Julie Julie Julie (American Girl)

Anyone remember that song?  "Julie, Julie, Julie do you love me?" . . .  Oh well, enough of that.  What this post is really about is a doll named Julie.  That would be an American Girl doll.  I have a friend with a Julie Doll with book, new and still in the box, that she would like to sell.  If you click on the American Girl link I have provided, you will see that the doll (with book) retails for $100.  She would like to sell it for $80.  If you have any interest or know someone that may, please share this information with them.  If you'd like to make an offer, let me know.  You can comment in this post, send me a facebook message or email me.  If you'd like to make a different offer, I can present it to her, but no promises, she told me she'd like to get $80 for her.

And by the way, if you have anything, whether its selling something or a service you provide, that you'd like me to post, I would be glad to do so for you.  Just let me know.  And, feel free to leave comments, I would LOVE some comments!

SORRY FOLKS, THE DOLL HAS SOLD!

SADDLE UP FOR A STEAL

Had to share a quickie steal.  I stopped by the Resale Shop in the old Train Depot in Belleville on South Illinois, down by Friday's tavern yesterday.  And I came home with a saddle for a friend.  For $30!!! Can you believe it.  I am told it is a roping saddle, so I learned something to "boot"!  Its leather and the leather has been tooled.  It looks to be in pretty good condition but I don't know nothing about saddles so you be the judge of how good a deal I got!  Now get out there and shop!

SALE ALERT!

Dillard's is clearancing stock at rock bottom prices.  This weekend (starting today for non credit card holders) most every marked down item is an additional 40% off!  This is my favorite time to buy at Dillard's.  I got a gorgeous Cole Haan nude colored leather purse for right at $100!  Regular price was over $200, it was marked down to around $175 and then with the additional 40% off it came to right over $100 with tax.  I also bought an Antonio Melani (Dillard's store brand) black leather (faux reptile finish) purse for about $30, regular price was around $150 and it was 65% off of that at $55 and then the additional 40% off of that (and hey, don't check my math and complain that I'm off, I don't have my receipt in front of me so I'm going from memory and that may be slightly off)!  Fantastic buys nonetheless and two great purses to take in to the fall!  I scored!  If I get a chance I'll post photos of my purchases later!  Check back!

Saling Across the South

Yard Saling that is.  I recently returned from another visit to the Yard Sale Across the South (otherwise known as the World's Longest Yard Sale or the Highway 127 sale).  It's held the first weekend of August every year.  The sale runs from Hudson, Michigan to Gadsden, Alabama, a total of 675 miles.  And we only made our way through 39 miles of it.  We, is me and my partner in crime when it comes to such treasure hunts, Kathy Schopp.  A high school friend with equal if not greater love of old things and found objects.  Don't you love that her last name is Schopp?  The 39 miles we covered over 3 days ran from Frankfort to Danville, Kentucky.

Our home base was the Hampton Inn in Frankfort.  We stayed there two nights on points collected through other Hilton stays and from a charge card that rewards with Hilton points.  We paid for the last night.  The sale officially starts on Thursday, although some vendors set up as early as Monday I'm told, and goes through Sunday, though you will find some vendors don't sell on Sunday, I assume because they have to travel and get back home to work on Monday.  We traveled on Thursday, with a stop in New Harmony, Indiana, which I'll have to tell you about another time, then shopped yard sales all day on Friday.  On Saturday, we shopped our way down to Harrodsburg and took a side trip to Pleasant Hill Shaker Village for their annual Arts & Crafts Festival and then hit a couple more yard sales on our way back to Frankfort for the evening.  It was back home on Sunday, but not before hitting a couple of our favorite spots one last time to see if we could find any deep discounts on the last day (we did) and then another quick stop back in New Harmony.  And I still made it home in time to visit "the moms" (my mother-in-law Mary and my mom, Wanda, both in nursing homes at this time, but more on that another time).

So, exactly what do you find at the World's Longest Yard Sale?  Well, you find residents having yard sales, neighbors and neighborhoods having yard sales, churches having rummage sales, convention centers having flea markets and anyone with a little bit of land setting up booths and renting them to vendors to sell their wares for a weekend.  And vendors come from all over the United States.  For that matter, the buyers come from all over too.  We spoke to a vendor who had visited with folks who had traveled from as far as California and Arizona to shop the sale.  I've been told that business owners from the West Coast fly out to the sale, rent a truck, fill it with finds and drive it back to stock their shops.  This year was my fourth visit to the sale.  Frankfort is the closest point on the sale to my house, straight down I-64 so that's where I've shopped all but one year.  Once we started down in Crossville, Tennessee and worked our way back up to Frankfort.  But for the extra drive time I wouldn't really say we found any better sales, although we did travel through some beautiful countryside and ran into the folks from HGTV shooting a special on the yard sale.

So, what treasures did I come home with?  Well, I can tell you I didn't spend over $15 for any one item.  Check out the photos of some of my finds.  My favorite finds were a vintage pillow made out of yo-yos on both sides of the pillow (marked $15 but she sold it to me for $5) and a vintage wooden sign that says "We're the Best in Town" (for $15).  The pillow is on my daybeds in the sunroom of our cabin (along with a zillion more) and the sign went to the cabin too but I haven't found "its place" yet.  I also picked up a vintage Crayola tin for a friend ($5, originally marked $32),

a floral tole painted tray (for $5), a vintage green McCoy planter for $10, a sweet bracelet made out of an English coin and old silverware ($15), a crock container (marked $10 but sold to me the last day for $3), a vintage wooden deck chair for $7, two small vintage oil paintings (the pair for $18 but they were marked $25 for the pair) and an old cast iron fireplace front ($10) that I plan to use as "yard art" at our cabin.  Other purchases included a small vintage pottery vase ($4), a cobalt blue planter ($1), a street number sign for our cabin ($10), a vintage white enamel colander ($10) and a deer tray ($3).

She's Baaaack (Well Almost)

Bear with me. I'm trying to get back in the blogging game. I may be slow getting started but I'm hoping you'll see my first new blog within the week! I'm planning to expand my horizons a little bit which might precipitate a change in blog names, but time will tell. In the meantime, I will still blog about found bargains but I will also be including some ideas for decorating with "found" objects or how to reincarnate found objects, some observations on our weekend cabin life, some other observations on dealing with aging parents or on grown children moving back in after college and some ideas on what to cook for dinner, that one was a request from a friend. I'd appreciate your input on what you'd like to see. So, stay tuned!