Garage Sale-ing, Donating, and a Big Change for Me

For those of you wondering where I've been for the last couple of days, I've been clearing out some of our storage spaces.  I've mentioned our "scary" garage on numerous occasions and it was time to clear some of that stuff away.  In addition to that our guest room closet was chock full of stuff, too.  So I spent all week with my trusty sidekick Whirling Dervish cleaning, sorting, organizing, and pricing items to go into a great big yard sale.  And then I spent the last 2 days sitting outside selling the stuff.  With my youngest child entering 1st grade, why the heck do I still have this stuff?

I priced things to move, because the goal was to clear out space, not make tons of money, but I still managed to make a tidy sum.

How great is this money box that CG made in shop class ages ago?

Early on day 2, a woman came buy with a card from The Friendship Tree, and asked me to give her a call when the sale was over for possible donations.  The Friendship Tree is a terrific outreach organization that helps families who find themselves in difficult situations.  Since my goal wasn't to make a mint, and it's such an amazing organization, I loaded up her car then and there.  I hope that I was able to help several families with my donations of a couple of car seats, a high chair, bouncy seat, and set of dishes. 

She was overwhelmed and gave me a hug.  The boys asked why that lady was hugging me, and I explained that we were donating some things for people who needed them.  This ties into my summertime goal of teaching the boys more about service and how we can do both big and little things to serve.

At the end of the day, we had made tons more room in the garage and the guest room closet is just about empty.  I have big plans for that closet that I hope to share with you soon.  But that's not the big change in my title.  What's the Big Change?  I'm no longer a luddite.  This is the phone I'd been using for the past several years.  A basic flip phone with no camera, even.

And this is my new toy tool.  An LG Optimus V smartphone with a touchscreen, and 3.2mp camera.

It was so nice to be able to check the weather radar, edit my Craigslist ad, and answer e-mails from my front lawn between garage sale customers.  I even took that money box pic with my phone.  I had every intention to write a post from the front lawn, but I wasn't sure how to use the pic from the phone in a post(I'm still learning.)  But the biggest change?  My phone bill. 

The do nothing phone with no broadband plan was costing $130 a month between our 3 phones, which breaks down to about $45 / month for the one phone on Verizon.  My new smartphone with unlimited texting and broadband is $25 / month through Virgin Mobile.  When we did an analysis of our phone usage, it turned out that CG didn't even use his phone, so we really only need 2 phones.  Saving $80 / month translates into nearly $1000 savings for the year.

Thanks for popping in and saving with me.  This is not your typical metamorphosis post, but still a big change so I'm linking up to Between Naps on the Porch's Metamorphosis Monday and Home Stories A to Z's Tips and Tutorials Party.

*Virgin Mobile did not in any way, shape, or form pay or perk me for this post(although wouldn't it be great if they did.)  I'm just in love with my new phone and service.

Before Blogging Throwback Thursdays #4 - One Fish, Two Fish

This month's party snuck up on me.  I've been super busy with the end of the school year's physical party planning, and the blogosphere has been jumping with the big Blog Party being co-hosted by a dozen fantastic bloggers.  Last month we had a great turnout, and hopefully we'll get a nice turnout despite my lack of planning.  So having done absolutely no planning, I got up this morning and walked around the house looking for something to take pics of.  Here's what I came up with.  The kids' Under The Sea bathroom.

This project started when we had to rip into the wall behind the shower in the toilet alcove.  We had some frozen pipes, and there was no access panel, so we had to cut a hole into the wall to fix the leaking pipes.  We wanted to keep access to the pipes available, but I didn't want an ugly door, so we built this removable recessed magazine rack.  It's basically a box with some doweling, and some applied case molding.  The whole unit can be pulled out if need be, because it just sits in the hole with no nails or anything.

As long as we were ripping into walls, I figured that was as good a time as any to replace the salmon colored toilet with a white one, pull down the apricot & blue floral wallpaper, remove the speckled tile wainscoting, and pull up the yucky bathroom carpet(why?!)  The tile floor was ugly and missing in a few spots, and we didn't have the budget to replace it.  I found an ugly $12 remnant piece of sheet vinyl flooring and flipped it to it's back side and painted it a sandy mix of colors with a couple of trompe l'oeiul accents like this starfish.

I found a remnant piece of green shag carpeting that I thought looked like anemones, and had it cut and bound into rugs for in front of the sinks and tub.

The whole room was painted including the ceiling.  I wanted the walls to look like a giant picture book, so I painted my sea critters in a cartoony style.  These floating shelves went in over the toilet.

The window needed an easy care valance, and what could be lower maintenance or more appropriate than a fishing net.  I got this net at the craft store, and boy did it ever stink when I pulled it out of the package.  If you're planning on recreating this look, make sure and give yourself time to air your net out outside for a couple of days before bringing it in.

The bathroom had a giant plate glass mirror like you'd find in a movie theater restroom.  I created a frame for it with 1x4 lumber and wrapped the frame in hemp rope.  It was easy to do, but my hands were torn up something awful by the time I finished wrapping the frame even with leather gloves.

Not wanting to miss a detail, I painted a switch plate cover at the local paint your own pottery store,

and hung the shower curtain from little fish hooks.

I'm linking this up to A Glimpse Inside's Catch a Glimpse Thursdays, Paisley Passions' Thrilling Thursdays, Funky Junk Interior's Saturday Night Special, Remodelaholic's Anonymous, and I <3 Naptime's Sundae Scoop.  That's my Before Blogging entry, now let's see yours.

Remember this is a party for anything you bought, made, or did Before Blogging.  Could be something big or little, just something you'd like to share.  This link will be open for a week, so you have plenty of time to take a pic and link up.  You can grab a party button here.

Prettying Up the Front Stoop

Remember way back in April when I told you all here that I had won a pretty awesome giveaway from Roeshel at the DIY Showoff?  I promised to show it off when it arrived, but then totally didn't.  My bad.  The problem is I had plans for my prize, but went in a completely different direction once it arrived.  I'm wishy washy like that.  Look how pretty Roeshel had wrapped my prize.

And this was what was inside.  I had won a blinged out tea towel(Love!) and my house numbers in vinyl.  She had surprised me by adding in that fun monogram vinyl, too.

I had planned on framing up the house numbers and affixing that plaque by my front door, but the monogram had me thinking, and I ended up doing something totally different.  I don't have a large porch, just a small stoop, outside my front door.  There's just enough space off to the side for a few plants or pumpkins at Halloween.  Here's what it looked like last year.

I grabbed a plain square planter from Lowe's for the house numbers.

Vinyl is really easy to apply.  It goes on like those car decals that you're forced glad to buy from your child's sports teams.  You peel off the back,

apply it, and smooth it on,

then peel off the front.

After I applied the vinyl numbers, I filled the bottom of the planter with some styrofoam packing peanuts and a little dirt.  I cheated with this planter.  I bought a hanging basket with a nice mix of plants,

removed the hanger, and placed the pot directly into my planter.

I just filled in around the pot with more dirt, this way if I accidentally kill it, I can just put a new hanging basket in there.

My second planter was a much cheaper one all around.  This was for my surprise monogram, so I wanted to use what I had.  I grabbed the wastebasket from my guest room, and drilled some drainage holes in the bottom of it.

I spraypainted it and then applied the monogram.

This improvised planter got plants dug up from our yard.  Here they both are by my front door.  I love putting out fresh color for the summer.

Thanks for popping in and putting out some summer color with me.

Weekend Review

After months & months of rain, we finally had our first completely rain free weekend.  Don't get me wrong, there's been plenty of moments of sunshine, but there hasn't been an entire weekend without precipitation of some kind all year.  You'd think we lived in the PNW, not the Northeast.  So how did we spend our first completely sunshiney weekend?  Out on the water, of course.

The jet ski finally went into the water.

There were some lazy moments in the sun swinging

and of course some fishing.

For those of you concerned that CG has no clothes, he just has about a dozen grey tank tops, and several red basketball shorts.  What can I say, he likes the familiar.

CG & SB built a bat house for my FIL for Father's Day.  If any bats move in, they should help with the helicopter sized mosquitos up at the cottage.  We only have some pics of the building process, but I'll try to see if I can put together a post on it.

The wave petunias are loving the sun, too.  The local nursery had these in good sized pots for 4/$10 so we snagged a couple to bring home for our front garden.

Thanks for popping in and enjoying the sun with us.

Tuna Melts

This is Snuggle Bunny's last week of school, but Whirling Dervish was done last week, so I've put him to work helping me get ready for a garage sale this week.  I've mentioned our scary garage several times, and it's gotten to the point where I'm scared that Hoarders is going to bring it's film crew here.  Ok, maybe it's not that bad, but it's definitely time for a clean out.  I've had WD help me move, clean, organize, and tag things all day.  In appreciation of that help, I made him his favorite sandwich for lunch, the Tuna Melt.

He's a teenager so he actually got 2 sandwiches, a bag of chips, and a yogurt, but that wouldn't have been such a pretty picture.  Here's how I make my tuna melts.  I start with 2 cans of chunk light tuna.

I add 1 1/2 tbsps mayonnaise, 1 tsp wasabi mayo, 1/4 cup sweet pickle relish, 1/2 a small onion chopped fine, and a twist of the pepper grinder.

I add some chopped fresh cilantro to my sandwiches, but WD prefers his without.

I melt some butter in my cast iron skillet, and place a slice of Udi's bread followed by a slice of cheese(WD likes american, I like fontina,) and 1/2 cup of the tuna mixture, followed by another slice of bread.

After a couple of minutes when the cheese has melted, I flip the sandwich over to brown the other side.  Placing the cheese under the tuna will help the cheese to melt quickly and help the sandwich stay together when you flip it so that all that deliciousness stays inside the sandwich and not all over the pan.  Yum.

Thanks for stopping by and having lunch with me & WD.  I'm linking this up to Home Stories of A to Z's Tips and Tutorials and Gluten-Free Homemaker's Gluten-Free Wednesdays.