Tour de Thrift

Saturday I participated in the first ever Arizona Bloggers Tour de Thrift.  It was a great event conceived of and hosted by Ashley of Cute as a Fox, and Jax from Aly & Ash.

A few dozen bloggers, thrifters, and readers of blogs got together for breakfast at Mimi's Cafe and then went on a "tour" of the Goodwill stores in the area on their 1/2 off day, in search of some great bargains.

It was great to meet some bloggers in person!  I kind of wish we had had more time to mix and mingle, but maybe that's my fault since I was late and juggling my newborn and his gear.

Here I am with Steph of Somewhat Simple and Crazy Domestic.  I found out about this event from her blog and was excited to meet her!  (And yes, you can tell I'm still a bit sleep deprived from baby--oh, and I had my hair cut.  Steph almost didn't recognize me from my profile pic.)

I hung out most of the time with AnnMarie from Twice Lovely.  I knew her a bit from when our husbands used to work together, but it has really been through blogging and Facebook that we have realized how much we have in common.  She brought her baby, too.  Here we are with Jax and Ashley, the organizers.  (l to r: me, Jax, AnnMarie & cute daughter, Ashley)

These girls did a great job with everything!  I was so excited about the name tags!  They are plastic and were painted with chalkboard paint.  Ashley has access to an engraving machine, so she added the cute flower on the side.  Then she had chalk ink markers available for us to use to write our names.  I have seriously been looking at these on-line for the longest time, but have been too cheap to pay shipping.  I was so happy when she told me she got hers at Hobby Lobby!  I managed to make it over there yesterday, and used my 40% off coupon to buy my own set of markers!  (You will be seeing more of them soon!)

The promise of a swag bag, may or may not have been my deciding factor about attending this event.  Let me tell you, it did not disappoint!  Can you see this loot:  Gorilla glue, Krylon brand Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint, plate hangers, cut vinyl ready for a project, glitter from the Crafty Chica, a couple of bottles of mod podge, a coupon to go towards a photoshoot with Jax-tied to a cute frame, and a couple of tubs of Behr paint--probably enough to paint my daughters' nightstand, whenever I find the right one to buy!  So many projects in the works in this bag!

There were also some fantastic door prizes, cutely displayed, that I wasn't fortunate enough to win (might have had to do with that being late business).  

Along with all of this, we got a $5 gift card to spend at Goodwill.  The shopping was fun, and would have been more fun if I didn't have to worry about a baby.  I seriously got sore carrying around my purchases while trying to push the stroller.  There were three stores on the tour.  I made it to two, before I had to be done.  The first one had a lot of great stuff, but also had a TON of people.  They must have heard that it was half off day, too.  The check out line took forever, but I got everything pictured above, plus a tin planter and my total, after using my $5 gift card was $7.43.  Cool huh!

The second store had less in the way of home furnishing, but I got lots of stuff there, too--mainly uniform bottoms for my kids for school.  I left exhausted, but excited about all of my new acquisitions.  Thanks so much to Goodwill, and to Jax and Ashley for such a fun event!