The Beach Cottage sitting room has, for most part of Sunday afternoon been looking like this. 

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So, Saturday morning dawns windy at the Beach Cottage, all is quiet and it's a rare weekend morning with absolutely no kids' sport – no runs at 6.30am to training, no soccer matches or umpiring.  After a long week with mucho of the above Mr BC was zonko, Mr Teenage BC was snoring, Miss BC was out cold and even the little one was snoozing still….but I was for some reason wide awake and up and about early.  

And what else can one do on a Saturday morning, Down Under, in Spring?  Of course, check the local paper, start plotting a route of garage sales, make some tea, and sneak off into the sun for treasure…

I did just that and set off full of anticipation.  First few stops were abysmal – you know those garage sales where you think, errrm, hello, just why did you bother?  By the third one of these, full of unwanted dollar-store-gifts from the nineties, I was ready to throw in the towel and so decided on just two more on my way home.  So  arrived at the last one, just about 5 or so minutes from the cottage, advertised as a 'street sale' but with just one house number – I spied it as I drove along, bustling with balloons and banners and the like.  

I had to park a bit further on and as I walked up the pavement on the opposite side of the street, a just-so gentleman was standing on the grass…I smiled as I went to cross over and he waved and pointed away from the one with the balloons and told me "deceased estate, this way" – of course, you can imagine my ears pricked up at 'deceased estate' – vintage things floated in front of my eyes and I followed his lead down a path of newly built houses on a shared drive – the farthest you could get from somewhere you might find a deceased estate. 

But oh. Oh.  Oh.  There were treasures. 

 And a couple of dealers. 

As soon as I saw the dealers stalking, I knew I had to be quick.  So I scooted around – picked up an old meat safe/cupboard (I'll show you that soon – mucho eye-rolling from both Mr BC and Mr Teenage BC), a bundle of vintage kitchen things, a white hand-embroidered linen bag for the WC, 1940's bamboo umbrella (lurve) and an old-fasioned towell rail  - all for $20.  

Too easy. 

As I walked back down the newly, perfectly paved driveway with my oh-so-wonderful vintage things, the man at the end smiled and said something along the lines of I had scored… of course I had, that is what this is all about, isn't it, on a Saturday morning without the kids?   I took my haul to the car, telling him we'd be back for the meat safe and then I thought 'I can't leave that trunk'.

I'd seen the trunk, covered, squashed in the corner, camaouflaged with bric-a-brac and hand-etched vintage glassware and assumed, mistakenly that it wasn't for sale but I loved it, it was sooooooo what I had been after for such a very long time. 

So I shut the boot of the car and went back.  I asked him was the trunk for sale.  And he said yes. 

One hundred bucks. 

I swallowed hard.  I thought Mr Beach Cotttage may well kill me if I spend that, at the moment, on another trunk (there really is one already in the garage waiting for paint). 

But, truly, I just couldn't leave her there…I mean, as I learnt, she came from Hungary (complete with old yellowed photos of the ship she was on) in the 1940's, just after the war, in a migrant ship.  I mean, she had real vintage lettering on the side.   

She was mine. 

And so here we are, Sunday afternoon in the Beach Cottage, re-arranging our tiny sitting room to accommodate our newly found treasure. 

I am and she, I think, is, eagerly awaiting her initiation tomorrow with a thorough clean, some serious primping and of course, a crash course in with all things white – stop by to see, of course, I'm blogging it…

Do I even need to tell you how many favours I had to promise to swing this one??? 

I'll let you guess…and tell me what sorta favours you'd do to get this baby in your cotttage?  ;-)

Love ya. 

S

xo

blogged for Rhoda's thrift event at Southern Hospitality, the last one for a while ;-(

EDITED TO ADD:  sorry I obviously didn't make it clear that I am NOT painting over this one – the whole reason I loved her was the wood and the lettering and the just general already gorgeousness!!!!!   and thanks so much to Maria from here who took the time to translate the words for me, I was going to have a go online myself so now I don't have to, the power of the internet eh?  So  'Fekete means Black and István means Steven, In Hungary the first name comes after the family name. So it belonged to a man'…I have more of the story on this old trunk to come…it certainly has some history with it!    S xo