a good day to go saling

yard-saling, that is!

this morning, darin and i armed ourselves with some cash and resolve and headed out to a church sale and a neighborhood garage sale.  it has been some time since the last time we went a-saling, but i am happy to report, we are still quite good at it. : )

here is a picture of our weekend loot:

 

 

minus the massive jar of chocolate-covered dried cherries in the back on the left and some other random freebies, everything was the fruit of our day’s labor of saling away.  i included the cherries in the picture because i’m proud of the purchase; they regularly sell for $39.99 at harry and david, one of my favorite stores (though i pretty much can only afford to shop clearance there).  i got the biggest jar they have at half-off on clearance, then had a $10 off $20 preferred customer card to supplement the savings, leaving me with only having to pay 25% of the full price. 

$10 for a jar of chocolate covered cherries sounds steep, yes, but i literally drool over those little coated fruits every time i go in the store (they have other chocolate-covered fruits available which i also like, but the cherries are my favorite), and it is a HUGE jar.  as in it holds 3lbs. 4oz. of cherries.  it’s just about as tall as my nalgene.  awesome.

 

shameless indulgence.

 

don't judge me...

 

now if i can just be mindful to ration them out…  thankfully, they put the nutrition facts on the side of the jar; for health reasons alone, i prayerfully won’t exceed more than 4 cherries a day.  at least i’ve got good sense going for me.

in any event, minus the jar of cherries, we only spent $17 today and brought home basically everything else you see on that table!  we spent about $10 on 34 pieces of clothing for the baby in various ages/sizes so we can keep it clothed for a while without a lot of fuss.  and because pictures are fun, here are a couple of my favorites:

 

it has ears on the feet! : ) so cute...

 

 

that's right. rocawear.

 

 

behold the stack.

 

my favorite!

 

so, other than clothes, we also got some cool hats and burp rags for the baby, a dictionary (so we can play scrabble with a better edition than the pocket-size… we play “if it’s not in there, you can’t use it”, which makes for lame games when you have such limited words), a thesaurus (for my personal enjoyment; i love those things!), a mayo clinic self-care book, thomas a kempis’s “the imitation of Christ” (wanted it for years…), a popular mechanics fix-it book for home repairs and maintenance, some cigar boxes and cookie/candy tins for shipping delicious items in the mail, a thermos, a nalgene, a travel mug (darin’s has been a mild disgrace to us in its ghetto state… needed replacing), an r2d2 drinking cup (totally geeked out over that one), and a mini food processor (it was only $1 and it works!  sweet!).

we also scored some free magazines from the library (they rotate stock frequently), a great bunch of samples in the mail (newborn disposable diapers for the meconium days–so not cleaning that out of my white diapers–, braggs liquid aminos, a packet of braggs 24 herb seasoning, some gillette shampoo, and lasinoh disposable nursing pads), and a $1.47 cracked pepper encrusted dry salami from harry and david.  not to mention that we bought groceries today and saved $14 on our total by shopping sales.

i love my cheap life.

my freezer is full of things to eat.  i baked fresh bread tonight for the week.  i’m drinking tasty cheap tea (i went to whole foods yesterday to buy pregnancy tea and realized that all i care about in the blend is the mint and the red raspberry leaf, so i just bought some bulk loose red raspberry leaf for a dollar and supplement with dried mint leaves on-hand at home and have a comparable blend for far less than $0.20 a cup).  and my love is on his way home from work.  it’s been a fabulously frugal day.  i feel accomplished.  yes.  yes i do.

oh, and did i mention that on monday, i will only have two weeks to go (technically) in this pregnancy?  yeah.  i am huge.  not kidding.  see for yourself:

 

yep. there's a human in there.

 

it’s bedtime.  i’m out.  in closing, i shall leave you with this precious picture of the $0.99 strawberries i scored at hyvee:

 

i didn't know that they all slice up into little heart shapes! aww... love.