A Rainy Estate Sale Day

We've been getting a lot of rain here this summer.  Not just rain but tremendous thunderstorms.  Yesterday morning was no different when Duane, Linda and I arranged to meet at an estate sale in a small town adjacent to Tampa called Lutz.  Linda actually lives in Lutz but not close to where the sale was being held.  She arrived first, followed by me, and then Duane.  Duane had passed the street and had to turn around and double back.  When you have rush hour traffic on your back bumper in the pouring rain it's not so easy to make a sudden turn.

The sale was so worth it although we discovered that most of the items had been sold the previous day.  Apparently, the sale began on Thursday and the woman having it had done really well the first day.  She said there was a long line of people waiting to get in when she opened the door.  This lady had collected tons of antique furniture and vintage and antique items over the years and furnished her lovely home with them.  She just purchased a condominium and kept what she absolutely loved.   She had already moved so everything in the house and garage was up for grabs.

Here are some pics from what she had just in the way of small items.  (If only we had gotten there on Thursday!)

These pictures are from the ad she ran before the sale.  Needless to say, it didn't look like this when we arrived on Friday morning.  She still had a lot of nice items, though.  Particularly nice porcelain serving bowls and plates and some furniture.  Duane found some blue and white Delft pieces for her collection along with a couple of large biscuit tins from Scotland to use to sort items in her workshop.  Linda bought a pretty tea serving tray and I ended up with two really cool vintage children's books.  Actually they're both close to 100 years old.  When I mentioned that we were 'library refugees' -- the lady wouldn't let us pay for the books.  That was really sweet of her.  I plan to record these and then pass them on to Linda to admire.

It would have been hard to top this sale although we did stop at one small yard sale.  Poor guy was getting rained on when he was trying to put stuff out.  We went on to Panera's where we got treats and drinks.  Mmm...  iced coffee, a chocolate pastry (my order) and good friends.  Hard to beat that.  BTW, sorry that my pic of our finds looks so hazy.  I didn't realize that the fog on my sunglasses when we arranged the items in my trunk was also on the lens of my camera.  Mea culpa!

Our purchases.