Goodwill Beach Bags

One of my all-time favorite resale shops is Goodwill.

Yes, long gone are the days of stumbling upon a Louis Vuitton handbag for $3.50 or a pair of Gucci shoes in the bargain bin. I realize that Goodwill employees have become super savvy to European designer creations and snag those items up as soon as they hit the receiving dock. So it was not too surprising when I heard that Goodwill has taken their enterprise a step further and opened an 'upscale' store in Keller, Texas. It's called the "GW Boutique".

Is nothing sacred?

I guess not - as soon as I check it out, I'll let you know more.

In the meantime, I'm happy to frequent the 'old-fashioned' Goodwill. One of my favorite stores is located about 10 miles away in an industrial area of Dallas. It's a great place to find never-used surplus stuff that area factories donate.

A couple of years ago, on one of my many Goodwill visits, I found brand new brown canvas tote bags with black strap handles for fifty cents each! Unable to resist the lure of a bargain, I bought ten of them. Granted, they might not have been the cutest bags ever and were a far cry from 'designer' quality but they were well made and had both outside and inside pockets. The familiar stirrings of a future craft project was in the making...

As the proud owner of ten new canvas bags, the only question I had now for myself was... What was I going to do with them? I called my friend, Kim who I just knew could help and she was all over it.

Beach bags for my sister's 50th Birthday Cruise.

All it took was a little craft paint and glitter, fabric and ribbon.

Voila! All 'cruisers' had their own personalized beach bag!

The beach bags turned out so well that I let my husband in on my plan to make matching visors for the guys who were also going on the cruise. Our conversation went sort of like this...

Him: (broadly smiling and appearing all eager) - "Are you going to make them all sparkly?"
Me:  (also smiling and equally as eager) - "Yeah!"
Him: (smugly) - "Don't."

Huh. He tells me that most guys don't really care to wear sparkly visors.

Their loss.