Archive for November, 2010
John’s Bee-Day Gift
Yesterday was my sweet hubby’s birthday so I figured I should share what Clara, Burger and I got him. John and I have recently been talking about how we’d love to amass more “real art” to complement all the DIY stuff that we have framed on every wall. This goal is definitely inspired by our friends Matt and Kristin – who we House Crashed here and here. The cheerful original art that lights up their home always has us jonesing to add more color and fun to our walls. So consider this painting to be the beginning of an exciting little collection that will happily hang in the new house:
It’s a 12 x 12″ original oil painting on canvas done by an amazing Etsy artist named Roz (to the tune of $75). And the moment I laid eyes on it I knew it was perfect. See, John and I actually worked bees into our wedding invitation (which you can check out here) so we’ve always considered them to be our animal- er, insect. And the fact that there are two of them galavanting around the canvas together makes it even easier to see as a symbol of our relationship. My man gives me a buzz, what can I say. Ok, enough cheese. Hubby loves it. So glad.
Setting Sale
Apparently gathering over 100 things to get rid of didn’t take as long as we thought (see the full list of purged items here), so we got all crazy and decided to host a last-minute moving sale this past Saturday (just to get rid of stuff while we still had that no nonsense iron will- you know, before we caved and decided to keep a few things around). We took about two weeks to plan our last yard sale, so making the decision to hold this one just two days out was a bit nerve-wracking, but the days aren’t getting any warmer, so we figured why waste time? Plus, hosting a yard sale isn’t rocket science – especially once you’ve gathered all of your “merchandise” and mentally decided to pull the trigger. Plus with the weather channel calling for sunny skies and 69 degree weather we figured it was a sign.
So we placed a free ad on Craigslist and drew up some neon-tacular directional posters to hang around the neighborhood. You can read more tips for actually hosting a sale here in this post of yore.
Despite our fears that no one goes yard-sale-ing in mid-November, the sale was GREAT. We had lots of steady traffic, Clara napped through the first two hours of the sale (when we were busiest), and we made over $300. Three hundred beans are great, but the best part of the sale is that we got rid of about 85% of our stuff. And that’s stuff we now don’t have to pack up and move. Which means more energy for unpacking, painting, and all that much more fun stuff (yes, that stuff is fun to us- we’re weird).
Here’s what our driveaway looked like towards the beginning of the sale (I didn’t snap a true “before” shot because early bird shoppers kept us too busy for a while).
Here’s all that was left by the end of the sale. And every item made its way to be donated within an hour or so that afternoon (we had a strict nothing-goes-back-into-the-house policy).
We were also reminded that hosting a yard sale can be quite entertaining. Here are a few highlights:
- The only shoes Sherry sold were to an 11-year-old girl. Yep, apparently Sherry has pre-teen feet (size 5.5 for the most part).
- A pack of neighborhood kids showed up on their bikes towards the end of the sale and bought a random assortment of knick-knacks, half of which we’re not sure they knew what to do with (for instance, they were convinced a glass spoon rest was a shoehorn).
- We met the new neighbors who bought the “bed-and-breakfast” house that we’ve always admired (shown here). But at least now our patio furniture will get to live there.
- We got to chat with two blog readers who were pleasantly surprised about stumbling upon our moving sale (we don’t share our address for obvious reasons, which is why we didn’t post about the sale beforehand).
- Not knowing our names but recognizing us from our nightly walks, one neighbor called us “the baby-chihuahua family” – which we wish would stick. Gotta love a good neighborhood nickname.
- We learned from one customer about the Book Exchange in Midlothian, where we later exchanged our unsold books for a credit… that we immediately used to buy two new books for Clara. New obsession? Check.
- The sale eventually turned into an impromptu neighborhood party where we got to catch up on the latest gossip from everyone around the block (thanks to the sunny skies and mild temps, it ended up being such a nice day).
- Just like last time, a random dog-on-the-loose came to visit. Luckily this one was a bit less rambunctious than the one from our past sale (who ended up taking a swim in the small pond that we once had in the backyard).
Ok, so that’s the tale our little moving sale. Feels good to have that stuff out of our lives (and to have a bit more money in our pockets). It’ll probably be a while until we need to host another yard sale, but feel free to drop some tips for others (or fun stories from your own yard sale-ing experience). Anyone else always get visited by a random pooch? Or have freakishly small feet that make selling shoes to adults a challenge?
Psst- We’re talking about how we recently revamped our dirty diapers & wipes routine right here on BabyCenter. Sounds fun right?
Fab Freebie: The Target Lady
***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – scroll down to see who won!***
I love today. Not just because it’s my 29th birthday, but because we are giving away a gift card to (drumroll, por favor)… TARGET!
We don’t really need to waste time reminding you guys how much we love Target (we’ve got about a million posts like this and this to prove it). I even created this graphic to try to convey how excited we are:
Can you handle that enthusiasm?
And while I always love a good opportunity to reference SNL’s Target Lady, this time I’m going to mention a different woman paired up with the red bullseye: HGTV’s Sabrina Soto. Sabrina is Target’s “Style Expert for Home,” which means she’s serving up design tips to to those of us who like affordable Tar-jay wares and coming home to a stylish space. She’s even got a bunch of tip-filled videos over on Target’s styleboutique blog.
But enough chitchat. Here’s how you can score the hundy dolla gift card:
- PRIZE: A hundred beans (in gift cards form) to spend at Target!
- TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “I’M A TARGET LADY” (or “I’M A TARGET GENTLEMAN” if you’re rocking a Y chromosome like me) and…
- BONUS QUESTION: … tell us about your favorite item that you’ve ever scored at Target. Do you love it because it’s especially stylish? Especially functional? Or maybe just especially affordable?
- GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Wednesday, November 17th at 8pm EST
- NUMBER OF WINNERS: One
- PRIZE SHIPS: The 50 United States
- USUAL STUFF: One entry per e-mail address is permitted. The winner will be selected using random.org and announced on Thursday as an update to this post. That’s right, come right back here Thursday morning for the announcement of our winner. Good luck…
******************************
And our very lucky winner (as selected by random.org) is… Ashley A. (who’s loves and can’t stop seem to buying Target clothes). Congrats!
Note: We weren’t paid or perk’d for hosting this giveaway, we just take them on to reward our lovely readers! See our Giveaway FAQs page for more info. Pics from Target.
100 Things.
Nothing lights a fire under your arse like making a public proclamation that you’re going to get rid of 100 things. So even though we’re not moving until mid December, we made our way from room to room paring down every single thing that we don’t love/need/use. The mantra as we went? No mercy. Because nothing is worse than packing, moving, and unpacking things that aren’t worth the time they took to transport or the space they’re eating up in the new place.
Here’s our getting-rid-of-it office pile:
Then we tackled the kitchen (Clara helped):
Here’s our outgoing kitchen pile (what you don’t see are a bunch of baskets and towels on the floor):
And here’s our den’s see-ya-later pile (cry not for the board games, they were doubles so we still have a copy of each one):
Our garage to-go pile:
Our basement done-zo pile:
And our big bedroom buh-bye pile (minus the baby and the dog of course- they stay):
And now for the full list of purged items:
- 11 pairs of shoes (10 of mine, one of John’s)
- 36 books (10 of which were cookbooks)
- 10 video tapes & DVDS
- 1 alarm clock
- 1 computer mouse
- countless padded envelopes & mailing tubes (from the days of our online print shop)
- 6 board games (some of which we had two identical versions, so we got rid of one)
- 2 yoga mats
- 1 radio
- 1 stocking
- 2 faux pumpkins
- 1 lamp
- 4 pillows
- 1 mirror
- 5 frames
- 54 items of clothing (including coats, hats, ties, tees, jeans, shirts, socks, etc)
- 4 plastic plates
- 6 ceramic plates
- 1 power screwdriver
- 4 outdoor chairs
- 2 welcome mats
- 1 rug
- 2 baskets of faux plants (they lived in the not-sunny-enough-for-real-plants basement)
- 1 floor lamp
- 4 plant pots
- 6 garden hooks
- 1 stencil
- 1 frisbee
- 4 old quarts of paint
- 2 buckets
- 2 metal tins (we came up with a new diaper & wipe disposal system- more details soon)
- 1 sprinkler
- 1 trash can
- 1 fabric basket
- 1 dark wicker basket
- 5 bath towels
- 1 nursing cover
- 8 baby toys & feeding supplies
- 4 glass cups
- 3 vases
- 4 pieces of faux fruit
- 8 wine glasses
- 8 mugs
- GRAND TOTAL: 222 items
Saweeeeeeeet. I mean on one hand it’s kind of embarrassing to admit that we were storing all that excess but boy does it feel good to get rid of it. Yup, that’s right. It’s all out of our house already – thanks to donating and selling every last item (we had an impromptu moving sale this weekend while we still had some steam and that no mercy attitude). We feared if things sat around for a while before we had a chance to donate or sell them we might have changed our minds and kept things that we didn’t need. And you know I have the patience of a 5 year old, right? More of those get-it-gone details coming soon.
What have you guys been purging? Have you identified any problem areas? We definitely held onto lots of books and clothes that we had no need for, but we were also surprised how many unnecessary kitchen items we were hoarding (many of which we had used exactly zero times).
Halfway
Clara is officially six months old today, which means we’ve reached the halfway point our weekly photo project (you know, the one with the fabric backdrops and photoshopped onesies).
At 12 weeks in, we broke down the “how to” behind the project right here, so this post is just more of an update – since we’ve now accumulated another three months worth of pics. Here’s a snapshot of the first 25. You can check them all out up close here on Flickr.
It’s hard to believe that we’ve taken 26 weekly portraits already. And thankfully we still look forward to our Friday afternoon appointment with the camera, some fabric, a white onesie, and our model. We worried that we’d regret the weekly decision and wish we opted just for monthly pics, but we actually look forward to Friday photo shoots and whatever facial expression adventure Clara will take us on each week. Whether it’s yawning…
…deviously twirling an invisible mustache…
…or even breaking out a ballerina costume to celebrate Halloween (pointed toe and all).
And in the affordable but meaningful holiday gift idea category, even though there are still 26 more photos to go before we hit our one year mark, we plan to package the collection-so-far in a little photo album Christmas present for the grandparents (I realize I sort of just gave away what they’ll find under their tree, but they’ve gotta know it’s already coming). And once we amass a full year’s worth of weekly pics, we’ll do a fancier hardbound book version for everyone (using Shutterfly or Kodak or something).
Oh, and lately we’ve been thinking that we may carry on the tradition past the one year mark because we’re enjoying it so much. But we’ll probably scale things back to just monthly photos at that point. We can only afford/use so much fabric after all. And speaking of all those swatches, from a DIY quilt to framed art or a fabric bunting, we’re so excited to repurpose all of the fun textiles we’ve been collecting thanks to this little daughter documenting project of ours. Can’t believe our baby girl is already half a year old. They grow up so fast.
