estate sale day

A little blog whine before I get to the subject at hand...I've been reading that people have been having trouble commenting on blogs and in fact my few I usually get are down as well along with my page views which are running about half what I usually see in my stats. So is this due to the whole Google+ thing or have I just been boring the pants off everyone?

Thursdays, as you may recall, are the days that my sister and I go to estate sales when there is one in the radius in which we are willing to travel. Last Thursday was one such in a very small community. It was basically a very big barn divided in two lengthwise, one side 'women's stuff' (household)

and the other 'men's stuff' (tools large and small)

and inside the small house. We didn't buy anything but lots of interesting stuff to look at. The deceased was a collector of train memorabilia

including these old lanterns which were very cool.

We weren't sure what the purpose of this was. Did it magnify the light from the lanterns?

Outside in the barn, among things like carnival glass, florist vases, and the usual detritus of a household was some collectible McCoy and Roseville pottery,

an assortment of cartoon cake pans,

    

this very cool light fixture of which only three of the six arms were intact (this actually tempted us severely wondering if they would sell us each just an arm which was easily detached but we resisted in the end),

and probably my favorite kitsch, this hand painted ceramic table decoration, Jesus with red lipstick.