Christmas Eve Yard Sale Santa 2012

Christmas Eve, 2011, and my nine year old grandson meets me at the door looking a bit anxious as he asks “Granny, are we going to do Yard Sale Santa?” “Of course!” I exclaim feeling delighted that this decade old tradition has become an anchor for our Holiday festivities. And so it goes. We gather around the tree after a light meal and before the children’s bedtime, and I get to be “Yard Sale Santa”. It’s the culmination of a years worth of “hunting and gathering” at Thrift Shops and Yard Sales with treasures galore for all (including the other grandparents). My daughter has become fond of the designer purses, and I can usually pull off something Ex-Officio or Mountain Hardware for my son in law. One year my grandson got a vintage Mickey Mouse bowling ball, and I can never go wrong with something from Hollister for my adolescent granddaughter. Some gifts are silly while others are met with the refrain, “I can’t believe you found that at a Yard Sale!” And it feels good to be recycling rather than being stuck in the consumer driven big box store madness that seems to take the joy out of giving. Don’t get me wrong, we still have a traditional Christmas morning gift exchange, but we try to curb the excesses. So, dear “Rosebuds”, I invite you to share in this tradition, and I challenge you to host your own family Yard Sale Santa gathering. The Second Hand Rosies “Yard Sale Santa Rag Shakin’” on Saturday, November 17, 2012 will be the perfect place to start your shopping. Yes, we will have the traditional clothing swap, but we are also encouraging you to bring other “stuff” that can be re-gifted, (art, kitchen tools, books, and oddities).

Have you ever bought a signed piece of artwork and looked up the artist on google? I have one large work that I found out is worth nearly $5000 by googling the artist. Other times you are not so lucky, you find out nothing and figure that this person might have taken a class or completed this work in college and did not want to carry it around with them so they donated it or maybe they gave it to a family member or friend who did not see the value in it……. Well, whatever comes to mind, the positive energy that the original artwork carries is now with you once you decide to buy it. $4 later with a plastic bag wrapped around it, I came home with a woodcut named “Little Girl.” I am drawn to woodcuts because of the use of negative space to create eye catching images. Here is how the story goes….. A few years back, I stumbled upon this wood cut print at our local Goodwill. It caught my eye because 72 was the year I was born and it was hand signed—which I am always drawn to. I liked the image so much that I hung it in our guest bedroom for the past 3 years. Recently, we have had to do some rearranging and I decided to take it down. I also thought I should look up the artist to see if she had continued to develop in her trade. I discovered that she had passed away recently. I wanted to return this piece of art home to her family. The artist was a young woman when she made this and she was obviously very talented. I packaged up “Little Girl” and sent it back to the artist’s widower this week. I suppose that I would hope that a bit of her spirit was still attached to that 40 year old wood cut, a memory of her youth, a girl with wide eyes and an open heart, a student in Alabama—I am not sure what to expect from here, but my hope is that the power grace will follow this package back to her family and give them a moment of comfort in their grief.

Sincerely,


Rosie P.