Thrift Store Finds

This weekend we were able to make it to my favorite thrift store. I hadn't been in a while and we found some really great stuff!

First of all, I found a great pair of maternity jeans. They still had the tags still on them and were made by Paige. I could tell they were probably pricey but hadn't heard of the brand before. I bought them for $4. When I got home I looked them up. They sell them at A Pea in a Pod and range between $145 and $245!! Woah.

They weren't my size and since I'M SURE THIS BABY IS GOING TO BE HERE ANY DAY! I'm not buying any more maternity items for myself anyways. Instead, I took them to a store here called The Clothes Mentor. They give you cash on the spot for used clothes and they gave me $25.50 for them! Score!


I also bought two books:

The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks (A friend recommended this book to me last week and so I was excited to spot it on the shelf for $.50) I'm thinking I'll have plenty of 2 AM reading times in the coming weeks :)

Atonement by Ian McEwan. This one just looked interesting. Also $.50

I also found this dishwasher basket. A friend of mine has one of these and it's great for all the little bottle parts (caps, rings, nipples etc). It was only $.50!

Finally I found some cute fabric. The long piece is an extra long pillow case in a fun pink print. It was $.50. I'm not sure what I'll do with it but I'm sure it will turn into something cute.

The other piece of fabric is an adorable knit fabric. There is about a yard and I love the sailboat pattern. I see some cute leggings for Lilly in the near future so stay tuned for that post!

All in all I spent $7.50 on all these things and made $21.50 on the jeans. Not bad right?!

Little Girl's Room...on a budget

Since the new baby is coming, she will be getting Lilly's old room. We decided to put two twin beds into Lilly's new room because eventually Charlotte will move in with her...and it will also work well as a guest room when we have guests in the future.

In case you forgot, here is the link to what this room looked like before (it was our guest room)

I started by painting the walls white and painting the two green stripes. THIS TOOK FOREVER. It took three coats of paint to get the walls to be a consistent white and the measuring, marking and taping portion of the stripes was very tedious...(this is why there are only two stripes)

I made the curtains using material I got on sale at JoAnns. Total cost per panel was $6. We found the metal bed frames at two thrift stores, $11 each. The comforters were from TJ Maxx and they were $19.99 each. The sheets were from Walmart ($10) and I made the throws at the end of the beds from some fabric I picked up about a year ago at the thrift store for $1! I also made the throw pillows with scraps of fabric that I had left over so no cost there.

We found the dresser at the Habitat for Humanity Restore for $60. It was a light wood color and looked like it was from the 70's. I painted it white and sprayed the hardware with some rustic bronze spray paint we had on hand.

  I spotted this piece of artwork on the wall (the butterfly) this week at the thrift store for $3. It matched the room perfectly and I couldn't pass it up

The lamp and accessories on the dresser and the letters on the wall were all from Lilly's old room. Fortunately they matched perfectly with the new room!

I would still like to get some book shelves (actually spice racks...see the idea here) to put on the walls (I'll probably paint them green). But other than that, the room is finished. I'm really happy with the way it turned out and also with some of the great deals we were able to find.

Here are the pins that inspired the look.

Thrifty Weekend Finds

I love weekends when we have time to stop by some thrift stores and find some great deals. This weekend was just that kind of weekend! Here are a few of my favorite finds:


Gilmore Girls seasons 1-5: I love this show so much! We found all five seasons, new, unopened in their original boxes for $25!


New Dining Room Table!: I've been wanting a dining room table so bad for about 3 years now. Our current table seats 4 comfortably and six ok...but every few weeks we try to put 8 people at it and let's just say we've all gotten to know each other a little better...

This table was new in the box at our local Habitat for Humanity Restore. It is from Sears and can be found here. New, it is $530...we paid $150. I still need to find some chairs I like though. Also, for my local readers...there is still one left at the Restore...also for $150!

Did you find any good deals this weekend?

Bathroom Curtain

I've been in a mood of switching things up lately in our house. I've gotten tired of the same old same old and am ready for a few changes...but don't want to spend a lot of money of course.

Here is how my bathroom window looked before. I think the white curtain on the white mini blind just wasn't working for me...it needed some color don't you think.

I purchased some brown material a few weeks ago at a thrift store and hadn't used it for anything yet. Since there is brown in the shower curtain and our vanity and towels are brown I thought it would work well here.

I simply cut the piece of material the width I wanted and length I wanted and then hemmed the edges. This is how it looked after hanging it up.

Pretty Ugly. Next I looped ribbon over the whole curtain and hot glued the ends together. The ribbon was a little shorter than the curtain so that the material gathered together at the bottom. I did this twice.

This was the end result. I took a few pictures in different formats trying to get it to look how it does in real life. The last picture is probably the closest. I like it better than the white but am not totally sure if I love it yet. What do you think?

How to wear it: The Mini Skirt!

So yesterday I was backed into at a stoplight by someone who decided he wanted to change lanes and backed up without thinking that there might be someone behind him...fun stuff. Especially considering my beautiful new car was one week old...

So, by the end of the day and after talking with the insurance company, police officer etc...I was ready for some retail therapy!

I ended up at my favorite thrift store and spent $8...on 8 things!

One of these things was a corduroy skirt that I thought looked a little long. I was planning on coming home and shortening it but then when I tried it on I realized that it wasn't actually long it was just made in the 90's which meant it came all the way up to my belly button! So, what I thought was a skirt that would end around my knee, was actually a mini skirt-which is exactly what I was planning to turn it into!

Now that leggings are popular I love me some mini skirts. This particular one is a green corduroy, which I paired with a black top, black boots and black leggings. Not too bad for $.99 right?

Thrift Store Finds

Yesterday was my first day of Christmas vacation! We started it off right by sleeping in...until 8:00!! (Lilly did too!) We also finished up all of our Christmas shopping and went to a thrift store as well. Here are a few of my favorite things that we found:

• Christmas Lights! We bought two colored net lights for $.25 each. We were able to test them before bringing them home and they worked. We had been wanting to get some more (I love how easy the nets are to use on bushes) but didn't want to spend $11 a piece for each one! $.25 is much better!
• This trivet may not seem too exciting but it just so happens to match all of my Christmas dishes! My dishes are older (from the 90's) and they don't make them any more so this was quite a find...and for only $1.25

• Tree Topper: This guy was only $.50 and so lovely don't you think!

A day at the Auction...

On Saturday we spent the day at an estate auction. We arrived at 9:30 and left at 3:30. It was a long day...especially with a little girl who wasn't interested in taking a nap (until we got in the car to drive home) but she was a trooper and we had a blast none the less.

What attracted me to this auction was that they had a TON of fabric. A TON. I'm not sure what the woman who lived there did but she definitely enjoyed sewing. They sold the fabric by the bag/box and by the end they were going for $.33 a bag! I ended up purchasing 125 yards of knit fabric (of various colors, stripes and solids) for $20!!  ($.17 a yard!) I'm so excited! I basically sought out all the knit fabric they had and got it. Since Joann's has such a limited supply of knits I have been dying to find some variation. I got just what I wanted and for so much less than paying retail. There were only about 50 people there and only about 5 that were bidding on the fabric.

Here is a picture of all the fabric folded and placed on the shelves of my new "sewing closet". (It currently a work in progress)

I also purchased an old Singer sewing machine. My current sewing machine doesn't do buttons, zippers or really anything besides sewing a basic stitch. I got the sewing machine for $3 and it came with 4 foot attachments, a ton of needles, the instruction manuals etc. I haven't tried it out though yet, but for $3 I figured it was worth a shot.

I also bought all of this thread (I color coordinated it after bringing it home) and the thread organizer for... $7!! There is a total of 325 spools of thread on it.

I bought 1 box full of elastic, over 50 rolls of un-opened elastic in varying sizes for $1

I bought another box for $1 that was filled with edging, lace, zippers, buttons etc.

Finally, I bought this cutting mat that unfolds into a HUGE board! It was also $1.

So, all in all I'd say I got about $2,000 worth of sewing materials for $33. Not bad for a days work :)

Thrift Store Friday!

Yesterday Lilly and I stopped by our favorite thrift store (yes, it's Lilly's favorite as well... she just doesn't know it yet) and found some GREAT Deals

I found these two packages of edging/binding. They were only $.50 each and were neutral colors so I picked them up. You never know when they'll come in handy.

This pillow case was only $.50 too! I love the ruffle on the bottom. I already used the material for an adorable dress for Lilly, stay tuned Monday to see the finished product. (Side note: After I brought this pillow case home and looked at it some more I realized it was the sheet set my parents used to have on their bed when I was a kid. Too funny.)

Aren't these shoes adorable! They were in great condition and only $.25!



I've been wanting to make Lilly a pumpkin costume for Halloween but hadn't gotten around to purchasing the fabric. They had everything I needed at the thrift store! I bought all this fabric for $3.50 (4 yards!)



They had other fabric as well (this is not very common so I was VERY excited to have spotted it) I got the rest of the fabric in the picture above for $5. Total spent: $9.75!!

Have you had any good thrift store find this week?

Thrifting Online

So I love going to thrift stores and yard sales but sometime it can be hard to get everything together and actually get there. I also know that a few of you out there have a phobia when it comes to thrift store shopping...the crowded racks, weird smells and eccentric people freak you out and force you to pay retail...

Well, you're in luck. I've put together a list of a few consignment sites that I've found online that offer some great products for great prices...take a look and start saving some money.

Recycle Your Fashions

This company is really unique because not only can you find great deals on name brand clothing but you can also consign your own clothing with them! They will either pay you for your items up front (like Plato's Closet but online and for people over the age of 16) or you can consign with them. They pay you a 60% split which is better than any local consignment shop I've been too! The brands they sell include: Ann Taylor, J. Crew, Anthropologie, Armani, and many many more.

Peachy Bees

This site sells children's clothes. Shipping is $5.00 regardless of what you get so the more you buy the better the deal. They have some really cute stuff too!

Savvy Thrift

This site sells some cute stuff for really good prices. The shipping is a little higher though :(

My Little Clothesline

This is another site for kids clothes. Also offers flat rate $5 shipping! They have some adorable stuff!!

A Tour Of My Guest Room

This isn't a recently completed project but while hard-core cleaning and organizing yesterday I thought you guys might like a detailed tour of my guest bedroom...

 The headboard is a wooden door we found at Lowe's. Someone had brought it back and while it still had the original cellophane wrap on it there was a tear in the cellophane... because of this they repriced the $150 door at $10. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it but for $10 we couldn't pass it up! I love how it looks as the headboard

(My cat has claimed our guest room as his home)

The chair in the corner is from Restore. $6!

 I picked this table up at a yard sale. It was $3 and painted a forest green. I repainted it the same color as the walls and then crackled it with an off white paint so that the green showed through the cracks. 

The artwork to the right of the dresser is an original poster advertising that week's publication of the Saturday Evening Post (copyright 1955). It was common to see these posters on the window's of hardware stores or diners above the stand where the Post was sold, in hopes that readers would see the add and then purchase a copy. This particular one has a Norman Rockwell photo on the cover. We found it in an ugly frame at a local thrift store  for $4! We had it re-matted and framed. It was in perfect condition.

I found this cabinet at a yard sale for $5!! This is exactly how I found it, it matched the room perfectly!

Hope you liked the tour! It's always fun to go through a room and remember all the stories that are associated with how it all came together.

Frugal Friday: Fabric for $.65 a yard!!

So Fabric can be expensive right? Well, not if you get creative about where you find it. Yesterday I stopped by the thrift store and took a peak in the linen's section. Here is what I found:

 This is a flat strawberry shortcake sheet. When I first spotted it I thought: Pillow Case Dress! Because I just love the contrasting section on the bottom. This piece of fabric is huge! I did in fact make a pillow case dress out of it yesterday afternoon and there is enough fabric to make 11 more!!! Total cost = $1.98

 This is a blue, king size, pillowcase. It was only $.45 and It has a suede like feel to it. The picture doesn't do it justice.

 I don't know what this was, maybe a small table cloth? It's a very pretty green and kind of has a linen feel to it. It was on sale for $.28 so I couldn't pass it up. It's large enough to make a shirt or skirt for Lilly

 These were two huge pillow cases. All in all, about 2.5 yards of material here. Total cost for both was $.99. I think the purple pattern is so pretty and just asking to be made into something adorable.

This was another huge sheet. More than 2.5 yards of fabric and an adorable polka dot pattern. I really want to make myself a dress out of this one. (or 3) It was only $1.98.

So, all in all I paid $6 for a little over 9 yards of fabric, which is about $.65 per yard! All of it is adorable and I can't wait to see what I can make with it.

Thinking outside the box allows you to come up with some creative ideas for a steal. Stay tuned Monday to see the adorable pillow case dress that I made from the Strawberry Shortcake sheet!

And have a great weekend!

Vintage Skirt Creation- For under $1

So on Wednesday I had a twenty minute window before picking up Lilly where I had just enough time to run into the thrift store. I made a B-Line for the $.99 rack and found this dress.

Pros: I love'd the blue pockets and I can't resists polka dots
Cons: Its ugly. It's six sizes to big, it had shoulder pads!? It would have been super awesome if this were 1984.

I thought, for $.99 it's worth a shot, maybe I can turn it into something awesome (read: awesome in 2012, not to be confused with awesome in 1984)

So I brought it home and cut the top off

(Don't you just love those pockets?!)

Then I flipped it inside out, folded the top down 1/2 inch and sewed it so that it was finished around the top. There was already a zipper but I had to cut it it half when I cut the dress. I removed the remaining portion of the zipper and installed my own (I found a pack of 15 zippers at the thrift store a while back for $1.98 and there was one that matched the blue in the dress perfectly!)

This was my first time installing a zipper and so it was nice for it to already be partially done for me. I just sewed the zipper in where the old zipper was (although I needed to go down a little bit further)

Aren't the colors a perfect match!

At this point the skirt was still about an inch too big for my waist. I simply make one pleat in the center of the front of the skirt and sewed it up, then it fit like a glove. 

I LOVE the way it turned out, I think it's gone from an 80's disaster to vintage retro. And all for under $1!!

What a Deal Friday

Alright, yesterday's trip to the thrift store resulted in some great finds! First up I found this tube-top stretch shirt for $1.00 and the white baby t-shirt for $0.75. Stay tuned on Monday to see what I do with them. Total investment $1.75

I also found this dress for $8.98! I love J. Crew but don't love spending $120.00 on a dress when I go into their stores. This was such a cute summer dress and in great condition!

Now go out there and find some great deals!