LOVING GOODWILL, redux!

OK, so this is one of my loooooooooooooooong overdue ones. this didn't happen LAST weekend, but the weekend before!! So I guess that would make it ... Sunday, December 9. Dang. (Does December really go by that fast??? I guess it does.)

I have been SEARCHING for these darn plates for over a month now ... these darn big black and white damask plates:

I went ahead and got the salad plates when they were on sale in the weekly circular a few weeks back, because I do totally love them, but those big dinner plates have been impossible to find for the past month.

And of course, guess where I found them!!!!!!! Yarr, Goodwill.

But there's the thing - ONE of the plates was BROKEN!! I honestly was nearly gonna buy ANOTHER in-store set that had one dish broken just because I was so desperate to own them.

Anyway, when I saw the plates in Goodwill, I nearly screamed. I was thinking about miraculously find a set no more than 10 seconds before I actually spied them. Man, it was unduly exciting. I love the hunt.

However, upon closer inspection, I realized the very back plate was cracked exactly in half.

AGONY!!!!!

:(

So, so, very sad.

So, I looked at all the rest of them, and they looked fine ... and so I put the broken one on top, hoping to show it to them so maybe I could get a mark down. I think they were marked $11.99.

I bring it up there, ask about the damage/markdown, and the chick ringing me up (hee, she's a nice, albeit goofy, and slightly clumsy gal) says, "OOOOOOOOOH, they were NOT like that before. They've been sitting there for WEEKS and they weren't like that yesterday."

Inside, I died a little. Yesterday? Yesterday? I'd missed them because of one day?? Because I was too tired to drag myself outta my parent's house to hit the sainted GOODWILL????

Awful. Awful awful awful. I was like mentally beating myself up for not going to Goodwill just a day earlier to get these darn plates that have been totally on my mind since I first laid eyes on them!

So as I got into the car, and drove to the other Target, finger crossed, and wishing and hoping that a set would be there ... I realized something.

I realized that *I* had moved the broken plate up from the back of the set. And if no one had taken a closer inspection, they would not have known. And despite the Goodwill employees ASSURING me that they were not broken before, and they must have been broken some time during the day before ... perhaps they had not realized the rear plate was jacked up. Hmm!!! Maybe THAT'S why the set was sent to Goodwill!!

Anyway, that's the idea that I held on to and have been reiterating, since it pacifies my inner anxious curmudgeon. It does make me feel better. And now I have the big dinner plates!!! So I will keep hunting at and looking for the plates at Goodwill even AFTER Christmas because I can use these other times of the year. And they go SO well with the beaded chargers I got last year that look SO much better than the weird ugly ones they have this year.

Eek.

And you know what else I got for $14.99 at this Goodwill?

And this lil baby is regularly $129.99 at Target.

Yippee!!