MID SUMMER GARAGE SALE AND GOODWILL FINDS

With summer coming to a close shortly, it’s not just the warm weather, the lazy, unstructured days and the vacations that I will miss.

Garage sale season is also wrapping up — and that’s a sad, sad thing.

Never mind that I have enough items ready for my own next sale– I can just can’t help being on the lookout for a new find.

And if I come across a sale in my travels (like this one in Wisconsin), I will always stop — even if everyone else in the car complains about it.

This year my garage sale-ing was hampered somewhat by my Achilles injury, but I’m so glad I started my summer junking journey with Laurie Romanaggi’s epic garage sale last month.

Some of the items I found there were among my favorites in the last couple months.

Look at this darling floor mat — I can’t wait to see it on my front porch come December.

Okay, but that was then, this is now.

My Wisconsin trip overlapped with the once-yearly, town-wide garage sale in Land O’Lakes, and while I didn’t find many bargains, I found a few things to bring home.

First I found this enamelware bowl I bought from a friend of my mother’s (it set me back two dollars).

She was sad to get rid of it, but I told her I’d use it often and think of her.

I also bought this enamelware cup for fifty cents.

As you can see it has a few dings on the lip but the color is even better than the photo suggests; it’s a deep robin’s egg blue, and many mornings I’ve come to rely on it to hold my latte.

Perhaps my favorite finds in Wisconsin came from a little shop called Seedy Antiques.

Land O’Lakes is such a tiny town and I’m not sure why I’d missed it on previous trips (perhaps because it’s a small place nestled in the pines next to the owner’s house) but I had so much fun checking out the enormous enamelware collection here.

I also loved talking to the owner, Joe, about his collections and certain pieces in the store.

The first thing that caught my eye was some of the white enamelware in the back. I ended up buying four perfect bowls to add to my collection.

They are the perfect size for a salad or soup, and it made me so happy to find four older ones in such great condition.

Lastly, I got to looking at this vintage greeting card collection and I ended up buying twenty of his vintage Valentine’s Day cards.

Turns out Joe is one of seventy four first cousins and he ended up with a number of their old greeting card collections — and there were so many to choose from.

I’m not sure what I’ll do with all of them (suggestions, please!) but in the meantime, I’m going to set them aside until after Christmas.

Back in Portland, the thrifting continued.

I went to one garage sale my friend Sasha said I must go to and she was right — I found so many fun things.

I found this vintage ring toss.

I also found all these there. Vintage Party Supplies.

The color on these is fantastic.

The napkins are amazing but how to use? Again, suggestions?

And look at these dominoes and vintage Snowman candle.

At another garage sale down the street I spied a paper bag of gift wrap.

The outside pieces were not to my liking but the bag holding it all looked pretty hold so I dug a little deeper. Lo and behold, good stuff awaited in the middle– much of it still in its original cello wrapping.

The bag was a dollar and while there are about twenty pieces I will donate back to Goodwill, there were just as many that I will have fun crafting with– tags, cards, box liners.

Speaking of Goodwill, I want to show you a couple things I retrieved recently from their Outlet Bins.

A medium sized Bodum French Press — perfect for cold brew iced coffee making.

I found this vintage Santa mini-broom.

And this retro paper basket.

And these vintage pipe cleaners.

I use pipe cleaners for a number of things, including molding them into script initials and using them as gift tags for presents I give out (the colors on these are gorgeous).

And lastly, speaking of lovely pastel tones, look at this short sleeved cashmere sweater I also scooped up.

I handwashed it in Woolite after I brought it home and it looks as good as new. For just a quarter, I found a pretty new wardrobe addition.

Are you too itching to go binning? Kids are back to school in less than two weeks, and I’m salivating thinking about all the junking trips that await me. Join me!

In the meantime, Team Kline is preparing for both the solar eclipse on Monday and then the next day our FIRST EVER CAMPING TRIP.

Ready or not, campsite — here we come.