We had been excited for weeks about the Phinney/Greenwood Neighborhood Yard Sale day. Excited because we consider it to be our “spring opener,” kicking off the yard sale season into high gear. Excited because it is usually one of our best days of the whole year. And a little extra excited because last year, it was the first sale we ever wrote about after starting up this blog. That’s right, Yard Sale Bloodbath is one year old … happy blogaversary to us!

So on Friday morning, I was disturbed to find an e-mail from Meghan saying “RAIN MIXED WITH SNOW. WTF???” That was the forecast for Saturday, which was alarming … especially since the previous Saturday was sunny and over 70 degrees. I didn’t want to believe it, and in the afternoon it looked like it was getting nicer, but by 6 p.m. we had full on snow. For real. In April. (You can see some pictures from the neighborhood here.) It was really not looking good for sales the next day. We figured unless we were completely snowed in we’d go check it out, but we didn’t have high hopes.

Saturday morning it actually looked OK! It was cloudy and about 36 degrees out, but the snow had melted away, and it seemed like it might just clear up. We headed out a bit early and started driving around the neighborhood. By now we have been going to the same people’s sales year after year, and our first stop was one we both remembered from years past, in a covered outdoor garage. Meghan picked up a pile of cool stuff. I made just one purchase: a pair of ugly gloves for fifty cents that I could not get on my quickly-freezing hands fast enough.

I had marked off certain sales that sounded promising, but a lot of them weren’t happening after all … big surprise. Most of the sales were in garages or otherwise sheltered. But some of them had their stuff out on the street. Which was too bad, because pretty soon it was raining.

We headed for a block which always has good sales. I loved this mannequin propped up outside a garage. Her head was cut off oddly on a slant (that you can’t really see in the photo) for reasons no one could really figure out.

Across the street, Meghan claimed the woman brings out the exact same stuff year after year. I believed her, but I couldn’t specifically recognize anything … until I saw this shot glass palette, which I completely remember checking out last year. Crazy.

By the time we left this block, it was full on snowing. It sucked, but it was sort of worth it to laugh at the fact that we were actually going to yard sales in the snow — a first, even for us. We kept driving around, stopping at plenty of lame sales that we normally would have passed by. Beggars can’t be choosers, right?

The snow situation was getting a little ridiculous so we decided to try and find the indoor rummage sales. Even these didn’t seem to be happening in some of the usual places. We did find one which was a benefit for the boy scouts. There was bagpipe music playing and nothing we wanted to buy.

Next we hit a really great sale a little off the beaten path. It was in a garage and they had all kinds of fun vintage things. A woman was hemming and hawing over whether to get this amazing Adam and Eve gravel painting. She ended up buying it, but let us snap a picture before she took it to its new home.

The people there had great midcentury kitsch stuff, like these bathroom fishes and seahorses. Cute!

I got a ’50s planter, two vintage pillowcases, and a Christmas Mambo CD. Meghan got a huge pile of really great books and CDs.

I know this isn’t a blog about the weather, but it was so odd that I have to keep talking about it. For a while there it was super sunny, but still snowing. Then it clouded up and the snow turned to rain, but somehow it felt even more freezing cold than when flakes were coming down. It was at this point that we hit the street where everyone seemed to have the idea to put tarps down over their stuff.

There was one sale with piles of intriguing clothes (under a series of tarps), but without my ugly gloves (left ’em in the car!) my hands were too frozen to even dig around. The guy there said he was having a hard time fishing change out of his pockets for the same reason.

Sadly, we agreed that it was time to call it a day. We had pretty much covered the area and it was really not fun to be outside anymore. There was just one more stop to make before we headed home: a moving sale at a weird church that we’d always kind of wondered about. Note that it wasn’t a church rummage sale; it was an actual moving sale. The buildings were being sold so they were vacating the premises.

The dark and musty basement was filled with a variety of crusty junk, including a row of pretty cool antique vanity tables. We didn’t buy anything.

All in all, it was definitely the most pathetic Phinney sale day we’ve ever been to, but we still ended up with some decent stuff. And I think we reached a new level of devotedness (and/or stupidity) when it comes to the things we’ll deal with to make the yard sale rounds.

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.

Last Saturday we hit three sales total and it was a great day. Sounds strange, but quality over quality turned out to be true for us this time.

The first sale was a moving sale indoors and they had tons of stuff. I was little concerned when I saw some antique mall price tags on many items (not a good sign), but everything was cheap and what was super great was the amount of paper (ephemera) in this one room.

I tried to get photos from both angles and they really don’t do it justice.

It was a small room and there was still a lot of empty space, but there were stacks and boxes of all kinds of stuff to dig through. Old magazines, games, kids books, Broadway show programs, corporate literature, sheet music – you name it. We spent about an hour at this one sale, mostly in this room.

A couple of my favorite odd items: This photo of the pigs …

… and the breeding hamsters for profit magazine. Nice.

The next one was a total dud. A driveway sale with baby crap and expensive clothes ($20 for jeans is insane) and a used breast milk pump. (eeeu. gross)

The last one of the day turned out to be great. Tons of clothes for $1 each (and Jenny picked up a few cool kid things), and it was a really fun sale in a great part of town.

All in all a great day!