We were excited to head out last Saturday morning in absolutely gorgeous weather — it was the first really spring-like Saturday we’ve had. The first two sales we hit were terrible and we wondered if things were evening out from our good day last weekend. The ads had sounded good but were completely boring. Although we did manage to take a picture of this lovely framed needlepoint piece.

The next stop didn’t do much to boost our confidence in the day. Tons of balloons in a part of town with no sidewalks = two of our classic signs that a sale is going to suck.

And in this case, the signs were right. Meghan snapped this photo of a bunch of junk laid out on a funky mattress sitting in the yard. We didn’t even want to touch anything here, let alone buy it.

While heading towards stop #4 we came across signs for a sale that hadn’t been advertised. We didn’t have high hopes, but that changed when we pulled up and saw two racks of clothes in the driveway, with a gorgeous peach colored formal dress up front. “How much for the Junior Prom dress?” Meghan asked the guy. He told her it was $5 and she grabbed it while also educating him about the fact that the shorter length meant it was actually a junior prom dress, not a regular prom dress.

There was a ton of stuff and the people had interesting taste, but wanted to downsize since they were moving into a new place. The sale continued along the driveway, into the garage, and even into another room hidden off to the side.

We were both fascinated by this humongous Jell-O Pudding box. I hope you can get a sense of scale — it was well over two feet tall.

And this pathetic dog painting captured our interest, although neither of us wanted to take it home.

Meghan ended up picking up a couple of small furniture items, including an amazing fold-out dining room table that we had to come back for the next day. It was $40 and when we returned the guy told her that many people had groaned realizing it was already sold. The wife was there on Sunday too and the husband revealed that she was not happy that he had sold the prom dress. Still, she admitted she didn’t fit into it anymore and seemed willing to accept that it was time to let it go. (Which was good, since it was already gone!)

OK, back to Saturday. We continued on to the sale we were originally trying to find, which was lame. Then we went to a sale that sounded like it would be totally freaky, advertising itself as raising funds for their trip to Burning Man (5 months in advance?). I didn’t think I would necessarily find anything I wanted there, but I thought it would at least be entertaining. I was disappointed to find it was quite normal.

Our last stop was a sale advertised as the estate sale of an antique dealer. It was in a garage filled with all kinds of amazing paper ephemera and other items: vintage postcards, road maps, menus, photographs, prints, calendars, magazines, etc.

The guys running the sale were the sons of the antique dealer. They told us some funny stories about how their dad would always be bringing home some dining room table or another, then he’d sell it later. They got used to thinking of their furniture not as possessions so much as things that would just pass through their homes for a while.

They were happy to let us take some pictures and when they found out it was for our blog, they even brought out this choice item just for us to get a good photo-op. It wasn’t for sale; they were planning to give it to some friend, who I hope was properly grateful.

We each ended up with a stack of photos and other items. (I bought Return of the Jedi wrapping paper!) They flipped through our stacks and charged us $20 each, which was a great deal. It was nice to end an already-good day at a sale full of interesting stuff run by friendly people.