Summer "Finds!"

One of our favorite things to do during the summer as a family is to HIT THE YARD SALES! There is nothing we 4 B's love more than stopping by a sale and finding a treasure. This summer has been an exceptional season for us, and we really hit the jackpot on every single thing we were looking for! And Britt even learned how to bargain - he's far braver than his mother and sister, that's for sure. He gets his smooth talking from his dad, of course.
If you think we're crazy to get our kicks from shopping other people's junk, let me share with  you a few (just a few, mind you!) highlights from our summer finds.
1. A brand new weed sprayer, with the tags still on it! Brady has been wanting one of the backpack weed sprayers for a couple of years, now. Right after we bought it, we did a price check at Coastal, and the exact same sprayer was $85.00, which is far more than we paid for ours. Exciting!
2. The third Star Wars movie on DVD. We found it at the last sale we went to (on this particular day). That morning, when we started out, Britt said, "I'm sending it out to the Universe - I am going to find that movie!" This happened while we were in Sublimity, one of our favorite places to go "yard saling." Britt looked and looked and looked through every DVD we came across at every single sale. Finally, at our last stop, there was a full table of DVDs, but a bunch of women were standing around it, and Britt couldn't get to it. He had showed me what the spine of the movie looked like, so I would know what to look for, and lo and behold, I saw the movie from across the table in the middle of the chatting women. I said, "Excuse me," reached out and snagged the DVD and yes! It was the EXACT VIDEO Britt had been searching for. Yay us! He sent it out in to the Universe, and it came back to him. Amen! It was good for him to see that the principal of The Secret really does work. We were all excited and happy for him. (Not so excited later on, though, when he relentlessly bugged us about watching it...)
3. I found a brand new copy of Kristin Hannah's book, Firefly Lane, which is the best book I've read all summer long. One of my friends (ironically named Kristin, as well) recommended her to me, and so I was thrilled to find a new, hardback book for a buck. The characters from that book are still living in my head!
4. Coca-Cola Glasses. We've been using Mason jars for our drinking glasses for the past several years, but we had a couple of really cool Coke glass that we loved, and so we started searching for more of them, and we've actually created an entire set, now! They come in different colors, and we have four or five of each color, now. Brailey can spy these glasses from a mile away! She was the Coca-Cola Glass Girl, this summer, and got a huge thrill out of finding them.
5. An almost new pressure washer. We nearly spent $300 on one from Costco this spring, but we knew we shouldn't, and good thing, because we found exactly what we were looking for at a mere fraction of that price! I love pressure washing things - I think it is part of my OCD, but it certainly came in handy when we redid our deck a couple of weeks ago. We love it!
6. An almost new, barely used Igloo Cooler for our beloved van. We love this cooler! I found the exact same one at Shopko and it was $45, so we feel really good about the $6 we spend on ours. So cool! Yah, pun intended.
We found a lot more treasures, let me tell you, but the one BIG thing we were searching for was a patio table and chairs. In fact, we took our picnic table off our deck to "unblock" us from finding the one we were meant to find. We came across a few, but they were either too expensive or not what we really wanted.
WELL! Sunday, after we just scored out last Coca-Cola glasses, completing our set, we were talking about how great it was that we had found everything we wanted at the yard sales this summer. And I said, "We found everything we wanted except for the patio set. Oh well! We'll find one someday!" Not sixty seconds after I said this, we saw a sale on the street with a patio set out front, one exactly like we were looking for! Brady whipped our van around drove us to the sale. He said, "Now play it cool, you guys. Don't look at the patio set first - don't look interested." And so as we hopped out of the van, I reminded the little B's, "Play it cool, play it cool..." They were laughing, but got serious real quick when we walked up to the sale - after all, we are Professional Yard Salers. Even though we were so excited, we kept our cool! Long story short, the set was in mint condition and priced fairly, and Brady managed to get a killer deal on it, and we now have our beloved patio set (see photo below), not only completing our deck, but completing a summer of successful sales, as well.
We bought a whole lot of other stuff over the course of the summer, but those were our main items we were actually looking for. I'm not sure I can adequately explain the amount of fun we have as a family searching through other people's junk. Our entire family gets excited to see what we can find. We do try to be smart and not buy a bunch of stuff we don't need. The secret, for us, is to have something in mind we would like to have that we might not otherwise be able to afford. And like I said, even Britt has learned the art of negotiation, which is a good skill to have. Brailey and I aren't so good with negotiating, but that's where Brady and Britt come into play, right? If you haven't ever spent a few hours hitting the yard sales, I highly recommend it. The 4 B's? We LOVE it!