Lucy, I'm home!

*taps microphone*

Is this thing still on?

Well, whaddaya know....

Because Sometimes The Google Gods Do Evil Voodoo Magic On Your Blog And Cell Phone

Cyber Monday or Flippin’ Sh!t On eBay

So, my bloggy hubby, Scope challenged all of us lazy slackers former bloggers who are content these days just curling up like pampered pets at the feet of Facebook to venture back out in Blogaritaville today for a Cyber Monday post and a link-up with him.  I figured I could handle one measly little blog post.  Sure.  Why not?…. Assuming I could figure out my password.   

Or that Windows Live Writer still acknowledged my existence.

Which it didn't.

Now I'm forced to compose my posts in Blogger like an animal.  No borders around my pictures or anything!  *sniffle*  F**k you, Windows Live Writer.  

But anyway....

I figured that since I have spent so much of my time lately in thrift stores, garage sales, and on eBay, I might as well tell you a bit about my eBay adventures.  Here are some of my better (and more high-five worthy) recent sales:


Out in Seattle last Christmas, I bought this Green Day American Idiot t-shirt in a thrift store for $2.99.  I really liked it, but it was too short on me (What?!  I know!) and my kiddo, Wednesday, wanted nothing to do with any shirt that had “idiot” sprawled across the front of it, so I listed it on eBay and it sold to a buyer in Australia for $18.00.  Sa-weet!


There’s this really awesome local thrift store here in Chicago that I walk to every Monday for their 50% off sale.  I bought this uber-slutty Coogi nautical-themed mini dress there for $3.00 and it sold on eBay for $50.00.   Cha-ching!  (Ohhhh, slutty sailor dresses, how I love thee!).  I wish I could find one of these every day! 


I bought this black, white, and red Anthropologie mesh skirt that had a really cool Tim Burton kind of look to it at my favorite thrift store.  I got it for $2.19 and it sold for $17.50.


Over the summer we had a huge community garage sale where I bought this 1973 Woodsy Owl (Remember him?!  “Give a hoot!  Don’t pollute!”) for $4.00.  The seller wanted $5.00 for it, but Woodsy was pretty beaten up and I tried to talk him down to $2.50, but he wouldn’t go any lower than $4.00.  Arg!  Dilemma!  I crossed my fingers and hoped his damaged spots wouldn’t be too bothersome to scare off any eBay buyers, but I shouldn’t have worried.  Woodsy sold fast and he sold for $27.00, so woo-hoo!


At the community wide garage sale, I also bought these Ninjago Lego minifigs as part of a set of two huge bags of Lego pieces.  The bags cost a total of $20, but I parted the various Legos out and these figures alone sold for $65.00!


These Batman Lego minifigs were part of the same garage sale Lego bags as the Ninjago ones.  This grouping sold for $42.00.   With all the different Lego groupings and sales I made from those Lego bags, I made over $150 in profit so far, and I’m not even done listing them all yet!


Other community wide garage sale finds:  This 50’s/60’s style Girl Scout Brownie plastic figurine which I got for 25 cents.  Yeah, just 25 cents!  I soooooooo felt like I was ripping the lady off!  It sold on eBay for $15.00.


And this little plastic tabletop globe which I got for 50 cents and it sold for $20.50.


And this Tupperware Shape-O-Ball which I bought for $2.00 and it sold for $20.00.


Man, we did great with our summer garage sale loot!  But back to thrift store scores.  I bought this huge Warner Brothers Studio Store Harry Potter snow globe at a thrift store for $2.73.  I about fainted when I saw it.  I know they are hard to find and can go for quite a bit of money.  This one had some minor damage and was missing its box, but I was still confidant it was worth it.  It ended up selling on eBay for $37.99.


I bought these Serta Sheep beanie babies at the local thrift store for $3.28 and they sold for $20.00 in about a day.


I bought this red vinyl snake skin jacket for $5.46.  This one took awhile to sell, but it eventually sold for $25.00.


This old 1970’s Sears Winnie the Pooh teddy bear was sitting alone and abandoned at the thrift store.  I got it for $1.09.   It sold for $20.00 to a buyer in England. 


I also bought this big bag of old Polly Pocket dolls from the early 90’s at the thrift store for $3.38 and it sold to an Australian buyer for $35.00 within an hour of listing it.  


And. lastly, I bought this life sized Jack Skellington Halloween decoration at the drug store for $15.00 and it sold on eBay for $90.00.  Woo-hoo!


And that’s what has been keeping me so busy lately, all the bargain hunting, listing, packing, and trips to the post office.  Whew!  I’m not sure how many of you guys are still around and reading ye olde blogs anymore, but I’ve missed you guys an awful lot.  What’s been up with you?   :-)




© Coracabana

My frog ate my homework. (I don’t have a dog.)

Maybe I just needed a blogging break.  Or maybe I thought that running through the fields of Facebook would be easier for awhile.  (It isn’t.)  But for whatever reason, I haven’t blogged in—*looks at watch*—half a freaking year.  Yeah.  Wow.  And I’m starting to miss it. 

I will be back with a less pointless post soon.  I guess I just wanted to see if I still remembered my password and whatnot.  Let’s find out!  (Ha!)

*fingers crossed*

And then I forgot how to blog.

Once upon a time I was a single mama, working eleven hours a day in a tiny room stuffed to bursting with other people’s obscenely sugar-ified children.  (Seriously, if all you feed your kids is a breakfast of marshmallow Peeps before leaving them with their teacher / nanny / babysitter, you are evil.  And you know it.) 

One day, for no reason, I started a blog.  I don’t even know why I did it.  At the time there was a snotty little voice in the back of my head saying, “Really, asshat?  You think you have time for this?!” 

The voice had a point.

Minus the asshat part.

I had the workload of two parents and a laundry basket piled so high it was threatening to dent the ceiling, where did I think I was going to squeeze in the time to blog?  Yet, I did….  until I got married and moved across the country.  Then—pffft!—I dunno, it was like my old vibrant bloggy motivation just woke up one morning and dropped dead.

Kind of like Smash.

Honestly, there are so many other things I would rather be doing.  Reading The Hunger Games and Percy Jackson with my kid.  Talking about everything and/or nothing with my hubby.  Ebaying (I made $70 on a skirt just the other day.  Yeah, $70 on a stupid, ugly skirt!).  Walking my neighborhood with my camera in tow.  Working on my photo albums.  Getting friendly with Ben & Jerry.  All the usual stuff. 

However….

Over on Facebook (where a lot of our former bloggy buddies are these days) my hubby, Scope, challenged us all to do a post today.  Just one itty bitty little post on Cyber Monday, just to say we did.

One post?  I can handle that.  Probably.  So, here’s a quick update (with pictures!  WHEEEEE!) of what’s been going on around here since I last did a real blog post:

We spent Spring Break in St. Louis….





….where we hung out with Gwen from Everything I Like Causes Cancer.




Wednesday started driving lessons.  Here she is after a successful stint at parallel parking.




We grew strawberries in our deck garden this summer.  (Lettuce too!)




We watched fireworks from our rooftop on the 4th of July (and our 3rd wedding anniversary).




In Summer, Wednesday cut about 8 inches off her hair and dyed it dark red.  It looks AMAZING! 




We spent two weeks in Seattle in July, seeing family….




….and Wednesday’s Seattle-y friends….






….and Scope finally got to meet Skyler’s Dad!




In August, our neighborhood was weirdly invaded by a gang of really pervy looking mushrooms.  (I mean, really, hubba hubba.)




Wednesday started her Junior year in high school in late August.




For Halloween, Wednesday was Edward Scissorhands….




….I was Batgirl….




….and Scope was a mad scientist clown, terrorizing Chicago in the dark!




In the Fall, Wednesday turned 17.




For her birthday party, we took her and one of her best friends to the Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives museum exhibit where we saw some pretty spiffy stuff.








And we even learned how to draw Mickey Mouse.






And then about a week ago, we sent our bloggy guest pig Fernando Von Bakonstein back home to his owner, McGone. Fernando kissed Wednesday goodbye at the bus stop before school, then he walked to the post office with me, climbed bravely into a box, and off he went.




And now, well, we’re just trying to get a grip on the holidays.  I’ve got a new 7.5’ spinning (yes, SPINNING!!!!) Christmas tree that just ain’t gonna decorate itself.  So, you know….

I’m not sure if I’ll be back blogging regularly anytime soon, but this was fun.  Yes, really. 

I guess I didn’t realize I was kind of missing it until now.  :-)





© Coracabana

How to look like a garden gnome (And other stories from 1974)

So, enough with all this slacking, agreed?  Agreed.  I believe I promised The Internet pictures and stories from 1974, right?  Well, okay.  I can do that.  Here’s what I’ve found out from scouring my mom’s hoard of old family pictures….


When 1974 began, I was about one and a half years old (and still mostly bald) (of course).  I used to go on lots of rainy wintery neighborhood walks with my Mom around our gray Seattle suburb.  But, hey, check out my snazzy red walking suit!




Yeah, go ahead and say it.  I can take it.  I looked like a beardless garden gnome.


*sigh*


Apparently, I was a dog person from the very beginning because I unearthed several shots of me running waddling through the streets with random neighborhood mutts.







Ahh, good ol’ 1974, when dogs could just roam the ‘hood without pesky hindrances like owners, leash laws, and litigious neighbors.  Those were the days. 


But anyway….


Our tour through 1974 is skipping Spring and jumping face-first right into the middle of Summer due to an absence of pictures.  Apparently, my parents misplaced their camera for six or seven months…. or they were just preoccupied with other things.  Like my soon-to-be-born little sister.  So,  here is my preggo mama (still rockin’ her bouffant beehive wig!) and me on my 2nd birthday.




I got lots of Noddy books and a Noddy doll that birthday, which were sent over from my relatives in England. 







Oh God, I will never forget those Noddy books!  I ended up with a whole bookshelf full of them and I remember feeling really uncomfortable about them.  In a nutshell, they could have been written by Paula Deen after a bank robbery, okay?  (What?  Too soon?)  The books were populated with “Golliwogs” in racist blackface makeup who lure Noddy into the woods and then steal all his stuff.  One of them was even named N*gger.  Yeah, his name was N*gger!  Unbelievable.


My mom wouldn’t read the books aloud to me and I remember her pulling them all off the shelves and hiding them whenever I had friends over, so, even really young, I definitely had the idea that they were bad books.  I just wasn’t sure why when I was little, but I supposed it had something to do with all the scary pictures of Noddy being robbed in the forest.  When I was about seven years old, I stumbled upon the old Noddy books and hid under my bed sheets with them, like a boy with a stack of stolen Playboy magazines, reading bits of them to myself when my mom wasn’t looking—and I was shocked at what was in them. 


These were children’s books????


In 2009, Noddy was, apparently, given a makeover and the Golliwogs were removed from the newest stories.  (It took until 2009 for that to happen????  Really????  Wow.)  I can’t seem to find my old Noddy doll on eBay or anywhere to tell you how much he sells for these days (although I’d really love to know), but you could buy the old Noddy books on eBay anywhere from $1 to $14 each, if you’re so inclined.


Okay, enough about Noddy….


For my birthday, I also got a huge orange baby carriage which, obviously, made me feel like hot stuff strutting around with it on the parquet floor.




My birthday cake, like most cakes in the 70’s, had a big, scary rubber clown head on it. 




Why oh why did people feel the need to befoul perfectly good cakes with gruesome clown heads in the 70’s?!  I’m telling you, I just don’t get it.  Nope.  Here’s a closer picture I borrowed from Etsy of some 1970’s cake topper clown heads.




*shudder*


As the Summer of 1974 rolled on, I could be found looking quite movie star-y, digging in my sandbox in my shades, handmade outfit, and Salt Water Sandals.




Did you grow up in the 70’s?  If you did, I’d bet my Bee Gees lunch box that you had Salt Water Sandals too, am I right?  Every kid I knew had them.  I had a red pair and a white pair. 




And if you grew up in Seattle in the 70’s, I bet you wore socks with your sandals too!  ;-)


According to my baby book, I was talking up a storm in 1974.  I said “bunnit” for bunny rabbit, “tombut” for bottom, and “alligator” for escalator.  On a related note, I accidentally asked my kid to “plat in the flug iron” instead of plug in the flat iron just two days ago, so at least I’m consistent. 


In early autumn of 1974, a very bizarre series of events took place which left me with no choice but to conclude that my parents had lost their wig-loving minds.  But…. we’re going to have to probe through those questionable moments in an upcoming post because—*sniffle*—I’m out of bloggy time for today.  I’ll be back soon, swearsies!




Wanna relive my discoveries of 1973?  Click HERE.  Or for 1972, click HERE.




© Coracabana