Took my son bowling yesterday

Sorry I haven't written much lately. Will try to do better.

On Sunday I took Jacob bowling. Some Banquet tv dinners have a coupon for a free game of bowling on the package. They were on sale for .88 the other week at Food Lion. So for only .88 you get a free game of bowling, plus the meal. Only certain bowling alleys accept the coupons but the one near me does, so we are set.

So anyways the final score of the game was Me: 91 Jacob: 89. How sad is that? I mean I've had years and years of bowling experience over my 6 year old son who just stands at the line and drops the ball from waist height. Maybe I can blame my poor performance on my new used bowling shoes. I've had a pair of bowling shoes from the 70's that I've used forever. But now I can't find them, I know they will turn up eventually. Well anyways to rent bowling shoes is $3.99 - highway robbery! I was at a thrift a few weeks ago and found a pair in my size for $3 so I bought them. Maybe I just need a little more practice with them. I have a bunch more coupons to use before they expire at the end of May so I'll definitely be doing more bowling. You can only use one coupon per person per day so that's why we only bowling 1 game, and plus, Jacob starts to lose attention after 1 game. For some reason, they don't charge for kid shoe rentals, only adults.

Yardsalequeen.com Message Boards down

The message boards are experiencing some technical difficulty at the moment so please just be patient. Hopefully they'll be back up soon.

Happy Belated Christmas and Happy New Year

Spent Chrismtas in upstate New York. Had a good time visiting family and shopping. No snow but had some snow on the drive home. Saw a Walmart truck that ran off the road - I took a picture of it but can't get to it right now to post it. I got a new computer for Christmas to replace my 8+ year old model so I quite haven't gotten the picture thing figured out yet.

While in NY I had a chance to go to a Salvation Army. The first thing I saw in the store was a customer holding a Serta Sheep. Uggh - I wanted to buy it! Some Serta Sheeps are very collectible - I believe you get one free if you buy a Serta mattress or else you can buy them new in Serta stores. Well anyways the sheep all have a # on their side and once they run out of a particular #, its no longer made and they go on to selling a different #. Well anyways whenever I see them I buy them. I sold a #13 Sheep for about $30 a while ago and I have a pink Breast Cancer Awareness sheep to sell tucked away somewhere in my clutter.

Well anyways at the Salvation Army, I couldn't tell what # it was but I was mad at myself for missing it and not being at the store 5 minutes earlier. I could tell the customer was friendly since she was chit-chatting with the workers and she was also talking out loud to herself and commenting on thing on the shelves. She had a armful of stuffed animals. So....I walk past her and say "Oh that sheep is sooo cute" and she agrees. I then walk away - not too far - but look at other stuff on the shelves. A few minutes later she comes up to me and goes "I just noticed this sheep as wires in its legs - my dogs may get hurt chewing on it - do you want to buy it? Of course! And I thanked her and wished her a Merry Christmas. Not the end of the story. I go to the register with some other stuff I find and the cashier looks at the price tag on the sheep and rings in .25 on the cash register and says "I just hate when companies try to sell their advertising figures - its just a personal pet peeve of mine so I only charged you .25" As it turns out the sheep is a fairly recent one so I'll hold on to it for a while.

I've done some after Chrismtas shopping. Went to Target up in NY and the one here by my house. We did "Christmas" with my brother and his wife on the afternoon of December 26 so I was able to buy a few more things on Tuesday morning to give to them - and of course it was half priced. My sister-in-law collect Disney Pooh ornaments and other Pooh related stuff so I was able to buy her a Pooh Hallmark ornament for $5.

I was at two different Walmarts yesterday and bought stuff at 75% off.

Well I gotta go - I still haven't unpacked from being home. Been too busy on the internet (I get internet withdrawls when I go to NY) and now been playing on my new computer too much.

Jeff is sick, not doing anything for New Years.

Christmas is coming up too fast

I have so much stuff to do before Christmas. As a kid it seemed like it too forever for Christmas to come, and now it gets here too fast. I had wanted to list a bunch of my Christmas related stuff on ebay, but only got a chance to list a few things. Oh well, always next year.

In my post the other week about OK! Magazine - I've since found a better offer. There's a seller on ebay selling 2 year subscriptions for only $3.75 . I bought a subscription for my sister and sister-in-law to give as gifts. What can I say? I'm a generous person.

No yardsales today. And probably not any for next few weeks. There is a ray of hope though - St. Pauls church always does a second Saturday in January indoor yardsale.

Report on Black Friday

Someone asked how I did on Black Friday and I guess I had forgotten to blog about it.

I had a good time shopping. As I've probably mentioned before, the closest real mall is about an hour drive away, so I mainly buy from stores that are nearby (Staples, Target, JC Penneys, Best Buy etc). I rarely go to a mall and when I do, I rarely buy stuff. I haven't always been this way. I grew up about 3 miles from the Clifton Country Mall in upstate NY and when I lived in Charleston, SC, the Northwoods mall was only about a mile away.

This past Black Friday I was at Staples at 6am. My husband said that he'd like a GPS that was on sale there for $149. So I got that and also bought the laminator which will be free after rebate, the power cord (free after rebate) and an extra memory stick for my camera which will cost $15 (after rebate). And of course I used three $3 coupons that I got from recycling inkjet cartridges at Staples. And used my bonus Rewards card. I thought the laminator would at least come with a few laminating sheets, but it didn't. I really don't need a laminator so maybe it will be for sale at my next yardsale. (And since it was free after rebate, any money I make on it is pure profit).

Best Buy: Bought 4 DVDs ($10 The Office Season 1 - love The Office!, Munich $5, Fight Club $5 and Brokeback Mountain ($5 - for me since I knew my husband would never buy it). He wanted Munich and Fight Club so those are put away for Christmas. He already has been playing with the GPS.

Old Navy - just looked around and won some free package stickers (which I think everyone won)

Bath & Body Works - had a coupon (got in the mail) for a free item worth $12.50 with any purchase. So I bought a package of the Wallflower refills on sale for $5. I bought a Wallflower last year during a Black Friday sale and also picked up another at the thrift for .25. For my free item got a big bottle of a combo shampoo/bodywash/bubblebath that was $12. B&BW sends out good coupons - really worthwhile to get on the mailing list if you like to shop there. I don't normally buy stuff there since I find it all the time at yardsales. I once bought a brand new B&BW gift set at a yardsale for $1. The seller received it and said she only likes fruit scents or flower scents (or vice versa) and she received the wrong type of scent.

Chickfila - used free soda coupon

Target: Bought DVD The Notebook for $4, Spongebob Plug N Play game for $10 - may put away for Jacob's birthday since he already is getting a lot of gifts (bought other stuff I needed but nothing Black Friday sale related)

JC Penneys: got the free snowglobe. Bought my husband a pair of Dearfoam slippers on sale for $15 (normally $30) and bought myself my Christmas present from him - a black leather coat on sale for $48.88, which was one of their Black Friday morning deals. I hadn't gone looking for a coat, but I saw them and tried it on and liked it. I also got 15% off my purchase because I did an online survey and when the survey is complete, I got to print a coupon good for 15% off my next purchase.

CVS Pharmacy: I went to 3 different CVS's. They had 2 liters of diet coke for .66 (limit 4) so I got 12 bottles. That should last me 12 days - I am so addicted. Also bought the Kleenex that was .88 box and had a $1 off 5 boxes coupon so I paid .68 a box (Jacob's teacher is always asking for donations of Kleenex for the classroom). Also bought myself some Maybelline makeup with was Buy 1 Get 1 Free - and I had a $2 off Maybelline coupon.

Also went to both Vintage Value thrift stores and got some stuff there. At one of the stores, they had a sale: .25 clothes. I can't remember what exactly I bought, but you know I bought stuff.

I wanted to stop at Ace Hardware but ended up meeting my husband & Jacob at a park and didn't go shopping afterwards.

$2 Longaberger basket, $2 Vera Bradley and free movie

I went to Smile both on Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday my buy of the day was a $2 Longaberger basket. It has a dark stain and is marked "Longaberger Handmade Series" on the bottom. It's a keeper. And yesterday I found a $2 Vera Bradley purse. I don't get the popularity of Vera Bradley purses at all. But I'm glad people are willing to overpay for them on ebay.

Also yesterday the Calvert Marine Museum was showing an indie documentary movie that I wanted to see (free admission to movie). So I went to that and afterwards noticed how pretty the lighthouse was decorated so I took some pics. My admission to the museum was free too since I'm a member. (Last May I bought a year family membership for $25 during a half priced day). I'm so used to going there with Jacob that it was weird to go alone. Weather was beautiful yesterday - I didn't adjust the color settings at all in the picture, that's exactly how it looked.

Subscription to OK! Magazine either $77.52 or $4.84

I've gotten so many free subscriptions to magazines from www.freebizmag.com but I was searching eBay weeks ago for magazine subscriptions and came across a 2 year weekly subscription to Ok! magazine (a cheesy celebrity gossip rag) for $5.99 so I figured what the heck, I'll splurge and actually pay for a magazine for a change. So I ordered it and it just started coming in the mail this week (when you order magazines thru a seller on ebay, sometimes it takes several weeks for it to start). What I found was amazing was that in the magazine there was a card offering a 2-for-1 deal, buy one year for $77.52 (!!!!!!) and your friend gets 51 issues (one year) free. Is anyone actually crazy and stupid enough to do that?

I just checked ebay and there are sellers now offering 2 a year (weekly) subscription for only $4.84 - so now i am feeling ripped off that I *overpaid* $5.99 for it - haha.

Pet Peeve about cashiers

First let me say I've been a cashier at many jobs in my life (Burger King, Opryland, Bradlee's etc) and now I'm the cashier at all my yardsales. The thing that drives me nuts is how some cashiers give you change back - they make a pile of the dollar bills, receipt on top of that, and then pile up all the change and give you the whole mess at once. The cashiers at my local KFC always do that and it drives me nuts (which happened tonight so that's why I am blogging about it). And then to even top that off the whole mess gets put in your left hand at the drive-thru (and since I'm right handed, my left is the lesser coordinated)

When I have a yardsale and let's say the customer's total is $2.75 and they pay with a $20 bill, this what I say when giving back change: quarter makes $3, four, five, five makes ten and ten makes twenty. I give the coin(s) back first - that way they have a second to put the change in a pocket if they want, then the bills.

Update on old fridge

I forgot to mention, I sold our old refrigerator for $100. I placed a free online ad at a local community type website.

"saved" $83.93 at the grocery store the other day

Did my weekly grocery trip to Giant Food the other day and used a bunch of coupons. The receipt shows the total was $114.23 but after the sales and coupons were deducted, I only paid $31.01

Spending spree

We've kinda been on a little spending spree lately. First the fridge - got the bill the other day, it was $848. But we put it on our Discover bill which has the cash back bonus. And we religiously pay off our bills every month. Last night someone came by and bought our old refrigerator for $100 cash. I put a free ad online for it. Plus we'll be getting about $20 gift card from Best Buy for buying the fridge and using their rewards program. They used to charge for their rewards program but when we bought the fridge, they said its now free to join so we signed up and will be getting a giftcard in the mail from them.

We've been needing a second cellphone. So I bought a new fancy one on ebay for $150 and a sim card with 150 minutes ($8). We use T-mobile but we don't get good reception at our house (a problem with many of the cell providers in our area).

To save money, we changed the service plan with T-mobile on my phone. We had been paying about $25 a month for very limited daytime minutes and unlimited weekends. (the main reason I have the cell phone is just for emergencies incase the school needs to call me while I'm out shopping).

So I changed it to T-mobile's prepaid service (with no monthly fees) and just bought $100 worth of minutes (1000 minutes) that will be good for a year. So instead of paying $300 a year for my cellphone, it will be just $100.

Oh and my husband bought a beemer. A 2002 BMW motorcycle that he found on ebay (has less less 7,000 miles on it). Paid cash for it. Will sell his old motorcycle, a Kawasaki Concours which has about 40,000 miles on it.

Looking forward to this Saturday - there's an indoor yardsale that should be good.

Think Florida Sucks? Let Penn & Teller know!

Today I got an email from someone from the Penn & Teller Show Bullshit. Apparently they found my website because of an abundance of wacky yardsale stories submitted by people in Florida on my website.

Anyhow for the next several weeks, they are looking to hear from people who think that Florida sucks for an upcoming episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit show. If you have a Florida story to tell (it doesn't have to be yardsale related), submit it to them and maybe you'll get your 15 minutes of fame.

For more info click here Florida Sucks

Refrigerator Make-over

We had a refrigerator make-over last week. What a job - even just taking all the crap off the old one took a while, let alone transfering food to the new one and cleaning out the old one.

Got a good deal on the new fridge from Best Buy. For some reason they sent me a coupon for 10% off any appliance or item in the store. The refrigerator already was on sale and they offered free delivery as a promotion. So when the cashier went to ring up the 10% off she said it wouldn't take because in small print on the coupon it said it could not be combined with any other offer or promotion, and the "free delivery" was considered a promotion. So then I said "Well charge me for delivery (it would have been $49 to deliver) and then use the 10% off coupon because it would still be cheaper that way. The computer cash register wouldn't let her do that either. So then I just said "can you get a Manager?" So she disappeared in the back for a while and came back and pressed some magic buttons on the cash register which allowed her to give me the 10% off AND get the free delivery. So I was happy.

My husband leaves for Las Vegas and the roof flies off!

This happened a few weeks ago but didn't have time to post until now. My husband left for Las Vegas on a Saturday (actually it was the Saturday I bought the chocolate fondue pot and mentioned the crappy weather). In the afternoon he called to say he got in safely, yadda yadda. We hang up and I then I look out the window and see something strange in the backyard. It was part of our roof! A 12-foot section of a ridge vent that runs right at the peak of the house. And at this point, it was raining.

I go up in the attic and I can see the sky! I was like "ohhhhh craaaaaappppp!!!". We have a 2-story house, so no way was I going to attempt any roof work. Since it was Saturday, I knew it would be hard to get any roofers to come out, but I figured there must be someone who would call me back soon. Boy was I wrong!

Since it was raining, I took an old blanklet and stapled it to the gap and put down plastic. Thankfully, it wasn't raining too hard and sun was forecasted for Sunday. But by Monday I figured all the roofers would be calling me back. Nope. As it turns out, I'm glad no one did since they could have charged me whatever they wanted and I would have gladly paid it. Even the ones I did get in touch with on Monday said they could put me on their calendar for later in the month (!!!).

On Tuesday I had the bright idea to call my cranky old man friend Rick (picture further below) and told him my problem. He called a handyman friend who lives just a few streets away from me and does jobs on the side and by Tuesday afternoon and $40 later, it was fixed.

Fall in upstate NY

I took this pic the other morning while at my mom's house (my childhood home). Would give anything to have a backyard like that now - instead I have to look at a little old house full of low-class renters.

back from upstate New York - 3 days of garagesales!

I spent a long weekend (is 5 days considered a long weekend??) back in my hometown of Clifton Park, NY. Since it's definitely fall up there, I wasn't expecting too many garage sales but I was wrong. There were several on Friday and Saturday and I even hit one on Sunday near my sister's house near Saratoga Springs.

Well I will write more later but I wanted to share this before I forgot - I packed very lightly going up and came back with a totally loaded down suitcase. So much so that the baggage clerk had to put a special tag on the bag with it's weight - 45 pounds! Five more pounds and I think I would have had to pay an extra charge or start layering on a bunch of clothes right at the ticket counter.

So anyways I was hoping that my suitcase wouldn't be chosen for inspection (maybe they all are)? But when I went to unpack it today, I saw the "Notice of Baggage Inspection" card. I would have loved to have seen the face of the baggage inspector going over the contents: Homer Simpson in a hula skirt? Not a security threat. I mean, if it wasn't my suitcase, I'd have to wonder about the person who packed a Glow in the Dark Nativity scene, vintage ice cream scooper, Deathland books, Dora the Explorer VHS tapes, coffee tin full of buttons and a wooden tool box. Good thing I didn't find any vintage Playboys or anything like that (for ebay) because if I had those would have been in there too.

And I had 5 packges of Chew-eez Carvers dog treats in the front section of the suitcase. I had 5 free coupons for dog treats (and 5 free coupons for cat treats) that were only valid at Petsmarts on 10/14 and 10/15. And as luck would have it, there is a Petsmart in my old hometown (I don't even have one near me in Maryland so I'm sure the coupons would have gone to waste had I not been in NY). I just had to pay the sales tax $1.22 for the 5 packages. I also got the 5 free cat treats (they were on a different receipt) - gave 2 to my sister for her two cats, and 3 to my brother for his 3 cats.

Yardsale buys today

Sorry for the long lapse in blog entries. It seems time just flies by and I don't have time to do anything, except shop that is. I gotta get a handle on my shopping addiction!

Only went to two yardsales today. No I wasn't restricting myself or anything, it was just that because the weather was so crappy yesterday there weren't many going on in my area. And I didn't want to drive far to find them.

I spent $5 at one sale ($0 at the other). Paid $3 for this new chocolate fondue fountain, $1 for a new Playdoh Lunchables kit and $1 for a new Disney Goofy Golf game (which I will put away for Christmas).

The funny thing about the fondue fountain is that on the fountain itself, it says "Old Fashioned Chocolate Fondue Fountain". Old Fashioned??? Just like grandma's electric chocolate fountain????

I sent in my reservation to attend a high school reunion later this month. My chance to get away by myself for a few days. Going to the reunion will be interesting since none of my friends that I've kept in touch with since high school are going.

Cutest Yardsale Customer of the day

One woman brought her cute little dog to the yardsale and when she saw me take his picture, she ran to the car and put on his Halloween costume for me.

Oh I forgot to mention in my previous post, before I set up for the church yardsale, I went to a few that had started early. At one sale, I bought a huge box of household decor stuff for $2. I only wanted a brand new medium sized Yankee Candle that was in the box (probably a $15 candle). So at my yardsale, I went thru the box and priced a few things at $1 each, .50 each, and probably sold $4 or $5 worth of stuff just out of that box - and of course I got the brand new Yankee Candle to boot! The rest of the stuff that I didn't think would sell, I set up a "freebie box" and a lot of that went too. Afterwards when I was closing up, I packed up a big box of stuff and donated it to a local animal rescue thrift store (luckily it was very close to the church).

One helluva yardsale sign at church yard sale

My friend Pat and I did the church yardsale yesterday. The church had advertised in the newspaper, posted the yardsale on their church sign facing the highway, had a massive sign on a cherry picker truck facing the highway and guess how many people showed up to actually hold a yardsale? Two - me and Pat! Can you believe it??? We couldn't and had a good laugh over it. There was one other person who set up near the parking lot, but they weren't in the parking lot with us.

When you think "church yardsale" you expect tons of donated stuff from the church members. Customers kept asking, is there going to be more? I think the church expected their members to show up that morning with their own stuff to sell or something, and no one did.

It worked out well for us because we got all the customers who were expecting to go to a big church yardsale. But unfortunately this week I didn't get very organized with my stuff - I could have brought tons more. I sold $111 (and gave a $10 donation to the church).

And the funny thing is, the yardsale was advertised as a "Youth" Yardsale and instead people got me and Pat. I am glad no one is suing over false advertising because if they did, they'd win!

Planning another yardsale

Ran into a friend today at the thrift store (yes, my bad! I can't stay away!) and she mentioned she wanted to have a yardsale soon - like this weekend. So she called a church that is having one this weekend and they said we can set up a table at it (and pay a donation, of our choosing). So tomorrow and Friday I need to re-group the junk that didn't sell last weekend, get rid of true crap and find "new" stuff to add to it.

Won't be as fun as a *fun*eral home yardsale, but it's nice to hold a sale with a friend.