New Old Treasures!

I’m pretty darn lucky in my friends if for no other reason than they are on the lookout for great stuff for me to use in my projects.

Today I got an urgent text message from one of my spies pals: Xmas alert! Call me!!!

She was passing along yet another friend’s message about an estate sale with quite a lot of vintage Christmas.

Lucky me!  And lucky for me that I was able to hop in the car and head on over to the sale. It was a cold, nasty, rainy day today here in Richmond but that did not deter intrepid estate sale shoppers.  I ran into a bunch of folks who were our customers when I was working for a local antiques dealer who did estate sales.  Old home week as it were.

And, yes, there was quite a nice lot of Christmas in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

I looked it all over, went downstairs to talk to the boss, and we made a deal.  I bought it all. Whoopee!

I’m happy with the price I paid. Having worked in the estate sale business myself, I believe in offering a fair price.  What people often don’t stop to think about is that the client (the family whose house it is) actually needs that money.  Most times, an estate sale is actually a transition for the person(s) from a larger home to a retirement community or some such.  And they need the proceeds generated from selling their possessions.  It troubles me when people forget that.  But I digress…

Here are some of my treasures.

I am itching to get back in the workshop!

Sadly, first I need to take care of a bunch of other things on my plate.  Not the least of which is taking down my Christmas decorations; doing the bookkeeping that I neglected for the past few months because there were simply not enough hours in the day to get to it; and on… and on.  Blah, blah, blah.

The workshop is also so crammed with stuff right now that I can hardly get in the door.  I pretty much just dumped everything when I unpacked from the New York show back in December.  And since Christmas, I have been accumulating new inventory (boy, has that been fun!)  It, too, has been plunked down willy nilly.  I desperately need to get some order restored before I can do one thing in there.

Here’s how bad it is.  When I unloaded the rental van after New York, I put my pair of gloves down in there somewhere.  They seem to have vaporized.  I can’t find them anywhere.  How sad is that?

But, getting back to my friends, a couple of months ago one of them sent me a picture of this fellow whom she had spied in an antiques mall.  She thought I might like him.
I’ll say so!  Unfortunately, I felt he was priced beyond what I ought to pay for something to use in a wreath or topiary.  Plus, I was out of town at a show at the time so I could not see him in person.  I’m particular about Santa faces and I was concerned that he might be one of the creepy ones.  So she sent me this one:

Nothing creepy about this guy.

Lo and behold, a few days later she messaged me to let me know he was on sale!  So, guess who is now waiting his turn to adorn something wonderful?

I think he’s very cool.  Don’t you?

So thanks to all my friends for keeping their eyes peeled for me.  I surely do appreciate it.