From Yard Sale to iPad Mini

Back in May, we had a yard sale.

In fact our entire community had a marketplace event where businesses had sidewalk sales and residents could register their own yard sales.

The city promoted it and provided maps listing each yard sale.

I planned months ahead of time to possibly maybe participate in the event.

But I didn’t want the pressure of HAVING to do the yard sale in case I didn’t get my act together and actually dig out and organize all the stuff we wanted to sell.

So I didn’t register with the city.

As the days got closer to the sale, we decided to motivate the girls by saying that if we made enough money, we’d buy an iPad Mini for the family.

That put McDaniel and Ellie into HIGH GEAR!!

So much so that I found myself saying things like,

“What?! 

You can’t get rid of Bali! 

You’ve had her since you were 3!”

Bali is a ballerina doll that you could slip over
your feet to dance with.

She used to scare the holy heck out of Monte. 

There were just too many memories attached to her. 

McDaniel liked to “watch” TV with Bali and sometimes she just stayed all night on the couch, 

legs crossed, arm propped up on the side of the sofa. 

Monte would come downstairs for breakfast 

and stop dead in his tracks every time 

thinking someone was in the house.

And sitting on our couch.

In a sparkly ballerina outfit.

Sometimes we’d just hang Bali up on a hook in McDaniel’s playroom. She had a handy loop at the base of her neck for just such a purpose.

But when you’d walk into the room, with her big ol’ head slouched over and her legs dangling…

well, it was worthy of a gasp. 

Every.

 Time.

So Bali got pushed into the attic closet. Which is where McDaniel pulled her from and shoved her into a bin marked, “Everything’s $2.00!”

Didn’t seem like enough for a bigger than life doll with such startling capabilities.

Luckily, she didn’t sell!

But now I can’t remember if she went back into the attic closet 

or if Monte won and donated her to Goodwill.

Apparently, it meant a great deal to me since I can’t remember.

Then Ellie pulled out this to sell.

“Not Prayer Bear!"

It’s a prayer bear made by a lady down the street.
There are scripture cards in the front pocket.

The lady down the street gave this to Ellie when she was little along with a bag of costume jewelry to play dress up with.

Ellie made the prayer bear fancy.

Ellie started right away with dressing up Prayer Bear. See the cross necklace and dangle earrings?

I knew right then that Ellie had her very own sense of style.

Just like I did with McDaniel when I found all her stuffed frogs 

on her bed staring back at me wearing fake mustaches.

When Ellie saw my resistance, she quickly agreed and kept the bear.

I know, I KNOW! I wasn’t helping!

The day before the event, I went to a website to get some advice on pricing and displaying our items for the sale.

I got some great tips!

Like putting all our American Girl Doll clothes by outfit into ziploc bags and pricing them per bag. I did that for all our Build-A-Bear clothes too.

(Which we had a surprising amount of, to Monte’s dismay.)

Another tip was to group like items such as stuffed animals into a bin with one sign that says:

“Everything $1.00”.

McDaniel had a thing for frogs.
With or without mustaches.

We also got the tip to put a FREE bin right by the street to draw people in. I put the ugly pillows from our sectional in the basement that were still in great shape but just too firm and unattractive for my taste. I also put random little toys and some home decor that I would’ve donated anyway.

The girls made a big pitcher of lemonade to offer our customers. Unbeknown to us, the girls slipped out a “TIP” jar and they raked in the cash!

The day started out chilly and overcast with a few scattered sprinkles.

We put out little signs at the end of our street and block and we had customers before we were finished setting out all our stuff.

McDaniel got a little wordy with her signs.

My sign said:  YARD SALE with an arrow pointing to our house.

Our first patron was a well-dressed guy in a nice car who bought a bunch of the American Girl doll clothes and the cigar box purse that I took to the Kentucky Derby over 10 years ago. He also pointed to the book page wreath I made and asked,

“What is it?”

Ouch!

We never went more than 15 minutes without a customer for 6 straight hours.

And when we did,

Monte made the girls pretend to be customers, picking through our stuff to entice others driving by to stop in

because that stuff must be good!

The girls pretend perusing.

We sold that trampoline chair for a friend. Ellie
really wanted to buy it. But what is the point of
clearing out if they want to drag stuff back in?!

At the end of a very long day, we had enough money to mostly buy an iPad mini!

The best part is that the girls don’t fight over the computer anymore for homework.

The only con is that now Monte plays soccer every night after work 

and does a lot of nodding 

and fake conversation responding 

while playing.

Hey, wait! 

Maybe I need him to teach me how to play now that college football has started…!