I first heard about The World's Longest Yard Sale a few years ago and thought it might be fun to do. [We do love thrifting!] And since we already had a couple of days planned for a get-a-way we decided it was the perfect time to give it a go!
- so we did a little research [not too much] and decided that we'd start around Crossville, TN and drive South through Chattanooga and to Mentone, AL - & possibly Gadsden, if we made good time. As the day grew closer I begin to think it was either going to be REALLY FUN or possibly, depending on the traffic / crowds, REALLY TEDIOUS.
We love seeing the crazy - quirky side of life and we were tempted to get this [park playground] duck for MK - but honestly didn't know if we could lift the concrete tire into the truck [and with the glider / chairs, where would it fit anyway?]
And you never know when you might need a motorcycle with a CANOE side car - too funny -
But here is Friday's deal of the day -
a bottle tree - shown at home with my little collection of blue glass transformers. I may outfit it completely in these little beauties, or I may go for some green and blue bottles. The premise behind a behind a bottle tree is that the upside down bottles capture evil spirits and keeps your house safe. There are those in the 'old south' that truly believe this - but in recent years bottle trees have become more like little works of art in the yard. Loving ours... sitting where the butterfly bush used to be [before it got too big for its britches.]
So here's my take on TWLYS - there are areas where 20 - 50 people may be set up in a field or huge yard, areas [miles] where there's nothing at all, and areas where people have just thrown things out on their lawn to sale --- soooooo, there needs to be some rules. Number one - no commentary on the goods until you've stopped; # 2: You say STOP if you want to stop, otherwise, you keep driving to the next area... The other 'rule' for us was - we just weren't in a hurry. In fact, on Saturday we probably didn't get started until nearly lunch time. Rule # 4: You can turn around, if you both agree on it. Rule # 5: Don't eat the food sold along the way [no matter how good it sounds; fresh fried pies and pinto beans & cornbread y'all? That was hard to resist, but we couldn't risk stomach upsets when we were set on going the distance.]
Instead, we stopped on a [North] Georgia mountain ledge and ate our leftovers from a little mom / pop Italian place we'd had dinner at the night before. Delish - even cold.
Could have been the company and adventure of it all.
We laughed because our phones / cameras [I hardly carry my 'real' camera at all any more - lol] said we were in two different locations even though we were standing mere feet apart...
So here's the goods:
Canvas & frames for painting, AU shirts, laptop sleeves [$1 each!], five of those little wooden cars, a couple of green flowered [retro] pyrex bowls [so fun!], a small milk glass compote [for my ever growing milk-glass collection], a bag of tomatoes, a basket of peaches, a couple of paintings with scriptures on them that I plan to vamp up a bit with mixed media, a chamber pot with lid that I plan to use for my compost before it goes outside, and a precious little matted light house painting that's already sitting on our side board in the dining room.
Not shown is the fun NASCAR book Craig bought for a friend, a phone holder, and three smaller [and cute] frames for art work, [and the bottle tree, of course.]
Note: We took a little stop at Rock City - I wanted to buy some magic rocks [such fond memories of going there as a kid and then with our boys.] But alas, the wonderful rock building that was the entrance / gift shop full of rocky novelties is now a STARBUCKS. And I'm sure that's heaven to many of you - but it was very sad to me. The new and improved gift shop was inside the gate and you had to purchase a shopping pass to get pass this guy:
Who knew?
Even Rock City has gone commercial...
One of the things we enjoyed most was seeing the gliders / sliders that were for sale. Craig even helped one guy sell his for $100 more than he was first asking. But the glider we wanted most was a little further south... so we stopped the yard-saling in Mentone and drove over to Guntersville for dinner at our all-time-favorite catfish place, then on Sunday we drove on south to pick up this:
And for us, THIS is the grand-prize of gliders. The wedding ring pattern. This is the only one we've ever seen IRL [in real life.] And it's in pretty good shape. It'll be painted a nice creamy, buttery yellow. And while the red set is gorgeous up on the hill under the trees, this one will sit on the patio for us to enjoy each day too. Yay.
- so we did a little research [not too much] and decided that we'd start around Crossville, TN and drive South through Chattanooga and to Mentone, AL - & possibly Gadsden, if we made good time. As the day grew closer I begin to think it was either going to be REALLY FUN or possibly, depending on the traffic / crowds, REALLY TEDIOUS.
We love seeing the crazy - quirky side of life and we were tempted to get this [park playground] duck for MK - but honestly didn't know if we could lift the concrete tire into the truck [and with the glider / chairs, where would it fit anyway?]
And you never know when you might need a motorcycle with a CANOE side car - too funny -
But here is Friday's deal of the day -
a bottle tree - shown at home with my little collection of blue glass transformers. I may outfit it completely in these little beauties, or I may go for some green and blue bottles. The premise behind a behind a bottle tree is that the upside down bottles capture evil spirits and keeps your house safe. There are those in the 'old south' that truly believe this - but in recent years bottle trees have become more like little works of art in the yard. Loving ours... sitting where the butterfly bush used to be [before it got too big for its britches.]
So here's my take on TWLYS - there are areas where 20 - 50 people may be set up in a field or huge yard, areas [miles] where there's nothing at all, and areas where people have just thrown things out on their lawn to sale --- soooooo, there needs to be some rules. Number one - no commentary on the goods until you've stopped; # 2: You say STOP if you want to stop, otherwise, you keep driving to the next area... The other 'rule' for us was - we just weren't in a hurry. In fact, on Saturday we probably didn't get started until nearly lunch time. Rule # 4: You can turn around, if you both agree on it. Rule # 5: Don't eat the food sold along the way [no matter how good it sounds; fresh fried pies and pinto beans & cornbread y'all? That was hard to resist, but we couldn't risk stomach upsets when we were set on going the distance.]
Instead, we stopped on a [North] Georgia mountain ledge and ate our leftovers from a little mom / pop Italian place we'd had dinner at the night before. Delish - even cold.
Could have been the company and adventure of it all.
We laughed because our phones / cameras [I hardly carry my 'real' camera at all any more - lol] said we were in two different locations even though we were standing mere feet apart...
So here's the goods:
Canvas & frames for painting, AU shirts, laptop sleeves [$1 each!], five of those little wooden cars, a couple of green flowered [retro] pyrex bowls [so fun!], a small milk glass compote [for my ever growing milk-glass collection], a bag of tomatoes, a basket of peaches, a couple of paintings with scriptures on them that I plan to vamp up a bit with mixed media, a chamber pot with lid that I plan to use for my compost before it goes outside, and a precious little matted light house painting that's already sitting on our side board in the dining room.
Not shown is the fun NASCAR book Craig bought for a friend, a phone holder, and three smaller [and cute] frames for art work, [and the bottle tree, of course.]
Note: We took a little stop at Rock City - I wanted to buy some magic rocks [such fond memories of going there as a kid and then with our boys.] But alas, the wonderful rock building that was the entrance / gift shop full of rocky novelties is now a STARBUCKS. And I'm sure that's heaven to many of you - but it was very sad to me. The new and improved gift shop was inside the gate and you had to purchase a shopping pass to get pass this guy:
Who knew?
Even Rock City has gone commercial...
One of the things we enjoyed most was seeing the gliders / sliders that were for sale. Craig even helped one guy sell his for $100 more than he was first asking. But the glider we wanted most was a little further south... so we stopped the yard-saling in Mentone and drove over to Guntersville for dinner at our all-time-favorite catfish place, then on Sunday we drove on south to pick up this:
And for us, THIS is the grand-prize of gliders. The wedding ring pattern. This is the only one we've ever seen IRL [in real life.] And it's in pretty good shape. It'll be painted a nice creamy, buttery yellow. And while the red set is gorgeous up on the hill under the trees, this one will sit on the patio for us to enjoy each day too. Yay.
4 comments:
Totally loving this!!!! I felt like I was there with you every step of the way...sweet...
You and your hubby seem to be so in love with each other and do so much together....with today's world being so busy. It is nice to see couple's doing things together for fun and because they want to and NOT because they have to do.
Thank you for bringing us along in your journaling. :)
Sounds like you had a grand time! Good for you! How fun that you had rules! That is such a better idea than making them up as you go. I had never heard the story of the bottle trees and found it quite interesting. Of course, I really like the grand prize find too! It is great that Craig helped someone get more for their glider than they knew it was worth.
So totally cute! You guys are so much in love!
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