It’s June, and June (at least in this part of the country) is yard sale time. Yard sales are serious business. They are planned for and neighborhood coordinated and strategized. It’s a time of year when everyone puts all their crap out in their front yard in the hopes that someone else will take out the trash.
I’m not much of a yard sale kinda girl, so I’ve only had 2 yard sales in my life. At the time of the first one, I had a ton of large baby toys, slides, tricycles, teeter totters, and playhouses. The afternoon before the sale, I had Husband help me get the bigger items out front to be put into the garage for the morning. What happened next shocked me. Cars started screeching to a halt in front of my house. We made about $500 the night BEFORE the sale started. It was time to reconsider what kinda girl I was.
When Younger Son was really little we noticed that whenever anything was put out front (flags on the 4th of July, pumpkins at Halloween) Younger Son would put his pinecone and his seashell on the front porch. He was only 3 when he started doing this and wasn’t able to articulate his thought process. To this day I don’t know what this was all about, but I remember thinking during my yard sale that maybe Younger Son had just been a yard-saler before his time. Younger Son is exceedingly smart and although he couldn’t tell me then, I think he was waiting for cars to come screeching to the curb for his pinecone and seashell.
Now for the yard sale the kids asked if they could have a lemonade stand. Any parent knows that a lemonade stand means you buy the paper goods and lemonade. You make the lemonade, set up the stand, make more lemonade, give them money for change, make more lemonade and then clean up the trash. All so your kids can make a few pennies. It would be easier just to hand them each a couple of bucks, but it’s a rite of passage so you have to just go with it. You don’t have to make home-made goodies for them to sell too, but you know I did.
Older Son has always been a bit of a hoarder. I don’t honestly know if he doesn’t want to throw stuff away or just couldn’t be bothered. My guess is it’s 50/50, but either way this kid keeps some ridiculous stuff. He keeps a year’s worth of papers in his backpack. If I force him to clean it out and get himself organized, he apparently just puts it all in his room.
*Grease 9 X 11 pan.
*Microwave ½ cup chocolate chips and 1 stick of butter for 40 seconds. Stir and keep microwaving and stirring at 10 second intervals until smooth. Stir in the cookie crumbs and press into bottom of pan. Refrigerate 15 minutes or till cool.
*Beat 1 stick butter, ¾ tsp mint extract, vanilla, milk and food coloring. Carefully beat in powdered sugar. Spread over cookie crust. Refrigerate 10 minutes.
*Microwave 1 stick of butter, the rest of the chocolate chips, and the rest of the mint extract for 30 seconds. Stir and microwave at 10 second intervals until smooth. Let cool while previous layer sets in fridge.
*Spread last chocolate layer over the powdered sugar layer and refrigerate one hour before cutting.
I'm guessing you want me to bake you something?
Mmm chocolate and mint are two of my favorite things in baking! I love how you add the personal stories on top of the recipes, it is a really nice touch!
If you like chocolate and mint, you'll like this recipe. Thanks for stopping by!
You're so sweet to make the snacks to hand out too. My friend did that for my daughter and hers. Ended up it started raining so she didn't let them sell them. They took the around the neighborhood and handed them out to people out working in their garages.
Bet all the neighbors were happy that it started raining, nothing better than door-to-door snack delivery!
Bwahahahaha! I love your signs! I had one that I put up when I worked in the nursery at our church. It read: Children left more than five minutes after the last meeting will be sold! Oddly enough, I was still waiting 20 minutes for some parents to show up. Sigh.
I can just picture your son's little seashell and pine cone! And where were your son's answers when I was in seventh grade?!
Here's the thing about those answers, I'm not really sure that they were the RIGHT answers. . .
Quiche and Monkey Bribe . . .I mean bread!