My brother, mother and niece came to spend the weekend with us, to help and add to the excitement. My niece, Hazel was teething so she was tired and semi-cranky. Here is a photo to illustrate her mood:

We were not so motivated the first day because we didn’t sleep much the night before. My family was supposed to arrive at our place around 11:30pmish but were delayed in getting on the road and actually didn;t arrive till about 1:45am. We were waiting up for them and we watched the movie Cloverfield while we waited, it was an interesting movie! It sure kept us awake.

After the family arrived I didn’t get to bed till after 3:15am and we awoke Saturday morning for the first day of the yard sale at 5am! We were a bit lazy on the merchandising and displaying of stuff in our sleep deprived state.

Dixie’s previous owner, Maiden53, came out to our yard sale to check things out and visit with Dixie. It was a good visit and Dixie got lots of good play time in with her old buddies.

Also, we had lots of compliments on our signs and had some great traffic! We made $225 on the first day and ended up closing up at about 1pm since it began to pour rain. We were thankful for our E-Z UP tent when the rain came.

Unfortunately for us our E-Z UP tent was defective or something, as we were taking it apart we noticed that the un-reinforced supports were warping or bending. It was like the screws were tightened too tight when it was assembled in the plant or something because the aluminum supports were bending and caving in.

This was a bummer because we paid like $400 for the tent for my craft business and this is only the second time we have used it. After closing the thing (following the manufactures instructions) it looked like this:

After pulling our hair out about the E-Z UP tent we tried to relax and move on to happier things. We got to observe and enjoy the elk in the meadow a few blocks from our home. My family was amazed and fascinated by them. Here is a photo I shot of the elk:

That evening we swung by the motor home we are going to pay for this weekend so my mom could see it and get an idea of what we still needed for the trek.

The next day we started the yard sale later and were more focused on making the products we were selling look nice. Here is what Sunday’s display looked like:

We made a total of $378 for the weekend and are rid of most of our little knick-knack stuff but none of the furniture or bigger items sold… Sunday’s crowd was considerably smaller and we made less but $378 is better than nothing.

After many yard sale visitors comments about how they would take certain things for free if they didn’t sell we decided that we wouldn’t be freecycling the bigger stuff if we could help it. It’s kind of rude of people to expect to get it for free anyway.

If we are selling it we need the money for it right? Assuming we’ll just give it away for free at the end was just sort of insulting for us… We really could use the extra cash for the move and we need to sell as much as we can as opposed to just giving it away so if you can’t pay the piddly $10.00 we are asking for a dresser you could have bargained for a lower price- we want to get something for it but no we will not give it to you for free when it doesn’t sell. Ugh! I am not going to go on about that much longer, it will just make me mad.

So all in all we made good progress in our moving preparations! Oh and if you are in Flagstaff, AZ and are looking for a good carpet cleaner give SOS Carpet Cleaning a call and tell them I sent you! We just had Kevin (the owner) out for a price quote and are really happy to be doing business with him, he is so friendly and is a great guy!

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We are fleeing poverty with a view! A well known Flagstaff personality is leaving Arizona… Come buy our stuff and see us off!

This sale will take place on Moenkopi Trail in Kachina Village just south of the Flagstaff airport. July 26th & 27th. Sale starts @ 7am on Saturday and @ 8am on Sunday, come early to get the best selection (but not before 7 please). This is not a “regular yard sale”, we are selling so much more! Buy our stuff so we don’t have to take it with us! Bring your cash and swing on by, we hope to see you there!

The following stuff is up for grabs:
A dresser, Bookshelf, Television, Radio, Singer sewing Machine w/ table, Computer desk, Loads of Men & woman’s clothes, Camping gear, Tents, Gift baskets, Purses, Working washer and Dryer, Stuffed animals, Toys, Kitchen table set w/ chairs, Movies, Music CD’s, Books, Magazines, Live plants, Snow shovel, Holiday decor, garden stuff and much more!

We have one more weekend to get our yard sale crap all gathered and priced. There isn’t too much stuff left to go through! We even compleatly cleaned out our storage unit over the weekend so we can cancel that service and save some money over the next month and a half.

We have almost filled one entire walk in closet with packed, inventoried and sorted boxes… I think we are on box 50 now. Thursday we will have the Winnebago here at the house, we’re picking it up and keeping it here after the mechanical inspection- I am excited! Things are progressing nicely and I am feeling much better about it all today.

A plumber came out yesterday to take a look at our flooding kitchen issue. He claims it was only a loose pipe, he didn’t investigate the “under the foundation” work the other contractor did on Friday. We have no idea if the flooding will return but I have cleared all our stuff from under the sink and now a bucket is down their under the pipe, just in case!

The post I feel good! Are we ahead of the game? appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Oooo, maybe our doggies old owner could visit that weekend also! You see we got our Dixie on freecycle and we have always offered to let her old owners visit her except it has been so busy that it has yet to happen. Maybe yard sale weekend huh?

Yesterday I spent the morning out the the shed pulling boxes out, going through them, sorting and putting stuff back into the shed. Amazingly there is not as much crap in there as I thought, still plenty to get rid of but not as bad as I imagined! Here is a slide show of the project:

Now I need to tackle the inside crap, like our spare room- craft room. We had everything we didn’t plan on unpacking (since we only expected to be here 6 months) shoved into the walk in closet in that room. Over the weekend while we were looking for our Harkens souvenir cup we pulled everything out of there that we wanted to sort, consolidate and possibly get rid of… It is a mess, I took some photos just for you!

Now I need some advice about yard sales and moving, got any great pointers? I was thinking about putting an ad about the sale on Flagstaff, Craig’slist. How else can I advertise for the sale? How much cash do you think I will need for making change? Do people barter much at yard sales, if so how much do I charge/ markup stuff? Help me, share your knowledge…

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