An $8 outfit - Thrifting!

Thrift shopping is one of my favorite hobbies! The saying, "one person's trash is another person's treasure" is so true! I love seeing the things people donated to the stores to sell and I love finding hidden gems. I live in Lansing, Mich. which is the capital city. There are a number of second hand and thrift stores in the area and I regularly visit a handful of them. Volunteers of America is one of my favorite.

The trick to thrift shopping is to have an open mind and patience. I go into the stores with very little expectations, maybe hoping to find some pants or sweaters, nothing too specific. As I shop I take a stroll through each section. If I'm looking for pants, I go through the pants rack and give every item a glance. Hidden gems are just that, hidden! You have to look through everything to find the good ones.

I visited Volunteers of America and put a couple outfits together pretty quickly for blog posts. The reason it was so easy is because I didn't have to actually find my size, etc. Finding an outfit in my size and style would take longer but I just wanted to show an example of how easy thrift shopping can be!  So I grabbed a few familiar name brands and created a casual outfit. I totaled the price for the 5 piece outfit and it was only $8!

Here we have a long sleeve button down top, a scarf, a purse and embellished leggings.

This style of purse is very trendy right now, this particular purse was selling for $1.99 and there wasn't a tag on the inside, so I don't know the brand name.

This royal blue long sleeve is from Express, it was selling for $.99 at Volunteers of America. The nude pink scarf was only $1.99 and didn't have a tag with the brand name.

These embellished leggings were from Justice, which is for teens but this pair was size 18 which would fit an adult. They were being sold for $.99.

A side view of the Michael Kors heels.

These black stylish heels from Michael Kors were only $1.99,  a great deal!! 

Volunteers of America runs specials, the day we visited all red tag items were 50% off. Sales change often, and run for one week at a time.