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I know that you were all waiting with baited breath wondering what awesome deals I might have scored this morning.  Well, I really hate to disappoint you, so I’ll show you what I got.

In our little town, there is a law (or ordinance or something like that) that says that you can’t start your garage sale before 8:00.  Yeah, I know.  Weird.  But, really, it works out well for me, since it is hard to get little boys up and dressed and fed and out the door any earlier than 8:00.  It also works well if you are the one having the garage sale because you won’t have early birds banging on your door at 6:00am while you try to pack in one last snooze.  In fact, we simply don’t have early birds in Dallas (Oregon!).  I’d say that the best time to head out to the sales is probably 8:30 (yay!) because by then the sellers have all of their stuff out and have just put their city approved sign on the corner (yeah, there is a law about the sign, too!).

Now, keep in mind that we have had Vacation Bible School all week long, and the worker’s meeting starts at 8:30am.  So, I figured that I had between 8:00 and 8:30 to get to as many sales as I could.  I was up at 6:00, checked email, dressed a kid, gave him a snack, fixed coffee, took a shower and got ready, cleaned the bathroom, did some laundry, woke up another kid, threw him in the shower, made sure HE was dressed, made smoothies (yum!), pulled the broken TV off the wall (another story for another time), and rushed out the door at approximately 7:59.  The boys had no idea what their mother had planned.

Okay, but first, I have to back up to tell you about my garage sale preparations.  Our county has a newspaper that comes out once a week.  Yesterday, I pulled the paper out and tore out the garage sale portion.  I crossed off all of the garage sales that were Saturday only.  (I don’t go to Saturday sales . . . I spend that time with the fam.)  Then I circled the ones that I could picture how to get to.  These would be the first ones to tackle.  I usually check out Craigs List for garage sales, but I didn’t have time this week.

So, anyway, I was in the car driving toward the first sale when I saw a caravan of cars pulling into a cul-de-sac right around the corner.  This sale was NOT on my list.  They must have been Craigs List people.  I found THE most adorable little round table with cute little turned legs.  I should have bought it.  I’m kicking myself.  It was only $3, but I couldn’t think of where I would put it in my house.  In hindsight, it doesn’t matter.  I loved it, so it should have been mine.  HOWEVER, if I’m going to stick with my “God would have wanted me to have it” logic, I have to confess to you all that God must NOT have wanted me to have that table because when I went back to the sale after VBS, it was gone.  Boo, hoo!

So, I pulled away from that sale empty handed and headed on down the street in search of the next sale on my list.  I pulled over to get a better look at the newspaper, and noticed that about 1/2 of the Friday sales didn’t open until 9:00.  What?  Huh?  What are these people thinking?  The day is half over at 9:00!!  Okay, so now I had to cross off the “after 9:00″ sales.  That left me a small handful of sales left.

I’ll spare you every little detail, but just know that I ended up going to 5 different garage sales between 8:00 and 8:30am.  The boys stayed in the car sipping their smoothies while I jumped out to see what was up.  It worked out nicely.

VBS was awesome!  I could go on and on, but let’s just say that I had an awesome group of 4th graders, the boys won the competition to bring the most $ for missions, over $1500 was raised, my own sweet boys had a wonderful time, and I was totally blessed.  We had close to 300 kids, and I am always amazed at how smoothly the week goes.  Awesome.

After VBS, the boys humored me and we checked out a few more sales.  Maybe 4 more.  I was tired, though, and my heart wasn’t in it.  I wanted to get home (and check on the table that was not to be).  We found one last sale in our neighborhood (one that wasn’t open at 8:00), and I picked up more goodies.

This is what I ended up with today:

What are you looking at?  Well, that is a big, plastic terra cotta lookin’ planter that is going to be painted black and put on the ledge by my bathtub to hold the toys.  We are SO tired of toys all over our bathtub, so this is the solution we came up with.  25¢  Of course, we’ll have to buy the special spraypaint for plastic, but I have lots of plastic projects just waiting in the wings!

The yellow lantern works and has a little funnel and extra wick.  I’m going to clean it up and empty it out and use it as an accessory in the guest room, most likely.  $1.00

The spoon and fork are not wooden, they are . . . ceramic or something like that.  Cheap-o.  BUT, picture them painted black and hanging on the wall or above the backsplash in the kitchen.  Cute!  $1.00 for the set and 4 magazines for the boys.

So, yeah.  Not a lot of stuff today.  But, I really think I need to take a step back and start PAINTING these items and putting them to use in my house, right?  That is my challenge for tomorrow!  Yipee!  Time to break out the spray paint!

And (another public service announcement for you), Glidden is giving away a FREE quart of paint in the color of your choice!  The offer ends July 2nd, or while supplies last, so click here, now!  https://www.glidden.com/promotions/free-paint-giveaway.do

I got Robin’s Egg and Mitch got Apple Green.  Yay!  You KNOW I’ll be painting in about 3-4 weeks!