HGTV, Whiners, The Property Brothers and Style Mags.............

In other words....BRAIN SPILL!!  RABBIT TRAILS!!

Claire and I love to watch HGTV together.  Our favorite shows are The Property Brothers, Income Property, and House Hunters.  The first two shows deal with total rehab of properties.  The men who star have fabulous vision and can remake ANYTHING into a dream home.

The people they have to deal with, on the other hand, are usually entitled, whiny spoiled brats.  They want everything on very little money.  There is a great deal of complaining when they realize their limited budgets don't pay for 'move in ready' homes, and they constantly bristle when they are shown 'fixer ups' that can be rehabbed into the home of their dreams.  In the end, the good guys prevail and the whiners are often left speechless. 

It makes for fabulous reality TV, in my humble opinion.

I honestly can't relate to the whiners.  I have spent my life seeing the possibilities in everything.  Don't tell me something can't be done!  That just makes me buckle down and work harder!

When I was a teenager, 'The Preppy Handbook' was big.  I didn't have a lot of money, but I could sure buy fabulous fakes that looked as good as the real thing Muffy and Kip sported.  When my first husband and I looked for our first house, we saw CRAP, plain and simple.  I got tired of gasping at grime, but we looked past it and redid a tiny 900 sq ft fixer into a very nice home.

Now.............what the heck does all this have to do with frugal fashion?  I TOLD you it was brain spill and rabbits trails!!

You should know by now that I am big into vision.  Seeing the possible in the impossible.  You can apply this to every area of life, and be enriched as a result.

I love to read fashion magazines.  I actually have a subscription to 'In Style,' but it's fun to go to the library and read them, too.  I had a couple I hadn't cracked open yet yesterday, so I took them with me to Claire's first PT visit. 

At first glance, reading fashion magazines seems like an odd pastime for someone looking to save money.  Oodles of pictures of thousand dollar plus purses and shoes, red carpet gowns and sky's the limit jewels...........how does that fall into the category of Goodwill goodies?

If I didn't peruse a fashion magazine periodically, I wouldn't know what the latest styles are, so when I DID shop at thrift stores, I wouldn't have the vision for what I saw there.  Claire wouldn't have had the good luck she has had with the formals we've found, because I wouldn't know what's current.  Likewise second hand purses, shoes, etc.  This is also my reason for subscribing to numerous fashion blogs.  I don't always have the time to look at them, but when I do, I learn a lot.  I don't say, 'UGH!  That's a CHANEL purse, that doesn't apply to me!'  I DO say (when shopping at Goodwill), 'look at that purse!  It looks JUST like a CHANEL!'

 

Checking out the fashions is a marvelous way to spend my time in the waiting room..........and it pays dividends later.