon garage sales of the latter class. Today I found two of those! At my first sale of the day I was glancing over a few tables of junk when I heard someone say "the books are all free", so of course I had to turn and find out where these books were located. There, at my feet were a couple large boxes full of really nice books. I dug through and pulled out a stack that intrigued me. I found a couple old-school housewife books that are packed with tips on how to take care of your home, make things last longer, and keep stuff looking nice. For free, I might learn a few things! I also found a big bag of someone's old stamp collection in the free box. I peeked through a few of the envelopes when I got home, and there are a few sheets of unused stamps that originally sold for 2-10c a piece, as well as a few complete collectors sets. I plan to resell all of these. I have zero cost into them, so if there isn't much interest on eBay, I'm not out any money. If nothing else, I can show my kids how stamps worked when I was a kid. (Anybody else remember licking stamps?)

Years ago when I went yard saling, I looked for a lot of household and decorating items. Now my mommy status shows! At another sale, I found a huge tote of old puzzles and toys. Both Aaron and I have a love for all things vintage, and we prefer raising our children with wooden toys and old heavy duty favorites than battery operated, brightly colored cheap plastic stuff, so this was a great find. Growing up we had the Fisher-Price musical clock and it was one of my favorites. I could watch the hands go around for hours! (I literally did.) I had tried looking on eBay to buy one of them once, but found that I probably never would be able to afford spending that much on one toy, so I gave up the idea. They do make modern versions today, but they're made out of cheap plastic and aren't very sturdy and authentic. (I passed one of the new ones up at a yard sale last year.) Well, there wasn't a price on any of this stuff, so I asked, and the lady told me 25c a piece sounded good. It sounded good to me too, so I snatched up every piece I could find, and spent a total of $2 on all of the goodies pictured above. The bus even came with a complete set of 8 little people! Not only was I excited at this find, but Adam was a happy boy coming home, and he made sure all four of those new toys accompanied him at the table for lunch. :)