Gross but worth it...

Tada!! There really was a pearl inside, (no, it did not have "stupid american" written inside thank you very much co-worker Jeff). Getting to this lovely little gem was no picnic, I had to drain the 60 year old can of formaldehyde, then grab the rubber gloves and butter knife to fish it out. Let me just say, I do not know how people eat oysters, makes me shudder. But lo and behold, after much prodding and twisting this shiny little thing appeared. So here comes my existential metaphor for the week: life is a lot like an oyster, mysterious, the future is tightly closed from us, but if we take the initiative and our trusty butter knife to make an earnest effort through all of the muck and messy stuff, we may find a pearl for our efforts. I challenge you to keep going for it, what is the pearl that you are striving for?

ET, A Pearl in a Can, and a lotta dreams

So....I went to an estate sale, if you can't already tell that by the menagerie of oddities on this table. So many treasures. This was one of those sales where they post the photos of what to expect on the web, right away I spotted a few things I was going for and they were already mine! BACK AWAY FROM THE E.T.! I got up super early before work to go, normally my mom would join me but she's off galavanting with her sisters in Cali. The owner was a really great quirky lady with a penchant for 100s of salt and pepper shakers, a pinball machine and two carnival funhouse mirrors in the basement! I snagged this lot, the house was packed and I was #47 so I wasn't getting the prime time stuff (plus I'm cheap as can be so I peruse the corners and dig in boxes). I can't wait to give my dad the MASH calendar for his birthday, it was for the last year that the show ran and Joyce, that's her name, marked the date of the last episode in it. There is even a foldout poster in the middle! The whales are for Carrie at SwankyLadyVintage, the scarves and West Germany set are for Etsy, so is the pixie girl, I have to get her out of my sight before I keep her for my very own. 

Seriously if you don't like E.T. you must be slightly dead inside, go back to your hovel and find a glowing heart already. I reached around a lady who was blocking my way looking at something else to snag him. I've never seen this one before and simply wanted him for my collection, then I saw online that some guy on eBay is asking a ton! He's mine, mine all mine, I just have to keep him out of the sun.

The West Germany set was a major find too! So thrilled! All in all my lot cost $12.85, which seems low, so I tallied up all of the items again and realized I was mischarged! I actually owe them $5!

This had to be the oddest item I found, which says a lot given my collection above. This is a souvenir oyster from Japan, preserved in formaldehyde, it quite blatantly says "DO NOT EAT ME" on the labels all around. It contains a pearl in the oyster, and when you shake it you can hear the shell rolling around. I WANT TO OPEN IT! I must fulfill what Joyce could not! It reminds me of when I was a kid and we would buy a bucket of geodes on the Spoon River then crack them open to see if we had crystals, except I have a feeling that this is going to smell like sophomore year biology class. I will keep you updated to let you know if my $1 was well spent!!

In the land of quirk and Batman

For those of you who aren't aware, I run an Etsy store. I have for the past 4 years. Not the kind of venture to quit my day job over but a fun side business. I sell a little bit of everything, mostly things that my mom has parted with. She is the notorious jewelry collector of our family, she used to buy junk bags of jewelry, take the few good pieces and give me the rest. I started selling it and little things that I would pick up at garage sales, estate sales, flea markets and hand-me-downs. One of the coolest things I sold recently was a Batman ring from 1966, I sold it to one of the biggest Batman collectors in the nation and he had the matching bracelet but had not acquired the ring. I was thrilled! Also the Danish modern vase that I picked up at a garage sale years ago sold to a boutique called NEST in New York. Everything has a story and it is so neat to see where they go from here. And yes that is a thermometer tie clip, I picked that up in California at the end of last year and it was about 90 degrees outside. Whew, one hot deal!