Thrifty Fashion: $1 buys 5 winter outfits!

I just love the yard sales the church across the street has! They do them about 4 times a year and that's where about 80% of my clothes come from because they do $1 a bag sales!! And I can fit a lot of clothes in one bag!

It got really cold here starting last month, in the 40s, which my southern blood just hates so of course I dug out my winter clothes....clothes I had just put away 2 months ago! How can you only have 2 months of summer?! The good news is all my winter clothes were too big on me....the even better news is that meant I got to run across the street with a dollar in my pocket and get a new winter wardrobe!

Last winter was our first winter here, our first real winter ever though as "winter" in the south is a joke...nothing compared to this! I didn't even own a coat in Arkansas! So it has taken me awhile to get used to wearing so much clothing....not a great fan of it as it makes me feel fat and bulky - sweaters are not very flattering on me, but at least I stay warm!

Anyway, back to the bag sale! I was really excited because I found some great items that matched really well! Lots of pinks and maroons, I guess those are my winter colors. lol I was able to find 5 really great outfits for going places, which I'll post photos of, and 6-7 "really warm for around the house" outfits...which I will not be posting photos of because you don't need to see me looking like a bag lady with 4 millions layers of clothes! (Though...I guess I am a bag lady....a $1 bag lady! hah!)

One buck - 5 Outfits! 

Button up w/ maroon stripes

Maroon Cardigan 

Jeans

Purple Skirt

Beatles Tee

Maroon Hoodie

I was holding in a sneeze here.  When I saw the photo I laughed because I look quite sexy while I'm holding in sneezes! From now on I might walk around, sniffing pepper, and holding in sneezes. :-P

Green tank top

Green and white cardigan

White tank top

Jeans

Floral Skirt

Brown tank top

Pink peasant shirt

Pink Cardigan 

(The two pink tops are the same color, the flash messed the photo up though.)

Huge pink sweater 

Beige tank top

Jeans

Sadly, it's only in the 40s. In a short while it will be in the NEGATIVE 40s!!!!!!!!

At which point I might be wearing a snowsuit all day long.

But maybe if I hold in sneezes whilst wearing it...I might still look good! :-P

Dress spruce up!

You know that little black dress I mentioned yesterday?
The one that cost me less 10 cents? (dollar grab bag)

Well, I like it ok. But I don't love it.

I thought I could take the buttons off and tolerate it, (I have some weird button phobia) but the buttons are not just decorative...they acutally hold the dress together so those suckers are not coming off. So I was all "meh" about the dress and was going to just put it in my "to donate" pile but as I tossing it in the pile I saw another dress I had thrown in there last week. It's a white lace sundress that I got while we were in N. Ireland but with my recent weight loss it doesn't fit me anymore. "It kind of looks like a petticoat though." I said to myself. (Yes, I talk to myself...) "And my black dress has a sort of 1950s feel to it..." I decided to see if I could put the two together and come up with something that would make me happy.

* I put on the white dress and layered the black one over it.
*I used my grandmas brooch to pin up one side of the black dress to show off the white a little more.
* I dug out my pearls that I won off a website years and years ago.
* I shined my black flats. (I do NOT wear heels...have never been able to stand them. A wedge heel once in a while but never those sharp, pointy things. Come on guys, you know how clumsy I am....I'd kill myself in seconds in those things.)

And......voila! Success! I'm very happy with the look! And the best part is, if I change my mind all I have to do is unpin the black dress, take off the white dress, and it's back to normal in seconds.

Before (Toddler sold separately.)

After:

:

Anywho, kept me busy for awhile so I didn't have to think about all the kids going back to school next week!!! :-(




.

What can you do with $1?

Why, buy a wardrobe of course! :-)

The local thrift stores and lots of the yard sales around here offer "Fill a bag for $1" and I LOVE them so much!

I can usually find clothes for the kids, sometimes really nice things but if not I'm still able to find lots of play clothes for them. I also see a lot of ladies buying the clothes to tear apart for quilts and other craft projects. I love when items that would otherwise be thrown away get re-used!

Here's what I was able to fit in one bag: jeans, tank top, casual shirt, flip flops, slacks, dressy shirt, dress, and heels. (If you wear jewelry you would have room to toss those in too, It's rare that I accessorize though. I like things simple. )

3 outfits. $1. 

(Toddler not included.) 

I will be removing those big white buttons from the dress though, yech.

So, if you ever see a place advertising $1 grab bags...run inside!!!!   :-)

Unexpected surprises are always nice!

Remember that bag of clothes I mentioned, the one I got at the bag sale?

As I was walking toward the desk to pay I saw a black and pink dress on the floor, it had fallen off a table so I reached down to pick it up and as I did I saw that I loved the dress....but there was no size tag and it looked too small for me. For some reason though I went ahead and threw it in my bag. I guess I was thinking that it was only a few pennies and if it didn't fit I could give it away to someone else. Or maybe I was just too lazy to fold it and put it back on the table. I'm not a folder. Or an ironer. ( I think I just made that word up.) (I don't iron because of a traumatic iron incidence as a kid. Seriously. If I even smell an iron I start to sweat. I've never owned one. My kids have never made those wax paper melting crafts that use an iron. They are so deprived. )  I hang all my clothes up or shove them in a drawer. (I didn't have a traumatic folding incidence as a kid....I just think it's silly to fold clothes that will get unfolded the first time you have to pull a shirt out from the bottom.) You can tell which is which pretty easy by the wrinkles. Drawer clothes are only for around the house though, luckily no one in my family cares. In fact they like the system because they always know when I'm going somewhere...."Mom's got her wrinkle free clothes on! Ask her if we can go too!"

Today Jason said he was taking me to a romantic picnic at the lake! (Gyros from a scary roadside stand...it doesn't get more romantic than that!)

So I decided to try it on......and........ it fit!!!! (Thanks P90X!)

I asked Rebecca to take a photo of the dress and Alex ran up to me just as she snapped it, gave me a huge hug, and said "You so purty mama." Awwwww

I love my boys!
And I love cute dresses that only cost a few pennies!

***Don't forget to sign up to win a $40 gift care HERE!***

$15 Summer Tween Wardrobe

My 12 year old needed summer clothes badly!!!!! "Like, right now mom!"
Not sure why this was soooo important since you know.....it's been raining or snowing non-stop for 8 months but I never say no to a trip to the thrift store.

Yes. You can get kewl clothes at your local Goodwill. There are actually a lot of name brand clothing on the racks that your tween will love.

So, Rebecca said she wanted "Shirts with sayings on them and some shoes."

Were we able to find what she wanted for a reasonable price?

You Betcha! (See...I can fit in with the locals.)

4 shirts with "sayings"
1 dress
2 pairs of shorts
and 3 pairs of shoes New w/ tags!

For only $15!!!

I had one very happy tween on my hands! :-)
Her shirts say:
"I'm out of bed, what more do you want?"
"I didn't do it."

"Dear Dorothy, Hate Oz, Took the shoes, Find your own way home!" (Which she is thinking of wearing the next time we go to the Judy Garland museum.)

And "Don't Bug Me" 

What's really neat is that the bug me shirt is from.....Holywood!!!!!!!!

Why is that so special? 

Because it's where I was BORN!

 Yup, I was born in Hollywood and Pat Boone delivered me.

(Granted it was Hollywood FL (not CA), and it was a midwife named Pat Boone but it’s still a good conversation starter.)

Anyway, yay for a happy tween!

Thrifty Fashion Thursday: 50 cent summer dress

So....you need a short, adorable dress. You want something like these.
(I think that might be the most anorexic looking mannequin I've ever seen.)

But the only dressy item in your closet is a long skirt, that you found at a yard sale for 50 cents.
What do you do?

First you try on your skirt so you can stare in the mirror and see if any ideas pop to mind.

"Hmmm, yes. If I pull it back right here and hike it up here...yes I think it just might do. Now...where are Cinderella's mice when I need them?"

Ok, so with this skirt I found that it had a lot of extra material that I could pull back and gather behind me. So I pulled it up, like a tube shirt, and then took a bit on each side, pulled it back and used a safety pin in the back. Then I put a belt around my waist, with the belt buckle in the back, to give it a little more color. It also had a string it the front that I tied around my neck.

Much more flirty and cute, perfect for summer! (If summer ever gets here!)

And then you twirl.
At least, that's what I always do when I have a new dress.

:-)

Thrift store outing

Remember last year on our 12th anniversary?

We pawned the kids off on some grad students, hopped on a trains, and explored a quaint Irish village.

How do you top that?

You don't.

In fact it can be a pretty hard fall from that high.

I did have plans though, big ones. yes indeedie. An elaborate cake, and a picnic by the lake, and something slinky and see through.

Instead this year for our Anniversary I spent all night and day cleaning up my son's puke, running errands,  and taking my other kids to swimming lessons. And my dear hubby was having his first, very stressful, day of summer programs and by late afternoon when he got home we both fell into bed for nothing more than a REAL nap.

"We have to do SOMETHING though " said we.

So we left the kids with grandma and grandpa for an hour (didn't want to be away from the sick kidos any longer than that) and made a quick dash to....a thrift store of course! Jason needed a pair of pants and I needed a water bottle. Aren't we just so romantic?

But it was fun and cute and kidless so we enjoyed ourselves and made fun of the outrageous clothes and I almost talked Jason into a red stripped shirt and he tried to drag my away far too soon telling me I needed "Thrift Store Intervention".

He found a pair of brand new with tags slacks for $3 and when the clerk rang them up she told me "Oh this tag means they are half off." so I yelled over to Jason, without thinking, "Hey hon, good news, your pants are gonna be half off!" And everyone stared.....and Jason got his hopes up for a second until he realized I was just talking about the price of his pants. :-P

I also found myself a brand new stainless steel bottle marked down from $12 to $3 and hope it works better than my old one that Alex could open so I had to drink backwash all the time. Let this one be Alex proof, please!

And I found Rebecca a night light for $1 and now I HAVE to remind myself that her room is DONE and I don't need ANYTHING else for it, except curtains, and to leave those cute pink items alone! Just walk away from the pink. You can do it.

And we picked up the kids and came home and had dinner (E-Mealz day two went great!) and than the other kids started throwing up and the phone was ringing and there was paperwork to be done and dishes to wash and showers to be given and more vomit to be cleaned.....and we laughed and said "It's no last year's adventure but it is kinda nice to be home and normal, our year of travel wore us out."

Thrifty Outfit Thursday

I got tired of digging around in my clean laundry basket and acutally put some clothes away today. (Shocking, no?) While I was neatly placing folded shoving wads of clothes in my dresser I saw something black with legs in the back. "What's that?" I thought, "I don't have any black pants." But sure enough, there was a pair of short legging hiding under my t-shirts. I have no idea where they came from! I'm guessing a grab bag though and I just somehow missed them.

I figured that I could use them to make another summer outfit!

And that's just what I did.

Now, I have lots of mini skirts that I wore over the winter with nice, long, thick leggings. The leggings are too hot for summer though and my legs are not designed for mini-skirts alone so I haven't worn any since it turned warm.

But these are short leggings so I played around with some of my skirts and came up with this.

The skirt I got for $1 on this day.
The t-shirt (bonus points if you can identify the band on it), flip flops, and jean belt in my hair I got at a dollar grab bag so....50 cents.
The leggings I have no idea. lol
Not bad for less than $2. :-P

I need to work on the hair idea though, I just kinda threw it up there last minute.

Thrift Store Tuesday

I have been staying away from the thrift stores lately because we are going on a trip for Memorial Day, so our funds are being saved for that.

Today however, I realized that Alex and I needed bathing suits for our weekend trip and I really wanted to get another summery outfit so I decided to stop in the Goodwill but vowed to stay away from the furniture and other house furnishings.

It was hard though because they had a computer desk and a cute end table and 3 recliners! Three! Wouldn't it be cute to do a living room with all chairs and no couch? Not that I'm getting tired of my ugly couch just yet, but wouldn't something like this be neat?

I also saw some cute curtains and a sign that I liked, we'll see if they are still there in a few weeks - if not no biggie as there are always other ideas to play around with.

I did find a nice outfit, not my usual style but it works and I won't melt to death in it.
Top was $1
Pants were $2
Flip flops were .50
Oh and that yellow chair I got last time for $1, I sit in it and read on sunny days. :-P

I also found a cute purse for $2, the only other one I have is a heavy winter one so I was thrilled to switch over to a lighter one.

Alex's Tigger swimsuit! It was 50 cents.
He tested it out in the sprinkler.

 I was very happy to find a simple black suit for $5!

So....I know I told myself I wasn't buying items for the house but, I could not pass up these next two items because they were something that Rebecca has been wanting so bad - wall stickers!
She saw wall stickers in a magazine while we were fixing up her room and asked if she could get some, I looked them up online but balked at the price and told her I'm sure we could make our own. (I didn't really think we'd find any at a thrift store or yard sale.) So I was so excited when I found two boxes of wall stickers today AND they had pink in them! (I still want to try making my own though, perhaps for the living room.)
One was $2 and one was $3.

She was beyond thrilled! She ran right to her room and put the squares over her bed and the others on her door. What's neat is that you can take them on and off so she can redecorate over and over.

 Rebecca really lucked out on wall decor today because while I was in town Jason's  sweet Aunt Alice treated me to lunch (I never had a close aunt growing up so I'm delighted to steal Jason's away.) and she had some gifts for the kids, (I told you she was a sweetheart) including a pink ribbon board for Rebecca!

*~*~*~*~
Total today: $16

Cheap Hat

I will be trying to do a lot more of my cheap thrifty posts, because all my life getting good deals has always made me happy and I know it makes you happy too.

Most of everything I own I've found at second hand stores because I feel like if I'm buying something that the first owner doesn't want...I'm keeping items out of the landfills and boycotting consumerism a tiny bit. However, if I find a good enough deal on a new item...saving a lot of money sometimes takes first priority. :-P

Today I took Rebecca and her BFF to Clarie's so they could get their ears pierced. *sniff sniff* Every time I turn around she's aged about 3 years, I need a child remote with a pause button.

While we were browsing the items I saw there was a clearance rack and of course made a beeline straight for it. Most of the items were not of use to me seeing as how I'm so totally lame drab classic and don't wear a lot of jewelry, make-up, or accessories but stuck in the back I did see a pretty hat. Now, I've never worn a hat unless it was one for cold but for some reason I just loved it, reminded me of a hat from the 1920's.

Since it was marked down from $34 to $2...I bought it! AND even wore it for the rest of the day without feeling like a fool, so it's a keeper. :-P
Plus it matches my favorite pair of boots. 

Thrifty Fun

Remember a few months back when the thrift store had the dollar grab bag sale and I bought a few things because I had recently lost some weight and nothing fit? And I didn't have time to post any photos of the outfits and ya'll got mad at me? Yeah, so the weight has kept coming off and I found myself in the same situation...nothing fit. (Stress diet people...lose inches while you lose your mind!) So, back to the thrift store I went because I refuse to waste money on new clothes - as long as they do what clothes are supposed to do (protect your body from the elements and cover your naughty bits)then who cares about fashion or name brands or whatever...it's just pieces of cloth!

This time I wasn't so lucky price wise as the only sale going on was $1 per item on some clothes - ugh! I had hoped to find a pair of jeans or two and a few nice shirts...but I've never been able to find a good pair of jeans at a thrift store, it's the one thing I just can't seem to score. So I had a look around and saw that there were tons of wee skirts and button up shirts - most of which were sale items. Seeing as you can't be too picky when you are trying to prove a point and save money - I decided to see if I could find 5 nice outfits from said skirts and shirts. (I never really wore little skirts before Belfast, but most of the UK women wore them so I got used to them in my time there.)

I was surprised by how much I love my new outfits! Are they in style or the latest fashion? I have no freaking idea! But I do know that they fit me, look good, match, keep me warm, and were affordable - and that's all that matters to me!

THIS time I made sure to take some photos for you...so you wouldn't smother me in my sleep or something. :-P

I spent about $20, a little less in fact, for all 5! Not bad huh?
(Excuse the horrible photos as I had to use the self-timer and the only spot to put the camera is in front of the window/mirror. lol)

 See? Wasn't that fun? Now it's your turn to go give your thrift store a chance!

Thrift Store Score!

Earthshoes boots - which retail for $150!!

I found these for $3!!!

Aren't they awesome!! I am so in love with them!

True Vintage

While I was in Arkansas my mother gave me my great-grandma's petticoat! She hand sewed it herself, it's breathtaking.

Admit it. You're so jealous.

:-P

It actually fits me perfectly though I'm afraid to wear it because it has lots of worn spots that could tear if I lean over too far. I think I can reinforce them though. It's also pretty dingy...more grayish than white but if I was going to start wearing it I'd consider dying it, a light purple perhaps.

As I mentioned it fits perfect as a hip skirt but I was also looking around online for ideas and came across a fashion site where chicks were wearing old slips as dresses by cinching them under the chest area and adding leggings and high heels.

I played around with that idea. Not sure of what occasion would warrant such an outfit but was fun nonetheless.

 The necklace is a piece of my grandma's costume jewelry.

Wonder if my great-grandkids will ever wear anything of mine? I better hang onto my tie dye...:-P

Dollar grab bag!

Rebecca and I went to Grand Rapids today and got all our Christmas shopping finished up! We also hit the jack pot at a thrift store....a dollar a bag sale! All the clothes you can fit in a bag for $1! We LOADED up our cart to overflowing and it was only 2 bags! Rebecca got 15 shirts, she was so excited she yelled "Should we go back and fill up another cart!?" lol I got a lot of clothes too (including an adorable swing dress that was new with tags priced at $60!) and quite a bit for the boys - fun!

If I had time I'd do a thrifty fashion photo show...but I don't.So there. :-P

*EDIT TO ADD a stinking photo!*

Since I got a million and one emails stating their disapproval that I did not do a thrifty fashion post.....here's ONE outfit I made from the $1 grab bags. Now please....it's all I have time for! Let me get back to Christmas crafts and packing for our trip and wrapping presents! lol

Brown winter boots - Clearance sale at wal-mart: $5
Leggings that match the small lines in the plaid dress: Inside one of the grab bags.
Plaid dress: Inside one of the grab bags.
Brown tank top: Inside one of the grab bags.
Blue Shirt that perfectly matches the big lines in the plaid: 10 cents at a yard sale.
Necklace made by a friend.

Total: $6!!!

Please ignore the horrible pic, only Alex is here so I had to use the self timer and the only place to put it was on the dresser facing the mirror. :-)