Half Price Books: My Experience Selling

Yesterday, I went to Half Price Books to sell some books, CDs and electronics. I had some good stuff Suze Orman, Suzanne Summers, among others for books (about 10 of them). Some new-age talk tapes and lower ranking motivational books that I threw in the batch. I put about 20 pop, rock, and rap CDs in the mix (Brittney Spears, Kesha, and Coolio et. al.). And, Some great Leap Pad and Leapsters games and consoles that I even still had the boxes and paperwork for.

Everything was in better than good condition, most of it was "like new".

$10.50

Yep, that's it, ten dollars and 50 cents. I had decided before I went in, I was taking whatever they offered. Otherwise, the stuff was going to the Salvation Army.

My assumption about that place is they give you about 10% of what they are going to sell the stuff for. Had I the time, or want to, I would have sold the stuff on Ebay or had a garage sale.

But, it is what it is.

If you just want to get rid of your old books, you're only going to get pennies on the dollar and Half Price Books. If you want more, you're going to have to put some effort in it and sell the stuff yourself.

Dealing with the Loft

I'm still dredging through my Spring Cleaning. I'm really taking my time this year because I have set a few personal goals that are dependent on great results. Yesterday I started tackling the loft.

The loft used to be the nursery. When the oldest went to college, the little one took over her room. The loft became a big old storage dump. Whatever I couldn't get rid of, or didn't know what to do with, got put in the loft.

It hasn't been pleasant walking by and seeing boxes of unused stuff just sitting there. Granted, because of my little problem with OCD, it's been organized chaos. Organized chaos is still chaos in my book. Well this spring, I'm fixing the problem.

Today I'm going to donate several boxes of baby items to our local help center. After that I'm heading to Half Price Books to see what I can get for some old books, CDs, and electronic games. I'll follow up this post with how that turns out.

Wish me luck!

Who are You?

We have decided that aliens have abducted our youngest daughter and replaced her with and evil clone. Now, this is not our first rodeo with a pre-teen. But, this time around I swear we're dealing with needing to get an exorcist.

The other day, after one of many arguments, I looked at her and she gives me the deer in the headlights stare. I told her, "I don't know who you are, but would you please bring my daughter back?" 

She laughed. Does that mean she is a clone?

Here with Grandpa

(The good old days)

Soup 'n' Sam-itch

After yesterday's post, I made a dish pinned a lot on Pinterest called Carrabba's Sausage and Lentil soup. Lately, I've been serving up a, what we like to call, "Soup 'n' Sam-itch" night. (Spelling issues are purely intentional). The whole Sam-itch thing came about watching an episode of Duck Dynasty and Godwin called a Sandwich, a Sam-itch. 

My spelling may be off, but the phonics aren't. He actually said what sounded like "Sam-itch." If you've ever watched the show, you know what I'm talking about.

Anyhoo, my oldest daughter had actually wanted me to make it. She had tried the soup at Carrabba's and sought out the recipe. She made it and said it was delicious! (I don't know how her version could have been good, she omitted all the good stuff).

It's called Carrabba's Sausage and Lentil soup. The copycat recipe is on Food. So, I made it and there were all kinds of good smells going on in the house all afternoon!

I read through some of the comments and ratings for the recipe and opted to make some changes to the original recipe. I will definitely make this soup again on a future Soup 'n' Sam-itch night. 

Next time I'm going to take a lot pictures so I can post my recipe changes on my Family Night Dinner Ideas blog. 

 Yummy!

*Note: the picture I took was right after I threw all the ingredients in the crock-pot. I had to take a picture to text my daughter to prove I was making the soup. I didn't take anymore pictures after it was done because we sat down to eat our Soup 'n' Sam-itch!

Bon Appetit!

My Etsy Shop is Live!

I did it! I opened an Etsy shop! You can see my hand crafted items on the side bar over there. It's been a lot of work putting it all together. Like I said in my post, "Planning Today," I want to do it right, if I'm going to do it.

There's a whole lot more to opening an Etsy shop than one would think. Not only do you have to make what you're going to sell, you have to list it, and promote it. Okay, that did make it all sound simple, but when you get down to the nitty gritty, there's really a lot to it.

Etsy suggests listing 10 items to start with. Well, for me at least, what I want to sell requires a lot of thought, sewing, drawing, assembling, and supplies. For example, one piece I made to sell requires upwards of $70 worth of supplies and equipment just to make it.

Hey Diddle, Diddle!

Given all that, and the time it took me to make it, I decided to make smaller pieces to help even the scales.

Twinkle, Twinkle little Star!

Hubby and I discussed the cost of overhead, time, and the "what ifs" prior to opening shop. The idea of starting with 10 items flew out the window. However, I'm working on more inventory anyway.

So, in an effort to help with branding, I started a blog just for my Etsy shop: Truly Unique Baby. (Notice how the new blog and my store have the same name? Cute huh?) Check it out if you have some time. Right now there's only a couple of posts. But, I'm working on creating more.

Along with all that, I'm still cleaning up this blog. The Internet has evolved so much since I started it, a lot of the old links don't work anymore. If only there were more hours in a day...

Well, if I'm going to get anything done, I better get to it.

 

Take care!

Piles of Paper

Spring cleaning continues in my world. How does one accumulate so much stuff? I think secretly I'm a pack rat.

This week I've been tackling paperwork. Since hubby had to do the taxes, I figured I'd do my part too. It's long overdue. What do you keep? Well, who knows? For instance, bank statements. Please don't ask me why we still get these, I've wanted to go paperless for years. Some say keep bank statements for three years. Some say one year. I decided to be safe and do three.

Tax returns seven years. Jeez that's a lot of paper to keep around for that long. When you're young, childless, and single you're looking at a couple of pieces of paper. When you grow a family you've got to keep seven book thick bundles of paper in your file cabinet.

Medical statements. Do you have to keep these? I've been holding on to stuff from twelve years back! Enough is enough, I decided to let them go. From now on I'm only going to keep medical stuff for one year to make sure insurance and payments are processed.

Mortgage statements. We've got a lot of those. Every single one from the first payment we made on the house. Plus, we've got another batch starting from a land purchase. We're keeping all those. Why? Because we heard a Clark Howard radio show saying you should. You must keep every single statement and payment receipt (stapled together) just in case. His theory: on the day you pay off your house, what if they come back and say you missed a payment? You'll have proof.

Funny how when you hear stuff like that you remember it forever.

Anyway, I'm off to the store. My paper shredder blew up.