Lemonade stand 2

Inspired by the lemonade boys of a few weeks ago (see post on in June called Lemonade stand --I can put a link here, but how?), H and K wanted to sell lemonade yesterday. It wasn't ideal weather, overcast and a bit rainy, but I let them go with it. It started with Hadley making musical instruments out of jars and beans. She wanted to sell them for $5 because she wants to buy a pet frog to replace the tadpole. We saw some at Meijer on Thursday and she has been consumed ever since. Though I doubt a pet frog will be much of a pet, I've have been surprised by all we learned from Fred Grapey Wells (the new name of the Beta fish). Because, animals are a good learning experience but there are no dogs or cats on the horizon due to allergies, we've decided she can buy herself a pet frog or two--we already have the small aquarium.

Major side note: this morning's conversation

H: Why can't I get a cat when I grow up?

Me: You can, but I won't be able to visit you then.

H: But you'll be too old to drive to my house anyway.)

Back to the point, I told H she couldn't sell jars with beans for $5 because they were not worth that much. After a long discussion about how her instruments were nice, but not worth money, she settled on lemonade. I made the girls go door-to-door and ask for a juicer, we found an antique one at house number four. Then we made a sign, I helped by printing out some graphics to color and with some of the spelling. Next we went to Jack's. I made H buy the lemons (no powdered stuff for this stand!) with her own money. She only brought enough to buy four lemons which only made about 1/2 cup of juice. I ended up donating evaporated cane juice, cups and bottled lemon juice. But we used the juicer we borrowed and made lemonade. We even boiled the sugar in a cup of water to ensure it would be evenly distributed throughout the juice. We put the ingredients together and tasted, added more water and sugar, and then stuck the pitcher in the fridge. We found a "cash box" which was a pink cardboard pencil box, found change, talked about costs and profits, though I don't think H really got it. And then set up.

The girls were shy sellers at first but cute enough that people stopped. Later the neighbor girl Anna stopped by, she was much bolder and led truly inspired chants at all the cars that drove by. Our street is not a super busy one, but generally in the afternoon, a car drives by every 3-4 minutes. Not one man stopped, but several mothers and grandma's did and often people paid more than the $0.25 we charged (if H had actually used all real lemons, purchased her own sugar, and cups, we would have needed to charge at least $0.75). I was unsuccessful in getting a picture of the numerous times one of the girls held up the sign upside down or even on the blank side of the poster board as they screamed at passing cars. All in all, after paying Anna and K their "wages" and subtracting the cost of the lemons, H made $8.00 and had lots of fun in the process. Oh and I failed to mention that K spent the whole day with her leggings inside out and her tag waving as she ran up and down the sidewalk!