Monday, May 24, 2010

yard sale mania!

i don't think i blogged about it last week {probably just because i was so frazzled thinking about it}, but we had our first adoption fundraiser yard sale on saturday. i was so nervous all week because it was very rainy here in the bluegrass and i thought we might get rained out, but thankfully, we did not! we had a great turn out and it seems that all of our hard work paid off and we have lots of money and memories to show for it.

over the last few weeks, we have spent countless hours running around town picking up donations of stuff from some awesome folks who wanted to support our adoption. i cannot even tell you how thankful we are to everyone who gave us stuff!! we have heard some great things about people using yard sales to fundraise but we weren't sure if it would work for us because we had a yard sale last september and didn't have much to actually sell. thankfully, through spreading the word, a lot of great friends and family (and some folks from craigslist!) donated some pretty awesome stuff to us for our sale. we have been storing the stuff in one of our spare bedrooms for the last several weeks waiting for the big sale. if you're curious, here's what our spare bedroom looked like last week:


we also had items stashed in my parent's barn and my sister's garage. it was insanity! {especially when we had to convince the social worker doing our adoption home study that we're not hoarders!!}

anyways, my sister generously offered her house as the site of our sale since her neighborhood was hosting a neighborhood wide sale. we've never had a yard sale at her house before so we weren't sure exactly how it would go, but it was great. after getting only about 1.5 hours of sleep friday night, we woke up early and began sorting stuff. we had a lot of friends and family come check the sale out and had a lot of help. i really wanted to get a picture of our army of worker bees in our adoption t-shirts but we were too busy making sales! even R and my nieces, mikayla and mikenna helped. they sat at the end of the driveway offering our baked goods, hot dogs and drinks to yard sale goers. i wish i would have added up how much they made but i'm pretty sure it was at least $40! at one point, my oldest niece, mikayla, made me laugh so hard because she shouted up the driveway and said, "mom, we're sooooo rich!! we've got at least $8!". i cracked up. if only our whole adoption was going to cost us $8 :)

early in the day, ryan and i decided that we wouldn't count how much we had made until all was said and done because we wanted to be surprised. i told him a few weeks ago that i was really hoping for us to make at least $1000. mr. negative nancy said that he doubted we could make that much. well, he was wrong!! after the sale ended and we counted everything up...our grand total was a little over $1300!!!!!!!!

plus, we still have a TON of stuff left to sell {2 trailer loads full to be exact, and growing!} and are going to try and do it all over again in june. i should definitely take a picture of our spare bedroom again because it seriously looks just as crammed as it was before. it totally reminds me of the loaves and fishes that were multiplied by Jesus to feed the 5000...except our loaves and fishes are stuff people don't want any more :) God has been so faithful to provide for us along this adoption journey. have i mentioned that our next payment for our adoption is $1000? with our yard sale and recent t-shirt sales, we've got a little more than exactly what we need to keep the ball rolling for our adoption and to bring our kiddo home. we can't wait!

if you came to shop our yard sale or gracious donated items to the cause, thank you!! you are definitely a part of what God is doing in our family.

2 comments:

Stacy said...

Awesome! Glad you had so much support and a great turnout :)

my life: said...

I blogged on your fabulous shirts and of course your cutie family.
;0) Hoping you get lots of traffic and sell many T's!
I'm lovin mine :0)