Estate Sale, Peacock Lane

Stopped by an estate sale today--it was on Peacock Lane, I couldn't resist.

It was much scarier than anticipated. I expected to see some Christmas stuff, but this woman had enough Christmas stuff to last year-round, and there actually weren't any dishes in the kitchen that weren't Christmas-themed. There were two life-size Santas (one "farmer Santa"--I forget who the other one was--I didn't start taking notes until I got upstairs) on the first floor, "Santa's chair" in the garage, and I don't remember everything else--though there were those original portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Santa hanging in the front bedroom.

This lady also collected Princess Diana memorabilia (on one of the beds upstairs was a copy of The Oregonian from the day Di died), Mickey Mouse stuff (my favorite thing in the house might have been the curtains in the stairway window, which were made from an old set of Disney sheets), carousel themed stuff (including a pair of mechanical toy horses that you'd pay a quarter to ride on in front of the grocery store), mannequins (there were maybe fifteen to twenty throughout the basement and upstairs, including many child mannequins, almost all dressed, and mostly from the sixties and earlier, I'd guess--all creepy, of course), and dolls. There were so many dolls, on the beds, displayed everywhere on countertops and dressers, piled in baby carriages and posed in doll beds... There were probably ten antique wooden baby carriages in the basement, all with dolls in them. There was also so much doll furniture, for dollhouse dolls and bigger dolls too. I remember at least four dollhouses, too--several Santa themed, but dollhouses nonetheless. Also in an upstairs bedroom was a lamp like the one in A Christmas Story: high heel, fishnets, and all.

It took me an hour to go through the whole house. The basement, first floor, and upstairs were all so full of stuff that I wondered how much junk they'd had to clear out just to hold the sale. I was nearly finished when a woman and I were speculating about how long she must have lived there to accumulate all that stuff--and another man told us he lived on the block, and the woman who lived there had been there for only three years. We decided she must have been waiting all her life to move to Peacock Lane.