Thrifty finds

One of the bonuses of being on maternity leave is being able to do a bit of op shopping (thrift shopping for North Americans).

I do it at least a few times a week and have my favourite shops. Here are my picks for anyone in Canberra who also shares my bower-bird-like passion for collecting other people's discarded treasures:

• The Dickson St Vinnies in Cape Street Dickson - it's clean and well organised. It doesn't really stock furniture but it does have clothing, books, manchester and homewares. There seems to be a reasonable turn over of stock and the staff are friendly. For those of you who work during the week its also open til 3pm on Saturday.
• The Brotherhood in Quenbeyan. It's huge and again doesn't stock furniture but I always find a bag full of great clothes/fabric or manchester here. They also have a decent range of books most weeks.

Now that I have a car with back doors I can get my son in and out of the car without us both having to perform gymnastics. My plan is to go further afield and hopefully discover a few more good ones - I'll keep you posted. I think I might try the shops in Mitchell next.

The photo is of a few of today's purchases. My favourite is the pull along duck. It opens up - presumably so that you can hide things in it, and while my son is a long way off being able to pull it along behind him I just had to buy it.

I'm currently obsessed with designing a couple of toys on wheels. At this stage they will both be softies on wheels. One will be bird of some kind, most likely a chicken, and a yatch. I ordered some wooden wheels on-line over the weekend and now just need to duck out and get some staples for my staple gun, a block of wood for the base and some big nails to act as axles and I should be able to knock up a proto-type in the next couple of days.

I can't wait - I'm not sure why I have such a burning desire to put a soft toy on wheels but I do.