Treasure Hunting

I used to think that yard saling was a happy little excursion where one idly spent one's weekend mornings wandering about hill and dale, poking through the remnants of a stranger's life in an effort to discover treasures on the cheap.

Well it's not - at least it isn't around here anyway.  Seriously, who knew that yard saling was a contact sport?

As in other parts of the country, normally rational housewives around here go on spring cleaning rampages, ruthlessly tossing the unused, broken, outgrown or other irrelevant pieces of their lives onto the curb (or into the garage or onto tables in their front yard).  They advertise in the local paper, litter the streets with posterboard/cardboard/whiteboard signs and wait for the masses to swarm upon them (usually between 7:30am - 8:00am on Friday morning). 

And the funny thing is, swarm we do, taunted by the illusion (or is that delusion?) of scoring big and paying little.  Harmless enough, right?  WRONG!  The sticky part is when the "professionals" arrive.  You know the type - pickers with skinny hearts and fat wallets.  They descend from their fancy new trucks in pairs with greedy glints in their eyes.  Utilizing eye contact and cryptic hand signals, they spread out in well choreographed movements and snatch up all the good stuff in mere seconds.  Ya, ya - I get it:  finders keepers, losers weepers...  The problem is that these successful stuff snatchers (aka thieves) arrive early, shove potential competitors aside, place hold tags on anything that looks good (whether they plan to buy the item or not), and then haul off the good stuff to their stores where they double or triple the price - all in the time that it takes me to get the kids unbuckled and out of their car seats.

Well, this momma had had enough.  So, on a cold Friday morning last week, I snatched my groggy children away from their warm breakfast and sped off to a promising sale about 4 miles north of town.  Oh ya, "those" girls were there, but I wasn't going to let them carry off all of the goodies.  I had a strategy:  while they went off in search of the big stuff (furniture, antiques, etc.), I scanned the area for diamonds in the rough.  Score!  The kids and I each found one thing with which we fell in love.  Thane found an old wooden truck, and Annabel discovered a purple prairie dress with lots of frills and bows for her dress-up box.

And me?  I found a very cool cobalt blue enamelware wash basin decorated with a chicken wire design.  It's the perfect thing for our Swedish-country cabin.  What's more, it's useful and I got it for a bargain.  Eat your hearts out, pro girls!