More

As promised in my last post, here are some more of my finds from over the border in Ontario :)

I stopped at a pile in the middle of nowhere because I noticed some of those sparkly decorations you see in the box in the top of this picture. After checking out the pile, I pulled out 7 boxes full of craft supplies. I'd say 95% of them were still in their original packages or had tags attached to them. The rest were completed craft projects. Some of those were wrapped and had hand written price tags on them which made me think that someone possibly had some grandiose plans of making and selling craft items at craft fairs. Maybe it all didn't work out, or life got in the way, but it seemed like an entire craft store was tossed out.

There were also 2 reusable shopping bags full of beads. Some were still in their original packages, and some were opened and put in ziplock bags...and they were heavy!

Out of all of it, I had to do 2 gluing repairs on the religious plaques, and I saved a few ornaments with tags and price tags still on them that we'll be able to sell for my kid's school fundraiser at Christmas time.

In one of the boxes were also these 2 wall hanging plaques of Jesus and Mary. They seem to be made of plaster or maybe chalkware. 

At another spot I grabbed this H2O floor steamer mop. All the extras were put in a bag and tied to it which told me that it most likely worked just fine and the owners included everything in hopes that someone would grab it...namely me :D And yes, I plugged it in at home and it worked just fine.

 

This little Hoover vacuum was also in the pile, so I took the chance on it and grabbed it at the same time.

 

When testing it at home, everything looked fine, but the suction was pretty bad. One look in the hose and I could see what the problem was. There was a huge clog of wood chips inside. I managed to get it all out, and low and behold, it works fine now. My husband used it on the weekend to clean out his car :)

I stopped at another huge pile in the middle of nowhere again. This time some old encyclopedias and furniture caught me eye. The books unfortunately were in terrible shape. I took one piece of furniture with me, a small cupboard made of real wood (no pics, already donated), and then I decided to peek into a box that was set out with everything. 

 

Inside I saw a receipt for Michael's craft store and a bunch of stuff still wrapped. I didn't know at the time what they were, I thought maybe photo albums. I just grabbed them and threw them into my car.

At home when I went through it, I found 14 packages of unopened 40 count blank black invitations and envelopes, and one package of tuxedo favour boxes.

 

Here is the grand total for all of it on the receipt...Yowza.

 At another stop nearby I scored this indoor golf putting system.

Then a bit further, I came across a pile with this awesome vintage cat themed stand up chalkboard

A Massimo leather bag

A bunch of dish and kitchen ware. The pink bowl is a Pyrex which some collectors go nuts for. I donated this one, along with the dishes and spice rack, for someone to find at the second hand store.

The beer stein mugs are my favourite though :) How awesome are they? These I kept. I don't have room for them unfortunately, but they will make me a nice amount of cash, so they'll go up for sale.

Mixed in with the kitchen stuff was also a few shoe formers, an old measuring tape, 2 old frames that were attached together as a decoration, and inside a baggie, a bunch of wooden pegs or pins of some kind. If anyone knows what they are or what they do, please leave me a comment :)

The next pile I stopped at was one of the biggest wastes I've yet to come across. I stopped because there were some big piles of books out at the curb along with a big box and many oddly shaped bags. The books were bound together in groups with duct tape and mostly french, so I didn't grab any of them. I did grab one pile of english books because I saw one book on fishing that I knew my son would want to look at. I then peeked into the rest of the bags and started loading them all into my car.

Here is what I found inside them...

This beautiful angel is huge! The top of her head touches the edge of my counter tops in the kitchen.

She is gorgeous, why, oh why, would they bag her up and put her in the garbage?

In another bag was another angel and a Santa Claus, these ones are about 2.5 feet tall

and a singing & dancing Penguin. He still had his batteries inside and he worked fine.

Squished in was yet another angel decoration. This one winds up and plays a sweet little tune while the wings slowly move up and down and the hands/arms move to look like they are stroking the strings of the harp. Unfortunately, because she was shoved into the bag, the top part of the background (which is a very thick heavy cardboard almost like wood) cracked almost completely off. I managed to clamp it and glue it back on, but you can still see the line where it was bent off. What a shame :(

Next up in another bag was Mr. and Mrs. Claus. I plugged them in and not only did their lights work, but they also started gently moving :)

In the rest of the bags I pulled out:

A Keytar

An awesome mens vintage fringed leather jacket

and a woman's vintage fringe leather jacket

An NBA hoodie with various team jersey patches sewn on it

and a never worn pant suit with the tags still attached

 Suede-brand new, suede-brand new, leather-barely worn, and suede-slightly worn

A bunch of candle and decorative doodads. The snowman seems to be hand blown and very heavy. My husband took the Buddha(?) riding a koi to his office. If anyone knows who the staue is of, please let me know...searching "Asian man riding a koi statue" on Google is getting me nowhere :P

A Game Boy color with the game Solar Striker loaded in the back

 

An old ALF stuffie with suction cups to hang on a car window. Damn right he went right up in my car :)

Wrapped up in some bubble wrap in a non-descript box was this little set of stained glass moons and stars. It would make a cute little mobile I think :)

 This unused staionary set. There were 4 sets of cards with 4 different art photos on them with matching envelopes, a bunch of stationary and envelopes to match the paper. The only thing that was missing was the set's pen.

In addition to 2 full garbage bags of clothing which I put to the side for the second hand store, there were  many brand new never used hats, gloves and mittens

 And 3 strands of LED outdoor Christmas lights

 Here is what my kitchen looked like as I was sorting through it all. What a disaster area! I'll never understand why all this stuff wasn't put out at the curb without the boxes and bags and just a big sign saying "FREE!" It would have been picked up and taken in no time, but by hiding it away in bags and boxes, nobody sees it and it would have ended up in the landfill. What a horrible waste that would have been :(

I also had to go to the town where they throw all those books into the recycle bins, so I decided to stop to see if anything was in them. I guess I got there at a good time, because all 4 of their bins were lined up and full to the brim. Here are the books I managed to save...

and these awesome old Nancy Drew books from the 40's and 50's

It all added up to another big drop-off for the second hand store :)

Stay tuned for even more over the border finds coming soon!