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:

I went to Smile both on Wednesday and Thursday. I sorta collect old tin spinning tops (if they are cheap enough) and I found one for $1 this week. Also bought a vintage (?) apron with embroidery for $2 (for ebay). Also bought some Baby Einstein vhs for .50 each.

Almost bought a Sony S90 digital camera on clearance at Staples today, with a coupon it would have been $209. I was going to buy it but they didn't have any more left. Sheesh, then why do they still have it on display?? That irks me when stores do that.

Free Hat with Haircut

I spotted this ad in our local newspaper and it amused me. Ok, you all know I love free stuff...but this ad doesn't give me confidence to get a haircut done tomorrow if they have to give you a free hat afterwards....

My buys from last Saturday:

.25 bottle of Canoe cologne
.25 each, bottles of Estee Lauder products (foamy gel cleanser, deep clean mask, lotion etc)
.25 small cookbook: BBQ with Budweiser
.50 large baggy full of Mighty Beanz toys
.25 two brand in package (fake) diamond tennis bracelets

Then at a church yardsale (where nothing was marked), I filled up a grocery bag full of stuff and then at checkout, the cashier would name a price. My bag of stuff was only $2. In my bag, I bought two brand new packages of freezer storage containers, Blues Clues software, a new zipper pull with my son's name on it, a Plankton (Spongebob character) watch in decorative container, a few books, a Tweety bird ceramic spoonrest, several small toys, a button that says "I am not your maid" and some other junk.

Buys this week

I went to Smile on Wed, Thurs and today (Friday) and bought stuff each day. (They are closed Sun-Tues so that is why I never have any Smile purchases on those days - haha). On Wednesday I bought some vintage melted plastic Halloween decorations (paid .50 each, they are destined for ebay since there are a lot of people who collect vintage Halloween). I also bought a bunch of women's books (by authors Lori Wick and Beverly Lewis) for .50 each that should also sell well.

Also bought some vintage souvenirs (.50 for the Bermuda tray and .75 for both of the Florida ones). I love Bermuda - I went once back in my 20's for Spring Break and would love to go back someday.

Also bought some Beatle's music. For $2 I bought "Snoopy's Beatles Classiks on Toys". It features the Peanut's Gang doing renditions of Penny Lane, She Loves You, Yesterday etc. all done on children's musical toys.

For $4, I bought two nice storage bins with hinged lids. The kind that small stores use when restocking their shelves. They were probably stolen from somewhere and somehow ended up at my thrift, where they had them for sale.

On Wednesday I went to V V (it was a .30 day). I found a great Dockers Golf shirt in my husband's size for .30. Also bought a vintage Rainbow Brite doll (.50) and a vintage Halloween witch decoration for .50.

Today at Target my bargain was on some clearanced Tilex cleaner for $3.48 - it was specially packaged and included two Clorox Bleach pens. I bought two. I just love those Clorox Bleach pens and it was cheaper than buying the bleach pens individually, and plus I got the bottles of Tilex.

In the mail I got another free coupon for a can of Starbucks's Doubleshot. I got one a few weeks ago when I filled out the info at www.doubleshot.com (click on where it says "This one's on us" and today for some reason, they sent me another.

Also in the mail was a certificate for a 60 day free membership at our local BJ's Warehouse. That works for me! I always hear good things about shopping at Costco, but we don't have one anywhere close, so BJ's is the next best thing. Pretty soon I'll have some new local stores to shop at, we are getting an Old Navy, Best Buy and a Ross. Right now if I wanted to shop at one of those, I'd have to drive 50 miles. But soon, they'll be within 20 minutes of my house.

My dog came home for a visit tonight. He's been steadily living at his adopted family's house for about the past month. His other family lives a few streets away and every so often he comes "home". After living here for 10 years he decided he wanted to live elsewhere and found a new family on his own. He has been going back and forth for well over 2 years now.

Yippee, tomorrow is Saturday!!!

$1 worth of junk

In a post from last week I mentioned buying $1 worth of toys at V V. Well, above is a picture of what I got. Some of the things included a 80's vintage knockoff Strawberry Shortcake type doll, a bunch of vehicles, some Little Tikes toys, a Rescue Hero guy, some Simon games and other toys.

Also in a previous post I mentioned the crappy spelling at my local Food Lion. Well I called their headquarters to ask about it and they were very surprised about the spelling on the sign and would look into it. Well, its been a few weeks and the sign is still there, so I took a pic of it. Shopping carts are provided 4 .....UGHHH!



Not planning on doing any shopping today. I should get busy and start some ebay auctions. Looking forward to watching the Big Brother finale tonight. I'm hoping for Maggie to win - never liked Ivette. Of course I wish that Kaysar or Janelle would win, but that's not going to happen.

I didn't do any store shopping today, but did manage to some free flowering bulbs from brecks.com. I'm on their mailing list and so is my mom (who has ordered from them in the past). Well in early August I got their latest catalog in the mail which had a special coupon on front: spend $25 and get $25 worth of stuff free. Well when I visited my mom in early August in New York, I saw HER catalog which had a much better coupon "$25 Gift Coupon - no strings attached". She had it ready to go in the trash since she said she wasn't going to order anything. I pointed out the coupon to her and she still told me she didn't want to order anything and told me to take it. So today I ordered some pink lily bulbs and with shipping it came to less than $25 so it was totally free. I ordered online and instead of it being shipped to her, it's going to be shipped to me.

Some of my buys this week

On Wednesday I think I had a "personal best". I hit 4 thrift shops in one day. If you saw where I live (out in the boonies), you would realize for me it's not an easy feat. Went to Smile (forgot what I bought, but I know I bought something of course). Then went to SPOT (a Humane Society thrift) and paid .75 for a talking SpongeBob Squarepants (already have one, but something went bad on the speaker). Then to Catholic Charities (where I bought nothing). Then to a thrift called HELP - which was having a .25 any pair of shoes sale. I bought my son a pair of watershoes and a new pair of men's Chuck Taylor high tops. Also bought a vintage Lands' End windbreaker ($1) for a newbie boater. The right arm is marked Starboard and the left, of course, Port. So with tax, I spent $1.57

With the price of gas, I also coordinated other errands that day, so it wasn't like I was just driving around trying to go to as many thrifts as possible.

Had a routine dentist appointment yesterday, which is located near V V. So even though it wasn't a .30 sale day at V V, I went anyways. Turns out they were having a "fill a bag of small toys for $1 sale". So I bought a big bag of toys, most is stuff I can resell at my own yardsale. I'll try to show a picture of it early next week. When I left the dentist I had to schedule my next appointment for a cleaning, so I made it for a Tuesday (rather than a Thursday), since Tuesdays are .30 days at V V.

Today my husband was off work and he wanted to go to the mall (an hour's drive away for us). We are going to a wedding next month and he needed either a new suit or new sportscoat/jacket. Since he's a big guy, he can't shop for that kind of clothing at a typical department store. So we ended up at Men's Wearhouse (man, they really want to rope you in and buy the whole "look". I think spending $29.99 for a tie that won't get much use is ridiculous!) So anyways, the bill came to +$250 for just a jacket and a shirt.

But even I bought something at the mall!!! Yes, even I shop at malls occasionally. What did I buy? Maybe a new outfit or handbag??? Heck no. At Dick's Sporting Goods I spent $15 on 80 pounds of shelled corn to feed our backyard squirrels. Apparently hunters use shelled corn as bait to attract deer - which I think is very sneaky and should be considered "cheating". I personally am not a fan of hunting.

Last Saturday my son (5 years old) went yardsaling with me - I normally don't take him since I can cover more ground without him. He only found one thing that he wanted - a very masculine studly stallion horse (.10). Ok, Ok, I know it looks like a girly My Little Pony knockoff, but I assure you it's meant for a boy.

I also bought the above funky vintage polyester "Tony Alamo of Nashville" western shirt (.50). The back has more embroidery and rhinestones. It's handwashable so I'll wash it and then put it up on ebay. At a church yardsale I bought a vintage Mattel Wizzer set ($1) - identical to what I had as a kid. Well actually I still have my childhood toy, so now I have two. They'll be on ebay eventually.

Yesterday I had some shopping to do (yesterday was the last day of my free pass to BJ's Warehouse, so I wanted to pick up a few things there before the pass expired). We used to be a member of BJ's Warehouse - one opened up locally about 2 years ago, and they had a special promotion for memberships when it first opened. But since there's just the 3 of us in our family, it's really not worth the annual membership fee so we let it expired. Maybe we'll join again in the future if we need to make a big purchase there.

So anyways, since I was close to V V, I went there too (and it was .30 day - clothing is just .30 each). I bought 8 pieces of clothing ($2.40 total). A couple of tops for me, a pair of Dockers khakis for my son, some shirts for my son and a couple of baby items (for ebay), including a smocked Feltman Bros. baby outfit.

Today I am staying home and won't be buying anything.

Went to Smile and bought a few things: $1 decorative windsock for outside (you will never find a %*!?%$ windchime at my home, but I think the windsock is cool and of course it's quiet and not obnoxiously noisy like windchimes are). I absolutely hate windchimes. And for $2 I bought (for ebay) a pair of military maternity camouflage pants.

Then went to Ace Hardware - they had a bunch of stuff on sale that you could get free once you mailed in the rebate. So I got all the "free" stuff and it came to about $20 (a person could go broke saving money). Now I just got to mail in the rebate - which I know I will do since I am good about that.

Then went to McDonald's for lunch (used a coupon) and I tried one of their new premium chicken sandwiches. Ugh, never again. I think I could sue them and win for their misuse of the word "premium".

Well I found my camera so I thought I would take a pic of my new $8 umbrella, that actually matches the patio furniture. The new umbrella will replace my old Budlight umbrella which is rusty, dirty and of course didn't match.

Today was a day I stayed home and did not go to Smile. My husband drove to Virginia with a few coworkers to play golf at a particular course. At least they are all chipping in for gas. I could have driven his truck to Smile, but I just decided to stay home for a change. A woman came by and bought our old waterbed so I am glad to get rid of that.

I spent a good portion of the day organizing and counting the Campbells Soup Labels and Boxtops that I have (a little over 600). If I don't get any more, I am hoping it will be good enough to win the contest that I mentioned in the previous post.

Went to Smile and didn't find much - that was expected since they kinda got cleaned out due to their half priced sales last week. I did find a talking Dora the Explorer action figure ($1) for my son. If someone bought it for their daughter, it would be considered a doll, but since I bought it for my son, it's an "action figure" - haha. About 2 months ago he discovered watching Dora and loves it. We tivo'ed "Go Diego Go", so it will be interesting to see if he likes that too. I also bought a nice patio umbrella for $8. I misplaced my camera, so no pics today.

Also today I stopped by my son Jacob's old school. I wanted to check on the status of their annual Back To School Boxtops for Education/Campbells Soup Labels contest. Last year my son was the winner of the school's contest since he submitted the most: over 2,000 boxtops & labels. (As the winner he received a school logo t-shirt, some free goodies from the cafeteria, a visit from Principal to his class, etc). I posted a request on my website click here and lots of people from around the country donated them to me. Well this year, he's at a different school but I still want to do something special with all the labels & boxtops I received. So I checked with Jacob's former teacher and I plan on donating the labels & boxtops in the name of another special needs child (one of my son's former classmates, the child is blind and has some other disabilities). I think it would be great to have the winner of the school's contest again be a child in the "Special Needs Pre-K" class.

So....if you happen to have a stash of Boxtops for Education and/or Campbells Soup Labels and don't know what to do with them, I would love them!! The contest ends Sept. 20 - my info is on the link above.