Thrifting in Valley City

We can’t visit Valley City without exploring both of the amazing thrift stores.  Valley City has the best thrift stores I have ever shopped at.  The prices are half those of other second hand stores, and both thrift stores are enormous.  You just never know what you might find thrifting in Valley City.  It amuses us to no end, and we always come home with treasures.

Grandma Kathy has created a special little tradition each time we visit:  giving each kidlet a few dollars (usually three,  some times five) to spend however they want while thrift shopping.  The kidlets LOVE this, and have so much fun searching out the best treasures.  It has been so interesting over the years to watch them pick out the treasure of their dreams, which is usually not something your average person would consider a treasure.  For example, a few years ago Mr. SP was in a pirate phase and bought scores of shiny metal statues and fake gold jewelry, which he played with for hours, pretending it was stolen pirate treasure.

On this trip The Banana spent nearly all of her five dollars, purchasing a stuffed unicorn, a pink princess purse and a pink billfold, where she stored the few cents in change she received back.  YaYa rooted out a competition gymnastics leotard and was extremely excited, since she has recently become  the Fargo Moorhead Acro Team’s biggest fan.  These days she spends much of her days upside down turning cartwheels on every available surface.  She also purchased  some craft supplies.  At the first thrift store Mr .SP refrained from buying anything.  At the second thrift store, Mr. SP spent nearly an hour reading used books on the bookshelf, and decided he didn’t need to buy any of them since he could just stand there and read them.  Instead he spent ten cents on a wind up caterpillar from the dime bin, and decided to save the rest of his money, grinning that he still had crispy dollar bills left while his sisters were left with dimes and pennies.

I found a jar of buttons!  I was so excited!  You don’t often find big jars of buttons in the Valley City thrift stores any more because the group home that makes jars of buttons usually packages all the like colors and sizes together in little bags now . I was thrilled to find my big jar of random buttons, since we have almost used up the one I found a couple of years ago.  The kidlets love to use buttons in random craft projects.  I also found a nice cast iron pan for Dr. Peds, who loves cast iron. Even better,   I was  super excited to find a pair of jeans like my second favorite pair of jeans that I bought when Mr. SP  was a baby.  My pair has holes all over them, so it was fantastic that I ran into a pair in my size.  They don’t make jeans like that anymore!  (Because, of course, by most people’s standards they are incredibly out of style . . . but these jeans just work for me).

YaYa fell in love with that wonderful couch in the photographs above!  It was only $8!  She really wanted to bring it home, but there was (thankfully) no way to transport it.  YaYa loves crazy furniture patterns and dusty green carpet from the 1960’s.  It will be very interesting visiting her future home when she becomes a young lady, I think.