Thursday, October 05, 2006

Rummage Sale!

Today I took a mental health day and accompanied my pal Laurie to the Christ Church Fall Rummage Sale in Winnetka. Now, this sale is not quite as elaborate or as crowded as their spring sale in May, but it is still quite a production. It's spread over several buildings associated with the church. A small building houses the sewing supplies and notions room, the hat and accessories room, the purse room, the table linens room, the jewelry room, etc. Another building houses women's clothing, books, china and glassware, electronics, records/cds/dvds/tapes, toys, etc. Yet another building houses men's clothing, the treasure room, children's clothing, paintings and frames, bed linens, and the French Room--the room where hotsy-totsy North Shore ladies' clothing is sold. The French Room is the Mecca of local rummage salers and a staple of most (maybe all) Chicagoland rummage sales. Of course, we never find any bargains in Christ Church's French Room--the joy of rummage sale-ing is finding the designer duds in the plain old women's clothing rooms. Which Laurie did with great success, including a Joseph Abboud jacket for only six samoleans.

Oh yeah. And outside the church proper are the furniture tent, the hardware tent, the sporting goods tent, the shoe tent, and the Maxwell Street tent (like shopping in your parents' basement!). I know I missed some important rooms and tents, but you get the picture.

In addition to Christ Church, however (as if that wasn't enough!), St. John's in nearby Wilmette also holds its rummage sale on this day. It's a small sale, but we always find something wonderful there.

So, without further ado, I'll show you my treasures:

First, I found a couple of cardigans for work--the green one at Christ Church (a whopping $3.00) and the black one in the French Room at St. Johns, where we DID find bargains. We got there after everything went to half price, so the sweater set me back a good two bucks. Laurie found a designer suit in St. John's French Room for $5.00; it had never been worn.

I also scored a pair of leather gloves (two bucks), a couple of hankies (two bits), a vintage tablecloth for the dining room table, bestrewn with violets (a whopping seven bucks--one of the day's big-ticket items), and a novel for fifty cents. Now, it may be unmitigated chick lit, but I caught about a half-hour of the movie on cable the other day, and I was intrigued. Not intrigued enough to note when it was coming on again so that I could watch the whole thing, but intrigued enough to buy the novel for half a buck.

The China Room yielded a nice cache of treasure today as well, including THE big-ticket item--a pair of blue glass candleholders ($12 for the pair), a cool vase for three bucks, a sweet little candy dish for fifty cents, a couple of etched wine glasses for three bucks (for the two of them), and another candleholder, purchased for only $2.50 after half-price was called.

But the find of the day--the find that I relished most--was something every boomer male who was at the least pre-pubescent in the sixties will remember with great fondness. That is why I purchased this as a gift for my husband. Feast your eyes:



I just know I'll get a whole lot of mileage out of the fifty cents I shelled out for that blast from the past! Heh, heh.

But... nary a sparkly thing in the bunch! Well, there are always the spring sales!

God, do I LOVE me some rummage!

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Now if only you can find the LP version of Nancy Sinatra's These Boots Are Made For Walkin', our lives will be complete. Trust me on this.

10:15 AM  

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