Thrifting for Kid Clothes: Winter Edition

Thrifting for kid clothes is my obsession. I love a good deal, and even though their closets are stuffed to the brim, I just. can't. stop. buying. them. clothes. They seriously could go a month without needing their laundry washed.

For some reason, I never published this blog post. I just noticed it in the "drafts" today, so I figured I'd post it. Jonas is a lot smaller in these pics... he turned 9 mos. old today :)

I love this sleeper. I thrifted it back before Joel was born, but I've since lost how much I've paid for it.


A thrifted pair of black dress pants for 50c, a $1 green vest, and a thrifted black tie


Jonas is wearing a $1 fleece romper, while his older brother sports a 40c striped polo and thrifted navy blue khakis.


A 50c pair of Pooh blue jeans and a 50c Pooh shirt,
thrifted on two seaparate occasions.


I love, love, love this $2 Gymboree sleeper


A 50c Tiger Hockey shirt for my hockey lovin' toddler


a 40c onesie


A cute toddler in a thrifted dinosaur shirt


This long sleeved polo onesie was 50c


This next outfit is one of my favorites. It was actually thrifted on three separate occasions but work together! First, the red and grey pants were thrifted back before Joel was born. The "Leader of the pack" tee was a bit of a splurge at $1, and the grey turtleneck onesie layered underneath was 50c.



Joel's basketball shirt was 50c,
and the jeans were thrifted for no more than 50c.


Here Joel is wearing a clearance t-shirt with 25c pants.


50c shirt and thrifted jeans :)


Handsome boy in a 50c Old Navy sweatshirt, showing off
his 50c Chick Hicks car. He loves the movie "Cars" so much!


99c jammies!


This fleece hoodie was a bit of a splurge at $1.50, but I couldn't pass it up. Underneath is a white Gerber onesie that I had received as a gift, and then I added an iron-on pumpkin to it :)


Another splurge for Baby Jonas: $2 "Backseat Driver" romper.
But isn't he cute? :)


My Santa Baby (in a 75c thrifted fleece blanket sleeper). The hat was given to me by one of my high school ex-boyfriends.... his family are Jehovah's Witnesses, and he had received it at school but couldn't keep it since they don't celebrate Christmas.

Christmas Ornament Wreaths

Has anyone out there ever made Christmas ornament wreaths? And if so, what kind of glue did you use to adhere all the ornaments together? I made three of these wreaths several years ago and used hot glue, but every year I have to reglue many of the ornaments back onto the wreath because they've fallen off or are barely hanging on. There must be a better way!

Anyway, I do love my ornament wreaths :) I started with a styrofoam wreath form, wrapped it in garage-sale green and white gingham ribbon (I think it was 50c for a huge big box of ribbon!), and then painstakingly hot glued bulb after bulb onto the wreath. (The bulbs were of course thrifted also!) In the end, I took some blue ribbon I had on hand and tied it around the top of the wreath so that it could hang on the wall, and voila!

Here they are hanging above my mantel this year. (And in case you're wondering, I don't normally decorate THIS early... Santa Claus is coming to our house for a photo shoot on Sunday, and so I needed a nice backdrop so the pictures turn out cute!)

{Note to self: if ornament wreaths made with hot glue are hung over candles, do not light them! Doing so will heat up the glue, causing the ornaments to come crashing down and shatter all over the floor. Then the glue will cool again, and the shards of glass wil adhere to the floor. Seriously.}

And here they are a few years ago, hanging above my couch.


I also made the blue background thingies that the wreaths are hanging on. It was a really quick and cheap project that adds a lot of pizzazz to the wall. (For the other 11 months out of the year, I hang photos on them). I could totally see making some of these with red and green fabric, or perhaps thrifted vintage Christmas tablecloths... the possibilities are endless!

Here's how I made mine in case you're interested. I went to Lowes and bought the cheapest thing I could find, which happened to be that brown pegboard stuff. I covered it with some of the heaps and piles of quilt batting that I have laying around. (Isn't it the best when you find some brand new batting at a garage sale for next-to-nothing?!) Then I stapled on my fabric (I think my staple gun {and my glue gun too} are extentions of my right arm...) and finally attached a hanger-thingie on the back so I could hang it onto the wall. Then I hammered a nail into it so that I could hang something on each panel, and viola, there you have it!

This is a photo of how they looked at the old house. At the new house, I've decorated in a more contemporary style, so I changed out the frames and am now using pictures of my husband and kids rather than my ancestors. Here is how it looks now (Sorry for the dark picture; I took this at night)

Help Me - I can't choose!

I have two Christmas outfits for the boys to wear when they get their pictures taken, and I just cannot make up my mind which one to use! Both outfits were completely thrifted :) What do you guys think; which one should they wear?

This Old Navy fleece "Peace" romper was 50c. The blue dress shirt and the dress pants each were 50c, and the sweater vest was a quarter.



This white dress shirt and black dress pants each were 50c, as was the Baby Gap sweater romper. I forget how much the tie was, but it was surely about 50c and it was still new with tags!



Perhaps we'll just go get their pictures taken twice :)

Bridesmaid Dress Tree Skirt

When my first son was 3 months old, one of my close friends got married. I was still carrying around a little extra baby weight. (Okay, it was probably more like an extra 50 lbs).

What a perfect time for me to have to buy a bridesmaid dress right? The bigger the dress, the more fabric to work with when I cut it up after the wedding :) There's a silver lining to everything!

I knew I would never wear the dress again, mainly because I was never planning on needing a size 16 again. (Wrong! I had my second child a month ago, and I am in a size 18. Mostly I'm still sticking with maternity clothes!)

Since the dresses were a beautiful shade of red, I figured I could make something Christmassy with it. And since my tree skirt was one of those small, el cheapo dollar store felt things, making a new tree skirt seemed like the obvious choice. I got the idea from Chica and Jo.

Basically, my friend and I cut out triangles, and then sewed them together into a circle. When we were done, it was not as big as I had pictured it, so we made it larger by adding a large ruffle to the circumference of the circle. We also cut out a small circle in the center so that it would fit around the tree trunk.


Voila! Happy Holidays!

Calendar Towel Onesies

Besides my little newborn, there was also another baby born on my street a week before mine, and another neighbor gave birth on November 2. Three babies born to three friends all within about one month of each other! Wowser!

After I saw this onesie on pinterest, I knew I would be making these for the three boys! Yes, that's right, they're all boys! AND, we all already have toddler boys about the same age. Crazy, huh?!

We're working on making an entire Buckeyes offensive line here on our street :)



Making one of these calendar towel onesies is really quick and easy to do. Here's how. Take an old calendar towel and cut out the appropriate month. Take some floss and back stitch around the date the baby was born. Next take some fusible web (mine was thrifted of course!) and adhere it to the wrong wide of your calendar applique with your iron. Iron it onto a plain onesie, and then use your machine to zig zag around the outside of the applique. You're done!

Kids in Thrifted Clothing!

The sweatshirt was a gift, but the jeans were thrifted :) ALL his jeans are thrifted, in fact. He has 8 pairs of jeans for a total of $3. And they're all in good condition with no holes or signs of obvious wear, and are good brands like Gymboree, Old Navy, Wrangler, etc!


Here Joel is wearing a totally thrifted outfit. I sewed down the skeleton tee from a thrifted adult tee, and the thrifted orange onesie underneath goes well with it to keep him warm.


The romper Jonas is wearing here was a bit of a thrifting splurge at $1 but it sure is cute :)


Jonas's romper was a gift, but Joel is wearing a thrifted outfit. At 40c, this shirt was a steal!

Cookie Monster Sleep Sack Costume and a Newborn!

I would like to introduce you to the newest member of the family.... Jonas Alexander!

At 9 lbs 4 oz, he was a hefty little newborn! He was born two weeks ago via c-section, and we're both doing quite well. I'm so glad he was born in time for Halloween... I do love Halloween :)

Proud big brother!




Now let's talk Halloween. To save money (hey, we are now diapering for two!), I decided to have my older son be Elmo because we already have an Elmo costume. My mom got Joel one for Christmas last year. And who goes great with Elmo? Cookie Monster, of course!

I started with a thrifted sleep sack pattern, and a bunch of other vintage stuff that I already had on hand. The fabric was from my great-grandmother's stash. When she passed away, I got her fabric. The zipper and bias tape were thrifted too.

The cookie is made of felt sandwiched together with batting in the middle, and attached to the sleep sack with velcro.

Then for his head, I decided to make a baby bonnet using Prudent Baby's awesome tutorial. I left off the ruffle for obvious reasons! I bought a six pack of ping pong balls for $1.29, hot glued two of them on top of the baby bonnet, and then drew some googly eyes with a permanent marker.

Is he not the cutest baby Cookie Monster you ever saw?