Buys And Dolls

I was truly raring to thrift this weekend (I'm training Ruby early), but after promising my neighbour that I'd join her at the zoo on Saturday morning, I was fearful that it was going to be a no go. As we drove to the zoo I bit my lip as we drove past so many garage sale signs, including one that read "Huge Estate Sale." Eeep. I rarely venture to the sales on Sundays, because there's hardly any point, but my curiosity got the best of me and I dragged Ruby to that estate sale. All I can say is "wow."


Estate sales kind of get me down. While they offer terrific thrifting opportunities, it's also really sad and often creepy to dig through a deceased person's stuff. The woman who owned the stuff from this particular sale was particularly interesting -- according to her daughter, the lady spent the bulk of the past 30 years doing crafts (yah!) and sitting in front of the TV, ordering dolls from the Home Shopping Channel. After rummaging through her craft stuff (nothing piqued my interest) and books (I snagged some old Golden Books for Roo) I ventured into the basement of the house, where, in a small room, at least 200 dolls were still up for sale. Two hundred. It was one of the most glorious/most depressing things I've ever seen. Piles of dolls, and not even necessarily collector's dolls, mostly unclothed, stacked in an unfinished basement. I let Ruby choose one doll (after rejecting her initial choices because I was afraid they'd come to life in the middle of the night and kill me in my sleep). Ruby's doll is named Anya (she came with a little name badge) and she's part of a set released to celebrate the birth of some quintuplets that were born in Ontario in the '80s. I also picked up a suitcase of Barbie clothes (for the future), a suitcase of doll's clothes, a little doll's cradle and then got the hell out of there.


I also managed to find some crockery this week, after lamenting to Leena that Pyrex is getting so hard to find. At the aforementioned estate sale I got a nice divided depression glass plate (which Leena herself tried to buy on Saturday, but at that point the woman was asking three times as much as she gave it to me for). Not satisfied with my haul, I went to the Sally Ann on Monday and found a boon of Pyrex. I ended up with two casseroles (one in Verde, one in Butterfly Gold) and a covered Verde divided serving dish. I also found a really sweet glass chip 'n' dip set with a cherry and gold leaf pattern. Score!