Wayang

Well the kiddos are finally back in school, and it seems I'll now have a bit of normalcy to my days again. There is still some construction going on in the house, so we're still living with a bit of chaos, but thankfully the boys each got their own rooms ready in time for the new school year.

As mentioned in my last post, I did my last town-wide garage sale for the year. It wasn't a big one and there weren't many people, but I still managed to get rid of a lot of stuff and walk away with $133.5. I wanted to do one at the house over the long Labour Day weekend, but we had some plans with family, so I wasn't able to. Maybe I'll be able to sneak one in before it gets too cold!

I also posted my blog somewhere online, and someone commented that I must be a dirty hoarder. I think it's obvious that the person didn't actually read the blog and see that I donate almost everything I find to charity and those in need. They probably just skimmed through it, saw all the pics and just made their assumption based on that. I do keep some items to sell so I can pay for my hobby and make a bit of a living from it, but the rest goes.

My main goal is to keep all this stuff out of the landfills so that it can be used again. I hate clutter as much as the next person, but it also makes me wonder what people think of me when they see me picking. I must admit that the comment did get to me and it made me a little bit leary of stopping my car lately.

Here is a look at what I did find when I stopped.

 Lots of baby and kids stuff in excellent and working condition....

A portable fold up swing

A simple bouncy chair

This Dora doll sings and dances when you press a button on her shoe

Another fold up portable swing

A baby gym that converts into a crawl through tunnel when baby starts crawling around

Musical toys. You can kind of see the lights working on the electronic ones

A whole baby doll set with 2 dolls

A kids V-Tech video game system with 4 games

House hold items...

A glass encased bamboo scene. Not sure if there is a specific name for these...

Headphones and 2 bike locks with keys

This pirate wine bottle holder. Without the bottle, he looks a bit like he was making a rude gesture! I wasn't sure what he was meant to do at first until I turned him over and saw a label that said "Drinking Pirate" Once I added a bottle we had lying around, he made more sense :)

Many eye glasses that will be recycled for 3rd word countries, a brand new looking wallet, a Nintendo DS case, and a little Pokemon pouch

A hockey statue. The player looks a bit like a zombie LOL

2 working lamps, light bulbs included!

 An Asics running belt, a hands free mobile headset still in the package, and 3 different tablet/Ipad/E-reader holder/protectors

2 body fat measuring bathroom scales and a USB laptop cooler

A compleat and unused sketch and drawing set in a nice wooden case

A cute little newlywed couple statue with a sticker underneath saying they were designed by M. Valenti (whoever that is lol)

A nice Christmas tree that just has one row of lights that won't turn on. This can easily be fixed by going out and buying a strand of lights and then adding them in. With all the ornaments and garlands put on trees, nobody will ever notice anything is wrong with it.

Lots of toiletries, These were all the ones that were unused, including a still sealed set of Proactive

The people that threw this out seemed to have kept the large plug in water pick set, but also included in the box was a cordless rechargeable water pick. It's still in there completely unused and still sealed and wrapped in plastic.

Jewellery...

A necklace that doubles as an eyeglasses holder, and at the bottom, a scorpion encased in resin that is supposed to hang on a necklace (there is a hole for a metal loop), and a tiger eye stone

Among some costume jewellery were a few silver pieces on the left, and what I'm really hoping are real diamond solitaire earrings in the little box

The watch looks older (70's or 80's ?)  but I can't find any info or mentions of it online 

At first I thought this box was empty, but as I went to throw it into the recycle bin, I heard something slide around inside. I checked it again, and underneath the foam insert, I found a 925 silver necklace.

Electronics...

An Pod docking station, 4 Samsung cellphones still in their packaging, and 2 Blackberrys  with accessories.

Last but not least, my favourite finds of the bunch! Wayang shadow puppets. 

These 2 are Wayang Kulit which are more of a flat shadow puppet. If you click the highlighted text there, you can see a YouTube video of how it's done. These 2 are marked as the characters Sri Rama on the left and Dewi Shinta on the right. 

Dewi Shinta was the wife of Sri Rama. As the story goes, she was kidnapped and imprisoned by King Rahwana. Her husband rescued her with the help of Hanuman, the white monkey, and Iesmana her brother. To prove that she was still a virgin after her ordeal, she was set on fire by her husband, only the fire could not burn her, and thus she confirmed her innocence. A symbol of trust and honor.

These 2 below are wayang golek puppets, they are more 3D and about 27 inches tall. I am not sure if they are also supposed to represent Shinta and Rama, but they are quite beautiful. I can not imagine why anyone would throw these away.

So that's all for now :) Since the kids are back at school and my life is on a bit more of a schedual now, I'm going to try to break up my posts a little bit more so I can make them a bit more frequently. Until next time!

Burn out

In my last post I mentioned another town wide garage sale I wanted to go to and some construction we are doing in the house. Unfortunately, I didn't end up making it to that town wide sale. There has been so much going on with our construction that we were up until 11:30pm the night before and I was just completely fried. There was no way I was going to get up at the crack of dawn to load up my car and drive out there. I was wondering if I made the right choice to stay home cause we can really use the extra money, but the weather had also called for a chance of rain, and the grey skies in the morning solidified my decision. The sale went on, rain or shine, and apparently it was still a big success. The sky stayed grey, but the rain stayed away. Oh well, maybe next year.

As for the construction happening, it's going slowly as my husband is doing all the work himself. He had a week off where we did most of the big stuff like putting up new walls, but now he can only do the rest on weekends. All our stuff has been been, or still needs to be, boxed up while it goes on. You really don't know how much crap you have until you have to box it all up. I kind of understand now when people move why they just throw everything out, because I was tempted to do the same thing myself a few times! 

All this chaos has lead to a bit of garbage burn out for me. Right now there is literally no room to bring in anything new anyways. The heat has been terrible lately and it seems nobody is throwing anything out on my regular runs. I've been coming home with almost nothing... I even asked my husband "Doesn't it seem like I was finding way more stuff last year?" I've just been feeling really "Meh" about going out at all lately. I may just stick to my first of the month runs for now.

Anywho, here is a look at the stuff I did bring home in the last few weeks...

The first thing I picked up was a nice convection oven that a lady that was moving gave to me. 

also from her pile I grabbed...

a whole bunch of jewellery I had to sort through

Some high end womens golf clothes

lots of marijuana paraphernalia

and a fun sparkly lava lamp

 at other spots I also picked up...

a small shelf unit still in the box

 2 fold up stools

And this throne looking chair that looks like it was handmade. My oldest son's name starts with an R so he claimed it immediately.

The next pile I stopped at was huge, I had to go through it quickly as it was starting to sprinkle out. Here is what I managed to pull from it...

As you can see from peeking into one of the bags, there was tonnes of goodies awaiting...

From that bag and another, I pulled out an entire box full of CDs and DVDs, some still with the plastic wrapping on...

and from other bags and boxes, I got...

A working cordless phone

And various electronics...

The best score was when I looked into this box

All in all, there was the Xbox system, 2 controllers a Turtle Beach head set, and 26 games. My kids flipped out when they saw it :)

After loading up that pile, I was quite wet from the rain. I went to drive off and my husbands car wouldn't start! This happened to me once before with his car, so I started freaking out again. Thankfully, after waiting it out a bit, the car finally started. We came to the conclusion that hubby's car just doesn't like moisture and humidity. I swear, I'm never taking his car out again!

At the next town I hit I found...

This oil painting on canvas

I really like the nice details in the fruit. At first glance I wasn't crazy about the piece, but the little light details and brush strokes in it really made the piece grow on me.

a nice pair of matching lamps, light bulbs included

I think I saved this plant just in time. It was shoved into a black garbage bag. 

A bunch of dolphin themed doodads. Clockwise starting at the bottom we have a round globe paperweight with 2 dolphins inside, a magnet of 2 dolphins swimming through a propeller, a thermometer, a pewter figurine, and another magnet.

and this Avon box

which revealed this never used/opened/worn pretty dragonfly broach inside

Off to town #3. 

This is the view I see as I cruise down the mountain in this town. It's pretty all lit up at night too :)

Here I found the following...

Some nice glassware

Lots of children's clothing  

A new floatie still all packaged up and now being used in our pool and at the beach :) 

More jewellery. The beige watch is a Swatch. One like it is going on Ebay for $85 and another one closer to the condition mine is in, is going for $55. Not that it will necessarily sell for that price, but it's nice to know that it does have some collector value. 

This stop threw out a bunch of generic toys and games that went to the second hand store, but I kept these V-Tech V-Smile cartridges to resell.

 At another stop, I found a bunch of more toys in open boxes, and when I went to peek into one of the garbage bags, I found a tonne of Play Station 2 games. There were also some of the console cords in the bag and I looked for the system itself, but I'm thinking it might have been in one of the open boxes and someone else grabbed it before I got there.

and at another stop where I was checking out some furniture (which was pressboard and got wrecked from the rain) I found these old french play and story books hidden inside a drawer. I can't find a date on any of them and I haven't reseached them yet, but they do look old.

The 4th town is pretty small so I didn't find much there this time, but I did manage to find...

An electronic coin bank with .34 cents inside and an additional dollar in quarters in the bag it was in

At this spot someone was throwing out tonnes of samples of tiles, cabinet faces, and fabric. I assume they either had a store or were some kind of contractor. I saved a little box of small tile samples and all the bolts of fabric. I gave some of the bolts with thinner and/or girly fabric to a friend (she has all girls, and I have all boys) and kept the thicker stuff for myself when I recover chairs. 

Here is a closer look at some of the patterns

I also found thee 2 canvas print frames in what looked like a move out pile.  These will do great at a garage sale.

From my regular runs aound town I also picked up...

A box full of crafting supplies, some things with tags still attached

Inside the box was also some photo frames, an old plate and what looks to be a candle holder

This plaque roughly translates to "May God bless your union so that it remains an adventure of love for always"

 

I picked this hand mower from the curb and then promptly sold it for $20

On the way back home from a grocery trip, I passed by a garage sale that was done, and 2 men were loading things up to the curb. I ended up taking 2 big Rubbermaid bins (that I'm now using to store and transport some of my garage sale stuff) and this clothes drying rack. With the racks down, this is what is currently holding all my clothing up in our bedroom while waiting for the closet to be done. 

Here is a look at how how stuffed my van was when I loaded all the stuff up for the second hand store. All the seats were removed except for the passenger seat, and my youngest son's seat/car seat right behind me when I drive.

 A few days ago I did another town wide sale, the last one that I know of for the season, but I'll save that for my next post. :)

Thanks for checking this one out, and I hope you all are enjoying your summer so far!