VERY THANKFUL and also...........

exhausted, aching all over and sunburned!!!!!!

Part of being frugal is having a giant garage sale.....which is what Mickey & I did Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Actually we have been preparing and planning for this event for weeks. We had everything ready and were just waiting for our 22 days of rain to cease!!!

The preparation took a lot of time. I had piles and piles of Aric & Oksana's clothes they had outgrown and hadn't been cleared out in years. I washed all of them and then ironed each and every piece. Here is one, of several piles, I am working on.

We were so grateful to have the 5th wheel in our back yard where I could hang, and stack all the items as we got them ready.

A couple of shots of everything set up and ready.

We did very well on selling things and it was certainly worth all the time and effort we put into it. We also feel good because we know we were able to bless the people who purchased the items with good deals for them.

Those of you who know my "attachment" to my ice cream buckets will get a kick out of this.......I had 11 pair of Aric's socks rolled up and I placed them in the bucket to hold them (I truly use these buckets for everything!!). One lady bought all 11 pair and when I was going to get a plastic bag to put them in she said, "Oh, I'll just carry them in this little bucket." I said, "Oh no, you can't have the bucket. I use it all the time." She said, "I was thinking it would make a nice little scrub bucket." So I placed the socks in the plastic bag :o) I had to laugh at myself. Especially now that our freezer went out I can no longer buy the ice cream in those buckets :o(

Here in our little town to have a Garage Sale you must get a permit from City Hall and you must get signed permission to put up a Garage Sale Sign in some one's yard and you CANNOT put up a sign on any City right-a-way. You can have the sale for up to 3 days but cannot have another within 3 months. Not that I plan to have another for a L-O-N-G time.......perhaps 3 years!!!!

I'd love to hear whether you have garage sales or not. Actually, I think this is maybe the 4th or 5th one I have ever done. We usually just give everything to Goo*dw*ill but with endeavoring to truly be more frugal we had this one.

Safety at Home

I was just reading on the subject in Good Housekeeping and thought this was a good site to pass on to others. I would suggest that you go and take the room to room tour and perhaps make a little checklist of things you want to remember. I haven't taken the whole tour yet, but I want to go back and visit some of the rooms I didn't get to. There are a lot of common sense pieces of advice, but you never know. Sometimes we all fail to think of the obvious.

Visit MySafeHome.org for more information.

FOREVER STAMP - REMINDER

Next Monday, May 11th, the price for a first class postage stamp is going to increase from 42 cents to 44 cents. Prior to that time you can purchase as many of the above Forever Stamps at the 42 cent rate and they will be good for as long as you have them, regardless of what the postage rate for a first class stamp is raised to in the future.

I posted about this on February 20th here when this rate increase was first announced. I will be buying more of these stamps this week at the 42 cent rate. I still have over 100 I purchased when they raised the rate from 41 cents to 42 cents so I'll be saving 3 cents every time I have to use those 100 stamps.

"Watch your pennies and your dollars will take care of themselves!!!

Something my father taught me at a very early age. I'd delighted to watch the pennies I save on purchasing these Forever Stamps.

You have 5 days left to make this purchase.