If you scrapbook you want some I promise! While reloading bookmarks I stumbled upon Becky Fleck sketches at Two Peas. How did I miss these??? I like some of these even better than the Becky Higgins sketches. And bless her, she has archived years worth of sketches at her website Page Maps. Scoot! Go now! Check them out!  You will thank me! It really is worth all those exclamation points. ; D 

The Vintage Homemaker list posted this link today that so much fun I am passing it along to you.  Mrs Catherine’s blog and other simple living sites have posted challenges related to not purchasing anything new for a month. When I read through the *rules* of the challenge it actually meant nothing new outside of food/medical etc. Well shoot, that’s no challenge lol!  Being a dedicated thrift shopper I had come to consider anything I purchased at these establishments to be *new*.  They were new to us anyway!

We do love thrift shopping. For one thing, the prices are awesome and you can find very high end labels for next to nothing. Move over ebay! Someone suggested I try there for Hanna Andersson clothing yesterday so I checked. Yes, in fact you can buy up to 3000 pieces of that designer at the moment. BUT, not for a buck by any stretch. Where else but the thrift store can you get a dryer for less than $50? Or the lovely Blue Willow tea cups we found stashed on a shelf for a dollar a piece? Three ring binders for 75 cents or less? A bread machine for $7?

Our routine has us visit one of a few stores each errand day. Normally if I need something for the home we start there and give it a couple weeks. On the off chance we can’t locate it by then we will hit a chain store. Doesn’t happen that often. If you want to give it a whirl but don’t know where to start check out The Thrift Shopper online magazine. Lots of fun articles and a search vehicle for your area.

I saw the pic on this site as well. Repurposed containers are on my mind lately since I have been slowly reorganizing the pantry. I LOVED the ideas Stacy Julian had on the first round of Clique TV but no way could afford to re-do all my storage with lined baskets. The thrift shop highlighted in the web mag has these coffee tins for storing small items. They used bottle caps to tie on the prices. I thought they would look nice with a scrapbook tag and label printed in a nice font for dry goods.

Can’t picture how thrifting would translate in your life? Check out these sites:

Manic Thrift Store Shopper

Thrift Store Art Revamp challenge  This is cool!  All sorts of art made by repurposing thrift finds. I so want that bag…..

Thrift Store Project

How to Thrift

Decorating with Thrift Store Finds  more to follow on this thought…..

  Thought we would upload pics of some relatively quick gifts we made up last week. Once you learn the basic embroidery stitches used in the redwork projects you can transfer them to other media. We needed some baby gifts in a pinch so we took some onesies, printed off names and images from a dingbat font we downloaded from Two Peas, and placed them under the top layer of the tee. We traced the letters and images with a water soluable transfer pen. (it disappears when wetted) then used a simple outline stitch over the tracing. That’s it! 

Stitching on the knit fabric is a bit tricky but not overly hard. If I do these again I will buy some fusible web to adhere to the back side of the stitching to protect it during laundering.

When uploading new bookmarks I found that Primrose Design Blog has been uploading stitching lessons complete with not just diagrams but PHOTOS of the stitches as they are worked. They are all listed under Stitch School so scroll down for them all.