I'm loving... second hand stuff!!

There are many other things I could write about right now, but until I get my jumbled thoughts collected I decided to just share my new found excitement at shopping second hand!! There was a fort in my last post that I bought on a facebook garage sale site for my local area, well that was purchase 1 but I have also discovered more treasure amongst other people's trash!! I wanted to get a few things for the backyard so that when the weather heats up and the front yard is too hot till late in the day we still had plenty to play with outside. I found this little tikes car for $25 and as you can see Bethany was most impressed, the girls LOVE this!!! I have looked at them in shops a few times but the absolute lowest I have ever seen it on sale brand new is $99, so I was very excited about this baragin!

 The girls love this table, Bethy calls it 'picnic' cause we like to eat lunch here, this was $20 (I saw one in the shops for $90) and the lady we picked it up from also threw in this Dora ride on for free cause she'd had it up for sale and hadn't sold it.

This little froggy was $5 and he holds our sandpit stuff. I found if I left the things in the sandpit when the cover was over it they seemed to get trodden on and broken, but if I left them out they got a bit yucky, so this was our $5 solution.

Now I have to admit this purchase was a tad extravagant on my part, but the kids have already had so much fun in it that i'm glad I decided to get it.

I also got some indoor things. I have wanted one of these bucket shelf things for ages but they've always been expensive when i've found them, this one was $25. It has made a huge difference in keeping the loungeroom tidier cause the kids can see the toys they want rather than tipping out a whole toybox to find them and to pack up they simply take a little bucket and fill it so it's like a game.

This easel got thrown in for free with the outdoor boat.

And this music player was very exciting because mine had a single tape deck that stopped working ages ago and you just can't find ones with cassette players anymore, but I have so much great kids music on tape and so this CD player/ double cassette deck was a great find!!

I also purchased 3 knex sets which I didn't take a picture of before I put them up on top of the cupbaord. They are Jaden's year 6 graduation presents that he can have at the end of the year once his year 6 work that I want to get through is finished. Working towards a reward like that works well with him most of the time and he LOVES knex so that was a very good investment!!

So I guess I have been on a little spending spree in the past week or so (thanks to our tax return, most went in savings but I allowed myself this little splurge as well). But I love that I found so many great things second hand and not only saved money but also saved on things ending up in landfill and 'recycled' insetad of just consumed. Probably still a bit idulgent when there is so much hunger in the world right now, but Africa has been on my mind too and we have been doing things about that too, but that is for another post.