The Big Sale...of stuff!

{note: this post does contain two videos taken by Brent:) You all cracked me up with your comments on the first video about me and my voice! I like putting a voice with a face, too! I do think I sound different than I feel like I do though. I've lived in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma so I can pretty much take it. I've visited several northern states and always caught quite a few comments on my ever-changing accent.}

I think Brent is a funny but good commentator. He even said sweet thank yous to people :)

As I've mentioned over the past couple of weeks, Brent's grandmother moved in with his mother. She has had a sticky few weeks with heart condition and surgery, but praise the Lord she is starting to recover. We certainly hope that continues!

She is allowing Brent and I to move into her house in order to have a home once we return from Dallas with Cohen. The house is much older so we have a few projects we have started. I'm no longer working on them..but Brent is along with some wonderful helpers!

HERE is the first post I did on the house before anything was touched really.

Since Brent's grandmother was downsizing, we hosted an estate sale of the things she didn't take with her to the new place. She wanted the proceeds of her things to go to a trust/foundation for our little Cohen (which is still being set up). SO nice of her! I will never forget when Brent's mom told me that. I know my jaw dropped. We also informed friends and family that if they had any items they wanted to get rid of that we would take it off their hands and their proceeds would also go to help our situation.

We had SO SO many kind people donate things! Even the neighbors that came see about the sale would read our flyers and go home, clean our their garage and bring items over to donate! We met some wonderful new neighbors I know we will be lucky to have!

Luckily, Brent and I had about 5 or 6 boxes of stuff and my parents had oh, about 20 or 30 boxes of stuff from their move they decided they didn't want! I really almost got to the point where I thought I wanted to sell all of my stuff. Hormones.

Our families and friends donated their time to help work the sale. Let me just tell you, it was a crazy week! I got very little sleep and one day I didn't make it to the sale until noon! My body simply wouldn't work when my alarm went off at 5am.

We certainly appreciate everyone's items they donated and time they donated!

We decided to make flyers and signs to put around the sale. Technically, at an estate sale, people shouldn't..or perhaps don't always try to negotiate prices..at least on the first day. Our sale was really more of an estate sale and garage sale with the variety of items we had. With all the shoppers, we had lots of stories about people with friends or family that had a baby with a heart condition or other amazing miracle situations. It was nice to hear all the stories and have sweet blessings said to us. Thanks to the signs and flyers, if someone had change coming back from their purchase, a lot of times they would drop the change in the donation jar. Do not get me wrong, there was still LOTS of haggling on prices at our estate/garage sale. That's the nature of the "game". But there were so many kind and understanding people that didn't want to bother trying to get an EXTRA good deal on an item knowing those few cents or dollars were going to a helpful cause.


My mom, being quite the little baker, decided she would make cookies, banana bread mini loafs and rum cake to sell at the sale. Needless to say, it was a hit! People came back after the first day looking for her treats to buy! People even wanted to place orders with her. We sold water as well, but it was a pretty cool sale so the water didn't fly out of the fridge.

I really didn't take many pictures throughout the sale because I was swamped being the cashier. I snapped a few and Brent took two videos so you can probably see more on them. He took a before video and an after. I wish I would have take some pictures of our friends and family that helped!

This was the living room before... and when I say before..it was before we really priced and organized things. Luckily, God gave us beautiful days so we were able to pull lots of things on the lawn, which you will see in the video.
Again, this picture was taken when we were working to organize and price things...

Here is the before video. I think it was actually taken on the 2nd day of the sale so there is actually quite a lot that had already been purchased.

Some of our neighbors are opening a winery, vineyard & bed and breakfast! How fun is that! Some of our friends donated a pretty antique table so the neighbors bought it for the bed and breakfast. I like the way Brent and neighbor decided to transport the table to their house. I started giggling and ran in to grab my camera.....

I know I already posted this picture once but here it is again :) One of the neighbors that came over and cleaned out her garage, had the tea pots sent over for us to sell! I kept the orange one :)

Here is the video Brent took towards the end of the sale. I believe it was on the last day after lunch. At the end of the day, the workers basically started telling people they could take whatever they would like and make a donation of whatever they wanted to.

After the sale, we worked to get everything packed in boxes and Brent got in on the porch and covered (bc forecasted rain) for Goodwill to pick up.

Here are just a few after pictures of the empty dinning & living room.

Thanks again to all who helped, donated and participated!

Now, we have a cute little house to move into. If we could JUST SELL OUR CURRENT HOUSE. That is going to cause serious issues if it doesn't sell soon :(

I have a post I'll work on regarding the projects in the new house that started before I left town. I snapped some pictures of Brent working and of our little painter elf friends :)

Today was a good day but I'm starting to wear down. I'm hurting and aching some. I think the past few weeks are really catching with me. I've been having some pains in my tummy over the past few hours but I'm thinking they might just be food related. I sure hope so, anyway. Cohen needs to cook in there a little longer! It's after midnight and I'll attempt to sleep soon. I'm putting it off because I know it won't be easy. I've had a hard time the past few nights. I go to the doctor tomorrow afternoon so updates on that soon!

Two nights away from Brent so far. Not too bad. Luckily, I only have to go one more :) It helps he has called several times since he got off work and went to bed. He, my brother and my dad went to make a list of some things for dad and brother to work on at house while Brent is at work. Brent then went to see our pup who is staying with his dad. It makes us so very sad to be away from Elton but it's really what's best for now. Elton loves being at his pawpaw's house and we know he is in good hands! I'm still working on a way to Skype with him.... Elton....