Well, the sale opened Friday morning at 9am. Unfortunately, it was joined by rain and construction workers. The street was blocked off and there was a lovely cement truck parked out front most of the morning. The shot below was taken by my brother to show just a snippet of the joy that was happening before I arrived. I wish we would have taken more pics of the action. (Surprisingly, this was the ONLY pic we took all weekend.) At least in this pic it doesn't look like it was raining that much. However, it rained and rained and rained...ALL - DAY - LONG!
So, once the cement truck was gone, the street in front of the house was still blocked due to the other construction happening at the same location. And, they were there almost as long as we were.
I don't know how, but we surprisingly had a small handful of customers that were dedicated enough to follow detour signs and come find us. One guy just wanted some of our baked goods, but didn't want to get out in the pouring rain, so I delivered them to his window. Another issue due the rain was trying to find room for all of our sale items. We crammed as much as we could in the garage and ended up having to use a utility room, right off of the garage, to display everything. So, with all of that joy and excitement, by 5pm we were ready to close down! We were wet, cold, and ready to relax somewhere dry.
Saturday was supposed to be a mostly dry day, but when we arrived at 6:30am the rain was still there. We opened at 7am as planned and had a very slow morning. This time, though, the construction workers were gone and the road wasn't completely blocked off. So, we were at least happy for that. However, I was starting to get bummed out. All of my positive thoughts were beginning to drown in the constant rain and lack of shoppers. The rain was slowing but was off and on and we still couldn't get stuff out and make it more visible. It was around 11:30am when I posted to Facebook that I was praying for sunshine and shoppers and asked that all my friends join me in that prayer. You must have joined me in prayer and God was faithful because by 12 or 12:30 we had started to move stuff out of the basement and onto the drive. There weren't shoppers nor sunshine, but there also wasn't any more rain. Slowly and surely shoppers started to arrive, and at about 1:30 we had our first "rush" of the event. (I give some of that credit to my old friend, Krissy because once she arrived, so did everyone else! I think she should have shown up MUCH earlier!)
The rest of the day went relatively smoothly. We did have a customer parked on the street that had their side mirror knocked off by a speeding car coming down the road. Of course, they never even stopped. But other than that, it was nice to deal more with shoppers than with rain and construction workers. We even stayed open an extra two hours because they were finally coming and we didn't want to turn them down.
By 5pm we were closing and I went to count money. None of us were too optimistic as we really had only had a decent flow of customer for a few hours. And, you could barely tell that we sold anything. I mean, we still had an entire 2 car garage (+ what was on the drive) full of stuff. However, we were shocked to find that we made a total of $422.50!!! (I'm still not sure how that happened!) Considering everything we had to deal with, I was pretty impressed! I can't imagine how well we could have done had the weather and construction not been an issue. BUT, like I mentioned, I do still have a ton of stuff. So, the fun is not over! Some of my family had intended to do another sale of their own and so we are going to combine our efforts. It will be at the end of May and will run more like a traditional multi-family sale with each getting the earnings of what they contributed to the sale. So, any money raised from the items my friends and I donated will still be put towards my fundraiser. I will keep you posted on the dates and times of that sale, so keep an eye out for your chance to go shopping and help us out!
I want to end with a HUGE THANK YOU to each and every person that was involved in making the sale possible. I know many in my family contributed a lot of time, energy, and resources. And many many more of you donated items to sell. I am so grateful to all of you for your support and can't wait to see what happens in the next sale as a result of your generosity! (start praying NOW for good weather & no construction! ha ha!)
THANK YOU!!!
