It’s August! Time to recap my thrifting hauls from July 2026. Here are the treasures I was blessed by God to find last month at thrift stores. It was Thriftmas in July!
I get a bit chatty as I describe the stuff so if you want to cut to the chase, just look at the photos and read the words in bold. Skip all my descriptions that give you a museum tour of my life with social studies/cultural and church history lessons/stroll down my memory lane/deep dive into the miscellany of a homeschooling LDS mom of 7/almost empty-nester life.
Above we see one of my July hauls at the Provo Deseret Industries (DI), one of my happy places.
–The flowery thing is a dress. $6 minus 15% off. Perfect for summer with my floral beige sandals. I have been wanting more dresses.
-a little matching word game by Usborne, $1, to play with my emerging reader grandchildren, current and future. I love Usborne books and products, which is why I have sold them a few times as a consultant. I generally pick up Usborne items whenever I can find them when thrifting. It’s basically a Memory game with words and pictures. Years ago my married daughter got the Usborne alphabet book with these same farm family characters for Christmas from her grandparents.
-Snowflake Bentley (!), for $1. I bought a copy of this book over a decade ago through a homeschool friend and after three moves I can’t find it. So I’m thrilled to have a copy again for just $1. Balance restored! One of my all-time favorite picture books, as Snowflake Bentley was homeschooled and created beauty in life, all because his mentor mother nurtured his passion. It’s a family tradition to read it aloud every winter for homeschooling and read it aloud in whatever homeschool co-op class I’m teaching, then make paper snowflakes. It is definitely going to be added to my hygge for winter picture book collection that I use to decorate my front room/school room/office/dining room in January, which you can see all here. One photo is below. I had to borrow a copy of Snowflake Bentley from the library last year to use.
–The Missionary Companion for $1 will go into a birthday care package for my missionary son. He’s got 8 months left!
–He Lives, $2, with music by Hilary Weeks, is to add to my Easter picture book collection. $2.
–The Star Wars craft book, $2. To give to my married daughter at Christmas. I found out that she likes to celebrate Star Wars day, May 4th, with Star Wars-themed stuff with her family of husband and three little boys, so this will be perfect for that.
–The Christmas Wish, $2. I got a copy of this a few months ago when thrifting. Now I have two. I will give one away at Christmas time to a minsiteree sister in a thrifted gift basket. I read it a few years ago when I found it at the public library. It’s a heartwarming Christmas story.
–Following the Light of Christ Into His Presence by John Pontius, $2. I read this years ago and loved it. I highly recommend it! It is the best book on how to feel the love of God. I will be giving this book to one of my children at Christmastime or maybe to my missionary son. It is sooooo good!
I have a friend, Terri, whom I met over 25 years ago when I was a young mom, at church. While she was living in my ward/congregation, she met John online and then married him and moved to Alaska to live with him. Years later, I got to hear him speak at an LDS women’s retreat two of my friends organized, in October 2012. I blogged about it here. Sadly, he has passed away, but his legacy lives on in his books, including the most famous one, Visions of Glory. Much misinformation has spread about that book. Learn the truth here.
Everything above was less than $14 total. Amazing as to how much happiness can be had for so little!
Then I went back to the Provo DI a week later looking for a swimsuit. This is my second haul of the month.
–Swim top and swim bottom, $6 each. It suddenly occurred to me mid-July we had a swim day coming up for our family reunion (as almost empty nesters, we are at the point where we can/need to do/want to do a reunion for the descendants of my husband and me) at Splash Summit,, a waterslide park. I realized I needed a new swimsuit for that occasion. I also wanted something to sunbathe in to replace what I’ve been using that would expose more skin, so that 70% of my body is exposed to get more Vitamin D. Something that would not be so hot as the black bottoms I’d been using, which are a magnet for heat. Black swimsuit plus 100 degree weather is just too hot for me! I found something! I had envisioned finding four swimwear pieces when I went looking. Sounds funny, but hear me out. I decided it was too much to ask to find a white swim skort at DI, so I bought a new white swim skort on amazon, then the plan was to find a swim top and swim bottom at DI to sunbathe in. See the green top and pink bottoms above. This is an immodest bikini basically, but I sunbathe in my backyard where nobody can see me unless they are flying over me in a helicopter. To go out in public, including the waterpark, then I wanted a bigger coverup to wear over the bikini top that would cover my bare midriff, to make a modest swim outfit, wearing the skort instead of the pink bottoms above. I was so pleased it all worked out! The bottoms were brand new, still with tag attached. They are not meant to be a set but they are all fluorescent colors that I love so the pieces work together.
That takes me to my first haul from the Springville DI for July. Items found are above and below. First I found this cute gingham-checked oversized top at the Springville DI to work as a swimwear top. It’s way too big for me but since I had the green swim bikini top on underneath at the water park it all worked as modest swimwear. I had grand plans of adding some elastic to bring it in, for the waist and the shoulders, to cinch it all in, but when the morning came of the day for the waterpark I chose to paint my toenails instead of refitting the top. So I just safety-pinned it. It did look funny but oh well. Maybe I’ll get to it before the next time I go swimming. I have created a waist below just by bunching in the fabric so you can see the effect I am going for with the future elastic sewed on.
I also found another Readers’ Digest songbook on that second Provo DI trip! My seventh one! Shown above, it was only $2! I have these six below, plus the Christmas one that I didn’t want to pull out of my Christmas storage to put on the shelf. I have found all of these thrifting in the past year or so, minus the Christmas one which came from the BYU Store for my 16th birthday. Amazing! I enjoy playing this music so much! It’s a little ritual to play one from any of the songbooks as a rallying song for family morning prayer, as well as family evening prayer, and then I reward myself after my weight training session by playing a a few songs. So much fun for me! I just wish I had houseful of people to sing along with me like the old days when we would sing together as part of our homeschooling Morning Time.
The songs from this newest one I just got, Parade of Popular Hits, are from the Hit Parade, so 1930s-50s. The series has 14 different songbooks so I’m halfway there, with 7 more to go. I know I could just buy the rest all online at thriftbooks or ebay but it’s so much funner to look for them at thrift stores. That way I prolong the thrill of the hunt and discovery. Also on that second trip to the Provo DI, as shown in the fifth photo above, you can see I found two books on Scotland. The close-ups are below.
My husband and I had just watched The Stone of Destiny for a date night movie so that got me more interested in Scotland. Also, my married daughter and her little family had just been to the Scottish Days festival in Payson UT so Scotland was on my mind. Here I found two books about it! I do have one ancestral line from Scotland through my dad’s dad so hey that motivates me more to learn about the country. On top of all that, I have the fun fact that my mother-in-law served a mission in Scotland when she was only 18, with her mother as her companion. Maybe she was the first 18 year old female to serve a mission for the Church, back in the early 1950s. That’s a story for another day. One of her converts became a stalwart member, whose son became a mission president in Scotland.
–Ok back to thrifting. In addition to the Scotland books, I found a Christmas Peanuts Charlie Brown book, 75 cents. It’s not a Charlie Brown Christmas, which I found a few months ago, but shows different Christmas Peanuts comic strips through the years.
Along with the gingham-checked swim cover-up, I found the stuff above from that same trip to the Springville DI:
–a Christmas picture book, The Miracle of the Wooden Shoes, $3. I read it aloud last year for Morning Basket after borrowing it from our local public library. I’m adding it to my Christmas picture book collection. I do always enjoy the work of the illustrator, Dan Burr. He’s done many books I love.
–The Christmas Chronicles, $2! I picked up a copy a while ago. Now I have found another copy which I will give to one of my children. Probably to the one I remember enjoying the story the most, my second son. I don’t think he every reads my blog so this will be a surprise. It is the best chapter book explaining the origin of Santa Claus I’ve ever found.
–Anna’s Prayer, $1.50, a beautiful story with beautiful illustrations by Shari Griffiths, the same illustrator as the one who illustrated To Witness Easter, a book co-written by my husband’s cousin, Lynne Hilton Wilson, which I blogged about here. Anna’s Prayer is about a Swedish immigrant girl. I have Swedish ancestry so I resonate with this.
I don’t know why, when each book is hardcover, the prices differ. One time when I was at the American Fork DI (back in January right after last Christmas, as detailed here) I negotiated all the inconsistent high prices down to the same price, which was $1, but this time I just didn’t have the time or energy to talk to the manager, so I paid the $6.50 for 3 books and walked out happy anyway.
Moving on to a different trip, I found these three goodies above at the Orem UT Savers.
–The knock-off Legos Nativity-themed were new, $5.49 with 25% off coupon. All the pieces were still in the sealed bags. Otherwise I would not have bought it. This will be another Christmas Eve activity for the grandchildren to do while we discuss the names of Christ with my Immanuel Wreath. I thrifted a Christmas Paint by Sticker book last month for the same purpose, with just two of the pages already used. I’m excited to have these two Christmas-themed activities to keep their hands occupied while we discuss.
–Plain and Precious, $3.49 with 25% off, a book about the plain and precious truths of The Book of Mormon by a Korean scholar, Yong-In Spencer Shin. It looks fascinating! Read his story here.
–Things New, $2.99 with 25% off, a book by Fiona and Terryl Givens. I found this book last fall and gave it to a friend in a basket full of basket of goodies and books for Christmas. I found it again, now for my son!
I’ll give both of these books to my missionary son for his birthday care package along with some treats and the book he requested, The Annotated Book of Mormon, which I will buy new.
This photo above is a close-up of the books in the photo below. This was my last thrifting haul for July 2026, done at the Springville UT DI.
–After Jesus, $2. This is a book about Jesus as to what happened in the Middle East after he died, as Christianity spread. It’s a Reader’s Digest book. I’ll probably put it with my Easter collection and get it out for Morning Basket after Easter is over next year. It’s full of maps and photos.
-a Jean Fritz book about the Underground Railroad, Brady, $1. I just love any book by Jean Fritz. I heard her speak at BYU the summer of 1989.
–Free to Choose and Not of this World songbooks, 75 cents each. These are two songbooks of piano music that take me back to my high school seminary days. You gotta love the 80s hair on the cover of Free to Choose. I’m adding these to my vast piano music collection. (Seminary is a religious class for high school students who want to learn more about the scriptures used in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.) I remember the Free to Choose songs from tenth grade, the year we studied the Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Each student got a cassette tape of the music, which I enjoyed playing. The phrase comes from a verse in the Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 2:27 which says,
“Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.”
“I’m free to choose, to win or lose, no matter who, comes to try to turn my way around, I’m in control…” These songs were used in a series of videos (primitive videos of still images with an accompanying soundtrack) that told stories of teens dealing with peer pressure, to help us students apply the principles to our own lives. This music is so nostalgic for me. For your listening pleasure, listen above. They are beautiful songs. It was fun to open up both books, and discover that both songbooks contain some songs written by Clive Romney. I have met Clive. He is a wonderful man, so genuine, jolly and kind, like a skinny Santa Claus. Not only that, but he is a brother to a homeschooling mom friend of mine, Roslyn Romney Reynolds Geertsen, whose website is here. Not of This World has a copyright date of 1984, so that was before my seminary time but it brings back the same vibe.
–Then a tiny little book full of suggested Christmas traditions, $1.
Then I got two pretty tops and a pretty dress! The solid pink top was $3 minus 15% off, and the dress and floral print top were for $6 each minus %15 off. All so pretty!
I am feeling blessed with all these wonderful finds.
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