Thrift Store Finds

I finally made it to one of my favorite thrift shops this past weekend (Goodwill Store), after my first ever trip to the landfill - was able to recycle everything I brought - yay! Next trip will probably be in the spring.
Here's a peek at my goodies/finds:

I spent a total of $7 and some cents. Each item was $.99 except for the yellow towel which was $1.99. The tin snips are just the perfect size for my hands, and work so easily. I already have a pair but they are very stiff, and only cut on the curve (don't ask - I bought them long ago). The concrete-smoother-thing would have been handy a few weekends ago when I was adding some patching to my garage floor - but I think I'll be doing more concrete work in the future ( small projects only), so I WILL use it. The piece of wood is, I think, one of those cedar planks for grilling salmon, but I'm going to use it for a cutting board for camping. It's small and lightweight - unfortunately, it's also very soft wood, but should last for the rest of MY camping years. :P I wasn't going to get both books until it was announced that all books were half off. I probably have most of the information in the 'homemade' book, but I really liked the sketches in it. (click the photo to get a closer look)

The towel is the one thing I was actually looking for: I needed a bigger one for my floor mop. My rag towels were/are all too small, and my larger "good" ones have designated uses - I didn't want to give one up just for mopping the floor. Here's the old-fashioned mop w/o a towel:

and with the towel:

Okay, so it may be a LITTLE bit long - I'm not going to start cutting it smaller until I use it a few times. This is the kind of mop that you want a little bit longer so you can use the mop head to push on the towel for scrubbing purposes (huh?) It's a little difficult to explain. The mop may look a little long - it is. It's as long as I am tall, which makes it a little inconvenient to use in my small kitchen sometime, but the handle is metal so I'm not about to start hacksawing it off. Why do I use such an unwieldy 'helper'? Because, after trying several different types of mops, I've found that it works the best for me. And that's all I have to say about that. :)