Message Board problem

My message board is having technical difficulty...hopefully it will be fixed soon. I'm not going to start up a back-up board until I hear news about how long the downtime will be.

Buys last few days

Went to a few yardsales yesterday (Friday yardsales are very rare here). And bought this fish windsock decoration. It was brand new and never assembled - the original price was $26.99, I paid $4. And bought another Little Tikes wagon ($10) for my son, it's nicer than my other Little Tikes wagon. At Smile I bought two old (1940's) University of Maryland college yearbooks. $2 each. I never see yearbooks for sale, so I felt compelled to buy them.

Today went to a few yardsales and an estate sale. I bought a nice lamp for .10 - yes, .10! It doesn't have a lampshade though (but I'm sure I can find one cheap at a thrift store). Also bought a Mary Moo Moo figurine for .10 and a cow bobblehead for .10. The bobblehead is a particular brand that my mom buys at gift stores, so that was a good find. And at the estate sale I bought a bunch of full bottles of various cleaners for $1.50 - cans of Scotchgard, Shout, Armstrong floor cleaner, Spot Shot, Rug Doctor Pet Stain remover, full can of Lysol etc - all for $1.50.

In the afteroon, I took my son to a trick-or-treating event in a local park Ann Marie Garden . They get about 50 vendors to set up booths along the trail and give out candy. The admission cost is $1 per child or a can of nonperishable food. The park is affiliated with the Smithsonian Institute, so they do have a bunch of sculptures on loan. Admission is free, except like today, when I had to bring a can of food.

Missed out on a pizza bargain...

I really don't pay attention to football much at all. But in our house we root for the Vikings, not the local teams (the Redskins or Ravens) - but shush don't tell anyone, I don't want my house TP'ed on Halloween! Well anyways, at our local Papa John's pizza, every week during football season they have a promotion. For every touchdown the Redskins get during a game, the next day you can get a free topping on a pizza. And if they win, the toppings are doubled. Well anyways, because of all the touchdowns last game, on Monday I could have gotten a 14 topping pizza for the plain cheese pizza price. Can you imagine 14 toppings on a pizza??? I was reading about it, and Papa Johns was telling people that getting all 14 toppings would result in an inadequately cooked pizza. I will have to pay attention to the Redskin scores from now on.

And speaking of the Redskins, I met a Hogette today and got a free autographed poster and football card - LOL! For some reason, the Hogette that lives in our little town was at Smile (in full Hogette regalia), making an appearance and giving aways posters. Had him personalize the poster to The Yard Sale Queen and the card to my son.





Heck, even when I actually met a pro football player in person I never thought to get an autograph. Many years ago when I was flying first class (I had a free upgrade coupon), I sat next to Dave Meggett when he was with the New York Giants. Very nice - he even ordered a rum and coke and gave me the rum bottle to stick in my purse for later. I love my rum and cokes! Actually what was pretty funny was that my husband was actually sitting back in coach at the time (he didn't have an upgrade coupon) and here I was chatting away with a pro football player.

Anyhow, didn't buy much today. Bought a .25 spoonrest to replace the one my husband broke and a $1 baby sling for ebay.

Spent $17.50 yesterday

Went to Smile yesterday and spent more than usual. Above is a few things I bought, $1 McCoy planter and two pairs of Easy Spirit slingback shoes ($2 a pair). No, they aren't mismatched, I bought a black pair and a tan pair, but only took a picture of one of each. Also bought a navy blue blazer/jacket for my son. It was more than I normally spend ($5) but it was in perfect condition and from Nordstrom. It's too big for him now, but will fit in a few years. I always buy things like this for him and put away for the future. I'm sure he'll need to dress up occasionally when he's older and I think its good to have some items like this on hand, so I don't have to run out and pay full price. Also bought a fancy Christmas dress for a little girl ($3) for ebay. I know this doesn't add up to $17.50, but I can't remember what else I bought.

No plans on doing any shopping today.

Another new lamp

Went to Smile and Vintage Value today. At Smile I bought 10 Wade figurines at .25 each. I collect them, since they are small and I can find them pretty cheap. Since I am cutting down on my "collections", I can still collect Wades, since they are so small and don't take up much room. They are a small giveaway that comes in Red Rose Tea (I don't even drink tea.). You can see what they look like at Red Rose Tea

At Vintage Value, it was a .30 clothing day. I bought 4 pieces including a like new Girl Scout Leader sweatshirt (for ebay) and an orange t-shirt for my son. I got a notice saying that his school is having a "Harvest Day" on October 31. Costumes are not allowed that day. No parade around the parking lot. Sheesh - his old school allowed Halloween parties and costume parade. Well anyways, his new school wants children to wear orange and black on Oct. 31. Oh boy, does that sound like fun.

Well anyways, at Vintage Value I bought this awesome floor lamp for $4! The camera flash washed out the beige color of the ribbed lampshade. Has a cracked glass (?) decorative thing at the center. As I waited in line to pay for it, several people commented on what a nice looking lamp it is. Here is a photo of my new lamp, and the photo below is the old lamp which it is going to replace. My old lamp is at least 17 years old, the gold is discoloring at the base and the shade has some paint splatters. Wanna buy it? It will be at my next yardsale.

Oh, I forgot to mention, about the "rumage" sale sign I saw, I'm going to be sending a copy of it to the guys at ThUnderground Films. They are looking for pics of funny or unusual yardsale type signs. See my website for more details: click here

I also forgot to mention what I bought at yardsales this past Saturday. I had my son with me, so I didn't go to many. I bought: $2 lead crystal decanter, a large 6 drawer plastic upright storage dresser (I love storage...). Paid $3. Later in the day, I went to BJ's Warehouse and happened to see a similar but smaller one for $19.99

Also bought a nice Welcome sign for $2 (painted on a piece of heavy slate), got a fancy fake diamond ring for free and 17 music CDs for .10 each. I had picked out about 10 when I saw the ".25 each" sign. But then when the seller was ringing me up, she said "oh, how about just .10 each". I love it when sellers reduce the price on their own. Anyhow, when she said that, I said I'd get the rest too. And they are all pretty decent CDs of mainstream artists (Bon Jovi, Janet Jackson, Bonnie Raitt, etc.)

My bargain today happened while at Food Lion. At the meat counter, a meat clerk was marking down a big bin of 93% lean hamburger to about $1 a pound. I bought 9 lbs of it. It was NOT past the sell-by date. I'll freeze it.

More about our trip

I finally downloaded the pics I took of our trip to Wisconsin (to attend a wedding). The wedding was held in a little town outside of Milwaukee. I finally got to go to the Taste of Home (magazine) visitor's center and the surrounding stores and had lunch at the nearby restaurant with my mother-in-law from San Pedro and my Wisconsin sister-in-law.. I bought a few things at the Reiman Publications store but spent less than $10.

On our drive there, we stayed overnight in Dayton, Ohio and went to the park at the river and saw their big fountain. Since it was late in the season, everything else was closed.

The wedding was held on a Saturday afternoon, so in the morning, I had nothing really to do...except go to a few yardsales! As it turned out, it was raining in Maryland that day, so I didn't miss any good yardsales back home. One thing I noticed about Wisconsin, is that they call their yardsales and garage sales "Rummage sales", or even in at least one case, "Rumage" Sale.

There were only a few sales, and I only found one with stuff worth buying (no, I didn't buy a big Packers blow up - that sale didn't have anything I wanted). That day I bought a cut glass pitcher for .25, a pair of sexy Aerosole shoes ($1) and a bunch of VHS for .25 each, including one of the old show: Ma and Pa Kettle. And when I went to Smile this week, what did I find? Another VHS of Ma and Pa Kettle, so now I have two to put together and sell on ebay.

The wedding was fun. Jacob and I viewed the wedding from a special sound proof booth...haha. Geez, I wonder why.

On the way back, we stopped briefly in Chicago to visit one of my internet emails friends who I have met a few times before. Took some pics of the Sears Tower while driving past....it takes a lot of skill to photograph the Tower while it's being partially obscured by a tractor trailer.

Just got back from Wisconsin

We took a roadtrip to Wisconsin to attend a niece's wedding. Will write more later. Oh and of course I went yardsailing in Wisconsin on Saturday and bought a few things. And of course I took lots of pics.

Geez, what the &*$%@#! is going on with all the stupid spam comments??? (see the below post with the 12 spam comments). I changed the settings on the blog, so from now on, if someone wishes to leave a message, you have to manually type in a code first. A real pain but maybe that will help with the stupid spam comments.

Today my favorite church had their semi-annual yardsale. They have awesome prices - so many things are marked .05 or .10. I spent $3.50.

My favorite buy of today was a pair of lamps for our nightstands. Since we got rid of our old bed with the built-in lights, we needed lamps for reading in bed. I love them (paid $5 for both), here's what they look like: