A Monsoon evening dress for £6.

Black, strappy and beaded all over. Makes me feel a million dollars.

a tripp trapp for £15

My dd found a fabulous inky blue cashmere jumper at the weekend for £5 - she looks so fabulous in it I want to lock her in her room until she's 30.

Next question. If you find a bargain that the people running the shop have obviously missed (like my Karen Millen suede jacket for £3) do you tell them and give them more? Or do you think "Whoopee - lucky me!"

Hampstead & Muswell Hill have charity shops with lovely clothes!

Not quite Hermes, but I recently bought a Bruno Magli scarf with retro farm animals on it for a pound. I am going to make it into a cushion for DD's nursery.

Other notable finds have been an Escada jacket and a paperweight that I noticed when I got it home was signed underneath - I looked it up and it turns out to be by some moderately famous glass artist and worth considerably more than the three or so pounds I paid for it.

have never bought anything valuable or notable at a charity shop, although have had loads of good things.

yesterday, we went into cancer research and found a France 1998 World Cup Trivial Pursuit.
obviously, the lack of money didn't come into and and we bought it at a princely £4.

had a look at the questions in the pub and found a Chelsea one OH couldn't answer !! hahahahahahahahahha

Think I'll trawl round FUlham and Notting Hill charity shops on my next day off, as I need new clothes and last time I got a new ankle-length winter coat from Monsoon for £25 (about £200 new), Gap jeans (£5 plus £3 for taking up), and a fab black dress which I think I only wore once but then recouped the cost on Ebay. Plus some jewellery.

More recently I got a brand new boxed playmat for a sitting-up baby - which was a godsend for the two months he used it before crawling off, and many, many baby toys and books. MIL is addicted to bargain-hunting and snobby SIL won't accept any charity shop items so MIL loves giving me lots of stuff for ds. An ELC wooden shape-sorter for £1 was a good one.

My Mum is a big fan of charity shops & jumble sales - I grew up on them. Recently she phoned me to tell me she'd bought a handbag for £1.99, and she thought it was Gucci. When I went over there, sure enough it had a big G on the front, but somehow... When my DD saw it, she recognised it: George at Asda.

Our local tip is brilliant too. I have furnished the house from there. An office chair for £5, beautiful wooden table for £8, and a set of 4 chairs that match the table perfectly. They let me have then for £10 because they'd got wet & had started to go mouldy, but after a good scrub they're fine!

I have a fab collection of assorted china - all our breakfast things are blue & white Scandinavian, but different designs. The dump is really good for things that some people are now throwing out but other people covet, like gravy boats, cake stands, jelly moulds & anything that's not dishwasher safe. All for around 20p each. I love this kind of recycling!

zipzap you have to pop in all the time 90% of the time you don't see anything nie. My oxfam is right next to the bus stop so i pop in a lot.

sylvanian families barge in box complete £1
boden coat for dd for £3 has been worn by 3 dds and still looks lovely.