Garage sales. What is no longer needed in one family is eagerly purchased by another. One family clears out unused stuff and it becomes exactly what the other family needs. Win-win. All are thrilled. Fantastic price, helping others, and clearing clutter.

Our friends had a garage sale and it was a lot of work. They spent hours preparing by clearing out garage and basement shelves, deciding what items would be on the garage sale, and tagging every item with a price. Their kids participated, too, adding candy to the garage sale inventory.

My kids visited this garage sale and came home with many treasures. For the friend discount of FREE JT and Brooke came home with toy airplanes, Harry Potter books, dinosaurs for their Cousin Theo, and -- of course -- Tootsie Pops! I smiled at my friend Theresa and thanked her for the “treasures" sarcastically.

I later saw Brooke and JT gathering up the dinosaurs to give to their cousin. It hit me. These dinosaurs might not have been needed anymore at the Norris house, but they turned into treasure when JT and Brooke gave them as a surprise to their dinosaur-loving cousin Theo. Theo wasn’t receiving trash. He was receiving a priceless treasure.

Garage sales. What a cool intersection of old and new. Garage sales, estate sales, antiquing, and auctions. Oh, and Charity Art Auctions. I had the pleasure of serving as an event chair for the Band of Angels charity art auction. The Art That Blows event took place last Friday, June 8th at the Home2Suites by Hilton in the Crossroads. Save the date for next year's Art That Blows -- Friday, June 14th at a TBA location!

The event was the brainchild of Band of Angels Chairman, Mike Meyer. Art That Blows uses instrument parts that are too "trashy" to repair, shares the broken pieces buffet with talented artists, and from the trash/junk/unusable stuff these genius artists create treasures.

The Zerbs family home includes two new treasures thanks to this year's silent art auction. An image of one of them, Tootlebill, is below. Photo credit many thanks to Frank Perez frankperezmusic.com. Tootle has moved from the lobby of the hotel to our living room. He/she/it brightens the place up!

Around his neck Tootle is wearing a tag that says: Ring-necked, flower-tailed, tootlebird. He has rings around his neck, flowers on his tail feathers, and the clarinet bell for his mouth is terrifically described as a tootlebill. Call stuff what it is. I love it! 

A shout out to artist Debbie Stone for creating this fun piece. It's made of unusable clarinet barrels, mouthpieces, mouthpiece caps, and a bell for the bill. And trumpet mouthpieces create the duck's crown. 

I played the clarinet and was a clarinet performance double major in college. My mom is a gifted musician and was my accompanist. I don't play much anymore and adding Tootlebill to our home makes me smile. It's bright and colorful and silly. When I see it the love I have for music and its important part in my life rises to the surface.  

Joy is a great way to describe Tootle. And the joy is even greater when I remember that my non-musical husband who "only plays the air drums and guitar" saw it, loved it, bid on it, and won it knowing it would make me smile, too. Welcome to the Zerbs home, Tootle.

junk. joy. love. art.