Friday Faves + Frugal Finds: 1 hour to yard sale, a $20 bill, a full car, and a cookout

Two weeks ago I headed out early on Saturday morning.  We were hosting a big cookout that evening at our house and I still had cleaning and lots of preparation to do so I didn’t have long to yard sale.  But I knew of a big community wide yard sale that I had gone to last year and found some really nice things that I really wanted to visit that day.  I had a $20 bill and about an hour to shop.  And I came home with the back of the Expedition rental I was driving FULL with some HUGE fun pieces!  

I put them all to use that night at our cookout!  (sorry for the cellphone pictures in this post but I was crazily getting everything into place along with doing my already planned set up/food prep/cleaning)

I stopped at 2 other sales I saw on the way to the parking lot community sale.  The first sale I had seen advertised in my local facebook yard sale group and there was a little table that I thought I might want for outdoors.  When I got there I realized the table was smaller than I realized and very lightweight which wouldn’t work well for outside.  BUT she had this bakers rack!

Now if you are a regular follower of my blog, you are probably thinking “but she just bought a bakers rack a few weeks ago?”.  Yes I did and I love the idea of using it outside and already gave it a spray paint makeover.  BUT it is much smaller than this one and the shelves are wire shelves which makes it hard for things to sit on it.  So I am going to list it for sale on facebook and hopefully get what I paid for it.

This baker’s rack is huge…  I honestly wasn’t even really considering it but when I asked how much it was and she said $5.00 because the wood on the shelves are a bit worn and it is missing the bottom wood shelf, I just couldn’t pass it up! 

I put a light coat of dark walnut stain on the shelves very quickly that afternoon so I could use it that evening but need to do a full makeover (possibly even change out the wood shelves for pallet wood shelves?) later.

I grabbed some things from around the house and here is how I used it that night.  I need to play around more with what I will put on there but all of this stuff is from yard sales and won’t get messed up outside.

I didn’t end up finding anything at the parking lot community sale but saw a sign for a neighborhood wide sale so stopped there on my way home.  It was in a super nice neighborhood but I only saw 3 homes total having sales and only stopped at 1. 

She had this metal iron table base that she said was a fish tank stand but I just loved it!  I could see pallet wood slats on top and using it outside as well.  She said $15 but I talked her down to $10. 

I set a piece of scrap wood on it for that night and used it as a beverage table.  

As I was loading it, I saw this chalkboard looking thing and asked how much she wanted for it.  When she said $5, I handed her the last of my money and loaded it my car! 

It’s this really cool 2-sided chalkboard 3-panel room divider.  The hinges were damaged on one of the panels and I will probably take all 3 of them apart and use them separately.  I told my friend Molly she could have one panel for $1.67 – what I paid for it – LOL!    The ABC side will get painted and I can see using these for decorating for events, I would love to eventually use one as a menu board or grocery list board in kitchen but probably not in this house, and my nieces/nephew said I should put one on the  wall in guest room for them to use!    So the frames will get painted but I think the chalkboard is all in great shape (but if not I can easily re-coat with some chalkboard spray paint)

Definitely was worth the $5 to me!  Here’s how I used one of the panels on that deck that night.  And there’s my mini pew bench I just showed you how I painted/stained.

So moral of the story… even if you only have some spare change or just a few minutes of time take the time to shop some yard sales.  You never know what you might find!

What have you found recently?