Thrifty Thursday

I actually bought this stuff on Monday, but what the heck. I'm showing it to you on Thursday, so Thrifty Thursday. :o)

I think I got some pretty good bargains. That round plastic thing on the left is a food dehydrator. You can barely see it's box behind the Cootie game. All the parts are there, and it works, so I'm planning to dry a lot of fruits and veggies from the farmer's markets this summer. The booklet says you can make jerky and yogurt in it, too.

On top of the FAO Schwartz bead barrel is a mandoline, to slice and julienne foods. I'm going to make some sweet potato fries, and who knows what else. It has all its parts, too.

The bead barrel has hundreds of different kinds of beads--wooden ones, plastic, alphabet--and strings to string them on. Good for teaching little fingers manual dexterity. The girls will enjoy them, too, for making necklaces and bracelets.

The rest of the stuff is from the toy aisle at the thrift store. The Sound Studio kit has a drum, tambourine, kazoo, horn, slide whistle, a stringed instrument like a zither, and some maracas. I think the grands will have fun with it.

In front of it is the Cootie game, with all four cooties and all their parts, and the instructions. Reece and Aubrey have already been playing with the cooties.

In front of the Cootie game is a Bingo game and a box of Double 12 Dominoes, all intact. Then a Scrabble game and Mastermind. I bought the Scrabble set mostly to use in craft projects as we already have one. It would be good for "spare parts," too. The 550 piece puzzle was packaged with some of the other games--a lagniappe. :o)

The counting bears and cups, blocks and the baby ball were all in one bag. Reece has some counting bears, but we didn't have the colored cups for sorting. And the blocks match a set of blocks we already have, so now we have more of them. Camryn enjoyed playing with the little plastic ball when she was here. Don't worry, I scrubbed it in hot, soapy water. I'm a freak about cleaning the stuff I buy at thrift stores.

They were having a sale on children's books. Buy 5 for $1 (yes, 5 books for $1), and get 5 more FREE! So, 10 books for $1. You just can't beat that. Unfortunately, they were pretty picked over, but I did manage to find 10 that we can use.

I love the illustrations in some of them, particularly the one open in the front. It is David McPhail's Animals From A To Z.

Make Way For Ducklings (Robert McCloskey) has already become one of Reece's bedtime favorites. You can never have too many Mother Goose and other nursery rhyme books. And for my budding scientists, an insect book and a book about the body.

The Baby Brown Bear's Big Bellyache book includes lots of other familiar Little Golden Book characters in the story--Shy Little Kitten, Poky Little Puppy, Saggy Baggy Elephant, Tawny Scrawny Lion, Scuffy the Tugboat, and Tootle the Train. Too cute. :o) Danny and the Dinosaur (Syd Hoff) and The Runaway Bunny (Margaret Wise Brown) are classics that the little kids will love. I'll save the Thanksgiving book until November. Did I ever tell you that books are one of my favorite things? I want my grandchildren to love them as much as I do.