Meet Nikka

She is Nick's identical twin sister.

Well, actually it is Nick with a wig that we picked up on our "Dress Up" shopping spree. 

But I think he is adorable! Don't you?

Last Friday I took everyone to the Goodwill Clearing House to find lots of cool dress up items.  We found some really cool stuff and some really crazy stuff too.  

I believe that, a child's dress up play is one of the ultimate creative play activities.  I think every child should have a variety of props to facilitate their playtime. 

I clearly remember being a very little girl, trying on a fuchsia hat and fake pearl necklace and snakeskin high heeled shoes at my neighbor lady's house and feeling so very elegant. LOL!

I think it was at that moment, gazing at my reflection in the bathroom mirror that I decided that I would always have dress up things for MY children.  

But it is funny, I don't have any high heeled shoes in my collection right now.  It seems that the popular items are holsters, Indian costumes, cowboy hats, camo, and wigs.  

Some day the girlie side of our dress up bin will be more fleshed out.  But we still have some things to share with little girls when they come to play.  A knight must occasionally rescue a princess, or kneel to a queen.  :-)

So as I mentioned earlier, we headed off to the clearing house to find fresh inspiration for our dress up bin. If you have never been to a Goodwill Clearing House, the way it works is pretty simple.  The super fast checkout is awesome!  You get a big blue plastic bin on wheels when you walk through the front door. This bin is lined with a clear bag, everything in the store is $1.19 per lb.  Fill up your cart, wheel it to the front, and up onto a scales and pay whatever it weighs x $1.19. 

Ok, so digging through piles of stuff is NOT my favorite thing to do.  But my boys LOVE it and they did most of it.  Since I was intending to get dress up things, anything else was just a perk and made our trip very low key and fun.  

I really should have the boys model our lovely creative finds, I am sure that they would be happy to let me do a photo shoot.  

We found:

• a black cape
• a Indian Vest
•  a grandmother dress
• two wigs
•  a baseball outfit
• a bright purple silk shirt
•  yrds of tan fabric and red silk
•  a Russian flag
• a bright pink hat
• a string of beads
• green feathers
• a cowboy shirt
• a plastic holster
• vinyl "leather" coat

Oh yes, and a whole set of little plastic Army Men and Cowboys and Indians.  The boys were ecstatic about this piece of loot.

The question from the boys is, "When can we go back again?" 

I think the answer might be "After we get a bigger dress up box".  LOL!