Last weekend started off with an unusual event: Meghan’s husband Dan came to sales with us! Readers of this blog probably know of him mainly from Meghan’s frequent comments about how she will end up divorced if she brings various things into the house (usually of the dishware variety). He usually works on Saturdays, but had the day off and decided to join us. After a quick stop for cash, we headed to a couple of nearby sales.

This sale had a lot of stuff. Meghan bought some jewelry and I thought I was going to leave empty-handed until I spotted their CDs — I picked up a pretty odd combo, Brian Wilson’s Smile and The Jingle Cats. I also laughed a lot about this framed print, which was now being sold for $2.

Somewhat in keeping with that theme, our next sale had been advertised as “High Quality Garage Sale.” They definitely had a quality view.

Both Dan and I took a quick spin through the stuff and headed back to the car grumbling about how they possibly had an unrealistic idea about what “high quality” actually means. Meanwhile, Meghan was finding stuff left and right. She bought two designer bracelets and some throw pillows and I think a few more items? All I know is that she used up just about all of her cash (and was pretty happy about it).

Now that we had hit the nearby sales it was time to venture a little further, off to a sale whose ad said something about having been renting a friend’s garage but now had to leave, for reasons about which we could only speculate. It mentioned vintage items and sounded pretty wacky. When we pulled up, Dan was excited since he had seen this large freestanding garage and always wondered what was in there. Well, today was our chance to find out.

We all loved the garage sale flag, but it wasn’t for sale (though she said you can get them “on the internet.” Who knew?)

This sale looked wacky, right off the bat.

And inside was just nuts. The first thing I spotted: a stack of saddles!

And then this crazy frog-on-frog vase. They look worried.

I may have had a similar look on my face as I tiptoed through the garage, trying not to knock anything over or bump into people making their way through the narrow pathways.

I will admit that I would have been tempted to buy this sign for a Truckload Sale of tame parakeets except that the edge was torn up and sort of crusty …

We were also somewhat taken with this ice skater painting.

But this faceless stuffed animal freaked me right out.

Dan pointed out these bags of hot dogs.

I had to tell him that this is the second time we have seen bags of tiny plastic hotdogs at a yard sale — I’m pretty sure (but not entirely positive!) they were not the same exact bags. (I’m not sure if it would be less or more weird if they were.)

And speaking of bags — check out this stash of vintage plastic baggies!

I know someone out there is upset that we did not buy these. (Um, sorry?) We also didn’t buy any of these unused paper slips for “Easter Gift Surprises” packaging — this is only a fraction of what was there.

Then we found a box full of dental tools.

At this point we were all wondering what the hell was going on at this sale. It didn’t feel fully hoarder-ish or exactly vintage-reseller-ish, but maybe somewhere in between? Someone who stockpiled things that might be (and sometimes were) valuable but never got around to selling them until now? I honestly have no idea.

Meghan purchased some of the dental tools for a friend along with a couple of other items. Dan was stoked to find a nice vintage barometer. He was giving us weather reports from the backseat for the rest of the day.

Our next stop was right where a friend of ours lived — I wasn’t positive if it was her address or just nearby. Turned out it was her house. Her boyfriend was just moving in and getting rid of a ton of his stuff.

There were a ton of cookbooks and I started to look through them, when the guy we refer to as “book guy” said that was his stack. Unlike “Furniture Guy” and “Annoying Jewelry Guy”, we like Book Guy, so this was fine, even though it was sad to miss out. (Later, he mentioned that if there was something we really wanted he would probably hand it over. See? He’s nice.)

Meghan found a few books from what was left, and picked up a Fiestaware pitcher. Dan made some remarks about how she had four or five at home already. Then he found a sword … and decided he needed to purchase this to use in a friend’s upcoming photo shoot. Meghan was less than thrilled and they proceeded to make irritated remarks at each other about these purchases for the rest of the sale. At this point I noticed a few copies of a magazine called Meatpaper — “the journal of meat culture” and decided those needed to be purchased. Those were not the only meat-related item at this ale.

I made a joke to Dan about how home sausage-making could be his new hobby, then instantly thought about how bad Meghan would want to kick my ass if this actually happened. Thankfully he didn’t take the bait.

We were coming up on quitting time, but decided to make a couple more stops. The first one was a total drive-by, but then we followed some signs to an indoor sale with this sign out front.

It turned out Meghan knew the people having the sale. It also turned out that someone was heavily into New Kids On The Block in their formative years.

I did not buy any of that stuff, but I did pick up a ’60s pamphlet called “Easy to Make Maidens and Cocktails” with sort of creepy illustrations, an old issue of Dirty Found (the all-smutty version of Found Magazine), and some vintage kid-sized cat-eye glasses — I was pretty happy with my purchases.

The Greenwood-Phinney neighborhood sale is one of our favorite big sale days. Partly because we have been going to it for a long time — probably more than ten years by now. Back when it was held in April, we thought of it as our “spring opener” for the season. It was the subject of our first real post on this blog (and our first-ever trunk shot) and we have blogged about it ever since, through snow and moving it to September (probably prompted by that snow) and then moving it to May and still having crappy weather sometimes anyway. This year, they finally hit the weather jackpot. It was a gorgeous sunny day!

We got to the neighborhood pretty early, so we decided to make a coffee stop first. The cafe had set out some “garage sale items.” I picked up a couple of things.

Buying stuff before we even really hit sales seemed like a good sign. And as we started making the rounds, it started to seem like a pretty good day. A couple folks who usually have great sales weren’t set up this year, but all in all the sales seemed better than average. Nothing was really amazing, but we were both picking up things here and there, and it seemed like a fairly interesting mix of items.

One of our earlier stops had this amazing sign out in front of the house.

We asked him if a guy had come by asking about jewelry and were surprised when he said no. He was pretty cool and also had entertaining price stickers on a few items.

I don’t think we bought anything at his sale, but I know we picked up things on the same block. There was a stretch of four or five stops where somehow I ended up buying one book at each sale (I was sort of glad that this trend didn’t continue throughout the day). I also bought a bunch of barely-worn stylish baby clothes for my three-month-old niece at a sale which could have practically stocked a kiddie clothes store.

Meghan spotted this trio of whiskey bottles at another sale — one each for Bourbon, Scotch, and Rye. After some debate, she decided it was too cool not to purchase.

But while things had gotten off to a pretty good start, the quality of the sales did seem to be declining a bit as we continued on. I think it started going downhill right around the time we spotted this scary-looking sale, which of course we checked out anyway. It was as bad as we expected.

Of course we took lots of photos throughout the day. The evidence reveals that we really did see a lot of things as we made the rounds.

For instance, we saw this star-spangled sequined cap.

Which would perhaps best be worn with this jacket.

We saw these paintings.

And this giant owl.

We saw a bunch of homemade wood benches, each with its own pun-laden, apostrophe-abusing sign.

We saw Disco Fever.

We saw Oktoberfest.

We saw The Ass Family.

We saw a box of union buttons.

We saw a bag of toilet paper rolls.

We saw this wedding hat (that seemed to have come right out of the Stepford Wives).

We saw a psychedelic-looking Bingo game (that turned out to be pretty much regular bingo inside).

We saw some bricks (though not all 200).

We saw Barbie’s rides.

We saw this hideous chair.

We saw these godawful speakers.

And we saw a cat with a cross.

We saw some things that were priceless.

And we saw stuff that had been set out for free.

We grabbed a couple of those free items, like a toy rubber tiger and a “Furnished Apartment For Rent” sign. But we passed on the “free to a good home” bear with provocatively-posed tail.

There was certainly plenty of bad stuff out there, but on the whole, this year’s sale day was pretty decent. The weather was awesome. There were fewer sales than there used to be several years ago, but there were also fewer crazy traffic jams as shoppers tried to navigate through all the narrow streets. And the items were definitely a mix of good, bad, and ugly … but there was still enough “good” for a decent trunk shot!

West Seattle was this weekend and Karl was out of town and Jenny had family in town. I pretty much go to West Seattle twice a year (if that) and I usually see my friend Hayla when I go. We have met up for lunch during the sale a couple of years back.

So, I sent her a message to see if she had any desire to hit up sales and a plan was made to meet around 8:30. My day started off crappy when I was unable to get gas at two different gas stations using two different cards – what is going on here!?!?!

Amazingly enough there were two sales right on Hayla’s block. She purchased a small child’s chair that we sort of half tossed in the trunk, then I swung around into the alley to drive back to her house. You can tell it’s going to be a fun day when you are both laughing at the thought of a broken chair falling out of your trunk.

Trying to give you a blow by blow of all the sales we hit would be almost impossible. There were around 200 people taking part in the sale and I think we probably hit around 60 sales, maybe more. I was surprised to find out that it’s $12 to be in the sale. One lady told me that she thought it was worth it, saying that there are maps and it’s promoted. I never even thought about folks having to pay. $2,400 seems like a pretty tidy profit.

These records are all polka and when I made a comment about it the woman was very defensive about her four boxes of records.

This is a pretty impressive amount of snow globes in one place.

You asked someone to bring them back for you for many years. Now they are going to end up sitting in the sun for most of the day. It didn’t even look like a dent had been made.

We hit a different area than Jenny and I usually start with. Not sure why, but they whole day felt a little backwards because of it.

I made Hayla take a photo of this blow-up doll (with huge boobs) in a Wonder Woman costume, which I hadn’t even noticed the whole time we had been at the sale.

At another sale we saw this amazing item.

Hayla also spotted a little one-hitter and a mushroom lighter. Hot! When she said she was going to buy it I told her that she needed to ask if they would take $8. I mean I don’t even dicker that much, but on a weed pipe? You have to! They seemed pleased to take $8 and when Hayla wanted to hit another sale I told her that I needed to find a bathroom before I did anything more. Thy guy having the sale let me come into their home and use the toilet. Classy! I guess the family had purchased the pipe for a family member that had cancer. Downer.

There are so many sales that things start to blend together, but we both didn’t feel that the trunk was getting filled fast enough.

I am not sure if you can tell how large this vegetable thing is, but it’s like five feet long.

I really liked it, but good sense prevailed (for once). The same sale also had this set of Danish Modern cookware.

Now, before you post about how I should have purchased this, he wanted $80 for the set. The sale had some amazing stuff, but priced like someone that used to have a vintage space at the antique mall.

We hit one estate sale and the view was amazing –- the house was too, but the sale was picked clean or maybe they didn’t have anything to begin with.

There was a woman at the sale that Hayla said was dressed like a Mormon meets a Mennonite. We think she had been part of the house, since she was outside getting really upset about a man that she thought had stolen a book from the sale. The dude was acting so chill that I can only guess he paid for the item inside and he seemed to be ignoring her or just didn’t understand why she was acting so odd.

One of our last sales had this sign.

I love the idea, but the ladies both had name tags on and that came across a little strange.

After a bit we just needed to eat. Hayla had mentioned Meander’s and it was yummy. Highly recommended.

All in all it was a great day with wonderful weather, company and food.