Artsy-Fartsy Stuff to fund my girl trip

My girl trip this year is to New York. We're all from central California so this is a big trip for us and expensive to boot.
We've already gotten our tickets but now we need to rent a van, get lodging in Philadelphia and New York city...and eat.
We've been thinking of ways to make money and we had one garage sale and made $250.
My part is coming up. I've been snatching things from the side of the road (literally) and bringing them home to paint - a six-drawer chest, a few old wood-paned windows, a 20 paned window that I found today, a bench my friend made from an old twin bed..... I have some odd pieces of wood to make yard angels out of and a few other ideas.
My idea.....and input is WELCOME... is to make a huge "FUNKY ART PIECES" sign to put on the main street a few blocks from my house and just pray to God that people who aren't looking for garage sale crap come and really want to buy art pieces.
I painted the chest of drawers a barn red and then painted one huge black-eyes Susan on it that goes from the top, down part of the front and a couple of leaves. One bench, that's large, I painted a kind of Arabian Nights scene on the back with tilting buildings and palm trees. Parts of the spindles will be painted with gold and some other colors.
I'm up for any input or ideas that would be a sure bet to help me raise money by September.

Kate

Your sign would bring me in because I am always curious. The pieces sound wonderful. My only question is are you going to have certain hours?
You may want to include that on a huge sign.
Maggie

I like the sign idea. I think it's perfect.

What if you ladies sell services? Alright, no wise cracks!

Do you have friends who would pay you to house sit, or stay overnight with their children so they could get away for a night?

Another thought and I think it would be fantastic. Have all the women going on the trip offer a car wash at a local gas station. Athletic teams do that all the time in this town. Why not boomer women. It would be a hoot.

Think outside the box and I know you'll come up with more ideas.

COLLECT NEWSPAPERS, OLD MAGS, then take the stuff to a recycle center. Canvas the neighborhoods for their old papers, mags as well.

I've know people who made up to 300.00 a weekend just doing this.

I also love the furniture thing you've done. How creative you are girl! And quite frankly, your entire group sounds like winners to me! I mean everybody pitching in to raise the moola...how cool is that?

JJ

Yay, yay, YAYYYYYYYY........I knew you guys would come up with some ideas!

We actually did think about a car wash and about getting our kids to help us too. And someone is baking stuff. One of my friends is making clocks, huge round ones....one of them is cleaning apartments and someone else is doing something but I don't know what.

I like the sign input too! I wouldn't have thought about that.

So who lives in/or near New York of Philadelphia that want's to come meet us?

Kate

Dreamer: I lke your artistic ideas! Go for it!

Is there someone who might need a hand with grocery shopping or any other shopping service? The elderly would benefit from that!

We're going in the middle of September. We'll arrive Friday evening in Philadelphia and stay til Monday, then go on to New York and do whatever we can there during the week.

We've got a wide variety of interests. I usually skulk off by myself for a while to look at art galleries or museums because I can only handle being part of a "group" for so long and then I need some space. But I probably won't do that this time, we'll be too far away to chance any problem.

And of course we want to see all the usual touristy stuff, but even though I was a huge Beatles fan, I've got no interest in seeing John Lennon's grave site, or whatever. It's a groupie thing. I just don't do "groupie." At least not dead people. Well okay, maybe SOME dead people but not John Lennon, not Jim Morrison...mmmm, and probably not Elvis. I don't know why, just can't.

So... we're looking for places to stay, cheap. And we've got exactly nine weeks to come up with the cash. It's kinda scary. Six women, non-refundable tickets. We're going if we have to sit in the airport the whole time.

Kate