Yardsale Buys today and Cypress Swamp visit

Been raining the past few days so not many last minute yardsales. Only went to a few sales and mostly bought food items. Strange but true. Bought a 12 pack of Diet Coke with Splenda for .50, a big box of Act Popcorn (16 packages of popcorn) for $1, a gallon Arizona iced tea .25 (I hate tea in any form, but my husband drinks it). Also bought a bunch of kids books at .10 each and a big spool of fencing wire for $1 - to fix where the Whiskey dog keeps digging out.



The other day was awfully hot and humid - so I figured the best place to go was the local Cypress swamp of course ;-). Above is a pic. That's the way I like to enjoy nature - see it but not get dirty. No charge to visit the cypress swamp and nature center.

Greetings from a pretty ghetto area of Southern Maryland!

The local news is all over a story about Hilary Duff refering to a nearby town as "pretty ghetto" in an issue of Elle magazine. Hilary Duff Joel Madden Good Charlotte article

Actually the local DJ's (Don & Mike) refer to Waldorf as the "Armpit of Southern Maryland" which is pretty accurate. The Waldorf I know has lots of sprawl, townhouses and traffic. I do like the Dollar Tree that Waldorf has - man, that is so ghetto!! Would have been really funny if she had said that the area was "pretty armpit-like" rather than "pretty ghetto".

Boat ride on the W. B. Tennison

Haven't bought any bargains lately (hard to really shop at the thrift store with my son) so if I don't have any bargains to post about, I'll just talk about what's going on at yardsalequeen.com headquarters.

Yesterday I took my son out on a boat ride, my son loves it and it lasts about an hour. It's $11 for the two of us. He'd like to go out on it everyday, but I told him we'd do it once a week during the summer. Usually they only do one boat ride per day, but yesterday was a busy tourist day at the museum so they did a second cruise. We got on the second cruise and there was only about 15 people on it which was nice. The boat ride goes under the long two-lane bridge that we regularly go over. My husband wants to buy a sailboat and go out sailing on the weekends, and I'm like, well if we did I wouldn't be going out on Saturday mornings, that's for sure!

If you happen to see the current issue of Woman's Day (dated July 11 and it has popsicles on the cover), look at page 15. That's where they put my interview and yardsalequeen.com is mentioned. A much better spot than last summer when I was all excited about yardsalequeen.com being in Woman's Day and it turned out to be a two sentence blurb buried in the middle of a article.

Yardsale Buys

My favorite buy from yesterday yardsales was a squirrel proof bird feeder ($2). It has a lever on it and when lightweight birds land on it they can eat the food, but when a heavy squirrel gets on it, the lever falls and blocks the food. Well in theory anyways that's how it's supposed to work. The seller had other birdfeeders too, but the thing was, there was still seed in them all. Yuck. The cheap birdseed too - millet.

Went to Target yesterday and returned a $15 blow up pool that I bought for my son. I inflated it (thank god we have an air compressor) and by the end of the day, it had a hole in it. I knew when I saw how cheap the plastic was that it wouldn't last long, but one day???!!!! I thought I threw the receipt away, but I found it so I was able to get a refund. Went to K-mart and bought a pool that I think is a little more heavy duty for $24. I hardly ever shop at K-mart but a similar pool at Target would have been $30. I swear you walk into our K-mart that we have here, and it feels like you've entered a time-warp and it's 1973 again.

Also went to a jewelry/gift store since they mailed out coupons for a free watch battery replacement.

Today Jacob and I went to the museum again (they had extra activities going on today due to Father's Day) and he and I were able to go out on a little rowboat for a while.

Calvert Marine Museum Solomons Maryland

Since school is out, we've been going a lot to the little museum near our house (The Calvert Marine Museum). I bought a family membership in May during a half-priced membership day (Normally $50, I paid $25). Jacob likes going to see the fish and the otters. We also climb up to the top of the Drum Point Lighthouse. The above picture is of Jacob outside the otter habitant and the Drum Point lighthouse is reflected in the glass. We are definitely getting our money's worth out of the membership fee. If I was to take Jacob there - and not have the membership card - it would cost $9 for the both of us. So since we usually go at least 3 times a WEEK, we definitely got our money's worth.

Free twin bed (only cost us $99)

I visit a local community type website that has free classified ads, you know I have to check out which yardsales are added every week. Well anyways they also have a "freebie" section where people post stuff they have for free. The other day I saw someone was giving away a 3 year old boxsprings for a twin bed (they switched to a bunk bed so they no longer needed the boxsprings). And that was exactly what my son needed. Jacob sleeps on a twin bed - the exact same one I had when I got my own room in the third grade! Really - the same frame, headboard, boxsprings and mattress. Geez, you would think a twin bed would last a lot longer than 35 years - just kidding. The fabric on the boxsprings finally tore and my son was pulling out all the padding and the actual springs were visible - yes, it was made during a time when actual springs were in boxsprings.

So I called about the boxsprings and we picked it up the other night - looked brand new and it was made by Serta. So then we stopped at BJ's Warehouse (since it was nearby) and saw that we could get a new mattress for only $99 so since we were in the truck, it just made sense to get one. So for $99 my son got a new bed (still has the same headboard that I had as a kid).

Before anyone suggests that I check out freecycle.org - yes, I know all about them. I just never had any luck with it. Seemed like the "good" stuff was gone quickly and you really had to read the emails ASAP. Also seemed there were a lot of greedy people on it. Someone would post something like: I have these items to give away, let me know if you can use any of it: a pack of diapers, a hammer, 10 cans of lima beans, 5 kittens, 2 yards of polyester material, 3 spare tires, 5 big landscaping rocks and a hairdryer. Then someone would say "I'll take it all!" Come on, how could anyone need all of those things. People were just getting greedy and all the constant emails were annoying. That's why I prefer the little local website where I found the boxsprings.

My Bargain at CVS Pharmacy : Razors .20 a package

I had some coupons for free packages Bic Shavors Comfort that were due to expire on 6/18 and I couldn't find them at the grocery store or Target, but I found them at CVS the other day. The coupons value was for up to $5.29 off a package, but at CVS they were on sale for $3.99 - which was good since the regular price at CVS was $5.89. So since I had to pay tax, they were just .20 a package!

Results of my pink shoes experiment

A few months ago I mentioned here that I couldn't resist buying a pair of pink suede shoes for .50 - for my son. They looked just like a similar beige pair that he likes and wears often. They are definitely not pink anymore. I put both liquid shoe polish and waxy shoe polish on them so now they are a one of a kind creation.

Got Free Sierra Mist at Food Lion grand opening

A new Food Lion grocery store opened up in our town earlier this week so I stopped in. While I'm glad I have a new store near to my house (3 miles away), there's another Food Lion that is 5 miles away. So that means they are ony 2 miles apart. I know in big metropolitan areas, having multiple grocery stores near each other is common, but geez, this is a pretty podunk area that I live in.

Anyhow at the store there was a display, "Free Samples Sierra Mist" and the Sierra Mist guy was stocking it up and told me to "help myself to as many as I would like". I questioned him what he meant by that and he reiterated that I could have as many as I want and that he had a lot to give away. He really seemed like he wanted people to take a lot. He commented something to the effect of the quicker he could give it away the better for him or something. So I helped myself. Do you remember that Sierra Mist commercial where the dog is laying in front of the air conditioner with it's legs spread? I think my dog Whiskey looks just like that dog.

Stay in School, don't loose your education!

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll notice that every so often I find a funny ad that I want to share. Usually it's an ad that I found funny (especially when it wasn't intended to be funny) or just weird. Well the above ad is sort of sad in a way, bad spelling for a local educational supply company that calls themselves "the learning experts". Their ad states: Your child may loose 80% of what they learn in class while away from School." So they used "loose" when they meant "lose" and they capitalized "school" when it shouldn't have been. Plus, the sentence just sounds bad to begin with. They should have said "Your child may lose 80% of what they learn in school over summer vacation". Or something like that. (Anyhow, I heard that 63.9% of statistics quoted in surveys are made up. See I even made that up! :) And yes, I know I have typos in the title for this posting - I did that on purpose.

Attempted Child Abduction at Yardsale

Someone emailed me this story about a man who tried to abduct a child during a yardsale: Attempted Child Abduction at Yard sale

free garage sale classified ads

Since it rained this morning, I had some "extra" time today so I finally got around to making a place on my message board for people to post free ads for yardsales and garagesales. Personally, I have no idea how successful it will be but I know in the past people have advertised their yardsales on my message board. So now there's a specific place for yardsale ads. The link to my message board is over there on the left.

We had a pretty big storm last night so I think that scared a lot of people into not having a sale today. Only found 2 yardsales in my area, which typically I would find a dozen or so. Where I live a lot of people don't place an ad in the newspaper, they just put up signs around their neighborhood in strategic spots. Didn't buy anything exciting today.

Been spending money left and right

Well my son graduates from Kindergarten on Monday, so I've been spending this week doing a lot of thrift shopping and real store shopping. My son doesn't handle thrift shopping very well, so I don't thrift shop much during the summer (I still yardsale tho).

Got the AC fixed (service and diagnosis was $95 flat, I was expecting extra "labor" charges). Turns out our thermostat was bad so tonight I bought a new one on ebay.

I joined BJ's Warehouse again. Ok, I know I mentioned in a previous post that it was silly to join BJ's when they keep giving free shopping days. Ok, well they haven't done any free shopping days in a while and they sent me a free $10 off coupon on re-joining. I still hadn't planning on joining but then they sent me a save $20 coupon on re-joining. So I did re-join on June 1, so that means it will be good till the end of June 2007. So even though it's a years membership, I'll really get 13 months. Then I'll let it expire again. I've found that many companies really don't do anything for their long-term customers, they are more interested in getting "new" customers or pursuing former customers. Another example would be one of my newspaper subscriptions. They always have "deals" for new customers but the old customers get screwed regarding the rates. Sometimes it works out to be cheaper by letting subscriptions expire for a bit and then getting it again as a "new" customer.

When I was at BJ's, I did buy my husband his Father's Day gift, they have a huge bucket of David's Sunflower seeds for $19.99.

Found a rare Friday yardsale (moving sale) today. We don't have many Friday sales around here. Bought 5 bottles of stuff for the yard (Roundup, concentrated weed killer, gallon of deck cleaner and some other stuff), all for $2. I've found that when people have moving sales, they rarely want to pay to "move" household stuff like cleaners and they are usually *dirt* cheap.