Estate Sale Pro Tips and Finds

Those who know me well or follow me on twitter know that I am a bit of an estate saler. I love going and looking at all the stuff. Props to good friend Auvrey for introducing me to this sport years ago!

A lot of people seem interested in estate saling, but many have questions, so I thought I'd give you some of my tips and tricks for the estate sale world.

Tip one- Good fuel

Ok this isn't necessary, but my Saturday morning routine involves getting a treat from Prairie Thunder Baking Company. My current faves are the chocolate croissant and the blueberry peach danish.



Okay but for real.

Where do you find out where estate sales are?

You might find this hard to believe, but long ago and far away, there were these things called newspapers that had classified ads. That's still where I look- the online version.

If you're in OKC, I'll even link you to it! The Oklahoman Classified- Estate Sales. They only list per the actual day it is.

Types of estate sales

There are a few types of estate sales. These are my own classification, nothing official. The bottom line difference between a garage sale and an estate sale is that the estate sale items are charged tax.

Estate sales are daunting for the family. I've never been through it myself, but I have seen enough that I think it's safe to say.

Because of this, some people bring in professional firms to hold their estate sales. They price the items, advertise, run the sale the actual days, and handle the tax stuff. If you are a shopper, these types of sales have pros and cons. PRO- no traumatized family members to deal with, items are usually priced to move, overall a better experience. CONS- Many times items are slightly overpriced because they have a better understanding of what items are worth, but they're still not retail prices.

Sometimes, families hold their own estate sales. I think this is a good idea if you have someone in the family who can emotionally disconnect from the experience and has a good idea of the end goal. Do you want to get rid of everything? Do you want to make a lot of money? Those two questions are important and can drastically change pricing. Some of the WORST estate sales I've been to have been family run. Sometimes the children are too emotionally connected to the items. Sometimes the person is there themselves, and that makes it even worse. One sale I went to, the entire family was wearing shirts with pictures of the deceased on it. Not a good idea.

PRO TIPS

Let me give you some major tips. If you ever need kitchen items, go to an estate sale. Cheap and easy. Same for tools, books, linens (although I do not use used linens to sleep on or bathe with). You can really stock up.

On Sundays, estate sales are slashing prices by at least half, usually. They want to get rid of stuff. Granted, the selection is lower, but the prices are drastically lower.

If you like DIY projects, estate sales give you great materials to work with.

Bargain! Bundle items (ex, get more than $10 worth of stuff and ask if you can have it all for $10)

CREEPY FACTOR

A lot of people find the concept of estate sales creepy. I've often heard it called "dead people stuff." Okay, so here's my take. One, a lot of estate sales are not actually for deceased people. Many times they're for people downsizing or moving into assisted living.

Beyond that, I just got over it. I will admit the first couple of months I went, I'd get pretty sad going through peoples' houses. But then I decided I was giving their items new life, and helping the family out by buying it. It's an odd type of recycling, in a way.

COOL STUFF

Okay, here are some of my favorite finds from the past few weeks.



This coat is beautiful! Lovely embroidery all over it, and only $4. It's not an every day, all year long item, but I think will look rockin' in the fall.



I have a weakness for old suitcases. This one is beautiful, although in damaged condition. I love the fabric on the inside. I have some ideas for making it into an end table. $1



I found these bead strands for $.25 each, and the pin (from ~1900) was $4. I put them together and they're a beautiful summer accessory.



One of my favorite books, with the beautiful original artwork. I think $.50




I just thought this was funny. It's worth clicking on the 2nd image and reading the description of the suggested game. :) Maybe $1?



This is actually from Habitat for Humanity's Renovation Station. I also like to go there every few weeks. They have great spare parts like this window, which are just ripe for DIY (do it yourself) project ideas. In fact, I have 2 of these and have some fun ideas in mind...

Well there ya go! If you have any more questions, let me know!

The Summer Day

The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

My (cousin's) big fat Arkansas wedding!

I have an oddly proportioned family. I feel as though my family is huge, but in some ways it also feels very small. For example, I have 2 first cousins. And one sister. But my dad has over 50 first cousins, so my 2nd cousin circle starts to explode, and from there on grows exponentially larger. AND all of those folks are very close, both geographically and in each others' lives.

All that to say, my cousin got married last weekend. She is almost exactly a year younger than me. In our youth, my grandmother liked to dress us alike, although I had brown hair and blue eyes and she had blonde hair and brown eyes. She's my first cousin to get married, and in a lot of ways the first family wedding we've had. It was lots of fun. But it was HOT. A June wedding at 2pm in Arkansas is not for the faint of heart. :) My great aunt asked me to please get married under a tree. And at the last minute I was put in charge of music. I worked the CD player like a pro. ;)

Sister and Me

Mom and me

My aunt, cousin, and grandmother

Happy bride and groom

Beautiful bride!

Reflections upon a bride

My parents

My uncle and my dad

I'm a (board) gamer... sort of

The good thing about friends is that they always end up getting you to do things that you wouldn't normally do.

I am not a board game person. My family was not a board game family so although I've always moderately enjoyed them, they're never my "go to" entertainment activity. But in recent years I have realized that several good friends are board game junkies. So they have broadened my horizons and introduced me to some really cool games.

I have become a fan of the game Ticket to Ride. It's pretty sweet.



And there was a game called Carcassonne, which was harder to pick up, but also fun.


But of course the key ingredient to any game night is great friends. :)

Good times!

Thought I could do a mass update on things that have been going on lately.

This weekend me, my homeboys and their awesome wives are getting together to party like it's 2005.



I got excited about the royal wedding. Both Will and Kate are my age, so it provided some excitement. I may have gotten a reproduction of a royal wedding ring.



This is a car I see often on my drive home. I finally got a pic of it going by with the scriptural context.

"Cars are a sign of the soon coming of Jesus!"

Habakkuk 3:8 and Nahum 2:1-4

I have been taking Zumba classes. They're latin dance aerobic classes. Reminds me of my days learning the samba in Brazil with my LST reader, Severino.



Oh I can shake my groove thang.

I seek the unusual

I don't tend to seek the path well traveled, so on my vacation last week I ended up at a most unusual place- King Spa and Sauna. Thanks Trip Advisor for the tip!

It's a Korean Spa and Bath House.

As soon as I walked in, I was overwhelmed by how *Asian* it is! It was like being transported back to Japan.

Everyone wears a uniform. Pink for ladies, black for men, yellow for kids. (Note- sorry for the low quality pics. All on my iPhone. Didn't want to be a creeper with my big ol' camera.)

This place was opulent. Really beautiful.


The dry saunas were amazing. There were 9 different ones. In the picture above, you can see 3 of them (the doors). Each had a different theme or special healing property. For example, above, the left one is a cold sauna. Something like 45 or so degrees in there. The middle one is a salt sauna. The right is a pyramid coated in a 23k gold layer.


Below is a picture of me after spending 15 minutes in a 160 degree room. It was sooooo hot. But it felt good. There is something so detoxifying feeling about sweating without exertion.

This is Caesar. So Asian. :)


There were so many geodes in the building. They were beautiful! My favorite sauna room had geodes and gems lining the entire room with an infrared light.


And this is an area full of giant leather recliners where you could just relax. They also had a separate movie theater where they constantly showed movies. Since you get an all day pass, there was plenty of time to lounge around and just chill. There was also a restaurant.

Of course there was also a separate area of public baths (separated by gender, of course). It was incredible. 5 different pools. 3 were different temperatures between 108 and 102, some with herbs and salts. 1 was a cold pool at about 70 degrees. Another was a chlorinated jacuzzi with strong jets. I loved going from the hot pools to the cold pool. It was intense!

Overall, what a great day. I stayed like, 7 hours and felt so relaxed and rejuvenated afterwards. I highly recommend it if you're in the DFW area!

My week

If you need me, I'll be in this position behind some wildflowers this week.

Japan Redux- the philosophy of flowers

Japan has obviously been on my mind a lot lately, as well as the collective psyche. I'm very thankful to say that I've now heard from all of my friends in Japan, and remarkably they are all ok. There are some places with severe structural damage, but they are ok. And of course now there is the issue of the nuclear reactors, which are located about a couple of hours from Hitachi.

Living in Japan deeply engrained in me the philosophy of living in season. This is the sakura- cherry blossom- time of year. Here in Oklahoma we don't have a lot of cherry blossoms, but we do have many plum, pear, and redbud trees.

In Japan, karaoke is big. One of my sweet, dear friends, Alina, would often sing a song called Sakura at karaoke. Lately I have missed her, my friends there, the memories, and the blossoms. This song says so much about Japanese philosophy and the truth about life and changing seasons.

Here's the thing about the season of blooms. It's beautiful, but fleeting. And it's only the beginning. The blooms are replaced by leaves, and that is when they come into their own.

Many people are difficult seasons right now. I hope we can all find hope through the world around us as it lives, changes, and shines beauty.

Sakura

Surely we're waiting, for the day we can see you again.
On the street lined with cherry blossom trees
We'll wave our hands and yell out.

Whenever we suffer or start to lose heart
We feel we can hang in there because you're smiling.
We can hear the song from back then from in those hazy scenes.

Cherry blossoms now in full bloom scattered fleetingly
I know it's fate, farewell my friend.
when it's time to leave on your journey,
with that unchanging feeling.

I wonder if now we can say those words without pretense.
Words from the heart, Words to hope for your bright future.
It's as if the bustling city is rushing us.

Cherry blossoms just floating to the ground believing one day they'll be reborn
Don't cry my friend, It's a shame but it's time to go
With that unadorned smile

Cherry blossoms now flying in the air
Eternally rustling awash in light
Farewell my friend let's meet again here.
On the street scattered with cherry blossoms.

March madness!

Spring has made me hyper-active and uber-domestic! I've gotten a lot done lately.

I put a desk together. If I had known how hard it was going to be, I don't think I would have done it. But for $25 at Goodwill, it was a great deal! But seriously, never again.


The handsome desk deserved cool decor. Candle holders + touch LED lights.


Then I felt it appropriate to re-cover the chair I was going to put with it. Huzzah!


I saw a blog that inspired me to try to make a new wall decoration on the cheap. Doilies, $4 at an estate sale. Window, $10 at Habitat for Humanity.


And of course the great outdoors! I love watching how plants change day to day in the spring.



I'm even trying some strawberries... we'll see how that goes.


Hooray spring! What have you gotten done?

My heart is in Japan

It would be wrong to say nothing about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan on my blog. This blog was birthed out of my year in Japan. If you look back through August 2004- July 2005, you can see many of my great adventures. I'm so thankful I have them chronicled here to remember.

This morning, like most of Americans who go to bed before 11pm, I heard about the earthquake in Japan. It took me a while to realize that it was actually somewhat near where I lived, Hitachi, and that the resulting tsunami had to have hit my beautiful port city.

My heart has been heavy all day. I have heard from many friends in Japan confirming they are ok, but there are others who still haven't been able to make contact. I shudder at the thought that my school that I loved and where I taught was less than a quarter mile from the ocean. The only report I've heard about Hitachi is that they were hit with a 30 foot wave. It happened at about 3pm Japan time, so you can put together why this makes me so sick.

But I hope as daylight has arrived in Japan and news becomes more readily available, I'll receive continued confirmation that the people and places I love are safe and stable.

The Japanese are nothing if not resilient. I hope you'll join me in continued prayer for the nation.

New Green

It's amazing how quickly things can change. This has been driven home recently by three separate families at my work being stricken with sudden loss.

But at the same time, things can change quickly for the good. I swear that last week at this time the branches were still bare, but now blooms and leaves are poking their way through to face the last weeks of winter and usher us into spring.

Nature can be cruel, but we can take hope in that its always being reborn.







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Also, Ms. Annaleise tagged me for a 4X4 survey!

1. Four places I go

*Lake Hefner
*Will Rogers Gardens
*Target
*OC

2. Four favorite smells

*Coffee in the morning
*Moonlight Path by Bath and Body Works
*Wisteria
*Soil

3. Four favorite movies/TV shows

*30 Rock
*House
*Big Bang Theory
*Pawn Stars

4. Four Recommendations

*Get out in the sun! It makes everything better.
*Floss daily.
*Give blood!
*Find a job you love. You spend most of your life there, after all.