Then there were 2

Then there were 2...No we aren't having another baby, Carson has 2 teeth!!!

Non-stop drooling, chewing, and did I mention drooling? He was sleeping all night long, 8-10 hours at a time until the tooth fairy arrived! Boy was that a stressful couple of weeks for us. Down at 8PM, up at 2AM, 4AM, 6AM and cranky!!! Poor little guy has had more Baby Motrin and Tylenol pumped through him in the last month, than I have had in 5 years.

Those pearly whites are now poked through and he a much happier baby. 5 Month check up went great! 17.8 pounds and 23 1/2 inches tall. Here are some updated pics of little man!

Little Terror- perfect for a teething baby!

I love hanging out in my kangaroo pouch!

Yum Yum! Cereal

I love to chew on my hand!

Helping Mommy at work!

My 1st OU/Texas game with Mom and Dad at the lake

Mom likes to dress me up like a little man, check out my cool jeans my uncle Matt got me!

Playing in my Wonder Bug at Mom's office!

Have a happy Friday!!!

XOXO

Organized Garage!!!

After a super successful garage sale, it was time to clean the garage!! If there is one thing that my hubby hates more than anything is me cluttering up his "man space". It is a really bad habit of mine to just drop my stuff in the garage on the way into the house and then there it sits.... sometimes for days weeks.

I am an insurance sales lady by day and an organizer by night! I love to stack, arrange, and label everything! For those of you who have ever been to our lake house, you know the labeling part it true!! :)

Since our garage sale, http://thefrenchtulip.blogspot.com/2011/10/garage-sale.html we have been needing to tidy up and organize the garage. We started by lining up all the power equipment under the work benches. They are so bulky, this was the best place to store them.

Then came the peg board! With help of Tanner, we hung 1x2's behind the peg board (on each edge) directly into the studs as anchors. Then we screwed the peg board into the anchors. This step is a must for 2 reasons:
1) the studs will hold the weight of the items you hang on the peg board
and most importantly
2) the 1 inch gap between the wall and the peg board allows you to "peg" your hooks into the holes with ease!

If you hang a peg board over a work bench like us, I suggest you raise it off the bench a few inches (we did 3 inches). This will make cleaning your work space easier and you can hang items on the lower pegs and get full use of the board.

I tried to evenly space out the items and hang them in order of importance. Tanner laughed at me during this process, but if I am going to organize... do it an eye appealing manner! :) The paper towels, scissors, tape, and some of the tools in my reach(cause I'm short). The locks, saws, and guy stuff near the top.

Then came the fun part, LABELS!!!!

I organized the shelves on this side of the garage with like items. All the cleaners in one tote. The lubes, degreasers, and guy gooey in another. Car care got its own bucket and outdoor light bulbs did too. Faucet covers now have their own spot as well as Tanner's toy boat. I bought hang tags from the Office Supply store and labeled with a black marker. I write the info on both sides in case the tags get flipped around. I use store bought tags becasue they are sturdier than homemade ones.

Now if we can just get everything back to its designated spot when not in use, I will be a happy wifey. I am making a promise to Tanner to NOT clutter his "man space" with my junk, then he will be a happy hubby!! Hopefully our garage will stay organized and clean forever!

XOXO

Garage Sale

What a busy couple of weeks we have had! Since we moved into the new house a year ago last month, we finally decided it was time to sell some of our "non-usables" in a garage sale. If you have never had a garage sale, let me tell you... it is a chore to get ready! I have had many over the years and I tend to think I have it down to an art!

PRICING:
First, I have been collecting items since the move. I price every item as I put it in the GARAGE SALE box. (This makes it TONS faster on you when you decide to have a sale). I use bright neon stickers for most items and then on clothing and hard to sticker items I make hang tags.

**How to make a cheap hang tag**
Use brightly colored paper (I use scraps of old scrapbook paper) punch a hole in the corner, write the item description and the price, and hang with some curly ribbon or on clothing I use a safety pin.

You ask why I write the description on it?? Well, after many successful sales, I have found people to change prices on items. I know, I know, it's just a garage sale, but why would I want to get $4 for a Coach purse that I had marked $50. Also, I think it extremely important to have every item priced. Nothing is worse than a non-priced item. I also don't like the "make me an offer" gimmick. I don't want to insult someone nor do I want to under price something that someone would have paid more for or vise-versa.

GATHERING:
We, meaning the hubby and I, started working on the sale 3 weeks prior to our big sale day. We would scour the house and garage for items to sell, price it and set it out in the garage.

We hung clothes on the rack as we priced them

Look at all the goodies we gathered!

My "work station" Everything was priced and inspected here. I made sure to fix any broken items, or insure that they worked via batteries or plug.

SET-UP:
I divided all of our items into like categories. All the kitchen items on one table, Christmas on another, household goods on one, baby on another, etc. It was like browsing at a store!! This makes it much easier to find something when someone asks if you have a specific item.

I staged the garage with the tables set up the night before the sale. When Friday morning rolled all we had to do was roll out the tables and place everything on the driveway.

Baby table

Notice the blankets and sheets in the background? We did this to hide our stuff that wasn't for sale.

See the sign in the background? We attached flags to it, to blow in the wind, as if all the stuff on the driveway wasn't a big enough eye catcher!! :)

We even had a 4 wheeler for sale!

More clothes on the much used racks

We had a display case for the sunglasses and we also had it for sale!

The overall display of our items

DATE AND TIME:
We chose a gorgeous fall day for our sale and made sure that our State football team (OU Sooners) played a night game on Saturday and that it wasn't the same time as our Sate Fair. Both of these events would have put a damper on things. We opened the doors at 7AM and closed them around 6PM each night. We had people non-stop the whole time!

SIGNS:
I don't take a picture of our signs, but I made them on NEON orange poster board and in big letters wrote GARAGE SALE--->
I taped them to some realtor signs that we had laying around. This is much easier than taping signs to a pole, and they stand up high off the ground. Our street intersects with a major city street, so we had LOTS of exposure with our signs.

FYI:
We had so much stuff, I was concerned that we wouldn't be able to sell it all. So, here was my master plan: EVERYTHING that was left at 1PM on Saturday was 1/2 off the marked price!!! I made another sign to put by my original sign... and boy did I open the flood gates! We had people standing in line to pay! We were slinging money and bags full of goodies faster than I ever expected. I will definitely do that again if I have another sale (hopefully not anytime soon!!!)

Overall we had a fabulous sale, we made over $3,500 and got rid of lots of clutter! After the 1/2 off sale, we only had 3 plastic totes of items left! I donated them to Good Will and got my tax slip. It feels good to declutter and make some money at the same time! We were too exhausted by the end of the weekend to clean up and organize the garage, so that was put off until the next weekend. Next blog post will be the new cleaned out garage!

Hopefully you can take a tip or two from me and have a successful garage sale too!!

XOXO-