Help?

In the process of de-hoarding, I have a pretty big collection of The Babysitter Club and The Babysitter Club Little Sister Chapter books I want to get rid of.

I feel like I can't just toss (ie. donate) them away without trying to sell them first. I feel like as such a large collection, they might be worth something.  Maybe not much, but even $100.00 would help out/be better than nothing at this point. (Is that too much?)

I don't really want to try piece/parting them out like listing one at a time on Half or Amazon, nor do I want to list them on Paperbackswap because I'm trying to get rid of books altogether. Since I got my Kindle I can Hoard e-Books and they not take up room in my house. I still have 21 credits at Paperbackswap, and it costs me to pay to send books to Swappers.

I want to try making an ad at Craigslist first (because it's free), or eBay as a last resort, but I'm having a terrible time trying to write my ad.

It would be a tremendous help to me if I could get some assistance making the ad to try to sell these.

There's a total of 83 of the Babysitter Club Chapter books, but they aren't all there. They go from #1 to #116, but is missing a few of the earlier ones like #6, #31, #35, #37, #41, #44, #50, then there's more missing like from #53 to #61, and #63, and #66 to #72...Well at that point it's easier to list the numbers that are there as opposed to the numbers missing.

On the other hand, many of them are doubles and a few are even triples.

Also, the books range in conditions from poor to like new. All the books are intact and have no loose pages, but a several of the covers are torn or bent or otherwise just old and raggedy looking.
They are definitely readers more than collectors.

These are a few of the extra books that aren't the Chapter books but goes along with the series.

Some Super Specials and Mysteries and more extra books.

There are a total of 56 of the "Little Sister" chapter books.  There are #1 through #52, missing #4, then there are a few more odd and end numbered books, #58, #64, #74, #89, and #114. No doubles.

These books are in a lot better looking condition. I think one book has a cut along the spine.

One extra book that goes with the Little Sister Series.

The series is about a group of middle school students living in the fictional town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut. They run a business called the Baby-sitters Club that helps parents find babysitters from the club who are available for jobs by calling during their club meetings. The club starts out with four members (Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, and Stacey McGill), eventually expanding to ten. Most of the main characters are thirteen years old. When the club was founded (in 1986), the four members were in the seventh grade, but ten novels later (1988), they are promoted to the eighth grade. From there, they are frozen in time until the very end of the series (2000), in which they graduate from middle school.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baby-sitters_Club

Baby-Sitters Little Sister is a series spin-off of The Baby-sitters Club novel series. Written by Ann M. Martin, the series centered on seven-year-old Karen Brewer, the stepsister to Kristy Thomas, who is President of The Baby-sitters Club. In this series, Karen is a second grader at Stoneybrook Academy.Much of the books are about Karen going to school, and the many adventures that she and her classmates have. Karen usually tries to do the right thing, but because she has been through some hard times in her young life, she sometimes makes a mistake. She does, however, learn from the mistakes, and the books do teach valuable lessons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby-Sitters_Little_Sister

De-Hoarding

Yep, I'm at that again. Nope, it's still not any easier.

Sometimes I get so aggravated I think, I'm just going to put all this stuff into a box and donate it off and be done with it!

Of course, once I actually get there and start sorting the stuff, it's just not that easy.
I might need/want it later, or, I'm an idiot for just giving away these perfectly good things I could be selling and earning a couple bucks off of.
No, they aren't worth much, but I have so much stuff that if I sold everything for $1.00 each, I'd have a fair bit!

Oh, and lord-a-mercy, the Sentimental stuff.

I wasn't upstairs probably ten minutes, just getting started good, when I ran into boxes of the boys trophies/medals/plaques/awards.

For one crazy minute I had it in my mind that I was going to get rid of that stuff. Period. Gone. Done.
Except, no way I could throw them in the trash. Even if they weren't my boys things, they are still way too good an item to throw in the garbage!
So I came down stairs and googled to try to find out what other people did with their old trophies.

Most threw them in the garbage, many donated them to the Salvation Army or schools or churches or other organizations that will re-use them.

They suggested taking photos of the trophies, then removing the nameplate to keep.

I found this website, where this lady bought an old frame at the Goodwill and fixed it up and made a display for her husband's medals and trophy nameplates.

Saving Old Trophies and Medals

I thought this was a pretty good idea, but when I went back to start sorting and getting them ready for photographing, I felt....I guess it was an anxiety attack. I felt like panicking.

I don't know why I am like this about stuuuuuuff.

Sunday Sermon

As a little girl, one of the many things my very socially-correct Grandmother taught me was that "a lady doesn't discuss subjects like religion or politics in public".

Now if I were like a whole lot of big mouth yakkity-yak so'n'so's I see on my tv or computer everyday, I could interpret that literally and twist it to suit my purposes and say, "Well, my home is not the public, and in a sense, this blog is my home, therefore, I can say whatever I want to here and that's okay."

Unfortunately, I can lie to others, but to myself, not so much.

So, I know good and darn well that when she said "in public" she meant "in general", including in your own home when you're hosting any sort of social gathering.  I can't fool myself into believing that having friends and strangers visiting here, my home on the Web, isn't the quintessential social gathering.

Since I (generally) want to be a good hostess, as ingrained in me since I was a little kid, that's one reason why I (generally) don't post about more controversial topics.

Another reason being, I often don't feel intelligent enough, or informed enough to conduct a good, open, honest argument discussion about many subjects, and mainly about politics and religion.

Not to mention, I can't trust others to be able to carry on a good, open, honest discussion without resorting to name-calling, insults and worse. (Yes, I realize that was a hypocritical statement, given the name calling in the second paragraph above. My apologies.)

But I worry about things, especially politics and religion, and I attempt to inform myself on such issues, which involves reading a lot of blogs, posts, statuses, comments, boards, threads, and websites.
I read a lot of sane, logical, informative speak, but it seems more often than not, the hateful, ignorant, righteous screeching greatly overshadows it.

I mean, that's with both sides of issues.
See, I'm stuck somewhere in the middle of Liberal/Progressive-ism and Republican/Conservative-ism.

For instance, I'm not against Gays, and I'm for Gay Marriage. I'm for the Separation of Church and State (Government), I think the War on Drugs is a money-wasting, losing battle (ie the Prohibition on alcohol in the 1920's), that Physician-Assisted Suicide should be a personal choice, am against the War on (the Middle East), and am not against Immigration.

On the other hand, I'm against Welfare (generally), Socialized Healthcare, Gun Control, Affirmative Action, Government Controlled Public Education, and I'm for Capitalism, Lower Taxes and a smaller Government, Private Property Rights, the Death Penalty and I don't give a lot of thought to Global Warming.

Needless to say, I piss off a whole lot of people!

But not on purpose. My beliefs/opinions are based on what I know/think I know/believe to be true or right. But I'm not afraid to admit if I'm wrong. IF I'm given a good, logical, sound reason to change my mind. I've changed my mind, and have had my mind changed quite often in my 40+ years.

What's not going to change my mind, or anyone else's mind, is having it yelled at me, or being insulted and called names.

I get that people are frustrated and want to be heard, but there are much better ways of accomplishing that, and maybe even making a real difference, rather than being brushed off as screaming, spitting, raving lunatics.

I think the anonymity of the Internet makes it easy for people to forget basic Manners and common Civility, to be able to shred others to pieces and tear them down without a second thought, and to be righteously ignorant because everything they know they learned from Meme's.

But I don't blame the Internet. I think the internet is a wonderful thing....when used in conjunction with Courtesy, Empathy and Compassion, and Personal Responsibility.
Words that, sadly, so many people on the Internet seem to have forgotten, or just don't care to remember sometimes.

Hot Apple Pie

on a cold, rainy Winter day. With vanilla ice cream on top.

One of the jars of Apple Pie Filling didn't seal up, so I went ahead and baked a pie. Probably a good thing it happened because this stuff really needed to be taste tested anyhow.

J said he would take it to the station and let the other firefighters eat it, but he made the great sacrifice of taste testing it first. He cut a whole quarter-of-the-pie-sized piece, I guess to make sure he got enough for a proper *taste*, haha.

He declared it "Good".

Canned Apple Pie Filling

I still had some apples left from when I bought all those on sale at Aldi's that I knew I was going to have to do something with soon or I was going to lose them.
Mom has already made enough crock pot apple butter to supply us through a Zombie apocalypse, and I thought I'd made us enough applesauce considering only two of us really eat it.  Although, as it turned out, I probably should have just made applesauce anyway.

The main reason I still had these apples and hadn't done anything with them yet was because I couldn't make up my mind to make apple pie filling. I really wanted to, but on the other hand, since we're wheat-intolerant, we don't really eat pie (unless we want to suffer).

But oh well, I made up mind to make the apple pie filling. Even though I'll probably end up giving it away like I did the apple pie moonshine I made before Christmas.

I found an easy-looking recipe at Little House in the Suburbs.

So I spent several hours peeling, coring, and slicing apples.
I was taking breaks to give my hands a rest, warm them up, and fix the guys something to eat, so I kept the apple slices in a sink of cold water, thinking I had read that that would keep them from turning brown.

Maybe it did, but it also turned them soggy. Some of the apples, the Red Delicious, were already soft, and pretty much turned to mush.

I used my new/old Enamelware pot I found at the Goodwill for ONE DOLLAR and TWENTY ONE CENTS the other day to mix up the syrupy mixture.

I boiled my jars and then packed them with apples...and mush. Then I poured in the syrupy mixture, using a butter knife to mix up the apples and mixture.
No pictures of all that because I made the biggest mess you ever saw!

But they turned out looking not too bad, I don't think. I'm sure it would have been better with more, firmer/crisper apples. Hopefully it tastes okay anyway.

Sweetheart Cabinet

(Apologies in advance...this is another one of the nonsensical posts I make when I want to talk, but I don't really want to bitch and moan and dwell on crap around here but I don't have anything else good or nice to talk about at the moment, so....)

This is a Scheirich Sweetheart Hoosier-type cabinet made in Louisville, KY (date unknown).
Apparently these cabinets were originally painted with a Pennsylvania Dutch or Folk Art design:

See: C. Dianne Zweig

Via

Several years ago, my Mom was redecorating the kitchen of their N.GA Mountain home and she'd wanted a Hoosier cabinet to put in it. She found this Sweetheart-Hoosier type of cabinet, which was painted at the time just red & white.

(Everyone else calls it a Hoosier cabinet, but it has "Sweetheart" stamped on the back and for some reason I can't recall right now I got in the habit of calling it the "Sweetheart" cabinet. Maybe it's just sweeter to say.)

A while later, they redecorated the kitchen again, and she asked me if I wanted the cabinet.
'Course I did!

I had *almost* the perfect place to put it, in the add-on old pantry/ laundry room - turned entry/mudroom, except the space just wasn't quite wide enough.  I had to get J to move the doorway over about 4 inches.

Mom had painted all the red parts a Sage green to match her kitchen, and it took me forever to get the red paint I wanted to paint it back to what I thought was the original color.
I see now from original pics I may have went a little wild with the red, lol.
Oh well, I like mine better anyway.

The problem was, I could not match the red of the enamel bordering the table/counter thing. I bought can after can of different shades of red, but they were all wrong!
Finally, I got J to remove the table/counter thing and we took it to Home Depot and they put it in their color match machine and made us a custom paint.

I keep my kitchen-related antiques and other things of interest (probably only to me, though) in it.
There's an old bundt cake pan, vintage cheese grater, old red & white enamel coffee pot, old Folger's coffee jar, old snuff can, an Aunt Jemima syrup bottle, kitchen scale, a couple of S&P shakers, Chicken egg timer, Honey, and some other stuff, and several vintage and interesting Mason jars.

My Mom's maiden last name was Mason, so I enjoy keeping unique jars with neat pictures and/or "Mason" imprinted on them.

The letters in the top right window is our last name made in a farm theme. The "C" is cat with it's tail curled up and around, the "R's" are roosters, the "O" is a bag of oats, the "K" is a tea kettle, the "E" is like a chicken coop with a hen and eggs.

The bunch of grapes-looking picture hanging from the right handle is actually blueberries. It was attached to a blueberry bush plant I bought a couple years ago and planted out back (but obviously need to relocate somewhere else in the yard because they aren't growing well).  It has a blueberry cobbler recipe on the back.

The Postcard in the left side window we found at a State Welcome Center, but I can't recall exactly which one at the moment.  We used to be able to take multiple vacations every year, and we'd always stop at the State Welcome Centers for info and fodder for my scrapbooks (that I have yet to make).
This one has a picture of a peach (Georgia being "The Peach State") and says "Let us eat peaches and die!".

The quote is attributed to no one, and I didn't find anything when I googled it, so I assume some postcard creator or marketer thought it would attract people to want to eat peaches?

I found it amusing, but at the same time, thought it had to be one of the strangest things I've seen in a long time.

In the bottom and drawers I keep some of my "Stockpile" stuff I get when I do my coupon/deal shopping.

The biggest challenge is keeping it cleaned off. It's the first flat surface when you come in the door, so as you might imagine, pretty much everything gets sat down on it.
I'll also tend to sit things on it that I intend to do something with, like magazines that need to go Recycle, or stuff I want to give my son or his GF next time they come up.

Goodwill Find

Yesterday we were out running some errands and I wanted to stop by the Goodwill to look for traveling coffee cups (insulated cups with lids) and Tall coffee mugs. I have regular size coffee mugs, but with our Keurig, the guys like to make Tall cups of coffee, and we only had 2 Tall cups...

Anyway...blah blah...sitting on the end shelf was this vintage white and black enamelware soup pot.

Kind of a funny find. At Christmas, my Mom gave me a vintage yellow with black enamelware pot.

No, I don't collect enamelware pots, or even enamelware at all. I'm not sure why my Mom got me the pot. (Probably she got it for herself then decided she didn't want it, lol.)

Anyway, I was just like, "Oh look, a pot like mine, only a little bigger and a different color". That was about the extent of my interest in it.

Until I looked at the price. Get this: $1.21.

That doesn't look dramatic enough - Get this: ONE DOLLAR and TWENTY ONE CENTS!

How could I *not* buy it? Well, I couldn't not, of course. Not at that price.
And, it'll look nice on my vintage red/white enamel-counter Sweetheart cabinet:

But this has to be it. No more. I am not collecting enamelware pots. Period.

Some years ago, I ended up with a Pedestal Compote Bowl, like this one:

I don't remember which color I got first - white, blue, red, clear - or where I got it from.  But after that, I kept finding the things at yard sales, thrift stores and flea markets, for like $1.00.  I remember, I didn't especially want to collect these, so whenever we saw one, I'd say I wouldn't pay more than $1.00 for it. And yet, I ended up with six.
Finally I had to say I wouldn't even pay a penny for them, and quit buying them, period.

Now I see them in antique stores priced at $15.00 +.

Anyway, I hope it's not going to be some crazy thing like that with enamelware pots now, lol.

Chickens!

Well, we've talked about it for a good while...it always seemed better in theory than actual practice, I think.  We had even started building a chicken coop (but then got into an argument over the design and it became an abandoned project).

Several days ago, a tornado hit in the county to the north-east of us and tore through two counties doing some terrible damage.  It ended up tearing up some commercial chicken houses. (Chickens grown for the grocery store, I think.)

I'm not sure why the chickens were no longer viable after the storm, why they couldn't still be raised or whatever, but at any rate, the chicken grower wanted to give away the chickens, or said he would have to kill them.
Someone told J's cousin about it. He already has a few chickens and wanted to get some more, but he has glaucoma and can't see to drive very well so he called J to ask him to take him up there to get some chickens.
Since we had talked about getting some chickens anyway, J said sure, he'd drive him, and get us some chickens, too.

They ended up getting three cages full. Currently they're imprisoned (looks like they are in prison with the bars to the right side of the pic) at Cousin's place, but when we get us a chicken coop built or made or whatever then we'll bring a few home. And hopefully be eating our own fresh eggs soon!

Theraputic Stars

Last month I discovered a new sport (lol)...folding origami Lucky Stars.  I ordered some of the special origami paper strips and learned how to fold the stars, then after I ran out I found out about cutting my own paper strips using unwanted catalogs or magazines.

I sliced up several pages of a Cabela's catalog and folded Lucky Stars to my heart's content.

After I was finished folding all those Stars I had had enough, and didn't have an urge to fold any more.

Then, last week (or maybe the week before, I can't remember, my days run together) I had my mind/heart set on a project for my kitchen.
For several reasons, I need J to help me with these projects that I want to do. Mostly, the saw noise make me nervous.

It shouldn't have been such an ordeal. I showed him a couple of examples from Pinterest and some other websites of what I was looking for, and told him, "Like it was in your Grandmother's house". He grew up in old farmhouses, too, so he knew what I was talking about.

And with all the scrap and freecycle wood we've stocked up on, we should have (and do have) everything we needed to complete the project without having to buy anything.

First, we needed a cubed box. Build a frame from 1x2's and cover the insides and the back with plywood, I suggested.
No, he sliced up some old trim and built two squares then covered the insides and back with plywood. Okay, it worked, whatever.

Then we need two side column-like things. 12 inches wide and deep, and 4.6 feet tall. He cuts 12' x 4.6' plywood panels, and tries to connect them with the scrap wood trim pieces about 6 inches long, using a brad nailer. Well, they were flimsy as heck and not staying together (imagine that).

I asked him why he refused to do it right, because basically that's what it boiled down to. He was scabbing together this slip-shoddy piece of crap that wasn't going to be good and sturdy or last any amount of time.
He told me, he didn't want to use the good wood.

In other words, say you decided to remodel your bathroom, and you have a two bathtubs sitting outside in your carport. One is a rusted, chipped piece of crap, and the other is nice, white, shiny clean. You decide to use the old, ugly, rusted chipped-up one in your remodel job, and save the nice, clean shiny one for....what?

This project is a sort of a remodel, even though it's "new" construction (being made to look old), I intend for it stay indefinitely and be a nice addition to the house.
But he don't want to use the "good" wood for it.  If he doesn't want to use the "good" wood to fix up the house, then what does he want to use it for?

By the time he dicked around and wasted most of the day doing a shitty worthless job before finally giving in and doing what I wanted, it was getting dark and cold outside.
He had to work at the fire dept. the next day, and on the ambulance the day after that.
The day after that, he came home and went to bed and slept all day.

I was really aggrivated that we'd made so little progress on my project. This is typical of us (HIM) that it takes weeks or months or years to do a project that really shouldn't take more than a day or two, because he always, always wants to do something the hardest, most ridiculous way possible.

Then I was really angry when he came home and slept all day.
I don't care that he worked on the ambulance all night. I wasn't the one that wanted him to quit the day job at the urgent care, making almost $4.00 an hour more, to go back to work almost fulltime on the ambulance - which he had quit doing years ago because he hated it so much.

And my computer is here in our bedroom, so I can't type or listen to videos or anything that makes noise that wakes him up.
So I went in the livingroom on the coffee table and cut paper strips for some more Stars to fold.

I wasn't loving the Cabela's stars as much as I had thought, and I had seen where someone had made them using pages from a book. I didn't have a book handy I wanted to destroy, but I saw some telephone books on the recycle pile so I used those.

They were kind of interesting at first, but kind of plain and boring after awhile.

But the point was, cutting the strips and folding the Stars helped me keep my sanity that day.
I can't explain it, don't know why or how, but it eased my anger and anxiety, that day, and the next couple of days while he wasn't at home and there was no progress being made on my project.

Then there was Wednesday morning, with storms and severe weather threats, tornadoes hitting near us, not knowing if or when the next one might get us. Or even without tornadoes, the wind doing terrible damage.
 Those kind of days are tense and scary.

The storms come from the front of the house, the west. Our livingroom is on the front side of the house, the bedroom is in the back.
I like to be where I can see and know what's going on so I sat in the livingroom with front door open (it was 73* outside then), and cut paper strips like crazy.
(The colorful ones are from a Publix (grocery store) magazine I had gotten in the mail and had pretty, pastel-colored pictures in it.)

I ended up cutting piles and piles of strips, without even really thinking about it.  But at the same time, I wasn't as nervous and fretting over the weather while I was focused on cutting the paper strips.

Then I discovered a third thing these Stars help me with is Patience. I've been trying to earn more "swagbucks" to cash in for Amazon gift cards or Paypal cash, and one of the tasks they have for you to be able to do is to watch TV clips or movie trailers.

Sometimes I run the clips and listen to them while I catch up on Facebook, but sometimes there's not really anything else to do but sit and play them. They don't last very long, so by the time I go to another website and start to try to read or do anything I have to go back and play another video clip.

I figured out that I can sit here and let he videos play and I can occupy myself folding the Stars, and I don't get all antsy and anxious like I tend to do when I've lost interest in something.

Kinda crazy these simple little Stars have turned out to be theraputic for me.