Champagne Taste...

When I was pregnant with Ruby, I knew that (for at least a little while) I wouldn't be working.  So we wouldn't have my income.  That super freaked me out, and it made me want to do two things: 1.) buy all the things, and 2.) find all the deals.

For "buy all the things" that really meant that I just wanted to have everything we'd ever possibly need before she was here, so that I didn't have to spend money after she was born.  Was I successful?  Eh, sort of.  We had everything we "needed".  Of course, I found other things I wanted, but that's a different story...

Next came "find all the deals".  You guys, I am cheap.  Spending money actually hurts me.  But I like new (or new to me) stuff.  And it turns out, I like nice stuff.  Quality stuff.  I am cheap, but I don't like cheap stuff.  I know.  Problem.

BUT

There are SO many deals to be had!  People often comment on Ruby's style (she is way more fashionable than I) and gear, and want to know where I got it.  I'm happy to share that I almost never ever pay full price for anything.  Remember, spending money hurts me!

Today I hit a jackpot deal, and I figured I ought to share my tricks with you all.

First, my deal.  How freaking CUTE are these?!?

See Kai Run "Cathy" in peach

See Kai Run Smaller "Leilani" in purple

Yes, they just got added to Ruby's closet.  We have LOVED her 2 pairs of SKR Smaller mary janes, and sadly, she's outgrowing them.  Knowing this, I've been on the hunt for good See Kai Run deals.  They were on Zulily a couple of days ago, but honestly?  Zulily does NOT top my list of good "deal" sites.  The shipping is expensive, it takes forEVER, and they deals aren't that great.  Plus, I have to pay tax, because they're a Seattle company.  Boo.

So, let me introduce you to my good friend, MyHabit.  Maybe my husband would like to call it, "my BAD habit", but actually, that site has saved us so much money!  Remember how I like "nice" things?  Champagne taste and all, but we have a beer budget.  Both of those pairs of shoes above retail for about $40 each.  I paid $40.52 (which included 10% tax, because, again, I live in WA) total for BOTH.  The leather boots were only $15!

For full disclosure, if you click that link above and follow it, I do get a kickback.  Which I'd love and totally use, but I won't at all be offended if you just google MyHabit and sign up yourself.  Yes, you have to sign up.  But guess what?  MyHabit is an Amazon deal site.  So it's connected to your Amazon account, which means once you sign in, you can buy with one click.  So easy.  Oh, and shipping is always free!  Oh, and it's super super fast (like, 2 days, no joke)!  I can't sing the praises of this deal site enough (and no, they did not ask me to or compensate me in any way, I just love love it).

Ruby's first pair of See Kai Run shoes came from MyHabit (also for $15).  I've also bought an adorable dress from her there, an Aden & Anais swaddle blanket, other stuff that I can't remember right now, and my biggest steal of all was my diaper bag (Baby Kaed Shanti, in silver).  That was during a flash sale.  It cost me $27.  Original price: $140.  I know.

My other faves are (none of these links are affilates):

*Mamabargains.  I've bought many things here, the best being my Beco Butterfly II for just $60.  But also an amber teething necklace (that Ruby wears 100% of the time), a Woombie, green sprouts sippy cups, and iPlay bibs.  Their shipping is kinda slow and not free, but they do have good deals.

*EcoBabyBuys.  I'm kind of a hippie, and this site helps me out.  I bought an awesome Monkey Foot Designs wetbag for a steal on here, and also wool dryer balls.  I'm keeping an eye out, because the dryer balls are totally awesome and I want more.

*Amazon.  Yep, we all know and love Amazon.  I check my other sites first because sometimes they're cheaper, but Amazon has pretty much everything, often at a good deal.  We have Prime, too, which makes shipping free and fast.  My favorite thing about Amazon is their flash sales.  I find them hard to catch (because I don't try that hard), but Ruby is currently napping in an Aden & Anais muslin sleepsack that has been my absolute favorite baby product for the summer so far.  And I got it for just $10 (instead of the ridiculous $45 msrp).

*Cotton Babies.  This is not a deal site.  However, if you are a cloth diaper fan (like we are!), you know that BumGenius diaps are awesome.  They're not that cheap, though.  However, Cotton Babies often offers "seconds" sales.  This means that the diapers are new, but they're "second" quality.  Which sounds bad, right?  Um, it's not.  Their standards for first quality must be crazy high, because I bought 6 BumGenius Elemental seconds, and 3 of them I couldn't find a single blemish.  Two had tiny dirt smudges that washed out immediately, and the third has a 1mm red thread that got caught in one of the inner seams.  These are my favorite diapers, and they were a steal at "seconds" prices!  The only bummer?  They have a store in WA (that is much too far for me to actually drive to, so I have to order online), which means, again, I have to pay that dang 10% sales tax.  Boo.

I also frequent consignment shops, and the big mom to mom consignment sales.  I find the big sales to have better deals, and better stuff usually.  At least half of Ruby's wardrobe is from there.  In our neck of the woods, they have one in March and October every year.  Perfect to get the next season's clothes.

I also troll the Target clearance section.  They do baby markdowns on Mondays.  If you look in the top right corner of the clearance sticker, it will have a number.  I like that number to be "70" because that means it's 70% off!  Lots of pieces in R's closet have cost me only $1.50 thanks to Target clearance.  If I'm lucky, I find things even cheaper than 70% off, but know that if the price ends in a 4, it's not going to go any lower.

So there you have it.  How I appeal to my champagne taste for baby/toddler stuff on a beer budget.  There are many other "deal" sites out there, but I've never found anything I needed off of them, or that they were a super great deal.  I'm picky, I don't just buy things because they are cheap, but I do make sure to stalk out the very best deal before I buy anything.  Like those adorable shoes above, my patience totally paid off with those ones!

Do you guys MyHabit?  Do you feel physical pain when spending money, but love to shop/have new things?  What's your favorite way to score a deal?  Do you get a rush when you score a good one?  I know I do, I'm going to be riding my shoe-deal high for a while...

The 100% Totally Unofficial Macklemore Thrift Shop Challenge

Please tell me you've heard the song, Thrift Shop, by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.  If you haven't, go watch the video of it now and just try not to laugh.  Or walk around singing, "I wear your granddad's clothes...  I look incredible..." for the rest of the day.  Just be warned, the unedited version is very... well... unedited.

Anyway, guess what?  YHL two times in one week!  These guys have done it again.  From being totally awesome last week when Ruby shared her slobber germs with John, to this gem: their (Completely Unofficial) Macklemore Thrift Shop Challenge.

You can read more about this challenge here, but it basically boiled down to three steps:

Step #1. Go to a thrift shop with – just as the chorus of the song says – “$20 in your pocket”and take a picture. 

Step #2. Spend that $20 any way you’d like and photograph your spoils.

Step #3. Find one item (or more) referenced in the song and snap a pic.

Seeing as how I have been wanting to go to the thrift shop anyway to find an oval (well, actually elliptical) or round frame to make a silhouette of Ruby for Project Finish the Nursery, I was IN.  Monday was rainy and boring, as we had nothing else going on, and Ruby didn't feel like taking a nap, so I chose that day to "pop some tags" and get my thrift shop on.

I should disclaim here that I bent the rules a bit.  I actually went to two thrift shops.  One small one that I'd never been to before, where I found only $1.97 worth of stuff to buy, and the big and bustling Goodwill.  Sadly, not the actual Goodwill from the Thrift Shop video, although that would have been awesome because it is a Goodwill outlet.  But I didn't want to drive all the way into Seattle with an unnapped baby.  All this is to say, that I only took my pictures at Goodwill, because that's where I spent the most of my money.

Oh, and I guess I bent the rules again.  I only had $15 in my pocket.  My total ended up being $16, but Goodwill takes debit cards, so I did that. =)  Moving on!

Step #1. Go to a thrift shop with – just as the chorus of the song says – “$20 in your pocket”and take a picture. 

It's kind of hard to take a selfie, which included the thrift shop, whilst holding a baby, and trying not to get run over in the VERY busy Goodwill parking lot!  I had to stalk out a spot, and got one stolen from me before we managed to park!  Goodwill sure was hopping for a Monday at noon.  No worries, though.  Soon we were ready to get in there and hunt for a come up.

Step #2. Spend that $20 any way you’d like and photograph your spoils.

Ah, how to spend my $20.  Before going to a thrift store, I like to make a list of stuff I'm looking for, because it can get pretty overwhelming in there.  Ruby and I were on the hunt for:

*Little Golden Books
*Picture frames, including one round/elliptical one (to be made over with spray paint)
*A tray for our coffee table (to be made over with spray paint)
*Milk glass
*A piggy bank for the nursery

We found a round frame at the little thrift store, and a nicely shaped skinny rectangular frame there as well.  But as those were the only items on my list at that store, we were off to Goodwill.  We searched for a long time, but we were successful!  Before we get to our successes though, I have to share some things that didn't make the cut.

First, if you are coulrophobic, scroll down really fast.  Because I'm still having nightmares about this:

Why this thing was ever even MADE is beyond me.  And the tape?  Do they really think that someone is going to separate the parts?  "Oh, I'll just take the yellow clown today..."  NO.

Then, while I was checking out a potential winner in the piggy bank category, Ruby honed in on this:

She was obsessed with it.  If she weren't securely strapped into that cart, she would have gone over the side for it.  I'm not kidding, baby girl was reaching out for that thing like her life depended on it.

And that's when I knew, my kid is weird.

I resisted the urge to make her day, and put that nasty rat in the cart.  I photographed our "spoils" when we got home, so first, let's move to step number three.

Step #3. Find one item (or more) referenced in the song and snap a pic.

This was both my favorite, and most fear-inducing part.  Remember how I had to stalk out a spot in the parking lot?  Yeah, there were a LOT of people in the Goodwill.  So we didn't get too crazy with the picture taking.  But we did find some stuff.

I reeeeeeally wanted to find a wolf for our noggin, or some moccasins someone'd been walkin' in, but alas, there were none.

We did find some velcro shoes:

But they were kid's shoes, so I kind of felt like that was cheating.

Then we found it.

I really wish I'd taken a better picture of this...

I don't actually think that keyboard was broken (at least I hope not, they were charging $30 for that thing!), but beggars can't be choosers.  Ruby kind of wanted to try to play it, but it just wasn't quite as appealing as that rat.

In the end, we had a pretty good time wandering around on our scavenger hunt.  My only regret (aside from not finding R. Kelly's sheets) was that I didn't tell Mr. G about this challenge before we went.  He wanted to come!  We spent the rest of the day peppering our text conversations with lyrics from the song.  

Anyway, want to see what we got?

Little Golden Books?  Check.  I found six of them, plus a hard back old-school copy of Amelia Bedelia for Ruby's library.  All the books were 79 cents each.

Picture frames?  Check.  Found those at the first thrift store.  Both were marked $1, but one was 25% off because of the color of its tag.  Woohoo!  I spent a loooooooooooong time in the frame section at the Goodwill, but let me just say, for a thrift store, they weren't so thrifty.  $14 for a janky old frame?  I don't think so.  If I want to pay $14 for a frame, I will go to Ikea!

Milk glass?  Check.  I would have liked to have found more of it, but this goblety thing will make an awesome serving dish for someone's 1st birthday party.  Or I could see it as a vase for fresh flowers.  Either way, it's so pretty.  I wish I'd taken a detail shot of it, it almost kind of looks like an artichoke on the sides.  It was kind of pricey, at $4.

Piggy bank.  I'm not sure if I found something totally awesome, or totally tacky with this one.  I'm kind of hoping that it's so tacky, it's awesome.  That unicorn in the picture?  Yep, that's a piggy bank!  I foresee Ruby loving it in the future, but I'm still on the fence about it.  Maybe I should spray paint it all one color?  I don't know.  I was all about it at the thrift shop, but now I think I'm having thrifter's remorse.  

So there you have it.  One man's trash was our come up.  Oh yeah, and we didn't find a tray.  Whomp whomp.  But this has really gotten me in the mood to do more thrifting, so it's only a matter of time!  Want to see what everybody else got with only $20 in their pockets?  Head on over to YHL and see!  And if you don't want to see, at least tell me what I should do with that unicorn.

UPDATE:

Unicorn detail, wonderfully tacky, or tacky tacky?