Junk Bonanza has been happening for 9 years and I think it's been 9 years that I've been wanting to go. Last fall my girlfriend asked if I wanted to go with her to Junk Bonanza........ YES!!!!! So months and months dragged by....... as it got closer I got busier and busier and could hardly think about it until the day before we were ready to leave. My girlfriend Kristin knows Minnesota like the back of her hand which was super cool for adventure the night before. We stayed right next to the Mall of America so we headed out for supper and shopping. One item on Kristin's list was sunglasses, we tried on 100's of sunglasses and laughed pretty hard at them. I had many people that were wanting to follow along with my trip so Instagram was a must and since we needed to conserve space in the car for "junk" my big camera was left at home. A junker does not carry a camera bag :)
The biggest, ugliest sunglasses I found.
The next morning we woke up bright and early and headed out to stand in line before the doors opened. We weren't the first in line but we were pretty close to the door and this formed behind us.
Being in the front of the line meant we needed to plan our path. Which was Annie Sloan Chalk Paint Class, first come first to get in........ So when those doors opened we sprinted across all this fabulous junk to the back on the 1st floor, up the escalator and got to the painting sign up along with many other girls on our heels. Set our alarms on our phones for the class start time and started enjoying the junk. We so wanted to stop and look at everything while we dashed through but knew we couldn't so I got out my phone and snapped some pictures, which is why they are blurring..... sprinting and iPhone camera don't mix well.
All day long we didn't have a clue where the restrooms were........ I guess I should have looked at my pictures. :)
I love the set up that some of the vendors went through just to display their stuff. These columns with the plants above is beyond cute. Many, many people dressed the part of the vintage junkie' look. Cowboy boots, braids and vintage jewelry were pretty common.
Getting pictures of fun things was as important to me as anything and when you need to get into an embracing position to achieve that photo of course I'm going to do it.
The vendor of this booth told me {as I was laying on the floor and he was taking my picture} that everyone has tried to get a photo of this light with the curly willow beaches but it doesn't ever look good......... I showed him mine and he says "that's the best I've seen, but no one else ever laid on the floor to do it"
While walking through booths after racks and racks of vintage clothing {which we didn't usually look at} I see this red jacket and it reminded me of the Medford High School Jackets so I went over and separated them and see this....
So I went to ask the lady where she got it. She said she picked it up at a garage sale in Medford, Wisconsin. I told her I was from Medford and what my maiden name was, of course she spent lots of time at my families bar. She used to live in Gilman and worked at Tombstone Pizza, she remembers coming to our family garage sales and could even tell me what she bought at them. It's a small world ladies and gentleman, a very small world.
Junk Bonanza is famous for Bloody Mary's so of course I had to sample one...... yep it's a given you need to get one or two or three of these while you are there.
It's painting class time. I bought a quart of this paint in red and I really hope I hate it.
I don't think that I will hate it at all, I think it might destroy my love for $1 oooops paint from Menards. The quart I bought is for a dresser that I own and don't plan to sell it, I will give you a run-down when I actually paint an entire piece of furniture with it.
I totally felt furniture for the rest of the day and could tell which ones were painted with Annie Sloan's Paint and which ones were not. Huge difference ladies, huge I'm saying.
I loved this chair in this color and everyone had fresh flowers sitting in their booths, it made a huge difference to their look. Fresh flowers are important this time of year. This chair was in Cash & Cari's booth. Do you know her?
She has a show on HGTV called Cash & Cari and I talked to her. She was terribly busy so I didn't get my picture taken with her........ but I talked to her.
In case I forgot to tell you I talked with Cari.........
This booth amazed me from the moment I saw it and then I realized what I was looking at. It's a backdrop painted like a vintage camper. Yep it's plywood with framed windows, real tires, a working door, little steps to get in, a blanket canopy and tons more features.
And she sold it. Someone from Thursday wanted it really bad and she ended up selling it. She was a very talented artist, that flag you can see on the porch is a painting hanging there.
Vintage jewels were covering everything....
I loved this booth for her creativity.
An idea for what do to with John's deer heads......
Are you kidding me, there is no way he'd let me do that but it does put the shabby chic in rustic.
Here is my girlfriend Kristin in her favorite booth with a big ole feather duster.
I'm not a heart girl but these hearts were pretty sweet.
Have you ever seen West End Salvage? They were there.........
We had our pictures taken with Don. He was having a great time and even though he was busy he would stop in mid motion to get his picture taken with all the girls. When I went over by him I said "I bet your pretty tired of all the girls wanting their picture taken with you" and he leaned over and whispered in my ear....... I can't tell you what he said but I laughed really hard and turned a couple shades of red.
Our day at Junk Bonanza was all day long, we were tired and sore but had a great time. After a bite for supper we headed out to Goodwill stores and IKEA, I guess we weren't too sore.
Heading home on Saturday my drop off point was in Stanley. A fun visit the kids, Max and Mally tried to talk me into sleeping in their beds and making them pancakes in the morning, too bad Grandpa found his way over to pick me up. They stood outside on the porch until we left.
If I said it a hundred times I'd say it again. I had so much fun this weekend. You can bet I'll be going back again next year. They do have a fall sale that I'm trying to talk John into going with me, he could totally do this with me. There is bloody mary's and beer to occupy him while I search the junk.
No comments:
Post a Comment