Last Saturday, was a beautiful 75-degree day, and we had zero plans. Since my husband lacks the ability to sit still for any period of time, he made several suggestions for how we could spend our late morning/early afternoon.
We settled on reading at the waterfront. We packed up our beach towels, iced water, some snacks for me, and our Kindles ('cause we're fancy like that) and headed out.
At the waterfront (which is a 2 minute drive from our house), we set up our towels and camped on a grassy area with a beautiful water view.
75-degrees is usually quite comfortable for me. In fact, I generally will still wear long sleeves, but Saturday was different. It felt like it was 100-degrees, and I was sweating like a pig.
After about an hour of flopping around on my towel, stealing Brad's hat to keep the sun off my head, and whining about the temperature, we decided to pack it up.
On the short drive home, we passed several 'Yard Sale' signs, and Brad had the genius idea to stop and check out a few.
When I say genius, that is not joke. It was the best idea he'd ever had. We'd never yard-saled together before. And at our very first stop we scored. Big. Time.
A few people had a large table set up outside of an apartment building. As we got out of the car, an older gentleman welcomed us, and informed us that most of the good stuff was gone. (It was nearly 4pm by this time.)
I strolled up to the table, and tried not to look too creeped out by some very old, unattractive stuffed animals, while Brad went to the other end of the table. When he asked the man how much he wanted for something, I ventured over to see what he was looking at.
An electronic dart board. For $3. As Brad said he'd take it, he picked it up, and underneath sat this gem: A Coleman propane camp stove.
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| http://assets.farmandfleet.com/product_full/603354-perfectflow_2_burner_propane_stove.jpg |
On the last day of our last camping trip, our camp stove caught on fire. Apparently it had started leaking fuel (it is at least 20 years old, and takes white gasoline), and when we would light it, it would not only ignite the burner, but also the leaking fuel pipe, causing very large flames and the potential for an explosion.
After that, we knew it was time to look into getting a new one, and propane was our preference.
When Brad lifted up the dart board, I gasped (while trying to keep my cool) and whispered through the corner of my mouth 'camp stove!'. It was not a quiet whisper, I probably could've yelled it more discretely. Brad asked the gentleman how much he wanted for it. '$5' he said. 'And it works!?' I said in a somewhat snotty tone (by accident. I was surprised he'd charge so little). He informed us that yes, it does work, and he'd gotten many a good camp meal out of it.
Brad paid the man $8 for the stove and the dart board, and we walked slowly back to the car (trying not to skip and jump, and to look like the mature adults we are...yep). Once we were in the safety of our car, and halfway down the block we both shrieked and danced awkward happy jigs in our seat belts.
'I think it's safe to say,' Brad told me, 'I'm officially addicted to yard-saling.'
Me, too, husband. Me, freakin', too.
holla! lets go garage sale-ing!
ReplyDeleteHeck yeah! I hear there's a large garage/yard sale event happening in North Slope this weekend, and they're giving out a map to all the sales in the neighborhood. May be worth checking out.
Deletehahahaha. i loved that ya'll had to contain yourselves until you got back in the car.
ReplyDeletesneaky.
Since we became homeowners, we've only missed 2 Saturdays of yard sale-ing. Jason has a great app that overlays Craigslist yard sale ads with Google maps that we use to plan our route... Can't remember what's it's called but it shouldn't be hard to find!
ReplyDeletelove love love garage sales!
ReplyDeletexxS