Friday, Friday, Friday!!!

Friday is retail therapy day--period. During the summer we go to garage sales & estate sales first, then thrift stores, then lunch. In the winter, it’s just thrift stores and estate sales then lunch. It’s the day I look forward to all week; if for some reason we don’t shop on Fridays I’m kind of snarky the whole day. I’ve tried to analyze why going shopping on Friday is so important. Well, it’s girl bonding time when we talk over our week and commiserate or congratulate each other. But it’s also the day when anything can happen; we could find a number one Barbie (that’s the very first one for you non-doll types) or some other fabulous thing that would get us air time on Antiques Roadshow. I have to believe that people who like to go to garage sales and thrift stores are basically optimists, the glass is always half full. Or, maybe, it can just be ascribed to the treasure hunting bug that is as old as history; we are descended from tribes of hunter/gatherers, after all. We want to believe that there is something magical out there to be found if we just look hard enough; and brother do we look!

Now, I’m not saying we don’t find treasures, we do, and we will share some of them with you later. What we mostly see is just ordinary stuff that we do or don’t happen to have a use for, at the moment. But almost as good as finding a treasure is finding something we judge to be entirely without merit, an eyesore. Those things that are so ridiculous that they make us laugh, and wonder how they came to exist. This last item will be the basis for a weekly post called “What were they thinking?” or W.W.T.T.? since we are lazy typists. We will try to post on Friday, but stuff comes up so it could be the weekend or even Monday when it gets done. Right now we have a backlog of Friday W.W.T.T.? photos so we’re doing it a couple of days early.

Now for the clunkers of the week:

Usually I love garden gnomes, but there is something kind of creepy about this one. Could it be his oddly full and pouty red lips, his long eyelashes, the overall poor quality of his paint job? Why is he hanging around with Care Bears; that is just a weird grouping. Not to mention that the care bears themselves worry us a bit.

The next item is just over-the-top ornate. It was 2-3 feet across and apparently belonged in a castle or palace—if only it wasn’t made from resin instead of metal. You can tell that the previous owners got home and then realized they had made a mistake. Instead of returning it, they packed the clock in its box and made a bee line to the local thrift. Really, on a small scale, in the picture, it doesn't look that horrid. Trust us. It was.

OK, I have to admit that the next thing isn’t all that ugly even with its 1970’s avocado color. What tickled me about it was that the previous owner still had the original tag after 30 years and thoughtfully attached it to the handle before dropping their faithful coffee pot off at the thrift store.

Well, that's all for now. Stay tuned for another installment of What Were They Thinking? Friday.