Selling Tips

While at the thrift store on 99 cent day Tuesday I was thinking of tips I would share if someone were with me. Here are a few to remember.

1. Start with your closet. See if you have any name brands that sell well that you aren’t wearing. This way your spending is low or nothing and your profit can be 100%, Then head out to the sales with that cash!
2. Buy only name brands you know will sell. I make sure I don’t buy more than 1 “High Risk” item per shopping trip. Below is my risky item for this week. It was a brand “Speechless” that I hadn’t heard of but a cute skirt. We will see if it sells!

 

• Don’t sell petites. They just don’t always sell well. Do I still buy them? Yes, but they are never a “For Sure” so I can’t recommend them.
• Remember times change. Right now Maternity dresses are the big “IN” for me. I get them for next to nothing and sell them consistently for $20 plus shipping. It is easy money but I betcha that will change when the weather changes!
•  Be careful when pre-buying clothes for another season. Stay with the tried and true. Don’t buy season items that are fashion statements or abnormal material (silk, corduroy, etc…). This summer bright colored capris were in, but I wouldn’t buy tons of that for next summer just because you never know! Now if it is a bright colored capri and a very good brand name, well, you can’t always go wrong.
• Know that even if it is a fabulous brand name, companies make mistakes. Go with your gut. Some times an article of clothing is just ugly. That is why they are trying to sell it to you. Don’t buy blindly but do take a risk every once in a while if your sells are going well.

• Know what ships where. I consistently have sold jean short-alls to Australia last fall. Maybe it was their summer time, I’m not sure. But always putting the international shipping helped the bids go higher and the sales go better!

Beauty from within!

I saw this video and was very impresses with the whole thing.

Check it out. I think it is something young girls really could use:

 

 If you look at it from the view point of God as this song puts it, well, it just really can open up your eyes! Not just for your kids, but for each of us!

House Keeping

 

My new game plan for daily organizing and house keeping.

These are copies of sheets I found on MONEYSAVINGMOM’s site. I have found them to be VERY thorough.

I thought I would share them with everyone. You don’t need to use the sheets but I do believe they give you a great idea of a place to start changing one’s lifestyle.

If you do list all the time this is a great idea for you!

 

The other half of the page is a weekly to-do list. Now, the lady that made this list keeps it and has at least 2 kids. I found that to be encouraging!

You can print it here: from Money Saving Mom

Traveling

This week we are in Dallas area on a business trip…no, not for me…I already checked for some Goodwill outlet around us. Nada. Probably better, now the kids and I can do 100% relaxing while the hubby does his work.

Our hotel was provided by the company and is very nice. Not quite warm enough this morning to use the outside pool, which I haven’t found yet, but nice enough to offer free breakfast. My son (above) said, “They made all this food for us?” Lol! Yes, yes son, they did!

We are about to head out to explore this town, Grand Prairie, Texas. I looked on line and their downtown area looks neat, but maybe not for ages 3 and under.=)

One thing I will say is it isn’t raining…so we are going to try to get out while we can! This is a good illustration of what it was doing back home.

Can never have too good of a pair of rubber boots! And yes, that “boulder” is on top of my son’s front loader. Not sure what game he was playing but I think the rocks were winning!

That’s our golf course out behind the fence…well, not ‘ours’ exactly but after hours we can enjoy it as much as we want! It is like having a huge manicured yard that you don’t have to pay for!

Mother’s day Gift idea

I saw this idea on a blog and copied it for my mom for her birthday. However, I haven’t seen my mom since her February birthday so now it will probably be a mother’s day present! Lol!

It is as simple as it looks! Just chicken wire, I got that from my parents farm, a wooden fence post frame, got that from my bro-in-law, and little clothes pins, which I got from my sister. It was truly a group effort!

Last time I saw this done it was with a black frame. So you could make this elegant rather than rustic. Or, you could even use barb wire with a wooden frame if you wanted more rustic!

This was also the way we were going to tell my mom we are expecting. But when it snowed and they couldn’t come visit we just emailed everyone picture showing them! That’s us on the left side holding our ultrasound picture.

So the only cost for this was the cost of the pictures! Which are just about to need replaced considering there 2 little one’s on their way!

If you were able to get everyone together for pictures and get better shots then I did it would turn out even better! I had to use everything from Facebook to email to get these shots!

Just passing along a good idea! Enjoy!

Whole chicken or bagged. Question solved!

It is time to solve the question. Is whole chicken cheaper than buying it pre-cut up or bagged chicken breast?

I got out my handy scale:

And my whole thawed chicken that I got for 85 cents per pound

I started by weighing the whole chicken after draining all the liquid that it came with.

It weighed in at 4.854 lbs.

I added water and started it boiling.

After an hour or so I pulled it out and let it cool. The broth I got from this one chicken is 1/2 gallon plus one pint.

I use my fingers and scissors to chop up the chicken. Some just shred it with a fork.

Here are the bones and fat I had left. I could boil these down if I needed more broth.

Time to weigh it without the bones:

Final value is 2.785 lbs.

So I got almost 3lbs for $4.39

The cheapest I can buy chicken breast bagged is a 3lb bag at Aldi $5.99.

So, if you don’t count your time, this way is cheaper and you get homemade broth out of it to boot!

But no one need fell guilty about buying prepackaged chicken since it runs (at least for me) $1.50ish more and saves you a lot of time.!

Problem solved!

(I also weighed the bones to see what everything equaled to. They weighed in at 1.314lbs.)

Bones + Meat =

1.314lb + 2.785lb= 4.099lb

Whole chicken prepackaged weighted 5.17lb

So I paid over a pound for water and it was still cheaper then buying bagged…not by much but interesting to find out what you pay for when you buy!

Which is cheaper? The Chicken, or the bag?

I used to buy whole chicken.

I would cut it up, freeze it, or cook with it and all in all spend a lot of time de-boning this chicken.

But then after my 1st child was born I started buying bagged chicken breast to cook,

All the while promising myself I would go back to the $.79 per pound whole chicken.

 Then my second child was born. And I have now gone back and forth and back and forth between the two. Finally deciding to use the bagged chicken breast for whole breast recipes or quick meals and the whole chicken for meals such as King Ranch Chicken, or Chicken Pot Pie. ( I can usually make both out of one chicken.)

Here is what I had left after making chicken pot pie for supper tonight:

About 4 1/2 cups of chicken pieces and a jar of broth. (Recipe took 2 cups of chicken and 2 cups of broth)

So my question to you is: Is it worth it?

At .79 cents per pound is it worth it to buy the whole chicken and spend the time boiling it and taking it apart? Or should I stick with the bagged chicken?

What do you think?

The start of A Niche To Find by Handkerchief Gal

I had no intention of ever blogging again…well, maybe when I was old and had no kids at home and was a loss at what to do with my life. Then I could become one of the many mournful people online, hoping to find soul-mates somewhere in cyberspace.

My experience with blogging had been diverse in the last year. One blog I started was really an online recipe box. Ready at my fingertips whether I was in Texas or Michigan. It was shared with very few people and even then was not cared about too much because it was a list of my recipe do’s and would-like-to-do’s.

My next blog was on a quest to improve my photography and apply my life to the pages of the infinite society that was never ending online. Oh, and brag about the fabulous deals I got! Needless to say this ended with disgust when I went world wide…er…added myself to some search engines and as a result got spammed out of existence! One gets tired of posting of yard work and getting offers for electronics…or worse.

But then my friend JC McCairn (Yes, my blog name is Handkerchief Gal, hers is JC McCairn, hmmm, maybe we are beginning to be internet fiascos!) mentions she wanted to start a blog and that she wanted writers for it. After finding out what she had in mind…I decided it wasn’t my style at all. But the seed was planted, only to shoot up the next day when my two darlings were asleep and I had a house to clean. Yep. Here I am. Procrastinating. The blog is disastrous already.

However, my goal for this blog is not a messy house, it is an inspiration to finish projects and share them with you, or just myself, in an effort to inspire. Though for myself more than anyone else.

So grab a glass of ice tea, or hot chocolate, depending on what climate you live in and I hope you enjoy a few good reads, and get a more than a few good laughs out of my learning. (If not you can always just click away…)