Shop til you Drop

Ian saying "touchdown" for the Giants!

I am not a person who loves to shop. I can enjoy it from time to time in reasonable doses. I find shopping for hours on end to be exhausting and rarely do it. Actually aside from yard sales, I can say I never do it any more because the kids REALLY don't enjoy shopping, and double strollers don't fit very well in between racks at department stores. I shopped for about 6 hours at the yard sales over the past two days. I shopped on Friday before and after library story time, for 2.5 hours Saturday morning (without the kids), and then did one last jaunt with Ian in the afternoon while Nadia was napping. The thing that motivated me to go the last time was that I took the stroller and got some exercise walking in between homes. There were hundreds of yard sales. I just visited a small percent of them. The people who paid the $5 to have theirs included on the map indicated what they were selling. That was extremely helpful as it helped me pick which ones to visit. My favorite stop was at a woman's house who used to run a daycare center. I spent $26 at her yard sale, and I easily could have spent a LOT more there. Had I known what was located there, that would have been my very first stop! I was grateful though that I did end up at her sale as I got many nice puzzles,a rhythm stick set that included a CD, a moon balance toy, a tree blocks set, a bear counter Bingo game, a wooden domino set featuring pictures of different animals, a Little People playground set, a stick horse, etc. I contemplated buying some more gymanstic mats as she had four for sale for $5 each, but by the time I made up my mind to get them, someone else had purchased all of them.

I hate bartering. The only times I usually will do it is for a car and a house, and in the case of a car I have a price in mind and when they see I won't budge, they usually come down to what I'm willing to pay. I have done it a little when in other countries (China and Mexico for example), but I do not enjoy it one iota. Usually at a yard sale if I think something is priced higher than it should be, I just don't buy it. On Friday there was a red Christmas sweater (size 3T) that I contemplated buying, but it was priced at $3.00, which seemed high for a used kid's sweater. Most people charge at the most $1.00 for a sweater. Some yard sales charge as little as 10 cents per item. Probably I should have offered the woman a lower amount, but I just walked away. On Saturday though I did make an offer twice, and both times my offer was accepted. The first was for the bumblebee costume that Nadia was wearing in the pictures in yesterday's post. It's made by Old Navy and is sized 2T/3T. Both Nadia and Ian look adorable in it. They both enjoy playing dress-up. The woman had it priced at $4. I offered her $2, and she accepted. I guess I'll have to get over my aversion to bartering if I'm going to shop at yard sales. I got the vest, pants, and shoes for Ian (shown in these first two pictures) at the yard sales this weekend. The shoes have squeakers in them, lol! The nursery workers took them off after about 5 minutes as they found the squeaking annoying. Ian got a big kick out of them the first time I put them on his feet.

I had a list of what I was hoping to buy at the yard sales. I succeeded on six counts (18 month pants for Ian, 18 month lightweight jacket for Ian, size 6 dress shoes for Ian, sneakers with velcro for Nadia, rhythm sticks, and a toy microphone for Nadia). I didn't find any size 9 ballet shoes for Nadia, hand puppets, or 4T turtlenecks for Nadia. Probably there were 4T turtlenecks somewhere, but many people had huge bins of clothing, and it was very hard to locate a specific item. I got a LOT of stuff for the about $80 I spent over the two days as the cheapest items were 10 cents each and the most expensive thing I bought was $4. The 18 month four piece suit I got for Ian yesterday for $3 came in handy for our family photo at Walmart today.

Let me say I am sold on Picture Me studios. They do a MUCH better job getting the kids to smile than the photographers at the Sears studio. The photographer we had today we had never worked with before, but she was excellent. I was thrilled and actually got a CD for the first time ever (just of one image). I spent about $60 total, which is more than I usually spend, but it was money well spent in my opinion. I do not plan on renewing my membership with Sears. I only wish they had the big numbers like Sears does. For Ian's 2 year pictures and Nadia's Christmas pictures, I think we'll either go to Picture Me or have my sister take them. Would you believe it was VERY hard today to pick which pictures to order? She got two great family shots of all four of us, one great shot of Paul and the kids, two great shots of me with the kids, and one great shot of Ian. She tried to get one of the two kids together, but by then we weren't getting good smiles from Nadia. That didn't bother me as my sister got a great shot of the two kids together last month.