With the warm springy weather, my family and I loved spending time outside (with the exception of rain and strong, cold winds), so it was the opportunity for us to check out garage sales for great useful finds (if the budget permits). We would skim through the free newspaper ads for garage sales, their locations and what kind of stuff will they be selling. We would look for the kids’ clothings, plants, plant containers, records, cassette tapes and storage organizers. But then, we would unexpectedly find things that we thought we did not need it but became very useful, for example, a broiling pan that people would not touch it (not ugly, but it has not been used at all and it looked brand new) and because broiling meats became the thing in meal planning, it was for 1 dollar and DH picked it up upon noticing it. He brought the pan over to show it to me while I was rummaging through the clothes, and I was excited to see the pan that we had to buy it. Since then, we broiled seasoned chicken breasts from frozen (learned that from my oldest brother, who loved the moist taste of seasoned chicken that he served them in sandwiches and salads), pork chops (the idea from my late MIL, who didn’t feel like bringing out the skillet to cook them so it was the easy way to get the dinner cooked within 30 minutes and less dishes to wash) and hamburger patties (in case we can’t BBQ outside due to weather, or we would have ended up like our longtime friends who decided that BBQ’ing in -40 degrees weather was OKAY LOL).
Now back to garage sale-ing, we did buy good items we put to use:
-records of Johnny Cash and Heart, as well as finding cassette tapes of Heart, AC/DC, and Bad English (I wanna hear “When I see You Smile” again,………)
-2 large plastic hanging baskets
-2 small plastic hanging baskets
-plants, ranging from wave petunias to tomato plants, and perinnial fern (otherwise, as what the sellers told me, they don’t like to see them go to waste, so it has to be used by other garden lovers)
-boys’ clothing (hey, 25 cents per clothing, stil in great shape)
-a rake for two dollars (because we were too lazy to pull the stuff out of the storage room to get the rake we have for cleaning up the yard area to start the gardening)
-a garden decoration that reads:”I TRIED IT BUT IT DIED”
-a houseplant shelf so now the rose plants are free from sitting amongst the “crowded jungle” (in other words, the baker’s rack full of houseplants that cleaned the air in the house)
-a Suzy’s Zoo acid-free photo album (11×14) for DS2’s pictures (regular priced at 25 dollars, unopened, still in wrapper, bought it for 3 dollars). Now my DS2 has an album of his own, away from his oldest brother’s album.
-Tupperware containers with lids that I have been meaning to keep handy on for dips and snacks to take everywhere without cleaning up the mess.
-five Hot Wheels cars that DH and DS1 thought were rare. The “General Lee” and “A-Team Van” were the most popular ones that DH and DS1 never expected to find in one of all garage sales.
-a wicker organizer that held all paper bills, letters and notes. Hey, it was 25 cents for this one, almost ten dollars cheaper than a wooden organizer at Giant Tiger.
-some odds and ends from the free table at one yard sale that saved me money big time and that the stuff I took for free are going to be used for crafting and such.
-kids’ books
-and I could go on, and on, and on,…………………..all above for under 50 dollars.
Oh, how we love garage sale-ing as we buy things to put them back to use again.
Now to gardening,………………….
Last Sunday, it was early morning, and DH was on the computer, DS1 giggling at Pocoyo on Treehouse TV, and DS2 napping in his playpen after a good hearty breakfast of applesauce and mashed bananas with his bottle, and I stepped outside to see what needed to be done before I start gardening. I didn’t think of bringing the camera out to take the “before” picture, because I was anxious and excited to get started (yes, it was a mess due to tall grass, cigarette butts, and gravel buildup along the sidewalks from the winter snow removal and redcution of ice) so I grabbed the rake and started raking out the mess, throwing out the garbage and dead grass. Then I took the WeedEater (the one that Dh had kept since he lived in the trailer in the hometown) and mowed down the tall grass along the fourplex building. DH came out and looked at the bench that I bought from the local auction 4 years ago, and decided it needed a color. The original color of the bench when I bought it, was a wash stain of greenish yellow, so DH thought of a hunter green color. I needed more soil for the gardening badly so we went to get paint and soil at Walmart. The shopping experience at Walmart was pretty unexpected as we bought more things than just paint and soil. We ended up with a tray of six green sweet pepper plants, one jalepeno plant, one sweet pepper plant, two strawberry plants and two trays of mixed colored impatiens. And oh yeah, paintbrushes to paint the bench with. We also went to Peavey Mart for specific plants that would compliment the garden very well, and to Canadian Tire (hey, I didn’t say Crappy Tire,………….) and bought a geranium witht eh color of pale pink with slashes of white.
After getting the garden set up, DH looked at his old wooden toybox (has to be around 35 years of age) and because we bought new toy storage boxes for the toys, DH wanted to throw out the box but I put a stop to it, as it gave me the idea of putting the wooden box to use. I lined it with the large garbage bag, filled with soil, and I had to buy the packages of peas seeds, carrots seeds, green onion seeds and a seed tape of mesclun lettuce mix, and planted them in the box. And DH had to use up the hunter green paint by painting the toy box. In the end, my neighbor (who lived accross the sidewalk from us) had to ask what was planted in the toybox and we told her about the vegetable garden, she thought it was the best idea we did.
Well, now,…………..I need ideas to put together decorative signs for the garden collection.
And yes, pictures will be posted soon,………………..:)
