Frugal finds

This is the time for spring consignment sales. This year we are lucky and don't need much for our daughter, but I like to check them out none the less. Here most of the consignment sales have half price Saturday. All the consignors tag items differently that they want to be tagged as half off and I have found some pretty tremendous deals. My general rule is that I will not spend more than $1 on a piece of clothing for everyday wear, and no more than $3 on something for church wear for my daughter, and often I can find things less than that. These are not cheap articles of clothing either, they are name brands that hold up well. In our house I have found that Gymboree, Children's Place and Okie Dokie hold up the best for the kind of abuse my child gives to them and they fit the longest. (I have no connection to those companies, that is just my opinion.) They also are stitched well so the seams hold up well, as I find it annoying to spend even a little on clothing that falls apart when I wash it for the first or second time. 

The toys and books, I set a limit before I walk in the door for what she can have, either by price or by number of items and price. Here are two of the deals that we got at 1/2 price day at one of the local consignment shops.  

The cloth book has sounds on each page so she can "read" it by herself, and is washable it was 75 cents.

The Elmo basket she loves to carry around the living room with her toys in it and I think we may use it for the egg hunt on Easter, it was 50 cents. 

Next a local library has their Friends of the library sale and I went last weekend. They sell discards from the library and donations from local people. The children's books were 50 cents for the board books, $1 for the paper backs and $1.50 for the hard backs. All other books were $1.50 for the paperback and $3.00 for the hard backs. They had the entire basement of the building categorized and nicely laid out. 

The Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales is an older edition with 20's style cover art, and will go nicely with my homeschooling. It was $1.50 as it is a children's book, the only damage it had was a small rip in the book jacket at the top on the spine. 

The next find I was SUPER excited about. (I am sorry for the blurriness, our camera decided it did not want to focus)  If you have not read these books you should. This is the compilation of newsletters written in the 90s about frugality in all forms. The newsletter was called the Tightwad Gazette. These two books were private donations to the sale, and looked like they had never been opened. They cost me $3 each. 

Lastly, there are some beautiful forsythia bushes in bloom in our neighborhood and I was able to get some blossoms for out table for free! It is always nice to bring some of the springtime inside.