Yard Sale/Thrift Store Finds

I haven't posted yard sale finds in awhile.
This weekend I hit several yard sales and our Goodwill - I don't like our local Goodwill very much as they generally price things a bit high but I happened to be in on the day all kids clothes were $1 and they had some household items priced really low. Here are some of the household items I picked up this weekend:

I got this gorgeous glass bowl for $2. A friend of mine has one just like it that I have admired since I first saw it. It's got a hallowed out part you can get to through the bottom of the bowl and you can fill it with decor to match the holiday. Right now I am loving it with no decorations, just holding lemons. (Which are .19 cents each at the grocery store right now!! We're making lots of LEMONADE these days!)


A brand new-in-the-box punch bowl with 6 glasses. It will double as a deep salad bowl or trifle bowl should I need either :) It was $5.


This three tiered dessert stand was $2. I need to find the perfect plates for it. I love how simple it is, it will blend in easily with any setting and can be decorated easily if I feel like making it look more festive.


And my favorite piece is this long candle holder. It was $8 which is more than I normally pay for second hand decorating pieces, but I have wanted something like this for AGES! It goes perfectly on our long dining room table.

Thrifty Treasures

It's a Wrap

I love old wrapping paper. Something about it makes my heart go pitter-patter. Thrift stores and yard sales are the PERFECT place to pick up vintage looking gift wrap, and usually it's priced at .25 and under!
Here are some of my favorite finds up close: (some may have been gifted to me by my mum, she's good at feeding my love for paper stuff and she shops thrift stores too!)

Today's Thrift Treasures

Edited to add: I do use the paper to wrap gifts for people, but generally only for gifts I won't see the recipient open. I don't want to know that they ripped up and threw out the beautiful paper! :)

A White Dish

This weekend was the base wide sale, and for the second year in a row I wasn't disappointed! If you live near a military base look up their number and call and ask if they hold an annual base wide yard sale. I spent three solid hours looking at yard sales on our base - and I am pretty sure I missed homes because the housing layout is a bit confusing! So when you call and ask if they host a yard sale, ask if they have maps available too :)
Ours had an abundance of baby, kid and women clothing and accessories, toys, books, household accessories and furniture. A lot of the clothes, toys and furniture were from Germany and were nice quality. There was a noticeable lack of men's things - though just about every other house was selling one of those massive all-in-one workout machines :)


I haven't had a chance to take pictures of most of the treasures, so I'll save those for later this week. This is the one treasure I picked up with Rhoda in mind... I was looking at a table of home decor items and this white dish stood out to me and made me think of Rhoda's white dish collection. I thought "Oh, I'll pick that up for Rhoda!" Silly me! I have never met Rhoda. You know you spend too much time online when you're shopping and start thinking about a blogger you have never met.
After much debate in my head I decide that I would buy it for myself anyway... maybe this will be the start of my own white dish collection!

Does anyone know what this dish is suppose to be used for? It's fairly large - bigger than a candy dish would be.

Horseshoe

I picked up 4 pairs of shoes at a yard sale for Judah, and this is the first thing he did with them - one shoe from each pair went on his horse :)

Check out Rhoda's for more yard sale treasures!

Ice Cream Juice

Last weekend I put the boys in the car and did something I have told myself I would never do when it comes to yard sale-ing - I went to individual yard sales.
While I came out of it with some nice finds, it reinforced to me that neighborhood and church yard sales are the most efficient, have the best prices and the best selection.

I had mapped out my route - I religiously check craigslist GARAGE SALE section all week - and there were no neighborhood yard sales to be had. But my addiction had gotten the best of me, and I decided that it didn't matter that the homes were spaced far apart.

In the end I had a good morning out with the boys. Neither of them were feeling very good, and they enjoyed being in the car for most of the morning. I hear that's odd for kids to be content sitting in their car seats watching the world go by, but mine sat for three hours and were happy as larks.

Judah (2 yrs old) got out at most of the yard sales, and when we would leave one he would say "Mommy, more houses? See more people?" I couldn't have been more proud of that boy! After the two hour mark he says to me "Mommy, Judah ice cream please?"
I'm not sure where he got this sudden craving for ice cream. He's had it less than a handful of times in his life. But if he was ever going to pick a time to ask for ice cream, he picked the best time!

Tip for any 2 year olds reading this: spend two hours doing your mommy's favorite activity, rooting her on and having a joyful attitude, and then politely ask for the snack you desire. It'll work.

I went through a McDonalds drive thru and, making a quick smart-momma decision, opted for a (lidded!) milk shake for him over an ice cream cone in the back seat of my car. When I handed it to him he said "Momma, not ice cream!" I told him it was "Ice cream juice."
That did the trick! He enjoyed his "ice cream juice" and now every time he sees the Golden Arches (why ARE they all over the place?!) he asks for more ice cream juice.

Anyways, back to the yard sales.

I found a wonderful yard sale full of size XS, S and a few M womens clothes. Her husband was selling the clothes and he told me everything was $1. I think the wife would have died if she knew how cheap her clothes were being sold for! She had designer and name brand clothes in near-new condition. I only bought two pieces as I won't fit in those sizes for a long time.

After all was said and done this past weekend I picked up 6 pieces of clothing at $1/piece. I googled the items and found 5 of them - the retail price for those 5 items was over $170! I was thrilled.

Here are two of my yard sale finds:

Blue. Lace. Charming.

This is in the top running for my favorite clothing purchase ever. In fact, I like it so much I am almost wishing it was cool enough to wear it! A blue, 100% leather jacket. I love the contrasting white stitches. It fits me perfectly. This was at the sale where the husband was selling his wifes clothes for $1!

Tomorrow is our base-wide yard sale - there are 5 'neighborhoods' on the base participating and it will be HUGE! I went last year and have dreamed about it happening again since then. From what I saw last year there weren't many people out shopping. I don't think most people realize you can easily drive onto your local military base. If you live near one call and ask if and when they hold their base wide yard sale.
Last year I spent about $25 on Judah and completely clothed him from 18 - 2 T clothes (including pajamas, dress clothes and a leather bomber jacket), got him several pairs of shoes in various sizes (that he promptly outgrew - that boy has BIG feet!) and also bought him several classic wooden toys.

Check out Jen's blog for more participants in her Frugal Fashionista and to see her great trenches!

Yard Sale Finds

Here are some of the things I picked up this weekend - I got some fabulous clothes too, but those will wait til Friday so I can link up with Jen's Frugal Fashion finds!

These three pieces came from the same home, and I got them all for $15, which was about $10 less than the prices on the three items, but I asked her if she'd take $15 for all (and 10 Dr. Seuss books!) and she said yes.

This little shelf is on our back porch, holding our 'porch' dishes.


I haven't decided where to put these two chairs, but they're solid oak and I like the look of them. I am considering painting them lime green, thanks to an image I saw in one of my Home Decorating magazines, and then putting them on our covered front porch.

This piece looks like it was built into this corner, so I think I will just paint it the same color as the wall whenever we paint the walls. I'm not sure what to put on it since I have Littles that get into everything and this is just at their height, which at their age is pretty much an open invitation to explore :)

I already linked up the boy clothes I found and posted earlier this week, but I thought I would add this post to Rhoda's Thirfty Treasures too!

Yard Sale Finds

I only went to one yard sale this weekend, but I picked up two more Christmas presents for the boys. If you missed my post earlier this week you can see the post here on some of the gifts I have picked up for the boys at yard sales so far this year.

This weekend I picked up two large Magna Doodles (the magnetic boards you draw on and then slide to erase.) They were in good shape and the pens are attached by string to the board - so no loosing the pens! YAY! I didn't get a picture of them and they're currently stashed away in my Gift Box.

The second item was two wooden Thomas the Tank Engine train whistles.
I didn't really like them as they were.

This is one of them before:

And this is the after:



I recovered it with scrapbook paper, Modge Podged it and *voila*! I think I am going to put their names on one each, and perhaps some other text if I can think of something.

Check out all the other thrifters finds at Rhoda's!

Yard Sale Finds - $1 Edition

"Hold in your excitement for 20 minutes or so... I'm still waking up." - those were the groggy words of my sweet hubby Saturday morning as I was eagerly waiting for us to leave the house to hit up the yard sales. I was a bit nervous as we were leaving the house very late - like 9 am late!! But we got some great deals that I am just thrilled about and I *think* Paul ended up having fun too :) Even though I said last week that I like to shop alone, I like just as much to shop with Paul (and the littles were with us too!) Here are the deals we got for $1 or less - come back later this week to see more of the treasures we found!

This solid wood table - the lady had bought it intending to refinish it and never got around to it. The drawers need new faces and knobs, and the whole thing needs a fresh coat of paint, but otherwise it is perfect! And ONE DOLLAR folks! I couldn't whip that dollar bill out of my pocket fast enough! Wall hanging shelves with little knobs and a towel rack underneath. I haven't decided if it'll go in a bathroom or the boys room. Once I decide where it'll go I will decide how to paint it. It's made of solid wood too. A mirror - I like how the picture makes the frame look, but it's not really that dark. I am going to paint it. I love the shape of it! Brown leather pillows - both of them for $1. Three candle stick holders - all three for $1. I liked this suede jacket SO much, but it's a million times too small for me, so I bought it for my much-smaller-than-me-friend, and (hopefully she'll like it!) and then every time she wears it I can enjoy looking at it :) And if she doesn't like it, no biggie - it was only $1!! By far Judah's favorite purchase - a bag full of cars and trucks! There were close to a dozen cars. That $1 probably worked the hardest, in terms of it entertaining a two year old for a few hours. Boomwhackers - Judah loves music, and while they sell these in stores in sets of 8- at a price tag of $25 - he will have to settle for a set of 4 at a total of .75 cents! I am always on the look out for cooling looking books. Since we are the ones reading them to him - and we go through A LOT of books! - it's important to both Paul and myself that we find the books amusing and enjoyable too. This book was a quarter, and because the cover looked cool I picked it up without reading it. I then read it to Paul on the way home and I think it's our new favorite kids book. Ever.

But I think I am going to save it for Judah for Christmas.

I have an assortment of Christmas/Birthday gifts for the boys that I have purchased at yard sales this season - come back later this week to get an early peak at their presents!
Thanks for stopping by for those of you newly visiting!

Check out these other yard sale posts:
Christmas Edition
Decorating Edition
Pirate Edition (for the boys room)

And be sure to check our Rhoda's website for more participants in Thrifty Treasures!