Sneak Peek - Kitchen Cabinets Project

Hey Guys! I need to get to bed but I thought I'd give you a sneak peek of one of the many projects we've started working on around here!

Yep! We're working on the kitchen. We will finish this baby if it is last thing we ever do. There's really only three things we need to do in here (love how easy I make that sound!) - paint the cabinets (we're going with this color!), replace the floors (thinking about this) and get a new refrigerator. Wait. There is four things. We also need to paint all the trim plus the basement door.

Anyway, I'll be back soon with more details (as soon as we make a bit more progress) and in the meantime, please know how much you all mean to me. Seriously, you guys are the best!

♥Crystal

p.s. GO see my friend Geesha here. She found two parrot vases like mine off ebay and she's so sweetly sharing with my other friend Mary here! I love both of these girls and so glad that we found each other through our blogs! I have now dubbed us (even if they don't like it) the Parrot Sisters. :)

A Yard Sale Success

We had our first yard sale this weekend and I'm happy to say it was a success in our book! It was waaaay more tiring than I could have expected (having stayed up until 1am for one reason or another for the past three nights really did me in) and I got sunburned (I should have got my sunscreen on) but the weather was perfect and we made a nice chunk of money to put into our house account (we're saving up for some new flooring for the kitchen!).

Now we aren't yard sale experts by any means but here's some tips that worked for us!

1. Figure Out the Type of Yard Sale You Want to Have - Our goal was to get rid of stuff that was just taking up space and that we didn't have any intention in using again. This factored into some of our other decisions below. We didn't want anything to come back into the house so we only put things out that we were sure we didn't want to keep.

2. Preparation Is Key - I really didn't want the yard sale to be a major stress event so I started working on rooms and closets a couple months ago. I'd do one space at a time and we designated certain areas for holding the items for the sale. We did stay up super late the night before so we could have been a bit more prepared but there were some things that could only be done last minute. One of the things that we did to make the set up quick (at least quick enough for us) was to fill our garage with as much as we could the night before so it was ready to come straight out in the morning.

 2. Signage - We had a street wide yard sale (it was pretty spectacular actually) with four houses participating.  Our job was to make signs. So I picked up some neon posterboard and opened a gallon of black paint and quickly freehanded these babies. It was midnight so I didn't worry about penciling it in and just winged it, hoping I wouldn't make a mistake. My main goal was to make them bright (neon poster board), bold with big arrows (black paint) and solid (I taped a piece of cardboard cut from boxes onto the back of each sign). We mapped out a route and stapled them up by 7:30 in the morning.

3. Pricing - First, I suggest pricing as you set items aside for the sale. It will save you loads of time because instead of going through everything a second time for pricing, you just do it as you add it to the pile and don't think of it again until you're setting it out for the sale. Second, blue tape worked really well for us. It sticks perfectly and sticks out on items.

4. Set-Up - I think it helps a lot to group your items by category so we kept all the kids stuff separate from the household/knick-knacky items. It also helps to set up and set out certain items so it is easy to see. For instance, I rolled out our rugs, set up the baby beach cabana, an extra beach umbrella (we also have a Sportbrella which I highly recommend for beach and non-beach shade) and the pack and play which I'm sure went quicker because of it.

5. Deal-Making & Marking Down Items - Like I said above, we really wanted to get rid of the stuff during the sale so we made plenty of deals and did some haggling. Towards the end we even put out signs marking everything on a table just 25¢ which got rid of quite a few items. This approach wouldn't work for everyone, especially if you goal in #1 is to make money and you don't mind saving items for another sale.

All in all it was a success and I'm glad we did it! For the longest time I just thought we weren't the yard sale type and now I just see that we needed to have a plan to execute it in as easy a fashion as possible. We ended up making some extra cash and clearing out our overly packed house a bit. Now that we have more room to move (seriously, the basement was packed!), we're going to work on getting what we do still have organized.

So how was your weekend? Anyone else stupidly get a sunburn like me? Did you have a yard sale or hit up a yard sale? I was a bit sad that I didn't get to go to the Restore and Aaron would not let me go check out this pair of old wood, twin size headboard/footboards over at my neighbor's house. I mean a pair! I have dreams of a huge kid bedroom some day with vintage twin size beds side by side. (Yes, Abby, if you're reading this, I really wanted those! But Aaron said no. Glad to see that someone did pick them up though!)

♥Crystal