Chocolate Castles as wel

Im so thankful for computers, chocolate and Castle reruns as I won’t be sticking my head out the door for a few days. After yesterday, it will be awhile before I show my face out in our neighborhood. Let me start at the beginning. Our community has a garage sale every year. It was so exciting to think that we could get rid of all the “treasures” that we don’t have room for since moving here in May. I had already begun to imagine the new chairs, lamps and Christmas decor which I would be able to buy after making a fortune on Saturday from selling all the goodies. On Friday morning, I ran to a store here to look and pick out new chairs that I just knew would be in my future after closing up the garage sale yesterday. That way, all I would have to do yesterday afternoon is walk in the store and point and say, “I’ll take that and that and oh yes, I have to have that cute little table decoration. And please box up all those wonderful lamps which I just cannot live without”. Because I get a little (ok, maybe more than a little) impulsive sometimes, I did come home Friday with the back end of our crossover  loaded with a new chest of draw4rs and a small buffet because what if,”there had been a huge crowd showing up at the store and bought them out of these two precious chests, (at least that was my reasoning when unloading them out of the back with Randy standing there just shaking his head.) and I would have had to settle for something that was just not “perfect” for our new house. Heaven  forbid! ok, back to Friday night preparing for Saturday morning garage sale…I unloaded the new “just had  to have pieces” and Randy says that he will take the big boxes to the dumpster which is located in the back of our neighborhood. He takes off on the golf cart and I proceed to bring in the newfound treasures. When he comes back a few minutes later, he walks in the house and says, “well, I am officially my dad now, I just picked up something that was sitting beside the dumpster because I thought you might like them; come outside.”. So I did. There sitting beside the golf cart were 3 lanterns which hold candles that add charm and sophistication to the American home. I said, “you mean to tell me that someone just left these at the dumpster? I’m so proud of you for bringing them home. I will just paint them black and set them up on the porch and buy new candles for them.”

To celebrate our new obtained Dumpster Decor, we decided to celebrate and go get a. Pizza so my energy would be spent on taking the rest of our stuff outside for the sale, which would start at 7 a.m.

When we were pulling back into the driveway with pizza in hand, I had had time to think that maybe  painting the lanterns would be a lot of trouble. So I told Randy that instead of painting them, I would just sell them in the garage sale. After all, If I could get $5/ea that would allow me to run to Hobby Lobby and get one gigantic black lantern. So, I marked them with little yellow stickers and set them out to be oohed and Ahhed over, just knowing that they would be the first thing to go. Sure enough, a neighbor stopped by at 7:30 and said, “oh that would look great on my porch, I will buy one. So after taking her money, I turned to Randy and smiled, being ever so confident that I had made the right decision.  About an hour later, a sweet new friend and her husband stopped by to see if we had anything they could not live without. Teresa lives the next street over and we have already become quite good friends. For those of you who know Carol Loper, Teresa is the Carol of Arizona.

Teresa looks over at the lanterns and says, I just saw one that looks just like those on Judy’s front porch. I said, yes, she stopped by earlier and bought one. She then looks at her husband and says, “those look just like the ones you took to the dumpster yesterday” at which time, she looks at me and says, “I had better go home to check and see if anything is missing from my house since you were at my house the other day.”.  By this time, we were laughing so hard we were both crying.  Randy looked at me and said, “I told you that out of 800 houses here, expect the person that threw these away to see them here at our house being sold.”.  Well, between the laughing and the embarrassment, it was just too much. She texted me and told me that she was not going to hang this sin over my head forever but she was certainly going to get some mileage out of it. I had to promise her that I will support her grandson’s first 2 years of college if she would keep quiet. Apparently that wasn’t enough, because she texted me this morning and said that they told everyone at the patio party last night. AND encouraged all our new friends to not ever let me house sit for them, as they might come home and find an empty house with me selling all their worldly possessions in a garage sale.

My dumpster diving days are now behind me and the new adventure of not stooping lower than garage sale finds is ahead.  I assured Teresa that I would at least tithe from the money I profited from the sale of her lantern. Maybe I need to give a little more than 10% to get me out of this one.