Mai & Kat's Shopping Challenge

Last month when were we out at Mai's birthday dinner, I gave her an envelope with a challenge. Inside the envelope was $20.00 plus a $3.00 off coupon. The challenge: Buy an outfit for our next celebration dinner, which would probably be for my birthday. The rule was we could only spend a total of $20.00 ($23.00 and using the $3.00 off coupon would still be $20.00). It had to be something nice, no jeans and a complete outfit. So if you were buying a top, you needed to buy a skirt or pants. The other rule was it had to be thrift store shopping and the $3.00 off coupon was from Savers.

Admittedly, I haven't done thrift store shopping in ages! The last time that I went, it was to Goodwill and it just felt so skanky! I've heard some positive things about Savers and there are two that I know of on this island. Yesterday, Mai and I decided to take on the challenge. Surprisingly, this was quite a pleasant experience. Savers is quite large, clean, well lit and quite organized. Perhaps it wasn't the best time to go shopping there as it was quite crowded, many with people trying to figure out what to do for halloween costumes. The dressing rooms were also very crowded and it was at least a 15 minute wait to get into the dressing room. There is a sign saying "6 item limit" but that was quite laughable since there was no one monitoring it and people were going in with shopping carts full of clothing.

I was surprised by the amount of clothing that I found that I really liked and could possibly fit me. Mai actually found a lot more things than I did to try on. Happily I can announce that we both found an outfit to wear plus more! We both bought 2 dresses each that we could wear out to dinner but we both know which one we will wear. The challege ended up being a tie because the price of the dresses that we each bought, ended up being the same!

Before I show you what was purchased for the dinner, I'll show you what else I ended up buying. Mai did buy a couple of t-tops and I can't remember if there was something else too. She didn't send me the picture for the additional items she purchased. I ended up also buying a pair of CK jeans, a denim skirt, a white t-top and a Chadwick dress. 

The Chadwick ended up being the most expensive at $14.99. The CK jeans were $7.99, the denim skirt was $5.99 and the t-top was $7.99. The t-top and jeans are for me to wear for work.

Mai's two dresses purchased with the challenge money:

The two dresses were $9.99 and $7.99. She will be wearing the blue floral print dress for our dinner out. I also really loved that basic black dress because of the cutout design at the bottom. There's no way that we could sew that dress and do the cutout work. She will probably add a shrug or jacket to the outfits.

Kat's two dresses purchased with the challenge money:

These dresses were $9.99 and $7.99 too. I will be wearing the red dress to dinner. This dress is a Cinnamon Girl dress, a Hawaii company. Their dresses retail on the average $80.00 - $90.00 so it was really exciting to be able to get this for only $9.99! The black dress is a bit more form fitting on me that I normally prefer but for $7.99 I couldn't pass it up. The reason being that the black fabric is an overlay over a cream fabric and I loved that the cream fabric also had floral print on it.

It gives depth to the whole look of the design of the dress.

I do not like to wear sleeveless clothing so I will be layering over these outfits a shrug. I have many shrugs in different styles and colors. I really love them. Here's the red dress with a 3/4 sleeve shrug:

If I can find a shorter shrug with a short sleeve in my stash, I will probably use it that way but it looks nice with the shrug in the picture.

We had so much fun and success shopping at Savers that we plan on doing it again. Funnily, we both forgot our $3.00 off coupon so we'll be able to use it next time. We met our challenge of buying an outfit to go out with for $20.00 or less.  With tax, we each paid $18.83. When we go out for our dinner in a few weeks, I'll be sure to take a picture of us wearing our outfits.

*Kat*


MAI here...Just to add on to Kat's blog....It was super a FUN Day! I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of merchandise that we found at SAVERS.  I actually purchased another black dress, and two addtional t-shirts.  If I knew how to post my pictures I would be able to show you all the rest of my purchases.  I spent less than $40 total for the entire lot.
WE spent a good couple of hours browsing thru all the merchandise.  There was a lady in front of us in line at the dressing room, (just by herself now) her shopping cart was stuffed full of clothes, maybe 50 pieces!  Totally insane!
When we get together for Kat's birthday we will definitly model our new attire. I challenge all of you bloggers out there to something like this. Save money, benefits a good cause (big brothers and big sisters of hawaii)  and get some great "new" threads!
Ok....Mai....over and out.  (as she fades into the background once more...)