Thrift Store Pet Peeves Arg!!!!

I had a bit of a problem with my computer last week but thankfully I am semi-back to normal. The only issue I have now is with my camera and getting new pictures on my computer.

Sooooo....until that is fixed by some miracle, I will have to go thru the thousands of my photos already on my harddrive and pick something out to talk about.

Today I pick: Thrift Store Pet Peeves. I have a bunch I could talk about, but here is one that really irritates me. Why do workers in thrift stores (and yardsales) put price stickers on things in very conspicuous places that may end up damaging the item when the label is removed?

Here is a picture of some vintage Charlie Brown & Snoopy plaques I bought a while back. I was tempted not to buy them since the store put large price tags right on the artwork which is just made of paper. The thrift store could have chosen to put the label on the back of the item, but no, they put it right smack dab on the front, where it can damage the item. Arg!!!!!



I knew because of my years of experience and mad skills I have in removing labels, I could probably remove the labels without damaging the plaques. Here's my plan of attack:

1. Start removal process very soon after acquiring object. The longer the sticker remains on, the harder it is to remove.

2. Summon my lady-in-waiting to retrieve hairdryer and official Tweezerman tweezers from royal bathroom.

3. Plug in said hairdryer and turn on low heat and aim it at label. After a few seconds, try to lift off a corner of the sticker with tweezers (while maintaining low heat on hairdryer). Once a corner gets lifted up, pull very gently to remove the rest of the label.

4. Have a drink and celebrate your success.

Well anyway, that's how I remove a price tag sticker. Your results may vary.

Adult Field Trip to Washington DC - National Air & Space Museum

Well again, there were no yardsales this past Saturday. Woe is me. But I managed to survive the day by drowning my sorrows at the open bar at a party hosted by my husband's place of employment. They know how to put on a party. This event was held at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington DC.

There were tons of things to do and not much time to do it. Eat, drink, be merry, see museum, watch Imax movies etc. All free, of course. Like I said before we thank you Lord for nuclear power! And since it was held in the evening when the museum is closed to the public, didn't have to deal or mingle with pesky tourists.

Looking down on the band and dance floor. This was early in the evening - people were too busy eating to dance - the dance floor filled up by the end of the night.




First thing I ate was a lobster lollipop.


This was called Shrimp Ouchy. It was shrimp yummy.


Risotto bar




omg - the desserts!!! Note to self - next time, line my large handbag with an empty gallon size Ziplock baggy. Or two.























Outside of the musuem

My old mirror mirror that is on the wall

Since I will be doing some minor remodeling to our powder room, I took some "before" pictures. It's very Circa 1992. We bought the house new in 1990, so I think I finally got around to taking down the crappy builder's grade medicine cabinet, adding the oh so fancy lighting fixture, painting, and putting up the dollar store peel n stick border around 1992 or so. And haven't done a thing since. I mean really, why mess with perfection? ha. But now the mirror is starting to age, at the bottom you can see where the reflective part of the mirror has gotten weird. It's like some cleaning chemical or something got behind the glass and started eating away at it.





I am keeping the sink and cabinet. I can never figure out why people go with those pedestal sinks. Not me. Where do they hide all their crap????

Mirror mirror soon to be on my bathroom wall

Here's one of my thrift store buys from the other day - a huge mirror for $10. I had better things to do today, so of course I asked my Lady-in-Waiting (having a Lady-in-Waiting is just one of my benefits of being Yardalequeen) to take the photo. So those muscular, well toned legs wearing fashionable grey pantaloons, fuzzy socks and thrift store Merrell brand shoes belong to her. Not me, of course.



It's been a good 20 years since our downstairs bathroom has had a facelift. So it might be about time for some minor remodeling. Like replace the lighting and the mirror, electric cover plates, remove the peel 'n stick wall border that I remember buying at a dollar store close-out etc etc. And it wouldn't hurt to give the bathroom a new coat of paint. (I bought a $5 gallon of a neutral colored Oops Paint at Ace Hardware.) Hey and guess what? The mirror looks all big and heavy in a cast iron frame, right? But it's not, it is big but not heavy - the frame is plastic! But I swear, it doesn't look like plastic and you can only tell if you touch it. And really, how often do you go around touching people's mirrors when you visit someone's house?

The Great Yard Sale Season of 2012 has officially opened!

I went to my first yardsale of 2012 (last weekend) so I know the yardsale season as officially begun. For $3 I bought a leather Stone Mountain handbag. Yes I know I already have the best handbag ever made which I currently still use and love but for $3, it doesn't hurt to have a little variety now and then.



And tomorrow I will shop at an indoor church yardsale, but then I have a feeling there may be a dry spell until springtime. But you never know.

I had a few other buys this week - from a thrift store. I was looking at our old rubbermaid kitchen sink dish drain the other night and thinking how old and gross it looked. And ta-da, just the next day I spot a brand new, never used one for $2.50.
I wish I had instead been looking at my old and gross mini-van and found a new one for $2.50.

Did anyone catch Storage Wars the other day where Barry Weiss found some old glass collectible fly catcher jars? The day after watching it, I found a blue glass fly catcher jar. The cashier had no idea what it was. I don't think it's old but for $1 I had to get it.

Oh and I bought an orange chair for $4. Depending on how the pictures turn out, my plan is to use it as a backdrop for when I take pics for ebay.

Cheers to a Great 2012!

I've been away. I would like to tell you I was visiting a vineyard and winery in the Tuscany region of France.





But I honestly cannot say that I was. I did however go to a local vineyard with a friend. Of course I used a coupon for a free wine tasting for 2 plus free wine glasses. The place and the grounds are much prettier when it's not wintertime and raining. Wine is not my adult beverage of choice, but I can manage to choke some down from time to time.

And I just got home from visiting my family in upstate New York for a while after Christmas. Plus I may have stopped in to their Salvation Army once or twice, just to browse, of course.

What a sucky day.

It's Saturday and there's no yardsales??? What's up with that!

Happy Festivus Everyone!

and now I will do an Airing of Grievances on how you, my blog readers, have disappointed me in the past year. In my earlier post, I told you I wanted you to buy me the $249 plus tax & shipping parade bracelet. Such a simple thing to do and you failed miserably. I was going to guess that at least I would receive a dozen or two of them, and not a single one has arrived! Phooey on you and you and you. And I was only planning on keeping one or two and ebaying the rest - because I'm generous that way. Shame shame shame on you.

So therefore I had to take matters into my own hand. I assumed (and rightly so) that you would disappoint me, so until I win the lottery, I bought myself a knockoff. So there. It's even imported! From exotic China!

Here's the one you were supposed to buy me: (which is now soldout on the BJs Warehouse website, so you can't even attempt to get into my good graces if you tried)




And this is the one I bought myself:


I hope you're happy. Now go enjoy the rest of Festivus!

My Christmas Troll Collection Expands

Somewhere in this castle is my Christmas Troll collection - so one day when I find them, I will have 3 more to add. The stuffed Santa troll is so ugly I had to have it. Plus, at .50, it was well within my budget. I bought the 2 other small trolls a few weeks ago for .25 each.

And today I bought a hardcover book - The Gospel According to Superman. Who says I'm not religious????!!!! It was in the kid's book section (kids books are normally .25 - and today was a half priced day, so I got 2 books for .25).



And here is one of my awesome buys from last week. I was donating items when another woman was donating this Berlin Sports wagon. I told one of the workers I was interested in it so they looked it over to price it. They decided that since it needed some work done on it - it is missing a screw - they would only charge $15 for it. Sold! If you were to buy it retail, it would *only* cost $189 at Toys R Us In my pic, it looks like it's missing one of the slats, but its laying down in the bed of the wagon.

One more day til Festivus!

Bargain Liquor and Mickey Mouse - what a combo!

There were no yard sales for me this past Saturday morning, so I had to get my bargain shopping fix elsewhere. On a couponing message board, I had read that Walgreens had $19.99 Christmas shirts ringing up at a .80 clearance price. So I had to check to see if my Walgreens had any. I found (and bought) two. Unfortunately, I only have one Walgreens near me so I cannot easily drive to other Walgreens to buy and hoard more.

Then leaving Walgreens, I saw a big "going out of business - everything 40% off" sign at a local gas station/convenience store. So I stopped in to see what they had. I hadn't been in that store in forever since I don't shop at gas station convenience stores (cuz everything is overpriced). When I buy gas, I just swipe my credit card at the pump so no need to go inside. Well what a surprise - it was a small liquor store inside. And at 40% off, I stocked up. It had been picked through already, so there were no large bottles of Johnny Walker for DH (so I had to settle for small bottles). The 1.75 liter bottles of Aged Cruzan rum were only $19.99 so, after the discount, they were $12 each. I would have bought more but 2 was all they had. The liter bottles of Myers were also $19.99 so $12 after discount. They also had a lot of generic cheapy type of liquor made by companies I have never heard of - which I passed up. Cruzan rum is from St. Croix - where we honeymooned and toured the Cruzan Rum distillery. For all the liquor in the pic, I ended up paying around $90. I will be all set for at least a month!

A Day in the Life of the Yardsalequeen (December version)

- Got up, made Jacob's lunch and got him on the school bus.

- Left the castle to get the royal vehicle's oil changed at Mr. Tire using my Groupon oil change coupon (paid $13 for the oil change and tire rotation coupon).

- while car was in the shop, walked to the nearby Staples and used $66.80 that I had in Staples Rewards credit to buy more printer ink and some other stuff.

- also browsed BJs Warehouse. Saw a $299 bracelet in the jewelry case that I liked. I see it's only $249 (+ tax & shipping) online (what a bargain - I really think you should buy it for me. Yes, I'm talking to you.) Here it is: Parade Bracelet Note to BJ's Warehouse advertising management: If you would like, you can send this item for me to review here on this super popular blog. With all those blingy, shiny gemstones, I think it would go well with my crown.

- picked up the car and drove to a nearby thrift where I spent around $5 on stuff. ($1 of it was a package of 2 ink cartridges which I will probably end up recycling at Staples for $4. Either that or I will ebay it for more).

- by this time, it was around 11am so I stopped at Quiznos and used my last Quiznos Groupon. If I remember right, I paid $2 each for 8 Quiznos sandwich coupons on Groupon. Got the sandwich "to go" so I didn't buy any soda - I have an electric cooler in my car full of canned sodas. Ate half the sandwich in the car and took the rest home for later.

- went to Old Navy to use my $20 Groupon coupon. Recently there was a nationwide Groupon for Old Navy - for $10 you could get $20 worth of merchandise. And since I had $10 in referral money in my account - I paid $0 for the Old Navy Groupon coupon. I bought 10 pairs of cozy socks (which were on sale for $2 each). I just had to pay .60 in sales tax. Will probably give as gifts.

- went to Bath & Body Works and used a 20% off your entire order coupon. I bought 2 things that were already on the 50% off clearance shelf.

- went to Target where I bought 4 boxes of Chex Rice cereal. On sale for $2.25 a box. And I had 2 coupons that were save $1 off 2 boxes. So I paid $7.00 for 4 boxes.

- went to Shoppers Food Warehouse, where they double coupons up to .99. I had some .75 off McIlhenny Tabasco sauce coupons. Price was $1.50 so I paid $0 for them when the coupons were doubled. Also bought a few other items (did not do a major grocery shopping trip).

- went to Kohls with my 20% off coupon. Plus I had a $10 off anything coupon which was only supposed to be good from Dec 1st - 10th. I asked at Customer Service if they would still honor it and they said yes. Bought a $5.99 winter themed doormat, a $6.99 gift for a child, plus some clearanced Fall dishtowels. Paid $4- something out of pocket.

- went to Walgreens. Got the Goody hair clips and the Salonpas pain patch (that are free this week with Register Rewards). I also *bought* a Revlon Top Speed nailpolish, which also was free ($3.99 on sale, minus $1 Revlon coupon which is in the coupon booklet by the Walgreens make-up counter) and received the $3.00 Register Reward (plus the Register Rewards for the Salonpas and Goody). I plan on giving the pain patch to my sister-in-law who uses them.

- went to Giant grocery store for a few things. Since I use the scanner gun to record my purchases, the scanner gun automatically gives me electronic coupons too. I've noticed that everyday it gives me a $1 electronic coupon to save $1 on any 4 Marchuan Ramen Noodles. So since individual packages are .27 each, I am able to get 4 for .08. Like almost everyday. Also bought packages of Betty Crocker Fun-da-middles cupcake box mixes for .84 each. The chocolate flavor was on clearance for $2.34 (the vanilla was still $3.19 a box). I had .75 coupons that doubled to $1.50. So $2.34 - $1.50 = .84 each. (Although Giant doubles coupons too, sometimes certain things are cheaper at Shoppers Food Warehouse so that is why I shop there occasionally).

- Returned to the castle and unloaded the royal vehicle.

- Jacob came home and took him to get his hair cut at Great Clips with a $6.99 coupon that was due to expire on the 18th. And yes, I do tip. I am thrifty but not cheap.

- then went to Papa Johns and picked up two free large 1 topping pizzas for dinner. A while back I won the coupons for free Papa Johns pizza at a Christmas bazaar. While waiting for the pizza to get done, walked around Food Lion where I bought a half-healthy Poinsettia plant that was on clearance for .50.

- did a blog post.

- thinking about what I want to buy tomorrow.

Changes to Yardsalequeen Message Board

Just a quick note to say that a few days ago I made my Message Board viewable only to those who are registered members. Up until recently, I had a small portion of the board viewable to anyone and everyone. Well because of computer attacks by spam-bots (if you don't know what that is, consider yourself lucky) I had to make the board only for registered members.

I've gotten a few emails from people who had been lurking for years and now are wondering why they can no longer read the board - so I figured I'd better say something here in case anyone else was wondering. So if you are intelligent, smart, witty, love yardsales and know how to play nice with others and know how to curtsy, I encourage you to register to be a member of the Queen-dom.

Dear Walgreens: This is so lame.

Walgreens, really? Worse SALE! ever. But I still love you anway.

Taking the time to celebrate one holiday at a time

In my previous Debbie Downer post, Anonymous commented that they wanted to see the Royal Christmas Tree. Hello??? I don't know about you, but I like to take my time and celebrate one holiday at a time. Therefore, behold, I present to you, the Royal Festivus Pole.

After celebrating Festivus then it's time to start thinking about decorating for Christmas.

I will have to post about my successful yardsale when I have more time. But later today - woohoo - I get yet another crown! (on bottom left molar).

First Yardsale of 2011

I have one day to pull a yardsale together. I signed up to sell at an indoor yardsale this Saturday, December 3. My first and last one for the year. So tomorrow I will just walk around the castle sticking price stickers on stuff and throwing it in my car. You know, for being a yardsale queen, I really should be better prepared.

I haven't blogged much lately so this post will be a mishmash of things to catch up on what's been happening lately.

Been doing lots of shopping lately, including some online deals and even (gasp) retail. But my retail shopping is pretty tame. Over Thanksgiving weekend, I hit CVS and Walgreens for their freebie deals with Extra Care Bucks and Register Rewards. I am part of the Occupy Walgreens and Occupy CVS movement.



Here's one of my CVS receipts. The majority of that receipt is the free Extra Care Bucks. I know it looks impressive, but in reality, it really should have been twice as long. I split my shopping cart into two orders. After I bought my first half of stuff - I had a receipt this long, but I tore off all the Extra Care Bucks to pay for this second order.

My Black Friday Kohl's trip was worse than I could have ever imagined. The checkout lane was ginormous - and took hours to check-out. I went because I had the free $10 to spend between midnight and 4am and additional 15% off and got the Kohls register rewards (or whatever they are called). But totally not worth it. I should have known better.

The checkout line went on and on and on and on...


Speaking of Kohl's, here is their $39.99 fragile glass hourglass (on sale for $19.99) - notice the debris from broken hourglasses. My $2 hourglass from a yardsale a few weeks ago puts these to shame.


One of my "buys" from Walgreens. Is it still considered buying if they pay you $4 to take it out of the store? In the mail, I got a free coupon for a free Shick Hydro razor (I have no idea why they sent me the coupon and don't remember signing up for anything) - so the cashier deducted the cost of it $8.99 - and then a $4 Register Reward printed. So I "made" $4 on that deal and got a free razor.



And I've been doing some Christmas Bazaar shopping. I went to one church bazaar the other Saturday that had a large "grannie's treasures" room. I bought a single endtable for $8 (plus I bought other junk). Remember, God loves a cheerful giver! I liked the mid-century modern look of this endtable.









The thrift stores are all decorated for Christmas. One of my thrifts has really gotten out of control in their pricing. No way would I ever pay $8 for used shoes. Or $8 for a prison ornament. Do people decorate their Christmas trees with prison ornaments to remind them of their relatives? Like do they say "I want a Lompac ornament because that's where Uncle Joey lives"??? Or maybe there is a group of collectors similar to those hardcore Hallmark ornament collectors but instead they collect penitentiary ornaments.



My son Jacob is very interested in all things relating to weather - so when I heard that his favorite weatherman - oops I mean favorite Chief Meteorologist - was going to give a talk at the library - I got him out of school early so we could go. Those of you who are in the DC/MD/VA area, you gotta know who I am talking about - weather superstar Doug Hill.



I printed out one of his head-shots and got him to autograph it for Jacob.

Black Friday thoughts by yardsalequeen debbie downer

I am really not liking that so many stores are opening at midnight on Black Friday. I hope next year they go back to the regular get up at the crack of dawn sales instead. I know this sound morbid but I think we are going to be hearing about crazy things happening because of the stores opening at midnight. You know, things like parents locking up their sleeping babies in cars while they shop. The drunk drivers having more targets to hit at midnight and so on.

So anyway, just thought I would do a quick upbeat blog posting. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Why I love shopping at Staples, and my $3 Waterford Crystal candy dish - oh my!

Where else can you walk out of a store with a bunch of stuff and pay nothing and it's legal? And you want to know what's funny?? Looking at the receipt now, I see I was even overcharged! I only bought two packages of bungee cords at .70 each and I see the cashier accidentally scanned one of them twice so there are 3 on the receipt. Note to self: start scrutinizing every cashier's every move at every transaction for the rest of my life.

The stuff I bought was on clearance. .50 for a package of Mrs. Field's cookies? Insane. Only flavor on clearance was macademia nut. I found one package on the endcap with the other clearance items. But then I had the brilliant idea to check the shelf where the other regularly priced Mrs. Fields cookies were located and found another Macademia Nut cookie package mixed in with the others. Man am I good. Welch's fruit snacks were clearanced to .50 a box and all had good expiration dates.

I paid using one of my Staples rewards checks. I get them monthly for recycling ink cartridges there. And I also buy my printer ink at staples so I get ink reward checks for those too. I just picked up a bunch of printer cartridges at a yardsale yesterday. I paid $2 for this whole lot:



Spray paints, weed killer, full bottle of outdoor bleach etc. Also included about 8 ink cartridges which either I will sell on ebay (since they are new/unused) or recycle at Staples and get a $16 reward ($2 per cartridge, up to 10 cartridges per month).

And I had some other great buys yesterday. Like this stuff


$2 hourglass - oh my!, $5 crock, $3 Waterford Crystal candy dish, .50 heavy duty scissors and a .50 male hula dancer (surprisingly, I do not already own one). Here's another pic of my candy dish that weighs 4 lbs.


And for $5 I got this awesome corner cabinet, with storage. You know I love storage.


It will replace the junky wooden corner shelf currently in my kitchen. Ooops I mean, it will replace the lovely vintage sturdy rustic solid wood corner shelving unit which was probably handmade with love by a talented Amish craftman at my next yardsale for big bucks.

No, we don't use that camping coffee pot or whatever it is, we use it for storing keys that we don't know what they go to. And I will have to find a new home for my Griswold cast iron witches cauldron since I won't get rid of that - you just never know when someone needs to have a spell cast on them.