Thrifty Thursday!

I haven't blogged for a few days because I have been busier than usual trying to wrap up *things around here before I leave on Monday for my 16 day trip "home" to St. Louis to be with my kids, grandson & friends!

(whoo-hoo!! I'm more than a little bit excited 'cause I have not seen them since Oct., and Ryatt is walking & talking now!) 

*"Things being completing partially finished art, filling up my new MP3 player with music (with  a little alot of help from  my computer guru/stud!), creating & packaging swaps that will be due to mail while I am gone or upon my return, cleaning house, doing laundry, packing, and shopping for trip essentials such as comfy shoes I can wear in 11 inches of snow (!), a new 8GB camera card, Airborn, and more sweaters...the latter a need which happily resulted in a valid excuse for yesterday being Thrifty Thursday with my friend Julia!

Julia is one of my few only friends who can pretty much match me store for store, hour for hour when it comes to thrifting...(even though we return home starving and having to pee like racehorses!)...plus she has an amazing eye for things and I love watching her make a find that I would have never noticed and then create something unique and beautiful out of it! We DO try to sort of blame each other for being a "bad influence" because even though either one of us has enough "stuff" to furnish/decorate a small Third World country (ooohh...imagine a thrifty chic Tanzania!), really- when you are able to get things like a 25 cent stuffed animal (for a dog toy), a pretty Golden Gate Bridge mug for 50 cents, or a brand new sweet little print fabric handmade baby bib for 50 cents, how can you NOT get addicted to thrift store shopping?! I have had SO many amazing finds over the years of junking---and I do mean YEARS, as in since I was a child, because my dad had a shop of, well, lets just say you could call them "curiosities", which he collected form all sorts of places, and I was introduced at a very young age to garage sales, flea markets and even abandoned farmhouse scavenging! My kids have the  thrifting gene as well, with my son boasting a collection of over 100 "epic" t-shirts (all from thrift stores and possibly worth a car payment) and my daughter frequently calling me with an excited squeal to share her latest thrifting treasure with me. I know that whenever she starts the conversation with " I called 'cause you're the only one who  will understand...", she is about to share a great find with me! (I got one of those calls just today, in fact, involving coveted $40 (retail) jean leggings found for $3 at Goodwill!)

So Julia & I went to a thrift store in the downtown Everett area that we like alot (I'm not for sure but I think it is called the Women's Crisis Care Thrift Store) which is small but packed to the gills, very clean & organized and usually quite reasonable priced. (there is nothing more annoying than finding a Dollar Tree item with a $3.99 price tag on it at a thrift store...and yes, I have SEEN that more than a few times!)
We also went to the Everett Women's Assistance League which is a larger store, also very clean & organized with great prices. That is where I spotted "the one that got away" for the day-see photo bvelow...!)
Next was a stop at some little shop we had passed many times, which used to be an antique store.
Now it has junk store stuff at antique store prices... $2.99 for an insurance ad coffee mug?! It better come with a free refills! They did have all their clothes half price but they were still not much of a deal (in my thrifting book at least!), plus it was just way too crammed full in there, with terrible lighting, and a tv blaring some ridiculous talkshow with two obnoxious chicks fighting over some loser guy who may or may not have been one or both of their baby daddy...(ugh...I have absolutely no tolerance, interest or use for that kind of crap-it literally makes my head feel like it is going to explode...or maybe it was the funky smell permeating that store...!) Anyway, that place will definitley not be on our list the next time we go out. (although Julia DID get her thrill from a pair of military issue nerdy glasses for a buck, which she is going to have made into sunglasses...perhaps that will have to be a futrue blog post update complete with photos!)
Our last stop was the St. Vincent DePaul on Broaddway which I usually only frequent on Sundays when all clothing is 99 cents-but they have a smaller store across from the big one which has alot of glassware, kitchen stuff, holiday decos, pictures, frames, craft stuff, toys, candles, etc...basically anything that is NOT clothing I guess! They always have great sales going on too, like kitchen stuff or toys at half off the already low prices. This is where we ended our thrifty treasure hunt, with the discovery of a perfectly preserved frog in a glass jar, along with witnessing an employee pushing a cart full of stuff out to the back dumpster to "throw in & break"...!
 (yet the Salvation Army Thrift store in nearby Mt. Vernon is closing it's doors after many years because no one is donating & their shelves are too empty to make any sales worth the cost of being open anymore...kinda sad.)

Here are just a few of the goodies I found while out yesterday-it would have taken a several shots to show everything, and since some things are for swaps & some are for gifts, I just grabbed a few random things to share in this photo:

I came home with about 6 bags of stuff, and this little pasiley suitcase was my most pricey purchase-at $2.49! The things in the bags to the left of the suitcase are those old style (Tuperware?) plastic, make-you-own popsicle molds-I remeber them from when I was little & back then I made Kool-Aide pops, but now they will be great for making refreshing, healthy, smoothie pops! And apparently I have a thing for red plaid here lately...I also scored a cool old red plaid lunchbox while thrifting last week!

And here is ""the one that got away (there usually is, every thrifting adventure day!).

I fell in love with this darling polka-dot dress,

and reeeeeally wanted it for a fun little Valentines date outfit,

buuuut...

a. it was not my (winter) size...

b. and even if it WAS my size, I have another long dentist appointment 

scheduled for Valentines Day,which will means that this

would have been a bit too dressy for a Valentines evening date

which will likely consist of a lovely dinner at home of soup and Advil...

Of course, that dinner will be made by & shared with my loving man, which means that, regardless of what I am wearing, (probably pj's), and the fact that I will quite possibly have soup dribbling down my still numb chin, he will tell me I am beautiful anyway and that is why- even though I didn't get to get this darling dress- I am (and will be) a very

Happy Me-Laurie Z!