It's Shenandoah Yard Crawl Time!

Yay! The annual Shenandoah County Yard Crawl is one of our "mark the calendar" events - hey, we're thrift-shopping pirates, what can I say?  It is a 43 mile long yard sale through several small country towns in the Shenandoah Valley in western Virginia.  This year marked our 4th year in a row we have shopped the Yard Crawl.  It was a lot of fun, and we did find some neat treasures.  The day was overcast and in the mid-80's, which was nice.  In past Augusts, it's been so hot, we were pooped by 11AM.  This year we were still going by 1PM, and that's saying something, since we hit the road at 5:30 to be at northern end of the sale by 7AM.

On the hunt!

We usually make our best finds in the first hour or two since everything hasn't been picked over too much yet.  This year it didn't seem like there were as many crawlers and we were still able to make some good finds later in the day.  Of course, it all depends what people are looking for.  There is a little of everything at the yard crawl, from furniture to antiques, clothing and every kind of toy and household item you can imagine.  There are a few dealers selling, but it's more like just people who have sheds or barns along the Valley Pike pulling their stuff out alongside the road.

Got some treasures!

In our case, we collect old holiday decorations, toleware, pewter, Carnival glass, jewelry, and what have you. To be honest, we have started many collections just because we found 2 matching items. Thankfully, we've come to our senses and cleared a lot of those collections out over the years. We do have a little antique booth, so we have an outlet to keep things moving on to those who will appreciate them.

  A lot of the fun of the Yard Crawl is chatting with people and moving on down the road to the next potential treasure score. It's a nice drive out in the country too, and the scenery is pretty.  I have to admit, there could be a few more bathrooms! LOL. We had a lot of fun and came home with a lot of nice finds.

Vintage Christmas treasures

Here are some neat old Santas and Christmas decorations we were able to come up with.  The red deer and sleigh in the middle are an old flocked set from the 50's or 60's.  The santa in the box is a really nice set that looks like it may never have been used.  He has a cloth outfit and beard, I don't know what the vintage of that is.  The old santa in the front left may be the best find of the day at 25 cents!  He is an old old cardboard Father Christmas made in Japan.  His beard is cotton and he is holding a pine branch in his hand. These finds will make nice additions to our vintage Christmas display.   

Assorted fun finds

Here are some other assorted goodies.  For some reason I attract Whiting and Davis mesh evening bags as you know.  Here is a more recent one for $2. The brass dipper is pretty old, the frame on the old picture must be from the 1800's (50 cents), the tole painted bucket is a nice old country piece for $1, and there's a silver bracelet up front that was $1 also.  We liked the black cat pitcher since we have two black cats.  We had to wait for someone who promised to be back by noon to get him, but she never showed, so we took him home for $1 too.  The sellers helped us count down the seconds till noon.  It was a good time.

All in all we didn't spend a lot, had a great day, and found some neat treasures.  I'm sure we'll head back up into the Blue Ridge Mountains again next year for year 5!