I hope when you read “Le Village” you said it with a French accent, because that’s how I intended that to sound.;)

My youngest daughter and I took a trip to Value Village last week to see what we could dig up. I wasn’t feeling very optimistic about it. With kids back in school now I had a feeling we’d be left with the dregs, but surprisingly, we managed to find some great stuff.

Exhibit A: One table runner. Just in time for Thanksgiving! (Excuse the lighting in this photo, it was, after all, taken in my laundry room. And it’s a dungeon down there.)

The table linen section at “ValVill” is vastly underrated. I often find something good here. A word of warning though; inspect before you buy! Check your tablecloth or place mats over carefully for stains and cigarette burns before you buy them. And make sure you wash everything. My table runner, for example, had dog hair on it. (I’m not sure what the dog was doing on the table, but whatever.)

The table linen section is also where ValVill keeps hangs their aprons, but you need to look around to find them. I’ve had the good fortune to find some really neat retro-style aprons for me and my kids.

My daughter Sarah, who is 10, has declared that secondhand shopping is her Favourite Thing In the Whole World. Not only did she pick out a small stack of Nancy Drew books on our last trip to Value Village, but we snagged a whole new outfit for her too.

Exhibit B: One new outfit, complete with really unique fall coat (which I didn’t expect to find):

Admittedly, combing the racks is a bit of work, but it helps if you think about it as some kind of treasure hunt. Sarah likes the fact that the clothes are cheap (I swear I didn’t put words in her mouth), and that she can find something that really reflects her sense of style.

We found a lot of other great stuff too, including:

• Woven baskets of all shapes and sizes. There were so many I decided right then and there to never buy new baskets ever again. Think of how organized we can be! One for dog toys, another for art supplies, one for the girls’ comic book collection… the list goes on! (Is there a such thing as too many baskets? I think not.)
• Baking pans, especially mini-muffin pans. I want to make these cool crayon pucks out of broken crayon bits and don’t want to use one of my own tins. (Pretty neat eh?)