Last week was hands down, the MOST STRESSFUL week of my life. I am NOT kidding. It started out with Houston almost dying on that mountain, then proceeded with me giving notice to the Becker Group and announcing the store closing and ended up with my mom in the hospital.

This past weekend in Palm Desert was just what I needed and I literally slept about 14 hours each night. I was EXHAUSTED!

Welcome to Lynn’s Latest #000048

Thursday, June 5th, 2025
Volume VI Issue 000048

In case you missed my last few emails, we will be closing the store. We have given 90 days notice to the management company and our final day will be August 25th. More details later in the ezine.

Store is 10% off. No extra discount off of the 20% Annie Sloan sale and no extra discount off of the 50% off clearance room.

As I started writing this newsletter, I looked up in my office and saw an envelope that said “LYNN ADELLE” on it in my grandmother’s handwriting.

Ever since I announced the store’s closing, I have been having dreams of my sister, my dad and my grandmother in my store wanting to help. It has been really weird, but also I feel like it is a sign that I am doing the right thing.

As I started reading the letter inside, I realized that I had to share it.

“Friday-9-17-82 (my grandma was 70 years old at that time doing an antique show in Seattle and I was a sophomore at USC)

Dearest Lynn:

No doubt you are settled down to routine school and in the swing again! Will you and Annie live in Troy all year?

I couldn’t find help for set up so did it by myself! I had them set boxes on one table & chairs & tried to work without lifting – it took me 7 hrs! I was really tired, having been up since 5:15 & then a date with the doctor at Group Health at 12:00.

Edna helped yesterday (sold a Shirley Temple doll for 135.!!) We went to town on Monorail before the show and I got some tools for Phil at Mayer Bros. Today I go early for a Jewelry Wholesale show at the Seattle Trade Center (by Spaghetti Factory) and tomorrow I go early for the Gem Show at Seattle Center. So I have had a heavy schedule for this trip. I feel so great and I’m just glad I can get around so good! The Dr. is keeping me on Tamoxifen & it seems to be perfect for me!

I ordered paperweights from St. Clair & some teapot ring holders & regular weights-they are really nice.

Sunday

I did the show yesterday alone as Edna was scheduled to go to the Puyallup Fair. Had a pretty good day 460 added to 450 for 1st day so if I do anything today I’m in pretty good shape-not like the old days, but I get my share. There are 50 dealers there with tons of merchandise & the Seattle area has a show or mall show nearly every week!

I was disappointed in the Jewelry show – only had 2 1/2 hrs there before the Antique show opened. All I bo’t was a Jewelry cleaning machine (sonic vibrator/and some loose diamonds). Bo’t no gold jewelry at all. Today I’m going to the Gem Show for 2 hrs hoping to find some rubies & some green Tsavorite garnets.

Monday-

Well, I’ll finish this progressive letter. I was happy to hear from you & glad you are pleased with ADPi. I’m sending a double Lincoln this time as I know you’ll have lots of extra expenses!

My show orders are coming in & I haven’t had time to check them all.

I love you – stay happy!

Grandma

Heart and Rainbow”

Here is a pic of me with my grandma around the same time of the letter…. in her shop.

Again, she was 70 and I was 19 or 20. We were so close!

There are so many things for me to unpack from that letter. I will share them throughout this ezine.

My first takeaway was that she used A LOT of exclamation points when writing…just like I do!

She also never slowed down. Up at 5:15 am (not me lol) and working all day and never stopping. We both have that in common. Maybe I need to start getting up earlier?….nah!

Also, she had just beat Breast Cancer that progressed to Lung and Hip Cancer and her doctor was keeping her on a drug that really saved her life…Tamoxifen.

Speaking of Cancer, one of my favorite team members was just diagnosed with cancer and had surgery this week. Please pray for her….

I KNOW she will beat this because she is one of the most lovely and positive people that I know.

Time for an eBay score before we get to my fun time in the desert.

Got this set of dishes for about $100. Just sold these 3 dinner plates for $263.99. Check out the listing here.

Houston is coming back to Ojai this week to climb back up and retrieve his bike. I am freaking out about this as it will take him about 9 hours to climb up and then another 6 hours to fix his bike and ride down.

Here is our text exchange. Please pray for him as well.

OK, thank you for letting me share that. I am very worried about this “bike rescue” that I don’t think really needs to happen. But try telling that to your 28 year old son.

Let’s get back to last week. Last Thursday, Jo Dallas offered to recreate the “Dos Padres” famous taco salad from Bellingham. My brother had found the recipe and Jo had been making it for her husband.

As we were getting ready to leave the store, Val showed up! What a treat! Here are the girls helping to price some jewelry….I am really going to miss this wonderful team of women that I have had the pleasure of working with over the past 7 years. Good news…is that we are all still great friends!

Since Val showed up to the store, we invited her back to my house for the “Dos Padres” Taco Salad. She said “yes”! It was a huge success.

Friday morning, Jo and I (along with Cha Cha) headed out for Palm Desert. We were going to drive to the Brentwood Country Mart to drop of the Cha to Indy and Larissa to watch her for the weekend. Thanks girls!

Half way to Palm Desert, I get a text from Indiana….

We have dumped so much money into that Jeep recently….here we go again. What a way to start the day! Ughhh.

When we arrived in Palm Desert we went straight to a Tattoo Mark estate sale. Not much there, but I did buy a stainless flatware set for $10. Pretty good score as the dinner forks sell for $29.99 on Replacements.com. Here is a tiktok I did showing how to identify patterns.

Click here to watch it.

After the sale, we headed to my mom’s cousin Gwen’s house to pick her up for lunch. This is where things also went south. And I am not kidding.

We drove up and her apartment looked dark and boarded up. We knocked and knocked and knocked….no answer. We called…no answer. We yelled her name…no answer.

I said to Jo, “she must have forgotten…let’s go grab lunch and come back after”.

We went to Billy Reed’s and had a great lunch. Then we headed back to Gwen’s to try and find her. Again, we knocked and yelled….no answer. Started driving away and realized I had better make sure she was OK.

Text her half brother Renato and he said “She is in there. I just talked to her. You have to knock really loud and say who you are because she has some neighbors that she doesn’t like.”

Here is a pic of us from a previous visit, because as soon as we got inside to see her (and she was OK) my phone rang and my mom was on the way to the hospital. Ughhhh.

My mom had some friends over and she started acting confused, so they called 911. The EMT’s took her blood pressure and it was super high, so they thought she should go to the hospital and I agreed.

Wish her house would sell so we could get her down here! Ughhh. After that was all taken care of and I knew my mom was safe, Jo Dallas says “I need a drink” and she NEVER drinks. So off we went to Tony’s (which used to be Pete’s). I think this Instagram story pretty much sums up the day.

Time for an eBay score. And I love this story. I always pick up yearbooks when I see them. I will pay $5 to $10 for each one.

I got an offer on this one of $90 and she also sent a question. “Before you accept my offer can you please make sure my dad Victor Clark (Jr or Sr year) is in the yearbook? I want to give this to him for Father’s Day.”

How sweet! What a great idea for a Father’s Day gift. He was in the book and I accepted her offer. She hasn’t paid yet, so we will see if she follows through with the sale. Fingers crossed. That is a great ROI!

Check out the listing here. If it says SOLD she bought it.

Here is the picture showing her dad. Proof!

Back to the desert. Friday night we went out to dinner with Mo and Saturday morning we went to estate and garage sales.

I found a bunch of Tom Clark Gnomes at a sale. They wanted $10 each and I asked for a special price if I take them all. Learned that from my Grandma!

They counted 30 and offered them to me for $150. I asked Mo and Jo (LOL MOJO) if I should buy them. Jo said “yes” and Mo wasn’t sure. Well, I bought them anyway. Here they are wrapping them up.

Interestingly enough, the Tom Clark gnomes are not worth a whole lot, but I should be able to get about $1,000 for all of them in individual auctions.

If you look closely you can see a green fancy vase on the table that I bought for $5. It is Fenton and it is going to do great on eBay. Back to my grandma’s letter, she carried Fenton in her store and we would often take pieces to the antique shows.

One of my favorite things to do when I worked in her store (in middle and high school), was to unpack the Fenton pieces when the arrived from the factory. They were all individually boxed and it was such a treat and surprise to see what was in each box.

Fenton was founded in 1905 (not many people realize that it is not a newer company) so yes, many of their pieces can be considered antique. Thank you grandma for teaching me so much (and for me knowing that you would have LOVED this vase) that I knew to buy it for $5!

It already has two bids and someone asked me to end the auction early for them and they would pay $100. NEVER EVER end an auction early! If someone asks, it usually means you have something really good.

Here is a link to the listing. Let’s hope it goes way up! Started the auction at $49.99 and it already has 3 bids. OK, it just got more bids and is now over $100….you need to follow along on this auction!

Back to the store…..For my consignors, here is more info about the closing.

This has been an incredibly difficult decision for me. Here are the details of the closing process for my consignors.

Consignor Instructions

1.) If you have consigned items with us, you may pick them up or leave them with us to sell during the liquidation process at a discounted price.

You will still receive payment for these items.

2.) If it doesn’t sell during the next 90 days, we will donate it to one of the following local charities: Habitat for Humanity or The Boys and Girls Club.

3.) We will still be taking in new consignments during this process.

4.) For those of you with items that sold over a year ago, your consignor credit has been converted to store credit as per the contract.

5.) I will be writing the next consignor checks on Monday, June 30th. Until then, please feel free to use your consignor credit to shop in the store.

After, June 30th, we will go back to the traditional Wednesday check writing day.

In Fun News, don’t forget we got in a bunch of brand new purses that are marked at $39.95 and are in the back 50% off garage. So, they are only $20 each! Check them out!

After Garage sales on Saturday in the desert, we had some fun plans. We were meeting Griff for lunch at Cactus Jacks. I have known Griff for 20 years and he was eBay’s 4th employee, spokesperson, eBay Podcast Host and I adore him!

He had the rapt attention of the four of us (me, Mo, Jo and Kel) and kept us entertained with stories of eBay’s beginning, when it was known as Auction Web.

I loved the story about how Pierre wanted to name it “Echo Bay” (a place he loved) and he went into the CA state licensing department where the clerk went through pages of pages and finally announced that it was taken.

He suggested that Pierre shorten it and Viola, “e-Bay” for “Echo Bay”.

Here we are at lunch!

And Griff went thrifting with us after. Sooooo much fun!

We even filmed a few tiktoks…unfortunately, the sound didn’t work in most of them. Here is one that did work. Click here to watch it.

Then Griff and I had to recreate our infamous first photo when I was a guest on eBay radio in 2015 with he and Lee.

That night the girls went to Las Casuelas for dinner and I opted to go to bed early. I told you I slept A LOT this past weekend!

Then on Sunday, we had lunch plans with Sandra, my former neighbor at 1 pm. We met her at The Old Spaghetti Factory….remember my grandmother mentioned that restaurant in her letter. She used to take me there!

Fun lunch, as always, with Sandra! What a weird photo…we all look like flat cardboard cutouts…am I wrong?

Sunday night, we met Linda McCoy Murray for dinner at the Cliff House. Linda is the widow of Jim Murray, the very famous LA Times Sportswriter.

Here we are after dinner.

Mo has a friend who is a HUGE fan of Jim Murray…..so Linda (Bless her Heart) pulled out 3 of his books for Mo to give her friend. Pretty cool if you ask me!

I met Linda about 20 years ago in Palm Desert because we both used the same personal trainer, Alida McDaniel. We had a mastermind group for years.

Check out this fun note from a Book Expo that we all attended in LA back in the day. We were at Engine Co No 28 for dinner and got our picture in one of the Book Expo publications. Can’t find the picture though!

Yes, they did call us the “Desert Divas” LOL!

Jo and I left Palm Desert first thing Monday morning and picked up Cha Cha on the way home. We decided to take PCH back to Ventura because it is finally open. Super sad to see the devastation from the fires.

An update on my nephew, Zach. He is in the Oakhurst area on his PCT hike. He has gone more than 900 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. Congrats!

Here is a picture from Zach’s trek. It is so beautiful it looks fake….right?

I drove Jo up to the Santa Barbara Airport on Tuesday morning and she is back home! Super fun time with her. But I need a vacation. hahaha.

Awesome surprise on Wednesday when Larry and Becky Raney from Bellingham stopped in the store on their way up the coast. Love these two!

The Raney’s printed my greeting cards, our beanie baby binder book and all of my 100 Best Books.

Becky was mentioning that when our Beanie Baby Binder was selling like crazy, they had 40 employees just to assemble the books because it was a loose leaf binder system. It was also Amazon.com’s best selling book in the pop culture category for 1998. Crazy!

Here is a TikTok that I did about our Beanie Baby writing experience and getting sued by Ty Warner himself. Long story!

Click here to watch.

One more random connection to my Grandma’s letter. She mentions my friend Annie. We were sorority sisters and roommates sophomore year. Annie called me this week to say she would be in LA from NY and wondered if we could see each other. I haven’t seen her in like 10 years So next Wednesday night, I will meet her and some other sorority sisters in Pasadena Fun!

She is one of my best friends and was even in my wedding. Here we are at Pledge Presents back in 1982. Annie is actually a lot shorter than me and is standing on a stair for this photo. LOL. Crazy!

OK, time to explain my subject line for this ezine. As I was leaving Palm Desert, I saw this statue that didn’t just say “Dream Big”, it said “Dream Bigger” and that really hit home.

I think too much of my creative entrepreneur energy has been poured into the store and its time for me to get back to designing greeting cards, writing books, painting and other new ventures. So, I am excited for this next chapter!

Also, I loved how my grandma ended her letter to me with “stay happy”. How precious is that? So, “Dream Bigger & Stay Happy” is my new motto!

Things we need for the store…..

AND PLEASE NO CONSIGNMENTS ON WEDNESDAYS….this is our big furniture take in and catch up day. THANK YOU!

Night Stands
End Tables
Rugs
Lamps…both table and floor
Nice Throw Pillows
Wicker/Baskets
Metalware
Woodenware
Garden
Outdoor
Dressers
Desks
Oil Paintings

And now what you have been waiting for….The new arrivals!

Console Hooker Furniture Home Modern Mood Entertainment Light Grey/natural $795.00