I love to shop. I love to buy things. Being a one-income family of four I've had to adjust a bit. Mostly, I focus this pleasure of mine on the acquisition of groceries and food. I enjoy immensely learning to cook something new; to find something different to pursue, to go on a hunt for a rare item, to try a new restaurant (although mostly I limit my restaurants to our favorite deli and our local Latino fare). I enjoy buying a big or little thing for the house (last week it was two $1 prisms and fishing line to hang in our small living room windows), to clean or meagerly furnish my "nest". I've always been this way.

Our local garage sales are excellent for spending frugally, and 'tis the season indeed. Some of my best Fridays and Saturdays lately have been spent biking around Hoquiam and Aberdeen with kids in tow, hopping off at various yard sales and going though piles of clothes in hunt for our wardrobe (my children especially do not benefit from newly-purchased clothes). This weekend's garage sale expedition was largely funded by my lettuce sales at our local Public Market (oddly, while visiting my family before I left, my dad first made fun of how little money my lettuce raised, then insisted I wasted it all by driving to the Market. But in reality I haven't driven to that Farmer's Market once in my produce-selling escapades and in fact had just disembarked from my bike to share my excitement).

This Saturday for $11 I purchased the following: an evening scarf (Kelly), 2 t-shirts (Kelly), 2 t-shirts and a dress shirt (Ralph), dress pants (Nels), a pair of herringbone cotton pants (to refashion for kids), denim jacket (Kelly), hoodie (Nels), ls tee shirt (Sophie), and 2 vinyl albums ("South Pacific" for me, "If I Could Only Remember My Name", hippie David Crosby for my parents).

Labels: Aberdeen, consumerism, FOO, garden, HQX, the Ghost of Christmas Bastard