Doing it Again- the clutter cycle with joy

Today I could not resist the siren call of the fall garage sale. The weather is cool and sunny and the leaves are so bright and colorful. I managed to find two promising garage sales.

Little Guy and I hit up one before I dropped him at preschool. We hit a toy/kids book motherlode.
I picked out-
Books- If you give a mouse a cookie, A Where's Waldo activity book, and a large Usborne book about rescue vehicles
Toys- two nicely dressed and accessorized barbies, a Barbie accessory container, and a few Barbie clothing items. Little Guy picked out a little Tonka firetruck.

I paid $3.

The second one I got to go to by my happy little self. This one was pretty picked over but I picked out a few paperbacks for myself and my mom. I also bought some Halloween decor for our mantle.
I paid $3.75

I didn't get great bargains today but I came home invigorated and ready to clean and decorate.
I also started another purge to donate to Goodwill. So far I've only found three books that escaped the garage sale pile. I'm going to keep looking for stuff to get rid of so I can justify my little garage sale habit. Soon it will be too cold for garage sales anyway.

The mantle is clean and decorated. The bookshelf is dusted. I put out my fall candles that I've been saving and plan on using up this month. The kids and are I are going to read If you Give a Mouse a cookie later and dig out our Mouse cookbook and make sugar cookie cut outs using fall themed cutters. Of course, that means that I will have to clean the mountain of stuff off of the kitchen table. I'm looking forward to filling my trash and recycling can to the brim so even more decluttering. And Yay! cookies. I still have half a can of frosting and sprinkles leftover from my little birthday cake (I splurged on a little Jiffy cake mix box for .69 cents and used half a can of Halloween themed frosting I found in the pantry).

(on a side clutter note about cookie cutters- I went through them a while ago and gave up the cutters that I didn't like. I donated them to the playdoh bin for my kids so they are not really gone. Just re purposed.)

It's almost time to pick up the kiddos from school and I have a load of laundry to fold. What a glorious day today!