The joy of finding original art!

One of my favorite things to search for at garage and estate sales is original art!

Framed and ready to hang, paintings are sold at prices that make the artist in me scream with frustration and the cheapskate in me giggle with pleasure.

$3.00 at a church sale.

$20.00 at one of Renee's customer's estate sale.

$10.00 at a garage sale. A big name artist too!



$1.00 each at garage sale.

$2.00 at garage sale.

$1.00 at a church garage sale.



Above and below ones at a deceased friend's estate sale.
A couple of bucks each, probably, but I really can't remember.

And here's my latest picture. It's truly a wonderful piece in oil,
painted on a piece of corrugated cardboard.
I can't believe such a beautiful piece is painted on cardboard!
Whoever painted it (no name), knew what they were doing.

For ONE DOLLAR!

I love this piece and look at it several times a day.

Do you have a piece of art that you feel this way about?

See Dick run!

Language has puzzled me ever since I first started reading about Dick and Jane playing with each other. As a child, my brain’s transference of letters and complete syllables made reading aloud a sweat-producing, pants-peeing experience.

Given enough time and tears I could figure out most words. The dose of medicine the little does swallow does make a small child cringe and a grown woman weep. And I’ll be ill in Ill. if I have to read aloud there.

I panicked seeing p’s, q’s, d’s, and b’s in words. The word dumb could be pump, dump, or bump. Quiet could be quite or quit. I never knew which. I stayed in a continued state of confusion which my parents and teachers didn’t understand back then.

“You’re just not concentrating,” they’d say, or worse yet, “You’re being dumb.” Or was I being pump or bump. Got me.

My father was a writer and books and magazines at our house were age inappropriate for children. “Daddy,” I remember asking, “Why do people send their money to Texas?”

“I’m not so sure they do,” he replied. “Why do you ask such a question?”

“These things,” I said, pointing to some resource information he was looking at. "They say, 'Everybody pays texas.' ” I bet California wishes they could set up such an arrangement.

Plus, of course, there were word twists. Rita and Wayne became Wita and Rayne, Uncle Tom and Aunt Martha became Uncle Mom and Aunt Tartha.

As my chronological age gathers speed, I find my mind slipping backwards towards those days of mixed letters. Just the other week Renee and I were at a garage sale where I unexpectedly asked the shocked seller, “How much for your “fucket of brogs?”

I know we're not welcome at that house anymore but I’m hoping Renee will start garage sale-ing with me again soon!

My Favorite Thing Party! Come join us! Ninety-third post and counting!

A picture of some of my favorite things:

I just had to join Thrifty Decor Chick's Favorite Thing Party,
courtesy of Jen at Sanctuary Arts at Home.
I have many favorite things
but this picture
shows
so
many
of them...
my love of home,
my love of garage sales,
my love of cowboy decorating.
The only thing it doesn't show is my love...

so here he is!

Mirror, Mirror on the wall...

Who got the bestest sale today of all?

Renee! That's who!

And there she is in the mirror with the mostest, dreamin' of puttin' this little beauty in her own home instead of puttin' it up for sale!

Because just look at the darling dresser that goes with it! And the side table (in two pieces for transportation)! Are they not the sweetest things you ever saw! I didn't take a closeup of the chippy pink paint over dark green but it is to die for! And just look at that wonderful paint job!


I do want to point out that I found them and sent Renee into the back room to buy 'em. I'm just wantin' to get credit where credit is due. After all, who doesn't like credit and credit cards!

And what did little ol' me get?

I found this giant, heavy, rusty floor jack!

Now those of you who follow WhisperWood (and if you don't, you should) might think I stole this from her but I didn't, although I do admit that without her post that included a jack just like this, I wouldn't have immediately grabbed it at the garage sale this morning. I loved hers when I saw it. I doubly love mine now that I have one.

My husband thinks I've lost my sanity.

Speaking of losing something and being insane, this is my favorite Thanksgiving picture. I'd dropped something behind my washer and grandson C-Bear, with an assist from my son Hat Dude, retrieved it for me.

No child or grandchild was hurt in the retrieval of this item!

'Twas a good day!

I had a WhisperWood-kind of garage sale day today! That means I found some junk I love at great prices.

And I decorated the house for Christmas.

Yup, this tree is it! That's all I'm doing for Christmas, and I wouldn't be doing that if I hadn't found it at a garage sale today. Three bucks. Handcrafted. Made of sheet metal. Folds flat for storage. My kind of tree.

Let's face it, when you add three adult children, a grandchild, their friends, their dogs, m-i-l and wheelchair, and a turkey to our house, there's no room for a tree. I'll spray the house with pine cleanser or something!

At another sale I found this old copper stencil and frame (two bucks), along with the chippy lock box (1 dollar. I'll put all our remotes in it) and CDs (50 cents each. Village People are great to exercise to and Dr. Oz is the bomb). I want the letters on the sign to pop more so I guess I'll take it apart and spray paint the background black.



A return trip to that sale after the prices halved garnered this cigar humidor, complete with totes and cutters and lighter. Plus two still-sealed cigars. Five bucks. IT Guy and the boys have this manly-man thing going with cigars, sitting outside no matter what the weather and smokin' their sticks. Five bucks! Oh, and the Mexican table cloth for 75 cents.


The leather-bound Louis L'Amour were a dollar each. I love the green Ball canning jar, especially for a quarter. The old platter is crazed just like I like 'em and the price was like I like 'em too. Another quarter.


The chippy black and white medicine cabinet (four bucks) even came with a note:

"This medicine chest came out of the Centerville Texas Hotel, downtown, just NW of the square, before they gutted it and remodeled it into the annex it is today, housing county offices such as the Juvenile Probation, Extension Offices" signed JB.

The belt is to die for. From Canton. Five bucks. The blue and rust wire duck was different enough for me to buy at a quarter.


And that's it. I had an 'ell of a morning shopping.

Eat your heart out, WhisperWood!

Oh, the things we buy!

This small copper sign sets on top of the toilet tank
in the western bathroom.

For once, I can't say I know where I got something.

I must have blocked it out of my mind.

I do know I've had it for years and years and years.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Whew, it's over...my garage sale, that is!

Boy, I love garage sales...other people's garage sales! Having one myself is just too much work!

Having one with Renee is much easier. I pull out all the things I want to sell, I supply tables and the back yard, then I stand around like I don't know what to do next. She can't stand it.

She sorts my like items into piles, then works magic as she displays them like my back yard was an upscale antique boutique.

Of course, I'm still standing around with my thumb in my mouth.

So after she fitzes over everything, she tells me to start pricing my stuff - and again, I don't have a clue.

"Renee, how much should I put on this?" I ask on each and every item. Meanwhile, she's still trying to unpack her stuff and put it out.


Finally, after the tenth or eleventh time I ask that question, Renee just starts doing it herself!

Maybe I'm not that bad but Renee is that good!

A typical Saturday morning...NOT!

Work started for me at 7:45 this morning. It might be in a swimming pool but it's still work on a Saturday morning and I resented it! Luckily, there were two garage sales within a couple of blocks of home so I could feed my addiction.

I'm thinking a drug additition would be easier to maintain than a garage sale addiction. Good drugs you can find any time of the year and on any street (or so I'm told) but a good garage sale between you and your work takes a lot of luck, the right weather, and nothing made in China!

I found one treasure, and I attacked a group of non-English-speaking men who bumped their big pickup into my little orange wagon.

Here's the treasure:



It's an old rawhide lampshade on a heavy metal frame. Two dollars. Heck, a fake rawhide shade at WallyWorld costs ten times that! I'm sure my dogs would think it's a large chew toy if they could reach it. I used it to replace the shade on my driftwood lamp.

Very western indeed and I've been wanting one. Let's face it, if Mary Emmerling has something in one of her western decorating books, I want one too.

The western platter is a Sky Ranch piece that Renee gave me and I barely had to beg her for it at all! The green canteen is by Frankoma. Two old branding irons serve as candle holders and a dead animal is the table runner. The deer painting is an original John Cogan.

So I attacked six men! They backed into my little wagon at the same garage sale. Everyone looked up to see whose vehicle had been hit, and the guy took his truck out of reverse and was going to take off. I started yelling at him, rushing forward with my finger jabbing the air. I had my bathing suit on under an extra-large shirt and jeans so he didn't know what I had or who I was, if you know what I mean. I was also wearing my work badge and had all kinds of keys hanging off me.

He got out of the truck and I'm acting like a crazy woman. Everyone is watching. FIVE MORE MEN got out of the truck and headed towards me. I figured they piled out of the truck for the intimidation factor.

I ignored the "groupies" and headed staight towards the driver, thinking all the while I'm going to be stabbed or shot! "Are you the driver?" I shouted. When he nodded his head, I give him a rap on his chest with my knuckle. He was big and I had to reach up but I did it like his momma would have. He suddenly had that "I'm a naughty boy" look on his face and his "friends" started backing away, muttering something in Spanish about "loco" and "blanca", which could have been referring to my mental state and my hair color. I don't know much Spanish but they knew I was little, I was old, I was crazy, and I had a hospital badge and they didn't want to mess with me.

I established that there was only a slight ding in the bumper and smiled when I said, "Get out of here but be careful next time."

They piled back in the truck faster than they had filed out. I bought my lampshade and went to work. It took me an hour to settle down. I'm sure my first class thought I was the Nazi drill instructor from Hell!

Sometimes it's the hunt...

...and sometimes it's the treasure!

I'm addicted to garage sales. My husband, IT Guy, spends hours on his computer searching for a twelve-step program to cure this disease, but so far he has come up with zip. Zero. Zilch. Consequently, come Saturday morning I’m up at six, heading for some sale on Seventh St.

But being first at a garage sale isn’t always that productive. Sometimes it pays to be almost last. The junk and clutter will have been lugged to somebody else’s house. The buying frenzy of first comers will be over, and the sellers will be more relaxed. They'll have more time to yak, bargain, and have some fun. When that happens, I find little jewels like this.

Last Saturday at one of my addiction stops, I bought this painting...because I liked it. Loved it, really. The scene, the colors, and even the vintage frame. It was marked $20, but it was late in the morning, and the price had been crossed out and lowered to $10. I paid without haggling and scurried home with my treasure, straight to my computer. I googled the artist all week. I found similar works by the same painter but no values. One hint, though, was a reference to one of his pieces in a museum. Hmmm, that sounded favorable.

Yesterday I found the Google hit I wanted. An auction house had sold one of the artist’s pieces for $1,700. True, it was a bigger work, but not by much. Better yet, it was of similar subject matter and the same style.

What's my piece worth? I don’t know but surely more than the ten bucks I paid for it! And, anyway, it’s my TREASURE, and I love it.

Come on Saturday morning!