Shop WHERE?!?!?!

It's a rare thing that I actually get out shopping EVER anymore.  I used to just blame it on the hassle of having three kids to bathe, clothe, pack bags for, fasten/unfasten seat beats at every stop and drag from cart to cart (boy, just thinking about it makes me tired).  It's like those old country folk that would rather go out and milk the cow instead of "going into town" to buy milk.  Which is lately becoming less funny to me, because just last week, I made marshmallows from scratch, because I didn't want to drag three kids ACROSS THE STREET to Publix to buy a bag of marshmallows.  Pitiful....

Anyways, as time goes on and the kids become easier to deal with (I only have to buckle and unbuckle one seat belt now), I find myself still not wanting to shop.  The less I have, the less there is to clean and take care of.  Then, there's the whole environmental factor--everything new you buy somehow wastes natural resources.  And, can't forget about the economy factor.  This past year and a half has put me in a perpetual state of fear of going broke.  Plus, there are so many better things to be doing with my God's money.

Well...last weekend, I took the girls "into town" to run some errands.  Along the way, we passed by the giant warehouse they call Goodwill.  Alexis has a school project coming up that requires her to come up with a costume for a historical figure that she was assigned.  Light bulb...let's see what we can find in Goodwill, so into the parking lot I pulled.

Honestly, I had driven by this place a million times and always wondered what it was like inside, but there was always this part of me that, to put it bluntly, thought I was too good to walk through those doors.  Funny, as silly as it sounds when I say it out loud, I still hesitated to get out of the car.

Deep breath and in we went.  Let me just tell you, I was AMAZED!!  Alexis had $5 (and a coupon) in her pocket that she was planning on spending at our next stop-- the bookstore.  For the price of one book, she could have gotten TEN in this place!!  It was only .50 for a paperback book!!  As I starting digging through the racks and racks of clothes looking for something that might be able to pass as 18th century garb, I found my attitude towards the place changing.  Some of these clothes still had TAGS!!  Seriously, a $34 extremely cute kid's dress for $3.50!!  Well to make a long story short-- one dress with tags, one shirt with tags, two books, $8, and a VERY excited kid later...I am hooked!!