Yard Sale, Craigslist Etiquette and Random Whining

So I've been gearing up for a yard sale for quite some time, and originally planned it for last weekend, but then I got sick and just wasn't prepared so I pushed it back a week.

Then after pushing it back a week Thursday rolls around and I'm still completely not prepared enough to start a yard sale the next morning, so I decide to do Saturday only.

I realized quickly that Friday's do the best in OKC for some strange reason.  I guess that is when all the hardcore yard sale folks come out because even though we had a steady stream of traffic, in comparison to previous years we were really lacking foot traffic.

By the end of the day we didn't do too shabby, a couple hundred bucks in our pocket, but we still had MANY big ticket items left that I was sure would have sold.

I'm also learning that at yard sales, you actually can make more on the tiny dollar here, five dollars there items than the big ticket things.  I decided that I would list some of our larger items online at Craigslist thinking that it would be less headache.

It wasn't.

I was wrong.

REALLY wrong.

Sometimes everything goes smoothly on Craigslist with the transaction.  You post an item for said price, person contacts you in kind an courteous manner.  They show up at said time, hand you cash, pick up the said item and are on their happy little way.

I said SOMETIMES.

There are several things that people do to annoy me on Craigslist, but I'm gonna stick to the top THREE of my Craigslist pet peeves.

Craigslist Idiot #1 "What is the lowest that you are willing to go."

Really? (In my best Amy Poehler voice)  CI?  (craigslist idiot)  Really?  If I wanted to sell my $40 item for $10 I would have posted it for ten dollars, not $40.  I understand negotiation, and wanting to get the best deal possible, and even I expect a little price negotiation and haggling, but lets learn how to do it properly.  Quote me an offer of an actual dollar amount and we can go from there.  Coming right out and asking me though "How low are you willing to go?" Really? Makes me insane.

CI #2 - "Can you please txt me a pic of it?"

Really?  I am one of those Craigslist shoppers that 99.9% of the time I will not even LOOK at your add if it does not contain photos.  Therefore I always do my buyers the courtesy of adding a quick photo or two to my posting.  Asking me to text a photo of the picture to you (while using short text) just makes me irate.  I mean REALLY? My response to this last night was the following "there were photos added to the post.  Here is a link once again to my post showing the photos." and I sent them a link.

CI #3 - "Can you deliver the item?"

Ok, I guess that maybe I may be the CI in this circumstance for not posting "pickup only" but sometimes I just think that is a given.  In the retail world I do not call up Petco and ask them to deliver me a dog crate, I go and pick up the item that I want.  If you don't want to pick it up sometimes stores WILL offer a delivery option but REALLY you have to expect a fee for this, and you definitely can't be trying to talk me down on my price while asking me to drive an HOUR to deliver you a DOG CRATE.  Really?  There is a section on Craigslist informing you where I'm located in the city so please don't act shocked when I tell you my nearest crossroads folks.

Ok, I promise I'll stop my rant now.

So, I got the purple sofas out of my den.

Here is what my den looked like if you recall:

Those overstuffed sofas just were not doing it for us anymore.  They were taking up a TON of space.  They never sold in the yard sale, but I have a couple interested folks on Craigslist, so we will see how it goes.

I've gone back in forth in my wonderful world of crazy indecisiveness over the past week whether to try to recover these two Wingback chairs that I currently have in my possession or just buy new chairs for this room.

Recovering furniture is NOT an easy task, and since the two chairs are not matching I'm afraid that it will look odd.

When we got them side by side they really don't look THAT much different.  One is slightly bigger, but I plan on putting a table between the two of them so they won't be THIS close when complete.  Also maybe I could add a "his" and "hers" pillow in each chair just to be kinda cute. 

Right now I'm like 99.9% sure that I'll recover them. 

I will probably change my mind tomorrow.

I tell you folks, I'm crazy.  I don't know how my husband puts up with me.  That's all I need is another project that I can't finish.

Oh, by the way, I finally got the baskets and fabric for my entryway bench.

forgive me for this craptastic photo of my bench

 We are almost there folks, almost there...

Family FUN Day!

Ok, I know I haven't written a post in forever.

We've been REALLY busy around here. Not with home stuff with just life, and being sick, oh and reading the Hunger Games and stuff like that.

I mean SERIOUSLY how GOOD are these books?  I'm half way through Mockingjay and I'm DYING to know how they end.

 I digress.

Friday my husband took the day off from work and we decided to unwind and have a family fun day. I'm SO glad he did because it was one AMAZING day.

We started out originally planning a zoo trip, but when we got in the parking lot The OKC Science Museum seemed to be calling our name. We changed our plans in a split second and decided to go for it, because that's how we roll. (Disclaimer, that's how my HUSBAND rolls. Normally the control freak in me will spaz out at a last minute change of plans such as this, but I was actually pretty cool with it).

We have a seriously AWESOME Science Museum here in OKC.  They have this HUGE indoor play area (like a three story tree house).  The little girls liked that.  They got a bit scared at the science live show with the explosions and such, but eventually they started to warm up to the place.  Good thing I bought a season pass.  That will come in handy I'm sure!
 
Anyhow we had a fun morning there and I think the grown ups may have had more fun than the kiddos did.

After the science museum we decided to still hit up the zoo.  Since we have a season pass it's nice to be able to drop in for a few hours and not have to stay the ENTIRE day.  It's been worth EVERY penny to have that family pass.  I HIGHLY recommend it.  That's why we decided it would be worth it to spring for the family pass to the science museum as well.  It will be great in the winter when it's too cold for the zoo!

At the zoo of course I had to stop and satisfy the crazy cat lady living inside me.  We have THREE new baby tigers at the zoo.

Isn't it seriously the most beautiful animal EVER?  I joke that God is gonna give me one in heaven, but I swear when I get to heaven God better have one of these babies waiting for me.

Of course we had to check on mamma and baby elephant too.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE our zoo.  I would dare say it's one of the best ever.

After the zoo we decided to head toward downtown and see what fun we could find down there.  We didn't know exactly WHAT we were gonna do, but this ended up being my most favorite part of the day.

Down by the Crystal bridge in the arts district they have this really artsy crazy looking kids park.  At first I thought it would be kinda lame, but it actually ended up being SUPER cool.

Brett with the new Devon building behind him

They have these large cool rock formations and beautiful gardens.

The slide is a big green hill with metal poles going down it.

They also have these weird little balls all over the place for climbing on.

And my favorite photo of the day, my kids on their GROW letters.

We then left the park and went exploring around the crystal bridge.  It's really neat down there and they have a LOT of cool spots to take photos (or goof off) as our family does.

This is our SUPERSTAR pose on the stage

Jumping OFF the stage

My itty bitty ones

I always get annoyed with my husband making goofy faces in EVERY photo.  I showed him this time that I can make goofy faces too.

After we left there we headed toward Sara Sara Cupcakes.  Seriously,  BEST. CUPCAKES. EVER.  (and I am NOT a cake person). 

They had one cupcake called "Sir Elton John."  I snapped a photo and sent it off to my BFF Lanie in Phoenix.  To say she LOVES Elton is a gross understatement.  She has his initials tattooed on her.  NOT.  KIDDING.  Love that gal.

After eating our cupcakes. We headed to the new Whole Foods that just recently opened here in OKC.  My husband had been there since it is close to his work, but I had not yet checked it out.  I LOVE the place.  It's pretty pricey, but we did pick up a few items (banana chips, some fresh almond butter that we ground ourselves and some chocolate peanut butter and of course Lara Bars for the husband).

After seeing all that yummy food, we decided to grab dinner.  We went to Shogun for dinner, and the kids enjoyed watching the chef cook in front of us.

After that, we went home and crashed of course because even though we had a TON of fun, we were EXHAUSTED.

Best family day EVER.

Cutting the Cord on Cable

img from hediacomputers.com via shutterstock

For a while now we have been seriously toying with the idea of canceling our cable TV. I know, crazy right?

Off and on my husband would mention canceling cable when things got tight and I would go into freak out mode. You know ladies, when you and your husband have the dreaded "budget meeting." Gawd I hate budget meetings.

Eventually my tears and whining would win out and we would drop the subject.

About a year ago though when Netflix started getting better and better about their streaming library, I started to give it some more serious thought.

Still though I thought I couldn't live life without a DVR, and also CBS shows were not on Netflix or Hulu.

So, we started toying with the idea of how we could cut the cord, and started working in that direction.

Our first step was to get an old tower and hooked it up to our upstairs TV. We have been streaming up there for more than six months. We tried out Boxee, which comes with an app for the iPhone which gave us a remote (which was nice not having to get up and click the mouse for each new episode or to search Netflix). However we noticed some glitches. Boxee doesn't show EVERYTHING in our Netflix queue. We didn't like that. Also it doesn't list the episodes in order.

Seriously folks my OCD was kicking into overdrive without the episodes in chronological order. I thought I'd pull my hair out.

Boxee did allow us to subscribe to shows like BBT through CBS, however it was really slow streaming, and we were not thrilled with the quality of it. Much better to exit the Boxee system and just go to the actual site through the browser.

We kind of gave up on cutting the cord for a bit, the Holidays came around and life just got too busy to work on the TV stuff.

However each month when that Cox bill would come in the mail, I would ask myself WHY? Why do I keep paying them $80 a month for something that we could easily get for next to nothing?

So, two weeks ago we got serious about this.

I ordered a free trial of Hulu plus and would you know the VERY day I did this Hulu Plus got an app for the Wii?  Our timing couldn't have been better.

I don't like their interface as much as the Netflix interface for the Wii, but they JUST came out with it.  I'm sure it will take some time to get the glitches out of it.

Next, I called Cox and found out how low our bill would go and they talked about "data caps".  A word I had not yet heard.

Data caps?  Are you FREAKING serious?  We have a 200GB a month data limit on our internet.  My heart sank.  We could increase that limit by upping to premier or ultimate package, but what was the point?  We were trying to SAVE money, not spend more.

I thought at that point again our journey to cancel cable was over, however after some research it seems that 200GB will give you about 32 HD movies a month or 500 SD shows.  That's like a LOT of TV people, about 5 or more hours a day if not more, and yes, that is how long the TV blares in our house at times on our bad days.

So, I started looking at our data usage and we stopped using cable over the weekend.  We streamed LITERALLY all day yesterday on both TV's and ended up using under 5GB.  That keeps us well under our allowance monthly.

This past weekend my husband made an HD antenna this weekend. It is very similar to THIS antenna. It's up in our attic and you can't even see it. Our picture quality is just as good if not better than cable.  We are getting all our local channels on both TV's just fine.

There are still some more issues to work out but we will do that along the way.

1.  I don't like having a huge tower in my bedroom hooked to my TV, so eventually what I think we will do is move it to a closet one day. My husband plans to get a video capture card (I think that's what it is...he is the techie on this). With that we can record our HD shows like HIMYM, BBT and CSI etc...all off the air in HD.

Our next step is to get a ROKU box.  It will be much better looking than the tower in our room, and it will give us a remote that we can use.

Img from ROKU.com

Roku seems to perform better than Boxee does as far as an interface according to reviews.  It will take a bit of money to sink into getting our system where we want it, but it the long run it should pay off.

2.  We can't watch CBS through Hulu Plus or Netflix.  ALL my favorite shows seem to be on that channel, so for now I have to watch them on the iMac or else up in our bedroom with the tower (because I can do that through the browser).  They stream a bit slower through CBS than they do on Hulu or Netflix.  Seriously CBS, get with the program!  However I think when we get the capture card, hopefully we can just record these to the hard drive and Roku will let us pull them up.  Again, we are still working on it.

Still, when i made that call to Cox today I was a little paniced and scared.  Cable has been our crutch for YEARS now.  In fact funny thing was my job BEFORE I was a stay at home mom was working in retention for Cox.  Yeah, I was the gal who would try to convince you to KEEP your cable and I got paid WELL to do it.

However the deed is done.  The cable is GONE.

I mean, what will I do if I can't watch mindless hours of House Hunters International on HGTV when I'm sick in bed?  Or what about that evening on the sofa watching VH1's top 100 one hit wonders of the nineties?  And yes, I'll miss my hours upon hours of Nick at Night reruns of Friends.  Who knows, maybe I'll read a book or something or actually GET SOME SLEEP?  Go figure.

Anyhow, if you are thinking about cutting the cord ask me any questions and I'll be happy to fill you in on what we do.  Also I'll keep you posted on our updates to our system!