The first few hours were quite a blur. We had folks lined up to pay for armloads, bags and boxes full of stuff. I priced everything VERY well, so some amazing deals were had. I found it really interesting to see what people were buying. It’s not always what you expect. I had piles of stuffed animals and I was worried that I wouldn’t sell many, but they flew out of there. The price was definitely right though:-) I sold all of the kids’ VHS tapes. I was worried nobody would want those either. I guess you just never know!

We had hundreds and hundreds of books. (still tons left too) On Sunday I sold them 4 for a $1.00. People love a great deal. I sold LOTS of books. Unfortunately, we just didn’t have time to blow up all of the balloons to sell for the kids, but they came in handy for attaching to the street signs. We got many compliments on my signs. I should have taken a photo of one. I got the idea to tape them to a section of garden fencing. You know the little arched ones that protect the edges of the flower beds? I pulled mine out and they worked perfectly for holding my signs up and so I could push them into the ground so they would stand up straight.

The results? Drum roll please: over $1700 was raised for my Weekend to End Breast Cancer fund!

Thank you to everyone who donated items for the sale and to all the folks who came out on a cold morning to support this great cause, and thank you to everyone who helped to get the word out for me:  Rebecca  from Miss604 who gave me a shout-out on her weekly set on the radio and blogged about it several times and Jenn and Joe from the Morning Buzz on 1410 radio who plugged the sale for me on Friday’s show. Somebody told me they heard about us  on The Beat from the Kid Carson Show. How did he know about it?  I’d love to know- thanks Kid! Big thanks also to Terry from Starbucks who donated coffee with all the fixings and a great raffle basket of goodies. Even more big thanks to Tania from  Moja Coffee who emailed me and then brought me a  great gift basket for another raffle prize. It was nice to meet you at the sale Tania!

The biggest thanks goes to my fantastic husband Jon, who sacrificed his sleep and his study time to help me all day long and all Sunday morning too, and has the blisters to prove it. I love you Jon!

Here’s just a portion of the items that have been donated for my garage sale to benefit the Weekend to End Breast Cancer. Jon took a group of photos and posted them on Flickr. Just looking at all this is making me nervous. Still so much work to do to get ready for this! Here’s the rest of the photos if you want to see what I’ve gotten myself into!  Yikes:-) Everything is piled up all over the place– the garage, the laundry room, the front hall, even some upstairs now.

Here are the lovely gift baskets that were donated for a raffle. One from our local Starbucks (with the set of cups too) and one from Moja Coffee Corp.

All proceeds to the Weekend to End Breast Cancer to benefit the BC Cancer Foundation.

When?

Saturday and Sunday
March 28th and 29th
9:00 am till 4:00 pm

Why?

Because Breast Cancer is Hard, Walking Isn’t

This is going to be a great sale. I’ve been collecting donated items for weeks and my garage is stuffed full!

Toys, kids’ clothes, games, puzzles
Dishes, household items of all kinds, small appliances
Lots of cool treasure
TVs,  DVD player, VCR,  microwave
Sports equipment
Coats, shoes, blankets
Kids videos, Disney, Dora, Wiggles and much more
Hundreds and Hundreds of BOOKS!

And lots of new items– I’ve been amazed at all the wonderful items that have been donated!

Too much to list here….you have to come and see it all this weekend–

~Rain or Shine~

Our local Starbucks has generously donated coffee, cups, merchandise and a great basket of goodies for a raffle.

You’ll get to buy all my yummy homemade goodies:  Homemade Marshmallow S’mores, Chocolate Covered Oreo Cookies

Home-baked Chunky Peanut Butter Treats for your doggies too:-)

Surprises for the kids!

Please come by and help me to reach my goal of raising $4000 before the Weekend to End Breast Cancer takes place in Vancouver this August!

I am having dreams about how to price everything, how to set up the sale and what to do if it rains! (especially after it SNOWED this weekend!) I thought about trying to get a portable shelter or tent donated, but it’s like pulling teeth to get companies to help on short notice. They all seem to want several months lead time for charitable requests. At least Starbucks came through for me! The manager said yes right on the spot and is donating coffee, cups, a raffle basket of goodies and even some store decor items she no longer needs that I can sell. So happy about that!

I guess if the forecast looks wet, we could clear out what we can of our own garage stuff, move it into the house, move the car to the street and set the tables up in there. We’d have to cover everything we’ve got stored in there or people will be trying to buy it.I still need to find some tables to borrow. There’s SO MUCH stuff and I want to try to display as much of it as possible. Nobody wants to be digging through boxes or piles of stuff.

Price tags are another thing. I was hoping I could print sheets of prices onto sticky labels, but the labels I have aren’t the removable kind. I stuck some to my Juicybags coin purses for a craft fair once and they were nearly impossible to remove. Maybe I can find a differnt kind of blank sticky label paper with removeable adhesive somewhere. I’m planning to price similair items with signs, such as “all paperback books 50 cents, or 3 for a dollar” and that should cut down on the number of price tags I need to do.

Still worried about how I’m going to manage this sale on my own. Jon has finals for his current course the Monday following the sale so he won’t have much time to help. Yikes– this could be hectic!

It sounds like my daughter is settling in Calgary pretty well. She and her friend have moved into their shared townhouse (2 other roomies) and she’s working quite a bit at her hostess job at a restaurant. She’s even looking for a second job! She’s lost her debit card (for about the millionth time) so of course it’s going to be mom to the rescue again going to her bank here to get her a new one and mail it out. Luckily I’m still joint on her account, so they should let me do it.  The best part about her living there is that we don’t argue anymore- AT ALL. I guess it’s difficult to argue with someone when your only contact is text, facebook and phone:-)

I just finished my set of 4 shifts and now I’m off for 5 days. I’ll be doing some local pick-ups of garage sale donations and some more trolling for more. I’m hoping I can get a helium tank donated for balloons and maybe some coffee from Tims or Starbucks. Anyone have a connection? I think my brother can hook me up for some tables. I’m going to need LOTS. I can’t believe all the stuff I’ve collected for the sale. Now to try to figure out how to display it all effectively. I have SO many books. Still trying to work out how to put those out without taking up too much space. I have some great free-standing display grids that I can use to hang clothing on and some hangers my mom gave me. No idea how I’m going to find time to sort through all the stuff and pricing it all?? Yikes…I really hope this sale goes well after all this work.  One thing I thought I might try: I sent a request to the local mall to see if I can set up outside one of the entrances on the Sunday prior to the sale and hand out flyers about it and sell my homemade treats. It’s a short notice request: their website states that non-profit requests need to be made 90 days prior. I guess it was worth a try anyway.

I took my goodies in to work the other day when I had my in-office day. I sold them for $1 a piece as donations to the walk, and I made $60! Everyone raved over the homemade marshmallow Smores. Now, I’m working on getting more marshamallows made to supply trays of goodies in the volunteers’ office at the hockey rink during my son’s Spring Break Tournament next week.  If I have to be there nearly everyday helping out, I might as well troll for donations too, right?

Last night it was pretty quiet on the phones, and I was playing on Twitter a bit and posting some new auctions. I found Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, Shaquille O’neil and MCHammer! They all tweet, and it was fun watching everyone try to chat with Ashton and Demi for a while. I just wish I could get any ONE of them to re-tweet about my blog auctions. Can you imagine the clicks I could get? Ashton has something like 250,000 followers! I can dream anyway:-)