Last week, I won a blog contest. $20 at Amazon.com from Jennie at She Likes Purple. Awesome, right?

Jennie had received an unexpected gift from a reader and was returning the generosity with her giveaway.

I had planned on throwing a contest of my own to pay it forward. Yesterday, my prize arrived in my inbox.

Also yesterday, I read this post by and Internet friend of mine who has fallen on some hard times. And here I am, living quite comfortably, having an extra $20 fall into my lap.

So Whitney, you are the winner of my non-contest. I know it won’t solve your problems, but maybe it’ll help just a little bit.

I’ll be in touch to figure out which gift card would help the most.

We had a yard sale over the weekend. We did pretty well, though my garage is now full of stuff that I’m left to either donate or try to sell on eBay or Craigslist.

My kitchen looks like either we were robbed or just moved in. I decided it was time to finally get rid of the hand-me-down table and falling-apart chairs and buy a grown-up (matching!) set.

Unfortunately the table and chairs didn’t sell. The bakers rack didn’t sell either. It had been our liquor cabinet/wine rack, but we really need a better storage solution. I had bottles of wine in boxes next to the backers rack! So the furniture will also live in the garage until I find a new home for it.

Anyway, I have a couple stories from the hours spent hanging out in my driveway on Saturday.

• Second sale of the day. A little girl from down the street is paying for the items she and her non-English-speaking mother have picked out. A purse and a couple pairs of shoes. A $5 purchase, and she hands me a hundred dollar bill. And hear I was thinking $100 in change would be enough to have on hand!

  It worked out fine. The first sale of the day brought in $20 so I had a slight cushion, and people generally came prepared with smaller bills. But I was a little worried to have used nearly all my change so early!

• I put a crucifix out on one of the tables. Brown-stained wood, with a bronze Jesus. It used to hang in my bedroom as a child. My mother returned it to me a couple years ago when they were moving from the house I grew up in.

  It’s not really my style, and I didn’t really know what I’d do with it. It felt wrong to throw it away or even put it in the Goodwill box … so I figured I’d put it out there in the sale.

  I didn’t put a price on it because I didn’t want to offend somebody. What price do you put on Jesus? I figured I’d let any potential buyers pay whatever they felt appropriate.

  About midway through the sale, a woman picked it up and waved me over.

  “I’ll give you a quarter for this.”