Adoption Fund Progress Report for March

I don't know where these people get the time to post on their blogs every day! I am kicking myself to do it once a week. It's better than my diary though, since I write in that about six times a year. Sooo...

March has been a busy and productive month. My dear, hard-working husband had more overtime this month than he has ever had at this company. He has worked almost every Saturday, and one Sunday (I think God understands). The result was that he earned enough to pay for the car troubles and put some in savings. I made $62 from the consignment sale.

Plus, I had a very successful garage sale. I have never made more than $50 doing a garage sale, but we made over $300 on Saturday morning. It was mostly due to a few wonderful people that brought over some big and small items. Thank you! I am a total introvert, and I was very nervous about doing a garage sale all by myself, but it was more fun than I thought it would be. I did learn a few things that I will remember for next time. One of them is to put a price of 25% higher than what I really want on the bigger items. When I am inevitably offered the lower price, I will bite my lip and sigh, and say, "Okay, it's yours". They got a bargain and I got a good sell price. I probably would have sold the Power Wheels right away if I had done this. As it was, I had 14 people ask about it and barter and I kept saying, "No sorry, I can't take less than $50". Man, I should put out a Power Wheels with every garage sale, just to draw them in. Then if asked, I will say it's $100. Deceptive sales tactics or effective marketing? I also had three people try to buy our crapavan. Oh boy, they don't know what they would be getting into. My favorite customers: the young hispanic boy that was very excited to find the first four Harry Potter books and paid for them out of his own money ($1 for the set); the four hispanic guys that were interested in our cheap, "tempermental" lawnmower - they tinkered with it and then got it working nicely (they were a funny bunch and laughingly offered to keep mowing for $5 off); the group of boys shopping with their grandma and armed with lots of quarters to shop with.

Anyway, we now have 37% of the total. I am finally gettting to listing things on Ebay. Hopefully, the hubby will have another overtime paycheck coming, so I hope to up the savings some more soon. For now, we have enough for the homestudy and agency fees, so that is enough to get started!