Date Day

Every spring Dan and I take a day off work and go garage-saling together.  We shop all morning and then eat lunch out afterwards.  Sometimes we go back to work in the afternoon, but usually we don't.  I'm not sure when this started, but we've been doing it at least five or six years.  We used to do this during our city-wide garage sale, but the suburb we moved to a couple of years ago doesn't have a city-wide sale, so we now we plan our "date" for our neighborhood garage sale.  The really funny thing is that I didn't discover that Dan liked to garage sale until after we were married, and honestly, I couldn't believe my good luck!

When we were first married, I used to go "run some errands" on Saturday mornings, which usually included stopping at as many garage sales as I could find.  One time I got home and was telling Dan about some great deal I found "when I just happened to stop by this garage sale..." when he interrupted me and said, "Garage sale!?!  Why didn't you say you were going garage-saling?  I want to go..."  I think my jaw might have hit the floor I was so surprised.

I have always loved to go garage-saling.  You just never know what you're going to find.  Garage sales are good for everybody:  fewer things gets thrown out; somebody makes a little money; and somebody else (me) saves a lot of money over going shopping at say, Target.  Here's a few of our finds from today:  six like-new "Hello Kitty" pieces of clothing and two new pairs of pajamas for Anna; two pairs of jeans (slim!) for Ehren and Christian; two Magic Tree House books for Ehren (we're trying to collect the whole series); a Hello Kitty beginning reader for Anna; some knitting yarn for my mom; a pair of pants for my nephew that have legs that zip off to make shorts (he loves these and has a hard time finding them in the store); stackable plastic storage containers; and two pairs of winter ski gloves for Ehren and Christian.  But the best bargain of the day was this:

A new, much-needed rug for my front door... for fifty cents!!!  I'm not going to tell you what was in front of my front door before...