Yard Sale Obsession

I used to have an aversion to yard sales.  About a month ago I decided to try them.  I did research and made a game plan.  I chose 6 yards sales and decided what order to go to them according to where they were, when they started and ended, and what kinds of things they had for sale.  I dragged Shaun along and made him get up early on a Saturday morning.  Things I learned:

-You can't tell how good/disappointing one will be by the description in their ad.  You just have to go to as many as you can and see what you find.
-Yard sales are WAY cheaper than the DI
-I prefer yard sales to the DI because you can see and meet the previous owners of what you are buying
-If there is a coveted item listed in their ad you have to get there EARLY or it will be gone
-A lot of sales aren't advertised online, but you will find a TON just driving around Saturday morning looking for signs
-Some sales are several days long, starting on Thursday or Friday.  Sometimes it's good to go early, before the good stuff is gone, and sometimes it's good to go at the end when they're just trying to get rid of everything that's left.
-Moving sales are awesome, because people are just trying to get rid of stuff, and if they don't sell it they will end up giving it to the DI rather than move it, so you get stuff REALLY cheap!

Here are the things I got over the past few weekends:

Almost the whole Chronicles of Narnia set.  Missing #2 - $1

DVD - $1

Puzzle - $1

Unopened swimming rafts - 25 cents each

Backpacks - $2 each

4 hotdog roasters - $1

Blue glass vases - $1 each (not the best deal, but I really like them)

Each of these were 5 cents, except the smallest was free, so 20 cents total!

These varied from 5 cents to 50 cents, all together they were $2.40.  Most are scratched, but I will pay $2 at Hasting's to get them buffed out, and they will still only be about $2.10 per movie!

I got two of these - just couldn't find the other at the moment I took the picture.  They were 25 cents each!  Okay, that is crazy.  They are at least $8 new!  Shaun and I used to be obsessed, but we wore some of the colors off of ours.  What good is a rubik's cube without colors??  Now we each have our own, and they are really nice ones.  We have both recently remembered how to solve them.  Good times.

Vernal

We are trying to go to every temple in Utah.  Over memorial day weekend we decided to go to the Vernal temple.  And the Dinosaur Park.                    We stopped at this "Pizzaria" on the way down.  When we walked in I wanted to turn right back around.  Several of the people there were missing several teeth.  I wasn't sure I trusted them to prepare my food.  I still don't.  But we stayed and there were no negative effects from the food. :)

Vernal temple, right next to a church building.  We ran into Shaun's dad's cousin at the front desk.  Pretty weird.  We run into people all the time who ask us if we're related to such-and-such Jolley, and we never know the person.  This time the guy just looked at Shaun and said, "You look like Brad's son."  Weird.

Shaun setting up the tent in his church clothes after visiting the temple.

There were chipmunks, lizards and BUNNIES all over our camp.  So cute!  I never got a picture of a bunny, but the chipmunks were pretty brave.

Real fossil preserved as they found it in the rock!

Grilled cheese, which we could barely get to cook because the wind was blowing and cooling it off faster than it could cook!

Turtle rock

petroglyphs?  not sure what they're called, but they were cool

saw a coyote right along the side of the road!

Ground hog?

I have an obsession with bare trees

We took a little hike up to this amazing view.

Shaun peeking into my sleeping bag.

Me peeking out.

Home improvements

After looking around at other apartments for a few months and considering moving, we decided we actually have it really good where we're at.  Size and price-wise our current apartment is a good deal.  Since we'll probably be here awhile we decided to start fixing some of the thing around the place that bother us.  (After 2 1/2 years of living here.  Shoulda done this earlier!)  Our landlords live upstairs, and are both around 90.  They told us they would pay for whatever improvements we needed to make.  So, we replaced the toilet seat - it was slightly broken and would slip around.  We replaced our bathroom faucet, which was so close to the edge of the sink it was hard to have room to scrub your hands, and had so little water pressure that we hardly ever ran it long enough for the hot water to reach it.  And I re-caulked the bath tub!  It looks SO much nicer!  I was pretty proud of myself.  Shaun helped a littlewith ripping the old caulk out, but only a little. :)

Before

During

After

Side of tub Before

Side of tub After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

During :)

May

I have so much catching up to do!!  I think I will just use 

pictures to remember what we've been doing this summer.

I cooked something with hamburger and onions.......haha Shaun likes to take candid pictures around the house, and those are about the only pictures that get taken of me.

We went to a circus at the Cache County Fairgrounds.  Very ghetto.  But hey, they had elephants.

We planted our first garden!  It's at a community garden in Hyde Park.

Some of the ladies I work with went out to lunch as a good-bye party for Kate, who won't be working with us next year.