Yard Sale Day 2: A better day and some prayer requests.

Mamas with kids or grandmas on the hunt.  It was a good day.  I made over $50.00 and for stuff just lying around and having nothing major to speak of, I didn't consider that a bad thing. 

Now onto more serious matters. 

1.  Sara will be traveling to Turkey next week for a hearing to try to get Eli back.  Here's the scoop:

Please pray for Sara, her success in the Turkish courts (she has a female for a judge and we were all thrilled to hear about that!) and for her safety and Eli's safety.  

2.  My friend, Kim, called this evening to tell me that her husband has what they suspect is a blood clot in the back of his brain.  Please keep Ford in your prayers as they do further neurological and diagnostic testing on him to accurately diagnose and treat his symptoms.  (Massive headache, then his face went numb.) 

Smiles in my day:

-  Another day done with the yard sale.

Have a great day!

Yard Sale Day 1: "You got any guns?"



I made this sign last night at midnight so that people wouldn't mistake . . .



. . . this as a party tent.  I came in at 12:10 AM and took a quick tour of the game closet to see what else could be sold. 

These two ladies flitted from house to house today, having a grand time.

The day began with cars beginning to circle at 7:15 AM like vultures.  These are, as we all know, the yard sale die hards.  They race up, sometimes quickly glancing at your offerings only to ask for the following items:

"You got any instruments?" 
"You got any hunting or fishing equipment?"
"You got any old or broken watches?"
"Do you have (this one was proper) a snow blower?"  I told him that the gravel drive pretty much put me out of the running for owning one.
Then, there is my favorite.  "You got any guns?" 

Here's the deal.  The tent was 10 x 20-- two Easy-Ups cable tied together.  You can see that it wasn't the most roomy place in there.  A three second look would tell you all you need to know.  Now, I realize that they were probably hoping that I would go to every cook and nanny in my house (not nook and cranny here-- sorry) to dig up some wonderful treasure for them. 

Nuthin' doin'.

Besides, we are a peace-loving house and in our home, we have no firearms.  The heaviest hitting item we have for self defense is a bubble gum pink aluminum kid-size baseball bat.  I'm good with that.

I had to laugh at the people who shopped ONLY the free box and didn't bother to look at anything else.  A guy came toodling up with his own shopping bag in hand and announced, "This is exactly what I was looking for!"  Grant you, I'm happy to have dispensed of some not necessarily quality items in the free box. 

I had people park in the end of my driveway this morning.  Where I'm sure that in most cases, that would be okay, but we were working with the fact that Hubs was going to need to go to work.  Since street salers tend to stay for a while, I told the gentleman, "Sir, I'm so sorry, but my husband is going to be leaving for work soon."  "WELL, IS HE GOING TO BE LEAVING IN A MINUTE?!"  "No, probably in about 10."  "Well, I'm fine then.  I'll be out of here by then."  It was only the before open crowd that did that and he was the only rude one about it.

I had a lady ask her husband, who was at the side of my house checking the workability of an orbital sander, to bring her some of my tomatoes since the deer ate all of hers.  He didn't, but I did send K- to pick her one.  I told her that it was organic, heirloom and and not genetically modified.  She looked weird at me.  "Well, it won't make you grow a third eye!"  "We'll just have it with our lunch."  Alrighty then.

I had a woman puzzled by K-'s snowshoes that I have for sale.  "What are these?!"  "Snowshoes!"  The look that she gave me was as if I had a third eye.  "Well, we like to snowshoe and hers are too small.  We ordered her new, but I just don't think that people typically snowshoe around here."  Again, she continued with that look.  They are purple and aluminum and I suppose if you are used to the idea of snowshoes being giant tennis rackets, these probably look like weird outer space junk. 

So how did the day end?  We made $45.00, but we've decided to buy the hammock stand that the neighbor has, so now we are down $25.00.  That's okay.  It'll make our hammock experience much better.  We installed the clothesline post a little too close to the fence post, so when we hang in the hammock, we're about an inch or two above the ground.  We suspect that we'll get much more use out of the (as we call it) hamhock if we have the stand instead.

Onward to tomorrow.  I'll try to report back about my progress tomorrow. 

Smiles in my day:
-  There is something that warms my heart about putting out a sign, having people willingly show up to your house, look at your discards, be willing to take them away and will actually pay you for them.  They pay you for junk you no longer desire.  There was a ton of work involved, but I think that it is grand that we make money off of things unusable to us.
-  K- biked the whole way on our walk today, up and down hills, and did great!  I didn't even have to break out any of the band aids that I squirreled away in my pocket.

Being up until 1:15-1:30 AM for the last three nights, then working full days has taken a toll on me.  I'm having a hard time typing.  I'm going in reverse a lot more than I should have to.  I need sleep.

Have a great day!

Tales from the Trenches: Readying for the street sale.




We're not selling the street.  It's not ours to sell.  However, there are many of us getting ready for our second annual street sale.  I've just spent hours measuring and pricing fabric I got stuck with after a business venture with someone went south.  Rrrr. 

I'll be out this week.  I'll be busy making quarters.  (Not minting them, but earning them for all of my hard work cleaning and bagging my items.) 

Have a great week!

Clip art credit to funtobeukrainian.com

To Chicago and back.

We made a quick run to Chicago this weekend.  It was my niece's birthday, so we ran up on Friday after K-'s arts camp performance and left Sunday morning at 11:30 EST.  Cousins played.  Much hair was styled and re-styled.  (K- has longer hair than her cousins, so they were all about braiding, pinning, twirling and doodle-afying her hair.  In fact, on night one, I had to end the doodling party at 12:15 AM EST when they were all still awake and needed to be notso.  They were being good, just girly and not sleeping.) 

We hit a rather long and wet storm on the way home where in some cases, visibility was notsogood.  We're thankful to have made it home safely, regardless to the lack of concern others had as they cut people off numerous times. 

With that, I'm exhausted.  Have a fantastic day!