Sometimes I’m amazed at what shows up at thrift stores. The other day when we were in Wisconsin, I ran to the thrift store hoping to find a pair of pants for my oldest boy. I of course got sidetracked by the girls dresses and found this beauty. It is a Marks and Spencer’s school uniform dress from the 90′s. It is almost identical to the one I wore when I went to school in England, except for mine was brown and white. As it was a size 5 (just like my daughter) and in pink (her favourite colour), how could I resist.

It goes perfectly with the little hand sewn vintage slip I also found her in a different thrift store in town. I just love when I find things that bring back such wonderful childhood memories for me, and to see the joy a new pink dress and pretty slip brings to my daughter is great.

Here are some more thrifty bits that I came across recently. I had a brilliant Kate Greenway book when I was a girl filled with all sorts of games in it. When I saw this, it brought back such memories and I knew this would look great in the girls room by itself, or filled with paper flowers.

Some creamy lace trim that will be perfect for my summer sewing.

A nice springy skirt for when the weather warms up and the wind dies down,

and a couple of slips to re-do a la dottie angel style.

I hope that by adding this to a post about thrifted items, nobody thinks I am trivializing the situation, but I wanted to mention how saddened I was by Elspeth Thompson’s death. She was such a sweet, and generous woman and I always loved communicating with her. Her books were a delight and her blog was a joy to read. She will be sadly missed and my prayers are with her family at this time.

First I made a fabric covered button, from one of the sets I found at the thrift store.

Then I made some backs.

Added some crocheted flowers from this pattern (which is brilliant, and my favourite flower to crochet)….

and turned them into fun flower brooches.

I am loving these and with changing up your yarn and buttons, they can be made to be springy, wintry, for your clothing…

or to gussy up a string bag.

These flowers are gorgeous, the pattern is flawless, they are fairly quick to whip up and brilliant every time. They would make perfect gifts, and are fantastic for embellishing lots of things. Have a go, you won’t regret it.

This was one of my finds on my thrift store run on Saturday. Aren’t they great? I just love the boxes as well, I have a thing for vintage illustrations.

Adventures with Sea Shells has both the specimens to look at and the book. Unfortunately the Adventures with Rocks is missing the book, but the kids are still loving the rock and mineral specimens and we have several other books where they can look up the information.

They were both a steal at $1 and 50 cents (because of the missing book), and the kids (and I) are really having fun with them.

On a side note, I did get some of my braces off on Thursday (the receptionist was as sweet as could be), though they were only the back ones that you can’t see anyway. One more week and I get the rest of them off, wohoo!

Hope everybody had a great weekend, anyone have anything exciting going on this week? Just more of the usual here.

I have been looking for some sewing bits and bobs and trims to work on some clothes for the girls this spring/summer and I hit the jackpot at the thrift store. Here are several yards of very girly knit trim.

A stash of red buttons, 27 yards of red crochet trim, and some really pretty red floral fabric.

Several more yards of an ivory crochet trim,

and several sets of buttons to cover with fabric.

I paid 50 cents for the fabric (almost two yards) and 50 cents for the 27 yards of red crochet trim. Each button set was 12 cents and everything else was 25 cents a piece, so all in all I came out with some fantastic deals. I do believe I am ready to make some cute things for the girls as the weather gets warmer, and don’t you love it when all of your purchases happen to be in the same colour palette unintentionally? I know, kind of weird, but I do.

Isn’t this piece beautiful? It was a gift from my mom after we found it on one of our Saturday morning thrift store runs a couple of weeks ago. I have no idea what it was originally intended for…..

but now it is sitting beside my couch, holding lots of scrumptious wool.

Well, instead of this last two weeks being filled with projects around the home, decluttering, and general family merriment, it was spent nursing four sick little ones to health. Unfortunately we have not turned round the corner just yet. My kids haven’t been this ill for years, if ever, for some of them. They are holding up pretty well, but it’s not pretty. Lots of really runny noses, not to mention they all sound like barking seals, with this nasty cough.

These daffodils (20 of them for less than $3) in my blue stripey jug have been cheering me up on the kitchen table. This winter has been dreadfully long and I am so ready for spring. A little bit of sunshine in a jug has really helped.

Now the babe has acquired the lovely cough, so it is off to the doctors again as there is nothing over the counter that you can give to a child so young. This ickiness has caused the boys to miss the last two weeks of their swimming lessons, which is very disappointing to them, not to mention we had a birthday boy in midst of all of this. We will be doing a fun day trip for all as soon as everyone is better, in honour of his birthday.

Here is another little bit of springy goodness, a vintage sheet for my daughter’s bed. Bright orange and yellow flowers have really cheered her room up, and she loves it, just what she needed in the midst of feeling so blah.

Well, my plan is to be back regularly now, but if I don’t show up one day, just know that I want to be here, but other duties call. Hope you all are feeling well, and had a nice restful weekend.

I wear my shoes until they have no more umph left in them, which is typically for years. This past fall is when my fall/spring shoes finally expired. Over the winter I’ve just worn my boots so haven’t really needed to find new ones, though somewhere in the distance I can see spring popping up.

I’m not a huge fan of shoe shopping, I can never seem to find exactly what I want/need for the kind of price I’m looking for. I need practical shoes, but let’s face it, I want them to look cute too. My mom and I went to the thrift store on Saturday and I was pretty happy to see these. They were all in my size, practically brand new, and the perfect price. So for a mere $13 bucks, I am 3 pairs of shoes richer.

These are my favourites. I just love them.

On a side note, do you remember my granny square laptop cover? I love the cover, but I just haven’t grown to love the colours, so I have decided to sell it. It holds a 13" MacBook perfectly (not really sure about PC laptop sizing, sorry) and I’m selling it for $35 plus actual shipping. If anyone is interested, please e-mail me at jennifer@theprairiegirl.com.

Hope everybody had a great weekend. We’ve got a busy week here, and my brother is coming into town at the end of the week, yeah!

A couple of weeks ago, Hubby and I went on a date sans kids (thanks mom!) Though it may not sound extremely romantic, we went to Barnes and Noble and just read quietly for an hour. It was so nice to flip through magazines without having to keep one eye on the kids.

I was flipping through the US Country Living and saw an article about using sweaters to cover items in your home. I loved the vases, but their instructions were vague at best and involved a lot of cutting and hot glue. Sounded kind of messy to me.

I wasn’t really keen on the idea of them being glued together as cleaning the cover and vase if necessary, wouldn’t be very easy. I also wanted to be able to swap out covers to coordinate with whatever was in them, or wherever they were in the house.I knew I could figure out a better way, so I gathered some thrifted sweaters and some empty bottles, and away I went. I am really pleased with how they turned out. I think it’s a really nice way to add some colour and texture to an arrangement.

They are so easy to make, and very quick as well. It’s fun to use different textured and patterned sweaters to create some different looks. Here is a tutorial in case you want to make some of your own.

Hope you guys have a great weekend.

All of my good intentions with bread and yogurt went out the window yesterday. I’m in the middle of dealing with a logistical nightmare with the closets around here. The last couple of days I have been sorting through the girls clothes, trying to pare down to what we actually use. Hang on, I’m getting sidetracked, more about the closets later.

I needed a few baskets to corral things in, so I ran to the thrift store. I found what I was looking for and swung by the blanket table. A little background first. Two years ago I knitted blankets for Hubby and the three bigger kids. They were a lot of work, a tad expensive, but totally worth it. For some reason, I just couldn’t justify spending the time or money on a blanket for myself. Since then, I’ve just been borrowing everybody else’s blankets.

Part of the love of thrifting for me is waiting to find the perfect thing. The success of finding something is sweeter the longer you’ve been waiting for it. Since I made the blankets, I’ve kept my eye out for a blanket for me. I’ve come across dozens of crocheted blankets, but most of them were really scratchy acrylic or the colours were just atrocious.

Today was my day. I went over to the blanket table and there she was. A gorgeous granny square blanket. It was big, 68″ x 51″. It was soft, and it was granny squares. (I have a really hard time photographing red, it never turns out right this is a beautiful scarlet colour). What could be better? Wait, maybe the price. Go on, take a guess. Yup, that’s right, $3. A whole $3. I couldn’t believe it, I almost squealed with delight in the middle of the store.

I was so excited. There is something about waiting and searching and then finally finding what you’ve been after. We got home, had some extra snuggles with the girls and I made the most delicious beef and ale stew (more on that later too) for supper.

The girls are doing a bit better, but my scratchy throat has now turned to a drippy nose ickiness. I had so many plans for this week around the house, but I’m not sure how much I’ll get done now. Now I think I might just need to get something warm to drink and curl up with my new blanket.