Last week, as part of Young House Love’s 100% Totally Unofficial Macklemore Thrift Shop Challenge, my only favorite sister (Kim) and I went thrifting. She was in town helping me with some technical deets for the blog (woohoo!), and once I played Macklemore’s Thrift Shop song for her, I knew I had her as an accomplice. Well, that and I may have played Thrift Shop on repeat on my iPhone while we got our only favorite brother moved into his new place — then, she was hooked. What, what… what, what…

(image from Young House Love)

Ok, so onto the challenge.

Step #1. Go to a thrift shop with – just as the chorus of the song says – “$20 in your pocket” and take a picture. Check, check.

Step #2. Spend your $20 any way you’d like and photograph your spoils. Check.

I bought a square frame (that I totally plan to paint and replace what’s inside it), a bent up little metal tray (that I also plan to paint and to straighten back out), a Little Tikes wheelbarrow that my little boo is going to love putting rocks/acorns in (once I get it all cleaned up), and a Mega Blocks castle for the boo to knock down repeatedly (once I get it cleaned up).

And, I came in decently under my $20 budget. Woohoo! Here is the breakdown –
Square Frame: 1.91
Bent Tray: 1.91
Little Tikes wheelbarrow: 1.91
Mega Blocks castle: 6.96
Tax: 0.34
Total: 13.03

Step #3. Find one item (or more) referenced in the song and snap a pic.

This task proved much harder. We went to a couple of different thrift stores but didn’t find anything super-awesome. Cue the game show wrong-answer noise: bwah-bwah-bwahahah….

I was totally hoping to find some awesomely-bad grandpa-y clothes. But, it seems either there are no grandpas in our area (not likely), that there are so many grandpas (or other Thrift Shop Challengers?) in our area that they had already bought up all the grandpa styles (not likely?), that the grandpas in our area aren’t donating their clothes to thrift stores (possible?), or that the grandpas in our area dress better than the young folks so their clothes wouldn’t exactly be to Macklemore’s standards (that’s what I’d bet my leftover 6.97 on!)…

Anyway, here’s what we did find…

Excuse the blurriness (and crazy eyes!) in the photo of me with the crazy-striped pants — I think I was so excited to find something that remotely resembled anyone’s grandpa’s style, that I was probably shaking like an lunatic (that, and we were using a camera phone). Note: that suit Kim has on the right is short sleeved. Rockin.

Step #4. Blog about it. Check…

Have you found anything good thrifting lately? Anyone else in Atlanta going to see John and Sherry from YHL at FLOR on Thursday night? What are the chances I will be able to act completely normal and not at all star-struck? (Which reminds me — went to Jen Lancaster’s book signing on Friday night and will post pics and the 411 this week!)