Capitalizing On A Holiday Weekend

As Sunday evening falls, I'm taking a much needed breather from the past week. It was a successful week in many ways. The run down:

Last Weds./Thurs.: I spent those two days prepping for our garage sale and getting the house ready for my parents and two aunts. Matt and I switched "date night" to Thursday and hit up Forte for dinner. We originally had planned to get to bed early due to the garage sale the next day, but we let our friends coerce us back to Forte for some live music and alcohol. We stayed out much longer than we had planned because of all the fun.

Friday: One of the things helped me have fun all Thursday night was some coffee at Forte that was kindly served up by Nick Dean. It did the trick too well. I didn't sleep much between the time we got home and the time I had to get up. Visions of grabbing a hangover sandwich from Timmy Ho's for Matt were dashed when I mistakenly opened one of the garage doors to put something inside around 7:45am and then forgot to close it. That meant I had my first customers at 8:10am. The sale moved at a steady pace from that point forward. Both our families descended on our house in the afternoon and we ended day one of the garage sale with a massive Italian sausage, Asian coleslaw, potato salad, salad, and chocolate cake dinner. Later on, we took my parents and aunts out to Wells Bay to watch the fireworks on Chautauqua Lake and hang out by a bonfire.

Saturday: I started the garage sale at 8:30am by marking down almost everything by half. My intent was get as much sold as possible so I would have less to cart off to any of the donations sites around town. It was a good strategy since we made an acceptable profit even after expenses. My dad and Matt spent a chunk of the day hanging the two chandeliers pictured below. We took my family out to Bemus Point for dinner at the Casino that night and came back to the house for some beers on the porch.

Sunday: Not much to report other than a late breakfast with my family at home, saying our good-byes, and then running to the store to get some miscellaneous items for the week.

Some people have asked if our house seems to big for just the two of us, especially since we don't plan to have kids, but after this weekend I'd have to say it's just fine. I love that we can have our families over and not feel like we're climbing over each other. It also was obvious that my aunts really enjoyed being on a mini-holiday even with helping us out with the sale. I feel really great about how the whole weekend worked out.