Thrifty Treasures for the Home and Garden

This weekend was the start of neighborhood garage sale season in my area. There were quite a few of them so I went Thursday, Friday and Saturday. On Thursday, I was one of the first people at a home decorator's sale. She stages homes that are on the market. Her prices were wonderful so I snatched up several items. I got three bags of eggs for $1.00 each, a Pottery Barn lamp for $2.00 with a spiral compact fluorescent light bulb still in it. The shutters were $2.00, the painted tray was $2.00, the mercury glass candle stick was $1.00, the old wood finials were $1.00 and the heavy mirror was $5.00. I spent about $16.00 at her house and got a lot of really nice things!

I went to a barn sale and got the old boat oar.



I also picked up three clay fireplace flue tiles at the barn sale, I got all three of them for $10.00. I wanted to use them as planters in the garden. I think I'll use one of them for a bird bath stand if I can find a saucer or bird bath top to fit, mine are too small. I can't wait until I have flowers blooming in this butterfly garden filling in the area around my new planters!

One thing that I have wanted for a long time, but couldn't justify the expense, was a heated bird bath. We stopped at one sale and the sweet elderly lady was moving to Texas to live near her son. She had the heated bird bath for two dollars!

We ended up back in the same neighborhood on Saturday and stopped by her home again. We struck up a conversation with her. She loves gardening and bird watching. She let us in the house to see go through her huge assortment of books and magazines and to see her lovely garden. I now have a a very large stack of Birds and Bloom and other gardening magazines to enjoy along with a wonderful book on attracting butterflies and hummingbirds to the garden.

I was also excited to find the green glass drawer pulls and at a different sale I got glass door knobs!

We went to one garage sale and they were packing up early. It had been raining off and on all day Saturday. We were shocked when they told us we could have whatever we wanted. Two red and green cabbage plates were free along with several nice antique china pieces.

I got so many things there's no way to mention them all. I'll try to post about them as I begin to repurpose and decorate using them in my home and garden.

I'm linking today to Southern Hospitality, Thrifty Treasures.

Thrifty Finds

Rhoda, at Southern Hospitality, hosts Monday treasures, for people to share their weekend thrifting/garage sale finds. I've never participated in this before, but I always enjoy reading Rhoda's blog to see what she finds in her garage sale ventures. I just had to participate this time, to show my garage sale treasures from this weekend.

I haven't been to garage sales in a long time, but a couple of nearby neighborhoods were having sales and I had some time in between a nursing home care plan meeting and work. So I decided to venture through the neighborhood sales to see what I could find. I stopped at one sale that had nothing marked, I saw this Drexel dresser and asked how much they wanted for it. To my astonishment, they only wanted $100! SOLD! I didn't need another dresser, but I did need a buffet for my dining room.


Before I found the dresser, I found two arrangements for $2 each. I didn't know what I was going to do with them, but I liked the containers and thought they were worth the $2. I decided that they would go nicely on the buffet for now.

It is a perfect match for my dining room! It looks so much like the Duncan Phyfe furniture I have! I need to move it to the other wall and have the china cabinet on the shorter wall. It was larger that I had thought and there isn't quite enough space between the table and buffet. That is another project for another day.

I also found these pretty hummingbird prints!

The price was still on the back of the frames. They were $15.99 each.

I got the set for $3.00! I love hummingbirds and was so excited to find these prints!

If you enjoy home decorating on a budget, head over to Rhoda's blog, she is an amazing home decorator and her projects will inspire you!

Now, back to the garden...my procrastination has paid off for once. We have a frost warning tonight and I'm so glad I haven't planted my impatiens yet. I covered the lantana, I think everything else should be O.K.