I haven’t blogged about thrifting for over 6 months. It’s been since the end of last summer! So I’m doing it today. Thrifting brings me such joy, and talking about thrifting brings me even more joy so here goes!

So these are photos of MOST of my finds from the past school year.

Above you’ll see my current favorite cardigan, a blue-green one, perfect for spring! It goes with so many of my floral and striped tops. I also love, love, love the green gingham checked shirt. I now have a gingham checked shirt in one of each of these colors: peach, red, teal blue, and lime green. The book at the top with the little boy holding a camera is a book about family traditions by Kimberly Bytheway, John Bytheway’s wife, and her mom. I’ve been collecting books about family traditions so this is a welcome addition to my collection.

I’ve also started collecting some Little Golden Books after getting some for a friend for her birthday when I found out she collects them. I prefer to get the old-fashioned ones, not the ones involving licensed characters, unless it’s Paw Patrol, which I will get just for my two grandsons. The Little Golden Book above is a 3-in-1 book with three of the LGB classics. More books for me to read aloud to my grandchildren when they visit. My mom has a huge Little Golden Books Collection which I hope to inherit someday. She amassed most of it during her years as a kindergarten teacher.

I read in one of Sally Clarkson’s books, either The Life Giving Home or the Life Giving Table, that she recommends any cookbook by Susan Branch. So far I have found two while thrifting. These are charming! The author does all the lettering and the illustrations for the recipes herself. I got these more for the vibes than to use the actual recipes. I will definitely have to adapt them to be sugar-free or low-carb.

I found the above books on a special birthday trip for myself last fall. I had found the Great American Bathroom Book years ago but after we moved to AZ it somehow disappeared. It’s a great book because it has one page summaries of several classic books. I know you can find summaries online these days but it’s great to have them in book form. The Melodie Webb one is another family traditions book. Yay!

I just love the three sweaters I found above. Polka dots and stripes! Plus I found some games for the 6-7 year old class I taught for the past school year, another book about family traditions, and a People’s Almanac. It’s kind of hard to see but it’s in the far right. Here’s a description of it over at wikipedia. I’m nerdy that way in gathering trivia, so this book is right up my alley. I also totally scored with the Feelings Buried Alive and another trivia-filled book of lists.

Since I’ve been keto/low-carb for awhile I love that I found Danielle Walker‘s Against All Grain cookbook. What a find! It pairs with her other book above.

I had also been wanting to find a Bob Ross-themed board game, Happy Little Accidents. I had given my mom another Bob Ross-themed board game for her birthday and was excited to get a different one for me. We played it right away and I was disappointed in the game mechanics, so I’ve tweaked it to make it into a better board game.

More board games! I’ve been wanting the Continent Race for a long time.

The book below with the title, A Book That Takes its Time, has beautiful notecards and little die-cut figures of flowers and such. It was hardly written in. It’s a combination journal/therapy/advice book. I’m going to cut up the beautifully decorated pages for recovering a cardboard box I have with a hinged lid. I’ll glue the decorations on and make it into a pretty storage box.

To the left of that book is an empty journal with a picture of the Savior on the cover, and an empty journal below it, in one of my favorite colors. I’m a big journal writer so these are perfect! Then the floral top in the center immediately spoke to me. I wear it with so many different sweaters: coral, hot pink, light pink, aqua blue, and green.

I was thrilled to find the two books above by some of my favorite Come Follow Christ vloggers, David Butler and Emily Belle Freeman.

I love finding pretty cards and notebooks. I found these black and white notecards for only $1! I use them as cards to go with gifts to female family members and friends. I love the Bible verses! The recipients can use them as bookmarks. I know I would if I were given one.

The Signers book pictured above I first discovered in a Chinaberry catalog. Because of Amazon, Chinaberry no longer exists. It was a delightful company that sold children’s books and products to enhance a warming of the hearth and home-based culture. Any day when the Chinaberry catalog arrived in my mailbox was the beginning of a visual and mental feast. For weeks after, I pored over the product descriptions in the catalog during any break from mom duty I could squeeze out, usually after all the kids were in bed. For years I have checked The Signers book out from the public library to read aloud every summer in the month before Independence Day, as it has a short biographical blurb for every signer of the Declaration of Independence. I’m thrilled I have my own copy now! We’ve been reading a bio a day during our Morning Basket time.

Then the GeoCards and Malarky cards are fun to use during mealtime. I saw the Malarky game at one thrift store. After looking it over, I thought, I don’t want the game, I just want the cards. So I didn’t buy it. Then an hour later, at a different thrift store, I found just the cards, so I bought them for $1. Perfect! Elementals is a chemistry-themed card game. The Fun Bible Facts I keep in the living room and occasionally toss out after our family scripture study or before or after nightly family prayer. Loaded Questions is a fun “getting to know you” board game, which I always love, and the World History Notebook again tickles my love of history and trivia. Plus a cozy teal blue cardigan sweater!

The backdrop in the photo above and below is a darling blanket I found thanks to my recently returned missionary son. He found it for me at Savers and mentioned it reminded him of another picnic blanket we had that has gone missing. So I’m replacing the missing one with this one. I still have hopes of finding the old one though, since it’s much bigger.

I have a small collection of Fandex cards: cats, US presidents, flowers, and trees. So I jumped at the chance to get the Explores deck, shown above.

My married son used to really be into the Art of Manliness podcast. I happened upon the book by the same name, as seen below. So I snatched up the book. I’m thinking I’ll use it with my 13 year old son, either giving it to him for his birthday this summer, or reading a few pages a day for our Morning Basket.

The Gifts of Christmas book will go with the tradition I’ve had for years of inviting each family member to ponder and write down a gift to give to Christ for the coming year on New Year’s Eve. Then we put it in an envelope and I put it in my stocking to be stored away. Then on New Year’s Eve I pull them out and let each person review what they wrote and write a new gift. Now I can read aloud this book to give family members ideas of what to give.

I am a sucker for getting books and games involving maps, so I got the On Assignment National Geographic game for gameschooling. I also love TriBond. I also love finding jr. versions of many board games, (see Backseat Drawing Jr. at the top of the post) hence I was happy to find TriBond for Kids. The TriBond for Kids deck of cards I will probably keep by the dining room table for mealtime pop quizzes, with my other trivia card decks, and dispense with the game mechanics. I checked Boardgamegeek to see what “Rate It” was rated before I bought it. I’ve made it a rule to only buy games that score at least 6 out of 10 or have a review of approval (either text or video) from Tom Vasel of The Dice Tower. In the video below he says that he likes the game, so I got it. It sounds like it will be a fun getting-to-know-you game for when all my family is in town.

When I was in jr. high and high school I read all of the James Herriot books. I absolutely adored those books! So I loved finding an illustrated book about his stories. I’m going to give this to my DH for Father’s Day. He never reads my blog so he won’t know. Shh, don’t tell!

I’m also going to give him the travel guide book below. We both love maps and sightseeing!

I’m always on the lookout for unusual tabletop games. This one below, called Spinergy, is a fun one to stir creative writing juices. Even though it rates at 5.7 on BGG, Tom Vasel approves it here so I snagged it. We played it today for gameschooling. I can see it would be really fun with a group of people who love to write. Tom says it’s one of the best underrated party games. In the game, you see who can be the best author after being given three random words (generated by the spinner shown below) and a random scenario, printed on a card.

Then I got this book on romance to give my husband some clues about what to do when I want him to plan date night.

Last but not least, I got the tome below. Lots of juicy stuff inside this one! I’m pleased that RFK Jr. is willing to stick his neck out on this issue!

That’s all for now! I’d love to see or hear about your thrifting deals below in the comments!