Things have been crazy busy for the last couple of weeks and I have neglected the blog! We went on vacation to Tiki Oasis in San Diego for five days and since we've been back it feels like all I've done is get ready for our Labor Day BBQ...between cleaning and fixing up the back yard I haven't had much time for anything else. I DID manage to sneak in a couple estate sales this past weekend and ended up scoring a few goodies.
When I was in high school I found two paper diner place mats at a garage sale. Someone had saved them from a roadtrip they'd taken back in the 60's. Those place mats started my obsession with vintage travel souvenirs that lasted for years. My apartment kitchen in San Diego was decorated in primary colors and travel plates, vintage postcards, ashrays, etc. for a long time. I always though it would be awesome to frame those placemats and hang them on the wall. Well, somewhere along the way those place mats disappeared never to be seen again and I abandoned that idea. Until this weekend....
I hit an estate that had boxes and boxes of old photos, paper, maps, brochures, postcards, etc. It was so sad to see the WWII era photos that the family hadn't wanted. With all the estates I've personally held, I've never had a family reject the personal items like that. At the very least they've always wanted to keep the pictures and diaries. At the bottom of a box was a menu being used as a folder that held over 30 paper diner placemats from the 1967 road trip the family had taken. There was even a few paper napkins and a vintage Cypress Gardens, FL bumper sticker in there too! The box also yielded three cardboard souvenir photo frames from the 40's: one from "Tops" restaraunt in San Diego dated 1944 (my personal favorite since I'm always on the look out for vintage San Diego stuff), one from the "Persian Room" at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco, and the third from the Bal Tabarin nightclub in SF (which eventually became Bimbo's).
Unfortunately wall space in my kitchen is at a premium so I don't know if I'll get around to actually hanging up the placemats but just the fact that I found some after all these years of searching is exciting enough for me. I'm beginning to think I may need a second house to hold all the things I'd love to collect, but alas, that is not a possibility. For now, all the treasures will be tucked away safely in my hutch drawer.
