Category: Estate Sales

Estate Sale Day

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Estate SalesLeave a comment

Since Donny was off today we decided to go to the two estate sales that Texas Pro On The Go had listed. Because it was the second day of the sale I didn’t really expect much to be left. Even if that is the case, it’s always fun to go look at the houses.

The first sale was in a neighborhood. The home was very pretty. It wasn’t too crowded which I really liked. When you go on the first day it’s always packed. Anyway I came away with a hat, scarf and a shirt.

I love hats and this one will work well with my fall wardrobe. The scarf is also the perfect color to add.

I was needing to add a long sleeve t-shirt and this one was perfect. I got all three pieces for $3.25. Bargain!

The next estate sale was at the most amazing house. It was on 3 acres. My favorite part was the artist studio. I told Donny that this is the type of house I just love. It would have to be a bit bigger, but you know what I mean.

How adorable is this cabin???

I found a bracelet and a Christmas tree topper. Donny found a ring for me that I just love.

I love the hammered silver band.

We spend $11 here. Another bargain!

After the sales we were starving. I couldn’t stop thinking about the protein shake from Sprouts so we picked up two of those and some sushi. Who knew Sprouts had such good sushi.

Such a fun day!

A Little Break

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Estate SalesLeave a comment

I took a little break from this space. There wasn’t really a reason, I just decided to spend a little more time offline and in the real world. So here are some of the snippets I would have written about in my average daily life.

Donny has a tradition at work where when it is someone’s birthday he gets them a pie from the Butcher Shop. I couldn’t leave without a little sweet treat and I found the creme brulee delicious.

And because neither of us felt like cooking that night we picked up Rotolo’s because I love their cauliflower crust pizza.

I had seen this awesome estate sale so I talked Donny into going with me on Wednesday before he had to be at work. I didn’t realize how far away it was and by the time we got there, there must have been at least 100 people. It was a big house with a huge workshop in the back all full of things. We did a quick run through but even if I had wanted something the line to checkout was so long he would have been late.

We ended up going back on Thursday and I found some fun things and some useful things.

Our staple gun was starting to peter out so we found this one. I keep my hammer in the house. That is until Donny needs it and then he leaves it outside. Now we have this one to keep outside. We needed some numbers for our mailbox and this set was only 2 bucks. Sold.

A few candles, some vintage trivets and Halloween tablecloths for the win.

I found this wind chime hanging outside of the workshop with no price. The man working that part of the sale let me have it for $3. I also found a bag of vintage Halloween decorations. Hannah has decided that she is having a Halloween party here with a few of her friends.

I had been needing a new silver necklace and we found the shorter one and the thicker long one at another estate sale. It was also the hwy 80 sale and I found this mother of pearl pendant that I just couldn’t pass up.

I have gotten back into reading. I finished The Pilot’s Wife. It was good.

I pulled one from this shelf and it’s good so far. I feel like sometimes James Patterson can be hit or miss.

The kids finished their 8 week class so we celebrated by having dinner at Don Benito’s. The sky was gorgeous

I’ve had my Fitbit watch for almost 8 years. I was charging it and left it on the windowsill. When I remembered about it the sun had overheated it and it was giving me a high temperature signal. I ran and put it into the fridge to cool it off. I love my watch. Donny keeps asking me if I want the newer version but I love the one I have. I’m happy to say that it did cool off and works just fine.

Hannah and I found the perfect butt tomato.

It has finally started to cool off in the mornings and evenings here. Because we live in Texas, it’s so hard to gauge when to do the clothes swap between warm and cool weather. I guess I did part 1 where I just removed all of the very summery clothes. I’m not quite ready to bring in the Fall/winter items yet. I picked up the 3 sweaters from Hope’s Closet so if it gets really cold I can wear them.

There is a female cat that we have been seeing for about a year. She looks just like Queso. She has finally let me pet her. I’ve named her Chips.

I still miss Queso so much. He was definitely a one of a kind cat.

Under the Weather

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Estate Sales, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Last night after we had dinner I felt awful. i had spent over two hours ironing. Why does it seem like I never iron winter clothes, but all the summer ones are always wrinkled? I hadn’t eaten much all day and then Donny went and picked up Jucys. It must have hit my stomach wrong because it tore it up. I ended up falling asleep on the couch and didn’t get a good rest at all.

Luckily Donny was off today so while he took the kids to school and ran by the radio station to record some commercials, I slept.

My thyroid is, as my doctor put it, very serious right now, so I’m thinking a lot of my symptoms are stemming from that.

Around noon I took a quick shower and we decided to get out of the house for a little while. We ended up at an estate sale. The house was gorgeous and since it was the second day a lot has already been bought. I did manage to find this pretty, gauzy, tie dyed maxi skirt and sleeveless T-shirt, so it wasn’t a totally wasted trip.

Donny cooked dinner because I’m still feeling puny. I’m going to try and get a full night’s sleep tonight. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll feel better.

Found It

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I woke up at 1:30 Monday morning with horrible indigestion and a bad stomach ache. I feeel asleep sitting up on the couch. Donny ran the kids to school and stopped and picked me up this magic liquid.

Donny thinks I picked up something from a chopped salad I ate. Could be, but now my joints are hurting and I’m just not feeling well in general. It could be the higher dose of thyroid medicine I started a few weeks ago. I have blood work soon, so hopefully I’ll find out if it’s that.

Wednesday is always estate sale day. I only went to one because it was in one of my favorite neighborhoods. I ended up going later than normal so a lot of the items had been sold. I was making one last pass before leaving and that’s when I saw it. When our home flooded in 2016 I lost my favorite cookbook that I’d had forever. I had looked online but could never find one. I walked through the estate sales kitchen and a woman was looking at the cookbooks when I sped it. I grabbed it and said, I hope you weren’t getting this. Luckily she wasn’t. I seriously almost cried.

It’s the Junior League cookbook from my hometown and I can’t never I found it in Longview. I used to use it constantly and missed it terribly. I finally found a unicorn 🦄

Estate Sales Date

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Just about every Thursday, if there is an estate sale, we’re there. Today there were 2. The first one was at a gorgeous home. While we were walking around looking at everything we met the owner’s sister. This was here dream home and she lived in it a little over a year before she passed away from cancer a few years ago. Her husband just couldn’t see living in this big house by himself so he moved to a smaller place and it’s going on the market next week.

It’s hard to tell from this picture, but this house is HUGE and the grounds are just beautiful.

This tree had the prettiest flowers.

We met up with the sister in the backyard. She showed us where the vegetable garden was and how her sister used to have plants all around the pond. I can only imagine how beautiful it looked.

I hope whoever buys the house restores it to its former glory.

Because this was the second day of the sale there wasn’t a whole lot left. I saw this cute Santa made our of tree bark and these vintage TV trays that were super cute.

I found a Harlan Coben book and Donny found a combination hoe weed puller. While I was waiting for him at the checkout table I saw this cool little eye rug that was almost brand new and was only $2.

Donny walks through every sale like this. I guess it is a safe way not to break anything.

We headed to the second one and didn’t really see anything that we thought we couldn’t live without except this vintage oak glider rocker. They wanted $150 for it. Although I loved it, I couldn’t justify paying that.

It was yellow (my favorite color). It was well made. It was so comfortable.

This evening Donny and I had to run to pick up some supplements and afterwards he said, “what do you want to do now?”. I told him we should just go by the estate sale to see, if by chance, the glider was still there. At 5 everything goes to half price. It was almost 6, so I knew we’d probably be out of luck.

When we got there we saw it and while Donny helped a couple carry out a dining room table and chairs I bought it. I’m not exactly sure where it’s going yet, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out. I’m so thankful that Donny likes the same things I do, well most of the time.

And our 3 legged cat Tommy is deathly afraid of the vacuum and when I got it out of the laundry room, ran and pretended like he was dead underneath my car.

Estate sale + new babies

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Estate Sales, Home Stuff, thriftingLeave a comment

I love that Donny is off on Thursdays because our day dates generally consist of finding estate sales. If you like to also go to estate sales, I highly recommend checking out estatesales.net to find some in your area. Anyway, I saw that there was a multi family estate sale starting at 10 am on Thursday and to make it even sweeter, I saw that they had my VERY favorite game from when I was a very little girl. My parents hated me playing it because there were so many pieces and it was played in the dark, So most of the time it sat in the top of the hall closet. I knew I wouldn’t be able to afford it because I had checked online so many times to try to find one and they were hella expensive. I really just wanted to SEE it. We got there at 9:45 and they had already been letting people in. The first thing I saw when we walked in was this older gentleman at the checkout with the game. Of course I asked him if i could just see and explained how nostalgic it was for me. He is a vintage game collector and actually invited us over to his house to play it. I was honestly just happy that he loved it too (he had been outbid on it on two occasions online) and wasn’t a reseller. I really should have gotten his address but it seemed a little weird even for me.

Only the best game ever! Well, from my 5 year old memory anyway.

There were some really cool things. A wool rug that was threadbare in one spot that I really liked. It was only $5, but Donny asked the practical question of “where are you going to put that old thing?”. He was right. I am slightly a rug hoarder and honestly didn’t have a place for it.

Donny had a great idea so we bought something in this picture.

Next we headed to one of our favorite places.

Where we put to use the baby corral we bought

We’ve now added 4 baby chicks to our flock. Well the grown hens and homicidal rooster don’t know about them yet because they will be in our living room for 9 weeks until they are old enough to join them.

Today I ran by my favorite thrift store and found some cute halloween bits.

The soaps are brand new. The cat is sugared vanilla and the ghost is pumpkin eggnog. They were $2 each. The pumpkin tea light holders were $1 each and although the cross isn’t Halloween, it has a heavy silver edge and it was also a dollar so i couldn’t pass it up.

I also got my haircut because Desiree had an opening and she’s the only one that touches mine and Hannah’s hair. Nothing major just the ends trimmed and they layers shaped up but it still feels good when you get a fresh cut.

A Thrifty Rainy Day

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Estate Sales, familyLeave a comment

I woke up to a wonderful rainy day. It was so cool outside that I actually wore jeans which I haven’t been able to do in months, complete with my sloggers.

I had to run to Sally Beauty Supply and was sure they opened at 9. I got there at 9:30 only to find they actually open at 10. Luckily there were a couple of estate sales that happened to be right around the corner. At the first one, which was crowded especially for a rainy day, I found the cutest Halloween cat. It was a gift that whoever owned it never opened. I snagged that for $5.00 but didn’t really find anything else.

I couldn’t figure out what the weird package at the bottom was.

Turns out it is a candle holder, but unfortunately the candles didn’t make it.

At the next estate sale i only found one thing. A porcelain little box that i can put my thyroid pill in on my nightstand. I have to set my alarm for 5:30 to take my pill because I have to wait 30 minutes before I can have coffee after I take it and I am still asleep fumbling around on my nightstand always hoping one of the cats haven’t knocked it off.

I still had a little bit of time so I went to Hope’s Closet, the thrift store across the street from Sally’s and found a cute terracotta moon and a gorgeous cotton duvet cover. I swear that thing was brand new. I threw it in the washer when I got home and now it’s on our bed. I wish it wasn’t white, but I still like it anyway. Both of those totaled a little over $12 so it was a good thrifting day.

It’s cat approved.

Also the kids had open house tonight. Hannah had to work and Donny didn’t get off until 7 so it was just Jackson and myself. The kids go to a very small high school. There’s only about 130 kids. The class sizes are very small and the teachers and staff really get to know the kids. Tonight we got their class schedules so we could go to each class and see what they do. The teachers all had to sign off and then you had seven places to take selfies. After you get the classes and selfies signed off on your kids are entered into a drawing to win prizes. I hope they won, but they won’t find out until tomorrow. Anyway, It was a lot of fun.But now, let me show you one of the selfies because they all look the same. My son WILL NOT SMILE IN PICTURES. He thinks it’s funny to make it look like a mug shot. I don’t think it’s funny.

I promise he’s a happy sweet kid lol

Estate Sale

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Estate SalesLeave a comment

When Donny and I moved to Longview, we ended up renting a house that was almost twice the size of our home we had for sale in Baton Rouge. This was fine, except for now we had two living areas and only had furniture for one. One of my biggest pet peeves is having rooms that you don’t use. I hate wasted space. I had just thrown some chairs I had on hand in there.  I wanted to go shopping to find the right furnishings, but the fact that we were still paying bills and the mortgage for the house we had for sale plus rent and bills for our rental here in Longview,  it just wasn’t in the budget. Not to mention that we had a giant tree fall at the house in Baton Rouge and had to shell out almost a $1000 to get it cut up and hauled away. I just had to be patient, which is hard for me.

On a trip to Dallas we stopped by Ikea and found a couch that we both really liked. The only problem was that we would have to rent a uhaul to get it home. Not an easy task, but it was doable. Still I didn’t want to pull the trigger yet. It was almost $1200 and although I love ikea, I still thought that was pretty steep and wanted to look around some more.

We also needed a new fridge. We left ours in the Baton Rouge house because it was an incentive to a potential buyer to not have to purchase one and because we really didn’t want to move it. Those things are HEAVY! I got a used one when we moved. We knew as soon as the Baton Rouge house sold it would free up our budget to get the one we wanted.

The house sold about a week before school started. We began to seriously start looking for furniture and a refrigerator. The Home Depot had the one we wanted. Side by side, water and ice. Basic, but still a little over $1100. I just couldn’t do it. I wanted to wait to see if they would go on sale or maybe we could find a scratch and dent one. Y’all, I just couldn’t spend that kind of money for a fridge. Just couldn’t.

Two weeks ago this happened. By total accident. I was just taking a short cut through my neighborhood.

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I had seen the signs earlier in the week, so I was positive that nothing good would be left. It was Friday and the last day of the sale. I still wanted to check it out.

When I pulled up and parked, I saw this lady struggling to get a computer desk to her car. I got out and helped her carry it. We tried, unsuccessfully, to get it into her small car. I told her that if she’d let me look around a few minutes, I’d put it in my SUV and take it to her house for her. She said she wanted to look some more too, so that would work.

I walked into the kitchen and BAM!!!!! guess what was for sale?????? A side by side fridge with ice and water. I grabbed the tag off of it. It was $230!!!! I was SO excited! I got even more excited when I walked into the living room and saw the perfect sofa. I sat on it and it was perfect. I swear, it had never been sat on. DSCN0891.JPG

(Picture is from my living room. I didn’t bring my camera because I didn’t know I was even going to stop at the sale)

It wasn’t the type I was looking for, but I loved it. I immediately called Donny at work and told him that I found a sofa AND a fridge. The sofa was priced at $250. He told me to get them both. It was such a great deal. Wait, it gets better. Since it was the last day EVERYTHING was half off! What the what? So, my fridge would be $115 and the sofa $125.

You may be wondering why in the world were they still there? Because when you buy them, YOU have to figure out how in the world you’re going to get them home. Donny was super busy at work and couldn’t rent a truck and help. I was stuck. The ladies at the sale were trying to come up with a solution. I threw caution to the wind, and paid for everything. I knew I’d find a way, I just didn’t know how. It was 11:00. They were closing at 6, so I had 7 hours to come up with a plan.

Remember the lady I helped out when I first got there? Well, she had found some more furniture she wanted to get so she found me and told me not to worry about helping her get her desk home. She had called a friend, with a truck, to help her move the stuff. There is was, the answer to my prayers.

When he showed up I asked him if there was anyway he would be willing to move the fridge and the heaviest couch I’d ever seen to my house around the corner? He said he’d be happy to! Holy wow, it pays to be nice because if I wouldn’t have helped the lady earlier, I would never have met Byron, my moving angel.

So, with my new friends, we moved a fridge, a sofa, a chair and ottoman and a coffee table to my house. Hey, I was there for over 4 hours because of a torrential downpour and it was all HALF PRICE!

So, here is my family room with the new (to me) furniture.

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The leather chair and ottoman’s final price was $40. It’s a great cream color and is in excellent condition and most importantly, comfortable.  Donny calls it a real chair, unlike my dark brown bucket chairs that he is not overly fond of.

The coffee table was $30. It was more expensive than I would have liked, but I just really loved it. I’m not really into the farmhouse look, but it goes really well in this room.DSCN0889

I had told Donny that the sofa was pleather. Not my favorite fabric, but it was so pretty, I was okay with it. When he got home and finally saw it, he wanted to look at the tag because he didn’t think it was pleather.

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Well, guess what? He was right. I got a leather and wood, barely used sofa for $125. Even the back was pretty, which was a very good thing because it faces our fireplace.

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I can’t forget to show the fridge. It’s beige, not the color I would have chosen, but it matches our cabinets perfectly, and just kind of blends in.

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The freezer side was a bit smaller than the one we had seen at The Home Depot, but we have a stand up freezer in the garage, so it’s not a problem.

We still need a few things for the house like a rug to layer over the jute rug in the family room. We also need a chair, I have one in mind, for the family room so I can move the brown bucket chair into the living room with the other one. I’m still looking for a small table for our breakfast nook. The one I have in there right now works, so it’s not a pressing issue.

My advice is if you are needing furnishings for your home, be patient and have an open mind. Don’t overlook a good deal just because it’s not exactly what you are looking for. The things I purchased at this estate sale might not have been exactly what I was looking for, but they work perfectly for what I needed them to do and for $310 plus the $100 I paid Byron to deliver everything, I saved a ton of money, which makes me very happy.

Stay frugal,

Stacy