Holiday Extravaganza

The time has come for our Holiday Extravaganza! Every year we like to celebrate the holidays and the end of our estate sale season with a festive sale. I currently have lots of furniture in my garage which is waiting to be shipped to Scottsdale once the reconstruction of the main bedroom and kitchen is complete so there is no room for a pop-up sale. Although a holiday pop-up sale at home base is not possible this year, we are fortunate to have a wonderful alternative! Next weekend beginning December 9 we will hold a high-end combined moving sale in a gorgeous 3,800 square foot 4-bedroom home in The Glen of Glenview. Our clients have traditional furniture, kitchenwares and useful household items and to enhance the sale we are bringing in an expanded jewelry caravan as well as boutique clothing, designer handbags and shoes, scarves galore and so much more. Adam will be bringing in his eclectic array of antiques and collectibles and we are helping a new client with the contents of a storage unit which has antique to vintage traditional furniture and artwork.

We will be in the living room with the main cashier station, the jewelry caravan, clothing and accessories. Adam will be in the adjacent office and our clients' items make up most of the balance of the home. Our new client's items are in the garage. Mother, Adam and I are excited because both the living room and office have lots of built-in shelving so we will be able to beautifully display our items for sale. Adam has been working on his display for several days and our plan is to set everything up on Tuesday. "Our" built-ins will hold sparkling crystal jewelry direct from the factories of the Czech Republic as well as antique-inspired Swarovski crystal pieces from Heidi Daus. There will be cases of wonderful jewelry as well highlighted by the Tucson Gem Show finds from Mexico, Russia, Thailand, Tibet and the Southwest US. If there is room, we will bring in sterling silver statement jewelry including designer pieces and artisan jewelry made by us and others. It will be a fun and exciting sale!

This past week I posted the following lot of Native American estate jewelry. The large Zuni thunderbird bolo and the two pair of spiny oyster shell earrings have sold, the other items are available. The most popular jewelry to purge on Facebook is the all turquoise but I enjoy jewelry with other stones as well. The plan is to price all of the vintage Native American estate jewelry in my collection and present it in Glenview as well. Before I know it, the Tucson Gem Show will be upon us and it will be time to buy more!

We hired Dolly to help out at Mother's house to set up the new bed for Rachel and John and get the new crafting tables down to the basement. The bed is now set up and I donated a headboard, nightstand, bed skirt and lambswool bed topper which will keep the bed cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It will be eclectic but really cute! Mother's basement is not typical, I find it totally livable. When I can, I have been helping Mother organize everything in the basement. I figured it was mostly crafting supplies and decor items which did not fit in upstairs but I did not realize how many personal items there are. We came across Dad's birth through age 7 book that Grandma Calpin partially filled out. I was surprised to see that it was not completed, especially since Dad was her only child. I am just like Grandma and I would have filled it all out! There were baby photos that I had never seen as well as 1950s accordion recital programs. Dad hated playing the accordion and I remember the holes in its grill from Dad jamming a pencil into it in frustration. The programs are very cute though! We also found Mother's leather cowgirl outfit. I have heard the legend many times but had never seen the outfit in person. Grandma Haertle literally had to cut Mother out of it as she outgrew it, she never wanted to take it off. I said we should put it in a shadowbox and display it in her room in Scottsdale, proof that she was always a cowgirl!

Because of the additional projects I was not able to work on the online store but I am excited to do so over the holiday break. In the meantime I would like to sell as much jewelry as possible these next two estate sale weeks so there is not as much to post online. The goal is still on track to complete the Shopify online store and shut down the GoDaddy store by the end of the year. Until it is time to head for Arizona I will work on posting the best pieces from my vintage Mexican jewelry collection.

I am in the midst of trying to sell the Scottsdale kitchen on Facebook Marketplace. I had a serious buyer but she is having trouble finding help to remove everything and install it at her home. A second buyer came to see everything Saturday and they love it, the hope is my contractor will be able to remove the granite countertops for her and she will be able to handle the rest. Fingers crossed as although the kitchen is not my style, it is still very nice and I would like for it to go to a good home. The project was supposed to start a week ago but as is normal for construction, we are still waiting.

I have not booked plane tickets yet to go to the Gem Show because I do not know what state the home will be in at that time. My hope was that if the project starts soon, the dirty work would be done before we got there. I will probably just book one-way tickets since it is the same price on Frontier as round trip and then we will book the return flight later when we know more. If things are livable we may stay until after the Heard Museum show in early March. The show was cancelled last year due to the pandemic and we have never been in Arizona long enough to attend in the past. But we will see because Kuochun will need to take care of both Margot and Vivi while we are gone.

Time to get back to preparations for Glenview, talk to you later!