costume time

The boy is SUPER into pokemon at the moment, and wants to be something called a charizard for halloween. Oh joy.

So here's the plan:

Buy orange clothes, including a hat.

Add felt/foam eyes, horns, and fangs to the hat.

Build wings somehow. Make them orange and blue.

Let him enjoy whatever weird Japanese thing he's into at the moment. He's six for god's sake.

The girl is another story. She keeps going back and forth between Mike Wazoski and Poppy, and just needs to make up her mind in time for me to figure something out. I like to give her space to figure it out herself, but time is money here kid.

Eh, what do I care. As long as they actually wear what I make, as opposed to refusing to like they have in the past, I'm good to go.

Hello fall

Troll hunting, apple picking, that was a fall-ish weekend.

That's quite orange, even if it's not quite jack-o-latern size.

Looking out for fall at the arboretum. 

There might be some costume making in my future, is somehow I find extra hours in the day.

Back to the grindstone

Woof. It was a little more difficult than I expected to get to work today after two long garage sale days. Of course that bed-wetting of a Bears game last night is not helping.

A much nicer day didn't seem to help with our selling as the day went on. Most of the leftover big stuff was still there when we wrapped up yesterday, but there is some online interest in the bike trailer thanks to craigslist. We took the smaller stuff we could pack up straight to good will last night, now we just need to get the big stuff out of the way.

Kind of gross to sell a mattress but the frame has lots of life left. 

sad Harbor Freight bike rack needs a new home. 

But the trains sold, and more clothes and small goods, so all in all we made almost $500 for the weekend. Not bad. And despite the mess the third garage is in right now, there's lots of room in the main garage again, which means I can start looking for a leaf blower to take up more space. Ah, suburban life. Next thing I know I'll be cleaning the garage again.

But I can get the bike in and out, so it's all good.

Maybe the crappy signs actually worked

Whew. Garage sale, day one, in the books.

The night before

And it was a success in that both bikes sold, and enough other stuff that we've built a small profit that makes me glad I did this. Despite a cloudy day that felt like it could turn into a rainy one at any point, we stayed dry and sold some good stuff. All the ND jerseys, both Bears jackets. The snow blower and the old corded mower.

The rush hour was already gone at this point, and the beater went soon after. 

Now I just have to unload the elliptical. The toddler bed. The wine butler. The bike trailer. Yikes, that feels like a long list.

But the bikes went to a good home. The same home, actually, a few hours apart. An older guy took the Raleigh down but his wife told him not to. So he came back later and bought it in his own. And then he came back and bought the beater a few hours later. My kind of guy. What does it say about me that most of my stuff sold to older suburban guys who were very excited to buy my clothes and gear? I don't know. I guess I'm an old man. 

OMG someone PLEASE buy these trains!

Lots of trains to sell too, but it'll give me and the boy more time to throw the football around so it's all good. One more early coffee run and we'll be ready to go.

DIY sign posts

If we're having a garage sale, one thing we need is garage sale signs. So I picked up some cheap ones, and spent a few minutes making some stakes with all the scrap I've got around.

I was tempted for about a millisecond to just buy a handful of the thin stakes in a bucket right next to these signs, but then I realized the whole point of a sale is making some extra cash getting rid of stuff, not buying more things I could easily do myself.

Six signs are perhaps a few too many, but I can double up on them and have them somewhere people can see them from both sides. Viola!

Between a few pieces of plywood and some split 2x4 chunks, I have plenty of stuff already looking vaguely stake-like. All I had to do was trim it and put a point on it.

With these in hand and most of our prep work done, I think we're nearly ready to host a sale. Fingers crossed we don't have to postpone a week b/c of rain!

Labor Day weekend project: put our bedroom tv up

Ah, Labor Day. One last gasp of summery goodness without the hassle of getting to soccer games, work, school, or anything else. So of course I'm cramming the weekend full of garage sale prep. And it just wouldn't be labor day without sneaking in one more side project. So why don't we put the bedroom tv up on the wall?

This actually came about thanks to the garage sale, in that the in-laws had an un-used mount they were going to contribute to the sale, but we thought we'd grab it and use it ourselves. So I picked up another cable management kit during the week and viola, one labor day weekend project.

The tv is a sony bravia from about 7 years ago at this point, and beside occasionally dropping picture for what seems to be no reason it's been solid. I like our cheap TCL in the basement better but this works. With a new roku on it I love it these days, Ventures Bros marathon every night! It was up on the wall in our condo but has been on a dresser since we moved. There are minimal components to connect but if the tv is going on the wall why not go all the way and hide the wires properly.

Properly means a power bridge and sneaking the hdmi cords down the wall. Easy.

Breaking the drywall saw while trying to cut the hole out? Less easy. 

Finding studs and marking the bracket. Not so easy! Of course the studs are apparently randomly spaced.

Getting everything back on and powered up. Again, not so easy. Accidentally bent the pins on a cord, so we're down to just the Roku for now. Dammit.

Well, I was pretty close to not screwing this one up. Got the bracket on easy, power bridge in fine, even remembered to tie the cables together to get them through. At least we can still use it as I wait for new hdmi cords to show up.