Book Sale Purchase as a Snapshot of My Life, Part 2

 

I wrote this other blog post three (three!) years ago after attending the annual library book sale in my other town. In it, I talk about how my pile of books had changed in the 8 years between the first time I attended the sale and the time I attended the sale as the mother of a 1.5 year old.

Well, now I have a 4.5 year old, and the pile has changed yet again. Three of those books up there are for me to read. (There are only three, mostly because my tastes have become... niche? You can check out my Amazon book wish list to see the kind of stuff I'm looking for and why those might not just materialize at a book sale.) The rest are for the young lady of the house. I was going for some solid reference type books that she can browse through over and over. And Mo Willems, of course. Always Mo Willems. She can read the Elephant and Piggie books by herself, so... yeah. The days are long, but the years are short, as they say.

A list of this year's books (because these are some great finds! look them up for your own kiddos!):

If You Take a Mouse to School

The Magic School Bus Kicks Up a Storm

Hold On To Your Kids

Curly Girl

Eat This Book

What I Believe

I Am Invited to a Party!

There is a Bird on Your Head!

The Pop-Up House of Inventions

If You Give a Pig a Pancake

First Human Body Encyclopedia (shout out to Cousin Liesl for mentioning this series on Facebook)

Piece = Part = Portion

The Dangerous Book for Boys

Edwina: the Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct

Gods, Goddesses, and Monsters

Atlas of Africa

The question is, have I read the books I bought three years ago? :-) 

Of the 15 books in the pile in the first post, I read (or tried to read) eight nine, four three are still in my to-read pile, and I've gotten rid of three of them. I think. Two of them became two of my favorites: The Teenager Liberation Handbook and Flipped. I list book reviews as public notes on my Facebook page, so please check them out. I love to hear what other people think about books!

Busy Bags: Miscellany

This summer to coincide with our (definitely one, possibly two) epic road trip(s), I am making busy bags for Lucy.  See the others by clicking here.
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The following are not proper busy bags, and they didn't take that much effort to make (or I didn't actually make them at all), so I thought I'd lump them all into one post.  The Post of Other Stuff to Keep Lucy Busy in a Car.

1.) Marble maze.  I found this idea through Pinterest along with the others.  Here is a link.

There's a marble in there.  The object is to moosh it around the seam lines from one side to the other.  Kinda fun.  Actually it sounds really fun for a really tired person.

Amazingly enough, I did not have a marble in my stash.  I am still slightly flabbergasted by this fact.  Nor could I find any whilst out at thrift stores and garage sales.  I couldn't even find a game of Chinese checkers with real marbles.  Nor did I have any large, round beads!  It was crazy.  So the thing that's in there is actually a round plastic pearl button with the loop broken off.  It works, but it would be better with something weightier, I think.  (On the plus side, if I ever find a marble, it will be easy enough to rip out part of the seam and replace it.)

2.) Notebook, markers, and stickers.

Lucy is, of course, enamored with little spiral-bound notebooks that flip open (like the ones on Blue's Clues).  She's gone through two from Target, and she picked out a new one at the Dollar Tree for our trips.  (The new one has Mr. Potato Head on it. ::shrug::) So I'll put that, some new markers, and a bunch of stickers in another pencil pouch.

The stickers are from my own stash.  I used to collect stickers in high school (but not in one of those little books -- on their sheets).  I'm soooooooooo glad I saved them all.  They're like magic.  Anytime I need to pacify Lucy, I just pull out another sheet of stickers.  And I have hundreds of sheets.  I always bring a new sheet when we eat out at a restaurant.  For the trips, I'm thinking I probably shouldn't put all the sheets in the pencil pouch at once, given her penchant for pulling all the stickers off the sheet and sticking them in a pile on one piece of paper.  She enjoys this, but it means she goes through stickers really fast.  I think I'll hold back a stash for emergencies.

3.) Digital voice recorder.  (Kinda like this.)

I found this in a free pile in our neighborhood the other day.  It's just a little, beat-up voice recorder.  All it needed was 2 AAA batteries, and it works great!  I was so glad to find it, as I was reminiscing recently about my tape recorder I had when I was little.  Hours of fun!  Lucy already knows how to operate it, and she thinks it's hysterical.  So that's definitely going in the car!

4.) Glow sticks.

I brought these the last time we moved, but I was a little unorganized on the Lucy entertainment front, so they didn't really get used.  But if we're out at night, I think these will be fun.

5.) Finger puppets, Jasmine, and Mulan. (Except that it's the Mulan dressed up like Ping, which apparently is pretty rare, and here we are dragging her around the house running her into things. Yep.)

I made her those finger puppets for Easter, and she plays with them some.  But what she really loves are her Jasmine and Mulan action figures that we found in a box of clothes and toys from Freecycle.  Oh my goodness -- she just runs around with them all day having them talk to each other.  So I think I'll stick the finger puppets and the gals in another pencil pouch.

(In other news, based on the search for a photo of the Jasmine figure, it appears that all the figures of Jasmine manufactured after 1992 were not "action figures" so much as they were "stand around and look sassy figures".  Fitting, I suppose.)

6.) Colorforms (essentially).

I found these on Amazon while looking for paper dolls.  Everyone loves Melissa & Doug, right?  Well, they sell these pads of backgrounds and "stickers", which are really just window clings/Colorforms.  There's a set with stuff around the house, and a set with animals and habitats.  Honestly, I bought both because I couldn't get over how fabulous it will be when Lucy decides there should be dinosaurs in the bathtub, or a grandfather clock in the jungle, etc, etc. 

In a moment of brilliant insight, I decided to remove the white from around all the clings before handing them to Lucy in the car.  I had a sudden vision of Lucy whining and screaming from the back seat because she couldn't peel the clings off, and decided to nip that in the bud.

7.) Pipe cleaners.

I just stuffed a bunch of different colored pipe cleaners into -- you guessed it -- a pencil pouch. Who knows what she'll come up with to do with them!

8.) Bubble wands.

These are for the rest stops.  It's a good way to get up and move around at a stop without the hazards of losing a ball or frisbee in traffic.

9.) Travel tray.

And to top it all off, we bought her one of these.  It's soft, so it won't be a crash hazard, it's got little walls to keep the stuff on it, and it has side pockets!  Lucy is so tall and our back seat is situated such that she can put her feet on the seat that her car seat is on, and when she does her knees are up a little bit higher than her lap, so this should work perfectly!  The only complaints from reviewers seemed to be that because the tray is soft, kids can't draw on it.  But that's what the cookie sheet is for!

So there you have it.  Geez, now I feel like I have too much time on my hands or something.

There's one more project coming, but it's not really a proper busy bag. More like an emergency purse toy....


BONUS TIP!
I realized I should add this one, as it's summer movie season.  We realized (quite by accident) that when we take Lucy to the movies, we should bring a sheet of bubble wrap.  It keeps her quiet and occupied, and it can be a nice stress relief if the movie gets a little intense.  And the movies are always so loud that no one notices the popping noise.  I'd bring some on the road trips, but I think we've got plenty going on...

"Last Minute Estate Sale"

"Last Minute Estate Sale" -- that's what the Craigslist ad said.  As it was less than a block from my house, of course I was out the door almost immediately.

This was a digging kind of sale.  It seemed the house had been vacant but full of stuff for some time.  Everything was in boxes.  It also seemed as if relatives of the deceased were there with the sole purpose of getting rid of everything before putting the house on the market soon.  The guy was very chatty and exuberant about his pieces.  All that to say... I loved this sale!

$14 later, all of the following plus some was all mine:

[Contact paper! And I discovered today that my circle paper punch will cut through this stuff.  Hello, envelope seals!]

[Vintage Pyrex divided casserole.  I guess I didn't take photos of the covered rectangular snowflake motif one I got at a thrift store the other week, eh?  My dreams of becoming a vintage Pyrex collector are coming true!]

 

[Vase. I dunno... I just like it! Teal is my color.]

[This thing!  It's actually two nightstands, and the top one is missing its legs.  I saw it and I thought it was cute, but I wasn't sure where I would put it.  The guy was like, "It's only five dollars!" and I was like, "Ehhhh... I don't have room for it."  Then he totaled up my other stuff to $7, which seemed perfectly reasonable to me (hello, the Pyrex!), and then said, "Ten dollars if you take the drawers too!"  I'm a sucker.]

 [Musty as heck!  That's crumpled newsprint sprayed with vinegar.  Oughta take care of the smell in a couple days.]

In case you're wondering about the discrepant math, I paid $10 for the drawer and some of the other stuff.  Then when I went back with the car to pick up the drawers, I found some other stuff.  See?  Sucker.

Evidence of a Good Sale Day

Duplos soaking in the sink...

[The guy called it "a bag of random junk" and sold it to me for a dollar.]

A child's Ikea table and chairs sitting outside, waiting to have the cobwebs wiped off...

[Twenty bucks!  Pretty much exactly what I had been looking for.]

...evidence of a good garage sale-ing day!


Lucy and Elmo are already settled in.

 

Also some black leather scraps (for the nose of the giant Totoro bean bag chair I'm going to make [photos forthcoming, of course]), Dumbo, Finding Nemo, big stack of newsprint paper, big bag of foam stickers, and assorted other less exciting things.

The Bert Conspiracy

Since having a daughter and starting to watch Sesame Street and own Sesame Street toys again, I have made a bizarre discovery.  At first it was only a sneaking suspicion, but now I am sure.  I know the truth, and now I share it with you.

In short, the Bert toys of the world, being as boring, stuffy, and generally un-fun as the Muppet in whose likeness they are made, are all abandoning their jobs as children's playthings and going AWOL.

EXHIBIT A:

Lucy received this set of bath toys new, as a Christmas gift.  The set came with a Bert.  I've seen him, held him, made him talk.  But sometime between 2 summers ago and the day we moved out of our last house, he made his escape.  We're not sure when, where, or how -- we only know that he is gone.

UPDATE: While Norman and I both agree that there was definitely a life-jacketed Bert included in this set, and that he is now missing, all listings of this toy on the internet show only Ernie and Elmo.  This conspiracy deepens...


EXHIBIT B:

I purchased this RV travel set at a thrift store a few months before we moved.  I saved it to give to Lucy on the road ("See? Your Sesame Street friends are moving across the country, too!").  After I bought it, I did some research to see how old the set was.  My discovery -- it originally came with a Bert, nowhere to be found at the thrift store.  A tiny lantern and picnic basket survive, in addition to the RV door that's not even attached, but Bert goes missing? Curious.


EXHIBIT C:

I found this tiny stuffed Ernie at a rummage sale.  Just the right size to fit in a Christmas stocking with his friend Bert.  But all of my searching through piles of grungy old rummage sale toys was in vain.  No tiny stuffed Bert in sight.


EXHIBIT D:

I found these pieces in a large bucket of free toys at a garage sale this weekend.  I found Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and Elmo.  I thought, "Bert missing again?"  But no -- I couldn't be sure.  Perhaps neither Bert nor Ernie made it into the design for this toy.  And then I spotted Ernie.  I've not been able to find a photo of this complete set online, and other characters are clearly missing (they are numbered), but Bert was most definitely gone.  My kid-grime-covered hands told the story.

Where are these Berts?  Where do they go?  What do they do after freeing themselves from a life of tea parties and inane preschool small talk?  We can only guess.  But as a fellow introvert, I can do nothing but wish them well on their journeys.

Thrift Scores!

Last weekend we drove down the road a ways to another small town to peruse their town library sale.  While we were at it, we also ate at the local pizza joint (complete with arcade games and a jukebox), and hit up a church rummage sale and a thrift shop.   We pretty much just made a day of it, because, hey, there's really not that much to do around here.

The pizza place was fun!  Lucy loved the crane machine and the "turkey" (the clucking chicken that spits out a plastic egg with a prize inside).  And I finally figured out why I like jukeboxes so much -- for only 33 cents, you determine what everyone else in the establishments has to listen to for the next 3 1/2 minutes.  The power!!!  Worth every penny.  (For the record, with my one dollar, I chose "Me and Bobby McGee" by Janice Joplin, "One Week" by the Barenaked Ladies, and "I Want It That Way" by the Backstreet Boys. Mwahahaha!)

The book sale was pretty good for what it was.  I found two of these books there:

along with some other (less bizarre) books and a couple of VHS tapes (including a 90s Disney sing-a-long. Remember those?).

A few choice pages from the Disco Dancing book:

[Very informative]

[Oh don't worry. I've already submitted it to the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.]

And then we went to a church rummage sale and found that Grover book, and this:

Gah!  It's so cute!  What's that?  It just looks normal to you?

Well here I have inserted a spool of thread for scale.  It's tiny!  It's a tiny little suitcase!  A Lucy-sized suitcase!  See, I've got a plaid suitcase just like this one, but ya know, bigger.  Me-sized.  But this one is babby-sized!  Oh, and it was 50 cents.  Go me!

Calculator Paper as Toddler or Preschooler Toy

We were at the thrift store today (a common Friday activity), and the particular one we were at is having a 50% off everything sale.  Now when everything is on sale, it makes me look a little closer at everything to see if anything has hidden potential.  I'm pretty sure the rolls of calculator paper have been there since I've been here; that is, since August.  Regularly $5.50 for a pack of 8 rolls, now $2.75.  Well I thought that was a pretty decent price for how much fun Lucy would probably get out of it.  Home they came.

But then when we got here, I realized that I really didn't want the entire roll to unroll in a big spiral all at once.  So I came up with this hack as a way of keeping a roll of calculator paper in check.  And then I took photos so I could write this tutorial for y'all.

You'll need:
a cheap plastic pen
a hair tie, rubber band, or piece of thin elastic

Take the pen apart.  I chose my pen based on the length of the middle plastic tube-y part.  (Long enough to span across the roll of paper, but not too long.)

Cut your hair tie.

Thread the hair tie through the pen tube.

Thread the other end of the hair tie through the middle of the roll of paper.

Pull tight 

and tie a knot.

 

Slip the knot around into the inside of the roll.

Now you can hold the tube by the middle and pull on the paper.  It will also stop the roll from unrolling before you want it to.

Ta da!

I gave Lucy the run of one roll today.  At first she just tore little pieces off to write on (shopping lists, I think).  Then she figured out that it would be fun to have me hold the roll while she pulled the paper across the entire room.  She pulled the whole roll off in very long pieces, then put them in a pile and spent at least half an hour picking the pile up and throwing it in the air like autumn leaves and generally reveling in the mess.  At the moment she's taking several shorter pieces and bundling them together to make a bouquet of flowers. 

Unfortunately I do not have a hack for cleaning up the mess.

Today in Thrift Store Kitsch

I found this at the thrift store today.  (The same store I found the breastfeeding poster -- fabulous place.)

I paid a whole 35 cents for this beauty.  I still haven't decided whether to keep it, sell it on Etsy, or send it to my mom!   I think Norman's vote is to hang it in our kitchen.

I also found, in keeping with my ridiculous good luck and perfect timing where thrift stores are concerned, a broth separator for making Thanksgiving gravy.  (My old one was cracked, so I tossed it before we moved.)

When Hoarding Pays Off

Before we moved across country, I got rid of a lot of fabric.  Most of my collections of denim and felt went, as did a bunch of my cotton fabric, fleece, and flannel.  But I refused to get rid of a single swatch of my corduroy.  I kept all of it.  There is a lot.  Right now it's all stuffed into three under-the-bed containers.

A good deal of the more interesting stuff came from a garage sale in Minnesota (I lived there for a summer once -- long story).  I've got some really awesome vintage prints.  I used them to make this and this and this. 

And now these!

I bought Lucy a bunch of pants at a school rummage sale, but I didn't realize that the knees of the khaki corduroys were nearly worn through! 

So now they're girly but not too girly, which is my favorite way for girls' clothes to be!

And that's why we keep even the tiniest scraps of awesome vintage printed corduroy.

(PS - If you want to patch pants without iron-on stickiness, you're gonna want to use a stitch like #1 here.  It's super sturdy!)

The Thrift Store Fates Were Smiling...

'Twas a good day for thrifting.  Lucy and I went on/in the bike/trailer, so it was very exciting getting everything we bought to fit.  Luckily, our bike trailer has a trunk, if you can believe it.  (Still the best $90 I've ever spent.)  The recycling center has a thrift store (which is awesome, because I had a dream about that once...).  Mostly they carry tools and building materials, so I went there looking for a certain tool we need, which they didn't have.  But to make up for it, first of all, everything was half off.  Secondly, there was a great selection of vintage craft supplies today. (Yes, please!)  Like these:

[Popsicle sticks because I am now obsessed with being able to do this.]

And these scarves:

And this (which, of course, they don't make anything like anymore):

[New in the box!]

Thirdly, I FOUND THIS:

 

On sale, remember. It was $1.25. I would have gladly given them upwards of $20 on the spot. Hooray, consumer surplus!!  I have been really wanting some breastfeeding art for some time now. This is perfect.  (Loosely translated, it says, "Breast is best" in Spanish.)  Love, love, love!

And then I went to another thrift store and bought some more cool stuff, and it somehow still all fit in the trailer (and Lucy didn't even have to walk!).

Said cool stuff:

[Completed and non-completed crewel embroidery. I can't say no.]

[Multi-colored film reel spools. Will probably end up in the supply shop.]

["Checkers": A checker board and some poker chips. Lucy saw people playing checkers on Sesame Street a week or two ago and has been obsessed.]

[Aaaand, jaunty embroidered cap for me!]

I spent about $15 all together. Yep.

OK, so what's the best thing you've ever found second-hand?  Do you feel, like I do, that it was waiting just for you?  I'm curious!

This Week in Thrifting Scores (and a question about ethnic slurs...)

I go to thrift stores on Thursdays. Not every Thursday. Probably 2 out of 3 Thursdays on average. I don't always buy something, but I usually do. (This might be part of the reason that the hypothetical prospect of living in a basement-less, garage-less 2-bedroom apartment is freaking me out a little...)

This week we checked out the new Goodwill store in Norman. It's at E 12th and Alameda, across from the Mazzio's, in there. I just spotted it on Monday, so I have no idea how long it's been there, or if they closed the other one in town, although I know they closed the one in Moore.

It's nice! It's pretty big, lots of space, and things are pretty well organized. The books are organized by genre, and the fiction is organized alphabetically by author's last name! This is practically unheard of in thrift-store-dom.

I picked up all of the following for a little over $10.

[Adorable footie pajamas. Not flame-retardant! Woohoo!]

[A Scrabble game (missing 7 tiles) and a Clue game (missing all the little metal pieces! Gypped!!). But the Clue game has this cool 1979 board.]

[A tie for Norman -- oddly cool.]

[A tie for crafting -- Fox hunt!!]

[Three books -- one of which I had been looking for, and two which I didn't know I had been looking for. I'll leave you to sort out which is which.]


This now means that my "to read" pile looks like this:
[Ridunkulous. "Buried Alive", indeed!]

Side question: is the use of the verb "to gyp" (as in to rip someone off, to give someone less than what they expected or paid for) offensive? I know it originally referred to Gypsies, but I don't think of it that way. Does it strike you as an ethnic slur?