The Bounty of Spring

This has been an odd week.  Not because of odd happenings, but because I've caught some kind of bug that has made my head an odd place in which to reside.

Normally when I'm sick, all of my emotions are flat.  I can't summon the motivation to care about much of anything, and all my senses are dulled.  We've all been there, right?

This week has been different.  I've had some kind of bug that several people in the area seem to be likewise suffering from- nothing major, just mild, persistent nausea, nagging headache along with aches and pains, and a general feeling of malaise and run-down-ness.

What makes this bug special is that, at least for me, it has included heightened emotions.  And no, I am not pregnant.  Just so we're clear.

Case in point:  Last night, while gathering ingredients for the supper I had in mind, I couldn't find the ground ginger.  I tore my spice cabinet apart and found THREE containers of thyme, but no ginger.  I even found a small pot of sage, which is completely useless to me, as I can't stand the smell or taste of sage.  But ginger?  None.

Is this worth crying over?  It almost was last night.  I really wanted beef noodle bowls.

Once I got over the devastating ginger-related loss (my life is so hard), I decided to make quiche.  I was refreshing my memory on how to make PW's pie crust, and her instructions included not the usual phrase involved in the making of pastries, "combine until it resembles coarse meal," but "gradually work... until it resembles a coarse meal. (Emphasis mine)"  Just the inclusion of that little article "a" filled my brain with images of a plate containing asparagus and maybe chicken telling me dirty jokes and inappropriate stories.

Naturally this filled me with such mirth I laughed until I was almost too weak to wield the pastry cutter.  I didn't think much of it- everyone laughs at the jokes their brain tells them, right?- until Caedmon came over, laid his little hand on my arm, and asked, "Are you okay, Mommy?"

It's possible I've come across as a trifle unbalanced this week.  Is it possible for a germ to generate symptoms of mild manic depression?

Episodes of feverish hilarity aside, there were plenty of high points this week.  My peach hyacinths bloomed:

The tulips are also beginning to open up:

I also finally got my lettuce in, the only cool season veggie I plant.  I turned the compost heap and it produced a prodigious amount of beautiful, black, hearty compost to nourish the garden with this year.  I went to my first garage sales of the season and came back with nice garments for Adelaide and Atticus both, including tennis shoes for Atticus for just a few bucks that should work for school in the fall.  I had no idea how such nice shoes could possibly have so little wear, as any shoes our six-year-old tromps around in look like they've been through a wood chipper after a mere three or four months of use.  The very nice lady who lived in the McMansion where the sale was located swooped in to explain, however, that she had bought them for her son, who refused to wear them because they weren't the exact right shade of blue.  I said a prayer of thanks for her kid's brattiness and its indirect benefit to our kid, who was pleased as punch with the shoes.

Germs, flowers, and garage sale finds:  It's finally starting to feel like spring!

A Midweek List

• You know those garage sales I went to last Friday?

The one billed "Selling a library of beloved books" was a gold mine.  Or an ink and paper mine, I suppose.  It was an older couple relocating across the state, and the sale was in their actual, built-in-bookshelves, at-home library.  Hardcovers for $1.  Paperbacks $0.50.  I have no idea how I made out with only these nine books, especially when, as I went to pay the absolutely delightful lady holding the sale, I only had to pay fifty cents apiece, even for the hardcovers, because I "obviously have such great taste in books."  I've read half of these, so my goal is to read the remainder throughout this year, as they're mostly classics I should be familiar with, anyway.  Although, if we're being honest, I'll probably never read that bottom one all the way through (Leviathan by Hobbes), as philosophy isn't one of my genres of choice.  I really just bought it because 1) it has a pretty cover, and 2) I like the word "leviathan."  What?  Bibliophiles can be shallow.  Obviously.  

• It looks like I've been a little too extreme in my instructions to my children to never, ever, ever, cut any of Mommy's flowers, ever.  After last week's yellow irises that I brought indoors had faded, I brought in some pink and white peonies.  Atticus followed me around as I merrily clipped my way through the backyard, anxiously running his hands through his hair and asking, "But aren't you going to get yourself in trouble?"  I tried to explain that it's my rule and I am thus free to break it at will (although, really, he's seen the hypocrisy that exists behind my "Only one cookie and then you're done" rule as I mow through half a dozen cookies in one sitting, so I don't know why he's having so much trouble with this flower thing) and that he can collect flowers to bring inside, too, as long as he has my permission.  

He looked unsettled every time he passed these the first full day they were there.

An unexpected advantage to bringing my flowers inside is that I'm finally able to smell them.  I've always heard people comment on the fragrance of peonies, but evidently when they're outdoors the scent is too widely dispersed for my sad sniffer to detect anything.  Bring a bunch of them into our front entryway, however, and man!  They've been perfuming our house rather beautifully for days, and I am proud to say I do enjoy the way flowers smell- I've never really been sure, as I can't stand floral-scented candles and such; they give me an instant headache.  The real thing, however, I can handle.  Joy!

• I got two calls last week asking me to participate in a local blood drive, and although I tried to explain that I've tried and tried and tried and my iron count's always too low, they insisted I try yet again, and I caved.  A helpful friend watched the kids, I assured her it would probably only be for about 15 minutes, but lo and behold, my iron levels were two-hundredth's of a percent higher than the lowest admissible amount.  They drained a bag of liquid life-force out of my body (I'm going to start a petition to have the Red Cross change the ever-boring term "Blood Drive" to "Liquid Life-Force Drainage Event"- I'm sure loads more people would sign up.  Or not.), I was immensely pleased not to have failed yet again, but I did wonder at the notable absence of signs saying things like, "It's a bloody good time" or pretty much any pun involving vampires.  A wasted opportunity, I say.

The Good and The Bad From Adelaide's Winter Concert

• Good:  I got Adelaide's Christmas dress at a garage sale last summer.  She was pleased with it.  I was pleased with it.  It cost $5.  Everybody wins.

• Bad:  It turned out to be way too big.  The length was manageable, but the midsection was really loose.  I decided to try and baste the back of the dress real quick to try and create an inconspicuous gather, and lo and behold, it worked!  You have no idea how thrilled I was.  These little let's-make-this-work-ten-minutes-before-we-have-to-leave things rarely work out for me, so this felt like a triumph.  So this one turned out Good (I know, I know, it should be "turned out well," but I have a theme going here).

• Good and Bad:  Listening to little children singing.  I know they're only two years younger than Adelaide, but those little kindergarteners are so darn cute singing their sweet Christmas songs, fidgeting, waving at their parents.  Their little voices are the most adorable thing you've ever heard in your entire life for exactly three songs.  At song #4, you feel the smile slipping from your face.  The end of #5, you give the most perfunctory clap possible, enough to satisfy the parents of the kindergarteners, but hopefully not enthusiastic enough to encourage the little beasts.  Halfway through song seven you wonder why you're being forced to listen to hell's soundtrack and your husband looks like he's contemplating mutiny.  Then, thank the sweet baby Jesus, they're done, the ticking under your left eye abates, and all is well with the world again.  Until you realize you haven't even heard your own kid sing.  It's not over.  Some part of your brain goes walkabout and you wonder if it's possible to get PTSD from a children's concert.

• Good:  Adelaide's music teacher expects much from her students; as a result, they learn a lot more than one might expect from a standard elementary music program:  by the end of kindergarten our daughter could read music (just basic treble clef), and this year she had the second graders singing in a round, and although she allowed them to sing I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas, she stressed that the voice of the girl on the original recording was of a poor tonal quality; too nasal.  All this meant it was far less painful to listen to the second graders than it was to listen to their younger classmates (it also may have helped that they sang half as many songs).  Adelaide was one of the students chosen to play the metallophone:

Ours is the farthest to the right of those standing behind the metallophone.  If you click to embiggen you'll see she's also the weird one.  This is surprising to exactly no one.  I think she liked the feel of the fur collar on her chin; she kept unconsciously doing it when not singing.  Better than picking her nose, something a couple of her classmates felt no compunction about doing in front of an audience.

• Good:  Atticus and Caedmon sat so still and quiet throughout the whole thing.  It was absolutely wonderful.  Last year Caedmon kept climbing in and out of his folding chair, which was only a problem because the chair kept folding him up into it, causing panic on Cade's part.  This did not stop him from doing it again and again and again.  Atticus was pretty good last year, but had not yet mastered the art of whispering things his parents really didn't want everyone around them to hear.  The year before that I hardly remember watching Adelaide at all because Derek and I were so busy trying to keep a one- and three-year-old quiet and seated for 45 minutes past their bedtime.  With these memories fresh in my mind, I did not take our sons' delightful social compliance for granted.  (It didn't hurt that the family in front of us had three small children they were trying to wrangle while watching an older sibling perform.  I felt such strong feelings of empathy I engaged in a tacit staring contest with the second-to-littlest, which only kept her busy for about 90 seconds, but still- 90 seconds can be a lifetime to mothers of littles.)

So: except for the nightmares I still have about those kindergarteners, it was overall very, very good.

Why, yes, that is a potty chair in the corner of the photo.  I'm not real sure what it was doing by the front door.  Nor do I know what's up with our children's faces.

You Get What You Pay For

I've spent most of the past week decorating our house for Christmas.  This is something I love to do, and it's always extra-fun for me, as I seem to forget half of what we own between the months of January and November (having an inconsistent memory makes life so fun sometimes!).  One of my favorite parts is pulling different items out and recalling how much I didn't spent on them- as with so much of the other things we own, I buy most of our Christmas decorations at thrift stores and garage sales.  This, of course, means there's often... let's say tweaking that must be done before I'm willing to set them out.

Take the wreath that's not gracing our front door because it's -2 degrees outside right now and Jesus Himself would have to be knocking on our door in order for me to open it.  I bought that wreath at Goodwill (and it will go up, just as soon as it gets somewhere above ten degrees, which might not even happen tomorrow) for $1.99 because I could see it would be a good, basic green Christmas wreath just as soon as I removed all the early 90's-era plaid ribbon and flocked cardinals missing most of their velvet skin.

But easily the weirdest and best Christmas item I've found was at a garage sale:

See?  Three primitive Christmas trees (if I call them "primitive" it sounds like they're supposed to be scraggly) for a dollar apiece.  You can see they now have applesauce cinnamon ornaments the kids and I made hanging from their branches.  I put those on only after removing all the tiny baby figurine ornaments that came with the trees.

Excuse me, I misspoke.  I removed all the naked glow in the dark baby figurine ornaments hanging from their branches.

If that isn't bizarre enough, upon closer inspection of their little naked glow in the dark backs, I was able to see that once upon a time, there were wings attached (okay, so I'm assuming they were wings- I suppose they could have been... whatever else grows out of babies' backs).  To me, this means someone snapped the wings off of all those little cherubs, which makes me think this family was purposely going for a fallen angel theme that Christmas, complete with festive games like pin-the-horns on Satan and Red Rover but instead of clotheslining the member of the opposing team running toward you, you'd be lined up in front of a burning fire pit and they'd run into that- unless your theology runs more toward Hell is Eternal Separation From God, in which case you'd just have to designate a little area behind you with this sign hanging up:

Purchase a slightly different version of this sign here!  Or just click to embiggen!

What on earth happened to this post?  I swear when I woke up this morning and promised myself to finally write down one of the dozen posts floating around in my head, it had no Microsoft paint.  It didn't even have Satanic games.

I'm now trying to engineer ways to drive by that house- the home of the naked glow in the dark fallen angel babies- just to try and look in their windows.  Who knows what other treasures they're hiding!

List!

(Not to be confused with Liszt!  Because I don't even play the piano!)


I haven't made a list in a while.  Let's rectify that mistake, shall we?

• I went garage sale-ing (what is the correct usage of that verb?  Is it saleing, saling, sale-ing?  Someone help me) this morning.  Four t-shirts, one long-sleeved shirt, two pairs of shorts, one jacket, one fancy winter dress that I'm hoping will last two Christmas seasons (all name brands and in excellent condition) and $10 later, Adelaide declared, "I LOVE garage sale-ing!"  I'm pretty sure this is what God was talking about when he said that you should train your children up early.  Yes, definitely.  Definitely talking about garage sales.

• Caedmon has learned how to climb out of his crib.  When I learned this I may or may not have wailed something like, "MY LIFE IS OVER."  He refuses to show me how he does it, possibly because that might put an end to finding him sitting on the kitchen counter early in the morning, shoving fistfuls of cereal into his mouth straight of the box.  I cannot handle the thought of him moving up to a regular bed, one without high sides and confining bars.  Terrible things will happen.

• Sometimes I hate Facebook; yesterday it was fun.  At least a dozen people posted this series of maps, specifically, "22 Maps that Show How Americans Speak English Totally Different From Each Other."  While the awkward phrasing of that title drove me a little crazy, the maps were so fun to peruse.  When we moved to Connecticut, I was amazed at how many times people would stare at me, bewildered, because of my word choices.  Even here in Iowa, I find plenty of linguistic dissimilarities from my southern Kansas home.  These maps seemed pretty accurate, not to mention fascinating.  And so funny.  Why yes, those are crawdads living in the creek, Derek just commented last week on my pronunciation of "lawyer" (it's not loyer; it's law-yer.  Hence the spelling.  Note:  this rule does not hold true for the word "caramel."  Because I said so.), and of course they're tennis shoes.  You really need to look at those maps if you want to have any idea of anything I just said.

Read the Super-Fun Language Maps Here!

• Another fun thing from Facebook:  Remember how I once told you guys about how much I loved working at the bookstore pre-children, and how one of my co-workers and I bonded over a mutual distaste for Dan Brown?  (This was at the height of "The Da Vinci Code" craze, and yes, that previous statement was an out of control run-on sentence.  I am aware.)  Anyway.  A friend of mine posted the funniest thing I've read in a long time onto my wall, or timeline, or whatever the kids are calling it these days:  A satirical article on Dan Brown and his newest book.  Here's one gem I mined for you, in case you're too lazy to click the link:  "New book Inferno, the latest in his celebrated series about fictional Harvard professor Robert Langdon, was inspired by top Italian poet Dante. It wouldn’t be the last in the lucrative sequence, either. He had all the sequels mapped out. The Mozart Acrostic. The Michelangelo Wordsearch. The Newton Sudoku."  If you've read any of his books, you'll find the article hilarious.  If not, it's funny anyway and you should definitely read it.  Because I said so.

Read the Super-Fun Article Making Fun of Dan Brown's so-called Writing Style Here!

• The kiddos and I are headed south early next week.  I'll stick around for about a day, just long enough so that they don't think I drove all that way just to abandon them (even though the very opposite is true, muahahahaha!).  Then I will leave them with their grandparents (my mom and Mark and Derek's folks are splitting up the time), and I will leave.  I will visit a few people for a few days, all by myself, and then I will drive home, all by myself.  I won't see the kids again until the grandparents drive them back up here about a week and a half later.  A week and a half later.  I was telling a friend of mine that it kind of feels like Derek and I have a mild case of Senioritis, but rather than counting down the days 'til graduation, we've been counting down to the moment I drop the kids off.  It's going to be glorious.

• Adelaide has been immersed in a series of books called "Warriors."  It's about these wild cats (not wildcats, but what appear to be clans of Felis catus, who look down on kittypets- cats with owners- and engage in fierce battles of territory and food and the like), and there are enough books in the series- upwards of  37- to have kept her engaged for a couple months now.  This new fascination has infected many other parts of her life, which is fun, but yesterday she introduced me to a new one: the possible inability to separate life from fantasy.  While we were discussing the trip south, she announced that she's going to be sure to spend plenty of time alone with my mom's cat, Ed, an old man of a cat.  She says she's going to try and find out if there are any Thunder Clans or River Clans living nearby, and where Ed sits in the feline hierarchy.  (These books are great for elementary age vocab, by the way.)  I tried to tell her that Ed's been a kittypet for years, but she would not be persuaded.  So Ed's about to get a whole lot of attention, wanted or not.

• I was sure I had more bullet-point-worthy news, but darned if I can think of it right now.  Maybe I'll just add to this list over the next few days.  [Update:  Hey, I actually did it!  I've added two bullet points already!  Go me!]

Currently Loving Vs Not So Much

We haven't had a list on here in at least a week or five days or something, right?  Let's correct that.


My Current Favorite Things:

• Kale.  There's a local restaurant that has a salad on its menu right now that consists of kale, feta cheese, apple slivers, dried cranberries, candied pecan bits, and grilled chicken, and it is so. freaking. good.  I've managed to re-create it at home, but because I'm lazy and don't want to spend time doing things like actually cooking chicken or candying nuts or slicing granny smith apples into matchsticks I've discovered that if you just get a little bit of kale, a little feta cheese, and a cranberry on each forkful you have the perfect combination of sweet, salty, and fresh.  I'm not always so great at eating my veggies, so this is a good thing for me.  Anyone know anything about growing kale?  I'd like to put it in our garden this year if at all possible.  

• Adelaide's eyes.  She's had sporadic headaches recently and has been complaining of some blurry vision; I was all set to ignore her anyway until she pointedly asked me to make her an appointment with the eye doctor.  We went this morning, and her vision is fine (Hallelujah!).  I asked the doc if, given Derek's astigmatism and having to get glasses in kindergarten and my extreme myopia and having to get glasses in third grade, we should really be on the lookout for vision problems in the near future, and he said that you just never really know- some kids have parents with perfect sight but have terrible vision themselves, and vice versa.  Here's hoping for some super-strong recessive genes from our kids' glasses-free grandparents and a mini-miracle (I'm looking at you, God)!

• I get to see my sisters and their families in three weeks.  This is a good thing.

• I found a cache of winter clothing that I bought for Adelaide at a garage sale over the summer hiding in the back of the closet.  They still have their $1 and $.50 stickers on them- I don't know who was more excited, Adelaide or me.  She randomly has a whole new wardrobe.  I'm still waiting for this to happen to me.  

• Our boys.  Specifically, our boys and food.  Yesterday I opened a drawer to get a pen and piece of paper and instead found a three-day-old, half-eaten slice of pizza resting atop the paper clips.  I took it out and was getting ready to throw it away when an indignant Caedmon spotted me and cried, "HEY!  Dat's my snack!  Don't frow away my snack!"  This morning, the boys and I were upstairs playing (because it's much warmer upstairs than down), when Atticus disappeared for five minutes.  When he came back up, he was chewing something.  We don't really snack much and I like to monitor what the boys eat between meals, so I was a little surprised and asked him what he was eating and why.  His response:  "I just had to go downstairs and get a spoon and eat some peanut butter because my stomach was so hungry it was about to eat the rest of my body." 

• You guys.  Adelaide had been begging to write a blog post for a couple weeks, and when I finally caved, she did nearly all of it herself:  She took the photos, I uploaded them and showed her how to put them on the blog, then showed her where to type and which buttons to click to publish, then held myself back from correcting every little thing.  Then you guys came along and commented and commented on her post, and she was absolutely thrilled.  You all are the nicest people ever.  Ever.  

• Books.  Because, well, they're books, but also because it's so unbearably cold outside, and is there anything better than curling up with a book and rejoicing in the fact that we live in the age of central heating?  

Tomorrow:  My Not-So-Favorite Things Right Now.  Good luck getting to sleep tonight with that on your mind.

How To Host a Successful Garage Sale

If you know anything about me, you know that I love garage sales (or yard sales, tag sales, rummage sales, whatever they call them in your neck of the woods).  It allows me to clothe our children in reasonably attractive clothing on a tight budget.  Plus I like what Derek calls junk, and I call antique/vintage/cool old stuff.

I've met quite a few people who have said they just can't get over the thought of going through someone else's stuff.  It doesn't bother me in the least.

I also realize that not everyone is going to swoon over a glass peanut butter jar from a defunct Des Moines factory with an expiration date of 5/24/1928, but I just love that kind of thing (COST ME 50¢, PEOPLE).  Or all the kitchen items I can find- tupperware, sifters, real silver utensils- that generally cost as little as 10¢ and never more than a dollar.  You can't find that kind of thing at those expensive Wal-Mart stores.


What I've found, however, through all this sale-combing, is that there are a whole lot of people out there who don't know how to throw a good garage sale.  They're just terrible at it.  They seem to be the ones who have never actually attended a garage sale themselves, and are just kind of winging it.

It's easy to tell the good sales from the bad:  the good ones have lots of people browsing and walking out with armloads of stuff, and generally the people hosting the sale are smiley and happy because they're making a lot of dough.  The bad ones, well- I really just want to tell those people that they shouldn't have wasted a weekend.

The thing is, throwing a good garage sale is pretty simple.  Notice I didn't say easy.  You're going to have to work for that money.  Still, if you have a couple kids or friends who will work for cookies, you should be able to knock the whole thing out pretty quickly.

So here it is (this week's excuse to make a list):




How to Host a Successful Garage Sale

Above all, you need to treat your sale like it's your own little store or boutique.  Think about what you look for in your favorite stores.  Things like:

Advertising:  First, you need to let people know your upcoming sale exists.

• Local newspapers:  This is the more traditional method of advertising for your sales, and most newspapers now have an online option, which is especially helpful for all those people searching your area for sales online.  Usually pretty inexpensive.

• Craig's List:  Helpful because you can write as much as you want, a lot of people use it as a sale search engine of sorts, and it's free.

• No matter what route you go for advertising, don't just write vague descriptions like "Lots of stuff!"  No kidding.  This is a garage sale.  Write "Kids' Clothes" (and if you have unlimited space to describe your stock, include whether for boy or girl, a range of sizes, or if you have nice clothing to sell, say something like "Brand Names"), "Kitchen Supplies," etc.

•  PLEASE DON'T LIE.  And when I say, "Don't lie," I mean don't label your collection of VHS tapes as "Vintage."  FYI, common parlance among antique dealers states that "antique" is anything 100+ years old, "vintage" is 50-100 years old (although technically, the word "vintage" should always include a year- vintage 1943, vintage 1972, etc- vintage was traditionally used to denote the year a wine was produced).  Your collection of 1990's Hotwheels is not "vintage."

• If you don't want early birds (people that come in the hour before the stated start time), you need to specify that: "No early birds."

• Make your sale stand out.  If you're moving, write it down:  "Moving Sale!"  If you're cleaning out twenty years worth of stuff, down-sizing, cleaning out your kid's closets, or just super excited to be having a sale, say it!

Signs:  Not only help people find the sale they're looking for (that would be yours), but also draws in people that just happen to be driving or walking by.   

• Those little plastic signs you can buy that say "Garage Sale" are nice, but please realize that they're pretty small and can easily get lost if there are a lot of For Sale signs or political ads anywhere near them.  They also provide a small space for you to write in your address.  Generally, this address is written so small that it's nearly impossible to read as you're driving by.  

• For my money, I'd buy several brightly colored (think hot pink or eye-searing green) pieces of poster board, and put up a whole mess of signs.  Put your first one up at the closest major intersection or at the entrance of your housing development.  And I know it's tempting to use fancy script or use different colors for each letter, but DON'T DO THAT.  Simply write GARAGE SALE in big block letters, under that write your address, perhaps the days and hours of the sale if you have room, and then a big arrow pointing in the direction of your sale. 

• You're not done yet.  You need to put up another sign about every block or so with more arrows pointing in the correct direction.  I always enjoy when they say fun things like, "ALMOST THERE!" and "YOU'RE SO CLOSE!"   Don't forget to put another sign up in front of your house ("YOU MADE IT!"), especially if the bulk of your sale is actually in the garage.

Don't Go It Alone

• Check around your neighborhood.  Maybe your neighbors have a bunch of stuff they want to get rid of, too, and would be interested in having a neighborhood garage sale.  Those things draw in hordes of people.  (I am not kidding.  Hordes.)

• If you don't really have that much to sell, see if any of your friends or family has some stuff they want to sell.  When I have a long list of sales to hit, I will drive right by a sale if it looks like there's not much there.  

• If you do end up having a sale of only your things, make sure you're not there by yourself.  You need someone to walk around and make sure things are relatively tidy, answer questions, and just generally keep an eye on things, while someone else mans the cash transactions.  Plus, you never know when some psycho is going to wait until you're the only one there and come try and abduct you.  I'm just sayin'.

Merchandising

• If you've ever worked in retail, you know what I mean.  If not, then listen up:  people aren't going to want to buy your stuff if it looks less like "stuff" and more like "crap."  Set out plenty of tables so that there's plenty of room to display all your stuff. 

• If you're selling clothes, don't make piles more than a few shirts deep; if you have towering stacks of clothes, people will go through the first few items, then give up because it's frustrating and time-consuming to try and sort through twenty pairs of jeans in one pile.  Also, if you have dresses, coats, or plenty of nice tops, try and get your hands on a portable clothing rack to hang those things on.  People are more likely to buy clothing if they can actually see it and it's easy to inspect.

• Wash clothes.  Disinfect toys.  Wash kitchen utensils.  Make everything as clean and presentable as possible.  (Note: Not applicable to true vintage and antique items.  Just dust those with a dry cloth.)

• Even if you're the least organized person every other week of the year, you need to be organized now.  Group like items together.  Don't just dump stuff randomly on a bunch of folding tables and assume it will sell.  It won't.

Pricing

• This is a tough one.  A lot of it depends on what area of the country you live in; I've found that the closer to the coasts you get, the higher the prices, both in general and at sales.

• I've found that most clothing items around here (central Iowa) range anywhere from 25¢ to $5.00.  Well, I should say most reasonable pricing is within that range.  I've come across sales where they're asking $15 and $20 for a fancy little girl's dress- if you're that attached to something or feel like it's worth that much, you should consider taking it to a consignment shop.  I generally get my kids' shirts for 25¢ to $3 (if it's a really nice, heavy sweater), and pants for 50¢ to $3.  Coats go up to about $10, but they need to be in great shape to ask that much.  If your clothing has holes or shows heavy wear or stains, you can make it really inexpensive, but chances are it probably won't sell no matter what.

• If you're getting a lot of foot traffic but nobody's buying anything, chances are your prices are too high.

• You can get those stickers that say 25¢, 50¢, $1, etc at Wal-Mart, you can use little pieces of masking tape and write your own prices in (and your initials if it's a joint sale with friends), or just put up some poster boards with prices listed:  "All shirts: 50¢, All Kitchen Items: 75¢, Hardcover Books: $1."  As long as you have a clear and easy-to-follow pricing system.  But PLEASE don't do one of those "All Prices Are Negotiable!  Make Me An Offer, and We'll Come Up With a Price!" things.  ANNOYING.   

And Don't Forget

• Have plenty of small bills and coins: Lots of ones, fives, and tens, and quarters, too, if you've marked your stuff for 25 or 50¢.

• If it's really hot out that day, consider offering free water or cups of lemonade (or if you have kids, help them set up a little lemonade and cookie stand, with lemonade for 25¢ and 2-3 cookies in baggies for around 50¢).  If it's colder, try hot chocolate.  

• Don't sell your underwear.  Just don't.  Throw it away.

• Make your sale as long as you can.  Anymore, the standard seems to be Friday mornings and/or afternoons through Sunday afternoons, although some start on Thursdays and some choose to end it on Saturdays.  The longer the sale, the greater the likelihood you're going to get rid of everything.

• Smile!  Be friendly!  I don't care if you've had a terrible day/week/life, I don't care if you don't really want to be there, I don't care if you don't like human beings in general.  If you want people to buy your junk, you need to be nice to them.  It will not kill you to show some kindness for two days, and come Monday, you can go back to your miserable little existence. 

Okay, my fellow garage salers.  What did I forget?

Random Thoughts

As we knew it would be, it was an extremely busy weekend.  As a result, my mental processes are all discombobulated and my thoughts are scattered.  I feel like if I could just catch hold of one, I'd be able to pin it down and work it into something coherent.

Since that doesn't seem likely, how about a fun list to help me make some sense of what's going on in my head?  And you lucky dogs can come along for the ride.

• We (and by "we," I mean Derek and his dad) ripped the cabinets out of our kitchen.  We discovered a couple layers of awesome wallpaper, awesome linoleum, plaster, scary holes, and wood paneling.  I'd love to see what this kitchen looked like in the 60's; if the wallpaper and flooring are any indication, I'd say pretty darn amazing.  And by amazing I mean incredibly ugly.

• When Derek's parents generously offered to give us the cabinets out of their rental property that had burned down (well, except for the kitchen, of course), I said, "Yes, please!"  Do you know how much kitchen cabinets cost?  Well, neither do I, but I do hear they're really freaking expensive.  

• Although the cabinets made it through the fire, they are coated in a thin layer of soot, which is not so surprisingly difficult to get off.  After watching my old standby of vinegar and water fail miserably, I was contemplating using an actual manufactured cleaner (gasp!), when I decided to try give my magic eraser a try.  Let me tell you what, the person that named that product was no marketing genius; those things seriously have some kind of magical properties- I wouldn't be surprised to find that J.K. Rowling herself had written them into existence.  

• After Derek's parents stayed way later than they intended, re-hooking up our dishwasher, sink, etc, they finally headed back to Kansas.  Ten minutes after they left, Caedmon found a container of screws and created two large piles of them- one on the floor in front of the back door, the other by the front door.  I can't help but feel that this was no accident, and that the poor child may have inherited some of his mother's paranoia.  His sharp screw-booby trap reminded me rather forcefully of my sister's- only hers involved upside-down shoes, sharp high heels pointing upward to ward off any intruders.  While I won't say precisely which parent we inherited this tendency from, I will say it's not my mom that sleeps with a gun under her pillow.

• I was again reminded of just how useless I am when it comes to home improvement.  I'm terrible with power tools and have a tendency to break things.  My major contributions to the weekend involved sweeping the floor every ten minutes in an effort to appear useful and whimpering every time Derek asked me to go down to the basement for something.

• What does the expression, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" mean?  What's a gift horse?  Is it like the Easter bunny, breaking into your house to leave you unhealthy gifts, or more like the tooth fairy, giving you money in exchange for body parts?  Can anyone enlighten me?

• Shortly after midnight last night, Adelaide woke Derek and me up by knocking on our bedroom door, crying softly.  She said her ear hurt and she couldn't sleep due to the pain.  I gave her some Tylenol, water, and sympathy, and tucked her back into bed.  After eventually falling back asleep, I had a nightmare, in which I took Adelaide to the doctor the next morning, and when he inspected her ear, instead of an infection, he found a cancerous tumor.  After a drawn-out illness, Adelaide died.  I woke to a sopping wet pillowcase; I had been crying in my sleep.  When we actually went to the doc this morning, there was no tumor in her ear.  Nor was there any infection.

• Derek's folks also took our children home after the first church service Sunday morning, which allowed me to sit with Derek in the video room during second service while he directed the video broadcast of our church's Easter service.  It was the closest thing we've had to a date since last November.  

• Garage sale season has once again begun.  I've already found some really cool- and really cheap, which only adds to its cool factor- stuff.  I won't bore you with the details.  Not today, anyway.  I'll save that for another post that you can already plan on skipping now.

Let's Make a Deal

I have an idea.

Let's go to someone's house and rifle through their cast-off belongings.  You know, the things they're trying to get rid of and out of their own house.  Oh, and let's pay them for these items that they don't even want anymore.

WHO'S WITH ME?

It sounds kind of crazy, right?  Maybe even a little bit gross.

But you know what?  I don't care.  Because I love garage sales.

Garages sales, yard sales, tag sales, whatever you call them in your neck of the woods.  I love them.

It's gotten to the point where someone can't even compliment my children's clothing without my feeling the compulsive urge to tell them exactly where I got it and how much I paid for it.  Sometimes I even include the brand name if I feel like I got a really good deal and am feeling extra- annoying that day.

"Adelaide has on a cute jacket today."

"Thanks!  I got it at a garage sale FOR A DOLLAR.  It's a Gap jacket, and it was $1.  Did I mention I only paid a dollar for it?"

For someone who can't remember half of what I need to get done today, let alone this week, I have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of how much I paid for garage sale finds.  I can go through each of our children's wardrobes and my kitchen cabinets and tell you exactly how much each item cost, and usually where I found it.  White milk glass cakestand, $2, from that nice old lady down the street who was downsizing.  Pink Children's Place cardigan, $2, upscale neighborhood in Ankeny.  Vintage beaded handbag (Christmas present for Adelaide in a couple weeks), $2.50, older couple escaping the Iowa winters and moving to Florida.

As fun as it would be for me to continue this list, I'll spare you.

It's gotten to the point where I have trouble shopping for new products.  "Three dollars?  Three dollars!  They expect me to pay three dollars for a t-shirt!  And it's not even a nice brand!  Gosh, Wal-Mart has gotten expensive!"

It's one of my complaints about winter.  To you un-initiated, winter is garage sale off-season.  Sure, you might be able to find one here or there, but they're often in people's homes, and I'm way too paranoid for that business.

But I have found a solution.  Something to get me through the paucity of garage sales that make up the winters here in the North.

It's a swap shop, and it's on Facebook.

I'm not a real big FB person.  There's way too much personal information and way too few filters, to my mind.  One big positive it now has in it's favor, however, are the swap shop pages.  My area has one, and it allows people to post photos and descriptions of things they want to sell.  I peruse our local shop several times a week, and have thus far netted six name-brand sweaters for $15 for Atticus, and a free 7' artificial Christmas tree in a nice Rubbermaid storage bin (and when I went to pick it up from the sweet older couple who had posted it, they threw in a Christmas wreath with door hanger, and two sleeves of ornaments-for free!).

Again, I could go on and on, but I won't.

True, it's not the same as a good garage or estate sale, but it's enough to get me through.  I liken it to a nicotine patch for people who are trying to quit smoking for winter, but plan on starting back up in the spring.  Or something.


And hey, it's only five short months until the Huxley City-Wide Garage Sale- which is like Christmas for people like me!

This Is A Good Story

Today we went to the Huxley City-Wide Garage Sale.

I love garage sales.  Or, as they called them in Connecticut, tag sales.

Crazy Connecticutians.

I bought all kinds of cute bargain clothing for the kids, and this for Adelaide's bedroom at Christmas-time:

Derek wasn't too impressed.  He doesn't really go for tacky Christmas decorations.

The End.