Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Cookies for sale!

We had a garage sale this past weekend. We have had a lot of garage sales. We are pretty much garage sale experts by now, but this garage sale was different. This garage sale was a massive undertaking because this was the sale at which I sold ALL of my baby boys clothes from birth to size four toddler. Needless to say after the past week and weekend, I was emotionally and physically exhausted.

The kids, especially Evan, were super excited about our sale because they wanted to sell cookies and lemonade. I bought two packs of the chocolate chip cookies that all you have to do is slap them on the pan and baked them. I mixed up a batch of bright red cherry drink. They made signs advertising their goodies for a quarter a piece, anticipating how much money they would have by the end of the sale.

The morning of the sale came and they got out the little picnic table and readied their little stand. And then they sat there, like bumps on a log and wondered why no one wanted to buy anything from them. My kids are not aggressive. Their father and I are not aggressive, in your face type of people, so there is no way for them to have learned that kind of personality trait from us. If they have inherited it in any way from any other family gene, it was not showing up on this particular morning.

I told them all they had to do was ask people if they wanted a drink or a cookie and someone would buy something. No one with any kind of heart can pass up a kid selling cookies. Especially a cute kid. None of them wanted to ask - they wanted me or Daddy to ask and we told them that it was their stand, they had to do the selling.

Spencer came up with the idea that Evan should take the signs off of the table and tape them to himself in sandwich board style. He was sure that Evan walking around and advertising would get them a line up in no time. He also told Evan to shout "Cookies for sale!" as he walked, but Evan said he was too shy to do that, so he just walked with signs taped to his shirt.

After about an hour with their only customers being themselves and their mommy, I had to take Miss Fur Real Pony to her soccer game.


But not before she ate up some of the profits.


An hour later when we got home from the soccer game, things had picked up dramatically on the cookie selling front. Evan was still walking around with signs taped to his shirt but was now carrying the cookies around and yelling "Cookies for sale! Fresh cookies for sale!" Their inventory had really dwindled in the hour or so we were gone. Evan was thrilled with the sales they were making and asked me if I wanted to know how he got over his fear. When I told him I would love to know, he said he just started by saying "Cookies for sale" in his head over and over and just started saying it louder and louder until he was really saying it. I guess it worked because every time someone new came into our driveway he walked right up to them with his tray of cookies and yelled "Cookies for sale!" right at them.



He was out of merchandise in no time. Like I told him, no one can resist a cute little boy asking them if they want to buy a cookie.


2 comments:

dr said...

This is so funny. I can just hear Evan yelling" "Cookies for sale." Love hearing about his thought process that helped him overcome his fear. Was the rest of your sale a success?

jensenbo said...

Garage sales are always so much fun. Good job, Voo!!