Good, Clean, Cheap Fun

Its so fun shopping for girl's clothes.
Faith thought this dress made a great blanket for her baby.
My big splurge- a knit dress and jacket from Gymboree. (I paid $16) Its SO cute.
Most of our "bounty" other than the toys & books my kids were dragging away while I tried to take the picture!

This weekend has become one of my favorite family traditions, City Wide Garage Sales. My Mom and Charlene both came to join me in my biannual bargain hunting. We had a lot of fun, although not as many funny memories as other weekends. Here is a roundup of our great deals:

-A toddler cash register for $2.50 for Faith, Grace got a big girl one for her birthday and now Faith can play Grocery Store too.

-A Beauty Shop for $4. Grace was doing her ritual of asking what our favorite part was at dinner (from Dora). Grace stated her favorite part was this fun find.

-Fisher Price Dump Truck for FREE. I asked the man if he would take a dollar, he said you can have it. (not sure why either)

-A cool big basket for $.50.  I heart baskets, especially cute cheap ones.

-A ugly fur covered stool for $2 which I already recovered with black fabric and works great with my desk.

-A tractor floor puzzle for $2.

-A Minnie Mouse costume for $1, maybe for a future Halloween.

-Assorted books, toys, & fun for the girls.

This is the first time Grace showed excitement at checking out the sales. A future yard saler in training!

(BTW: That is my new red couch in the background of the picture, notice it is not in the basement. But more on that later...)

City Wide Garage Sales

Everything we bought!! Can you believe it?
A closer look at our garage sale steals!
Grace's new $2 dress for her dress up box (thank you nana!). It is made entirely of sequins.
Grace apparently takes after me, she didn't like the scratchy neck.
A pop up bed for traveling, complete with princess sleeping bag. A hit with both of my princesses.

Well another city wide garage sale weekend has come and gone. My mom & mother-in-law came once again to join in the bargain hunting expedition. We are crazy, did I mention that? We left the house at 6:30 am. It was so much fun. Here are my favorite purchases this go round.
-A khaki colored oversized chair $60 (I was super excited I have been looking forever!)
-The pink pop up princess bed
-A super cute Old Navy coat for Grace for $5
-A Leap Frog Letter Radio for $.50 (Grace LOVES it!)
-Lots of cute dresses for both the girls.
-Fun clothes/hats for our dress up box
-An antique looking fire engine car for $30(This was my mom's big purchase for her photography business)

Probably the funniest moment this time was all three of us ladies driving around in the country at 10 o'clock trying to figure out where a sale for the next day was that wasn't on the map. Did I mention we are crazy??

A Mommy Holiday

Well, we had a "Mommy Holiday" this weekend- all town yardsales. Yes, in our home All Town Yardsale weekend is a bi-annual holiday! It is a tradition in the making. Each fall and spring the town of Hannibal has an offical all town yardsale day. What is all town yardsales, you ask? It is a the weekend when there are tons of yardsales and the paper publishes a map of the city listing them all by zones. For the past 3 my mom has come and went along. This time my mother-in-law joined in and I think will be in attendance from now on. We had a really fun time.

My husband seriously laughs at me. Friday morning I go and get a paper. Then I get out colored markers and mark which ones open on Friday & which ones don't open till Saturday. Then I rank which ones sound the best & make a plan for which ones to hit first. We get up stinking early to be there when the open at 7 a.m. There is some serious yard sale competition in this town!

Here were some of the great buys (& memories) this time around:
-$8 A Little Tykes Car (that you can ride in-good thing the Dora car is highly fought over on the day I have extra kids at my house)
-$2 A Dora riding toy (Grace has already got my money's worth she has "rode" everywhere since Saturday refusing to walk around our home)
-$20 Carseat (For Jeremy's Father's Day gift so he can have his own since Grace has been wanting to "Go with Daddy")
-$12 A Leap Frog Learning Pad & 7 Books (what fun!)
-Free Uncontrolable Laughter (Okay gotta explain this one. While Charlene and I hit a yardsale my mom stayed in the car with the girls. When I opened the door to the van I almost gagged it smelled horrible. While we were gone Grace had an accident. She said I potty. I toot- Uh oh- I poop. Oh, and did she all over everything! My poor mother trying to clean her up. She sported some princess pj's that were purchased at a previous yardsale for the remainder of the outing)
-Spare Change (My mother-in-law brought a whole bag. Which was great for picking up cheap items that cost less than a dollar. Uh Oh again- she spilled the whole thing all over some person's garage floor. Needless to say it went everywhere!)

What a wonderful way to spend a Saturday morning. Did I mention I basically have my girls entire summer wardrobe between what has been handed down to us and what we found at yardsales? God is good!!