Home Again and Wee Bit Broke

I'm home!

What an awesome four days. And the best part aside from 1700+ antiques vendors? My husband said this to me on Saturday: "I don't know how you do this all day." Music to my ears! Every wife should have a getaway trip at least once per year where she leaves her husband alone for four days with the kids and the house. I am one seriously loved and appreciated woman today. Okay, so they love me all the time, but not with this kind of fresh renewal. Sigh . . . the spontaneous loves and small-armed hugs I am being showered with this morning. Lovin' it.

So back to the trip. The wagon train pulled out of our Small Town at 7:30am after a quick stop for coffee and lots of giggling with delight. The group included six women and two cars- a very large truck with canopy and a very large SUV. We drove about 500 miles to the Large Metro City hosting the show, checked into our 3-star hotel for a whopping steal of a price on Priceline.com (name your own price really does work, people) and then headed over to a little antiques shopping district in an older part of the city to do a warm-up shopping excursion and eat dinner.
I scored this nifty little pink cookie jar


and a 6-gallon Redwing crock

The crock- what a steal of a deal. There were several at the big show selling for considerably more money than I paid. I was pleased.

When I opened my suitcase that night my Hubs had tucked a love note in it with an extra $50.00. Ilovehimmadly.

For the Big Show we buy the "Early Admission" passes in advance which gets us in the show on Friday with the vendors and allows us to shop for an entire day before the general public can purchase admission AND we get in 30 minutes early than the general public on the other two days of the show. Four of the six in our group arrived at the show at 6:30am on Friday to shop out of trunks, which is vendors who open their car trunks and trailers and sell antiques in the parking lot for an hour before the show opens. It only happens on Friday. At the magic hour of 7:45 they all feverishly pack up and either head inside at 8:00 to begin selling in booth spaces they have inside, they join the crowds to shop the show, or they just have to clear up their stuff and move along to allow for parking. You can get some crazy good deals during trunk shopping but JK and I didn't feel up to getting there at 6:30am so we gave ourselves an extra half hour of sleep and arrived at 7:00.

I nabbed a set of three blue Pyrex refrigerator dishes in mint condition with lids while trunk shopping. The yellow bowl was a surprise from JK that she found in her shopping.


When I say, "gets us in the show on Friday with the vendors" I mean that we literally are going in the gates at 8:00am with the vendors. This is both good and not always good. It's good because we get first pick at all the best stuff. The show prohibits vendors from setting up before the show opens to allow for "fair shopping". This is good because you don't have dealers shopping from one another and comparing notes before the show opens. It's frustrating because after three hours of shopping under the sun in the crowds you pour into the three expo buildings which open at 11:00am and you have to tentatively shop and wander while the vendors frantically set up their merchandise. Their tables and display shelving/cases are ready they just aren't able to put out merchandise until the doors open at 11:00am. Sometimes they are friendly and don't mind you peeking at what they're doing and buying as they are setting up and sometimes they block off their booth entrances and ignore you completely and you have to come back. I cooled off in the air conditioning and wandered a bit and then went back outside to shop more freely now that the throngs of people had moved indoors and to wait for more booths to be set up inside before I went back in. It was a beautiful morning and shopping outside after the major crowds were gone was nice because the vendors had a chance to relax, sit down, and get friendly now that the inital rush had passed. I could move freely in their sometimes small spaces, and didn't have to worry about my cart in the crowd. It was during this time that I made friends with a very nice seller who cut me a screaming deal on the three final bowls I needed to complete my set of splash-proof tulip Fire-King bowls.

I also bought these two green Texasware bowls from him.

I felt like I had won the lottery as I walked away.

While outside I also picked up two different sets of tomato shaped salt/pepper shakers,

a couple of vintage dresses for Spicey (which still need to be soaked and washed)

and a big box of vintage buttons, most of them still on their original cards. (The round can of buttons I found on Saturday)


I stopped for a hotdog for lunch and moved inside. It was heating up and I was losing steam. My feet were also starting to hurt. Not a good sign. I browsed indoors for awhile and when JK called me to ask if I wanted to make a "car run" with her (take our loot out to the car). I declined but asked her to bring me my back-up shoes, the sandals I wore last year, that I had thrown in teh car just in case. Thank heavens I did. They felt so much better but I couldn't reverse the damage I was feeling in the soles of my feet and the ache in my legs from six hours in the Birkenstocks that I had hoped would absorb and cushion weight and shock but did nothing of the sort. That was a small bummer.
I finished the day twelve hours later with some vintage dress patterns (yes! even some maternity patterns!)

three pink Pyrex refrigerator dishes to complete my set (the bottom one is a piece I bought last year)

I also eyeballed a quilt that I really wanted but needed to think on, bought a Christmas tablecloth that I've been outbid on eBay for more than a couple of times, and picked out five vintage "Ding-Dong School" books for the kids. I love me some Miss Frances books.

We rallied at our favorite restaurant and ate while trying not to pass out in our food. Aside from more antiques than I could comprehend and incredible great finds, my favorite part of every day was dinner after the show. The show is so vast and we all had our own pace and agenda so we generally shopped either alone or sporadically in pairs throughout the day. Coming together at dinner was the first real chance of the day to hear what everyone did and saw and experienced. We have the same round of questions that we answer around the table each night: 1. Best deal of the day, 2. Best story of the day, 3. The item you wish you'd bought that you'll go to first the next day.When we returned to the hotel we maintained a tradition from last year by setting up everything we'd bought that day and then viewing each person's loot. We call it "show and tell". I went to bed with the most incredible leg aches I think I've ever had.

There's nothing a little Tylenol, a good night's sleep, and some feverish praying can't do. I woke up feeling better and we set out at 7:45am for Starbucks and another day of antique-ing. Day two produced a few more vintage sewung patterns, a couple of souvenirs for friends and family, a Fenton hobnail butterdish (the other pieces shown I already had)

a vintage coat

some little doo-dads for the still genderless Bump

and THE QUILT.

Last year and this year each of my friends have brought home a quilt or two. Some are totally primo, some show varying signs of age, some are just quilt tops. The prices of quilts at the show vary and they come in all patterns and conditions. This year I really wanted to come home with a good quilt, it didn't have to be primo, but it did need to not cost me 1/4 of my spending money. I spotted the one I wanted and that I could afford (key phrase there) and chatted with the dealer for awhile about it on Friday. He wasn't coming down to a price I felt like I wanted to pay but it was only the first day. The following day I went back to visit it, drool a bit more, contemplated and then walked away. I returned with my two friends in the group who are quilt gurus. They looked it over with me, did a tag-team effort of working the dealer purposefully ("will you take $___?") and passively ("Mm, I don't know Karen, it does have some staining . . . and there was that other quilt that the dealer said he'd go $____ on. . ." conversed audibly in front of the dealer, of course). Within 10 minutes they had her down to the exact price I had mentally thought I could pay for it. I walked away ecstatic and we shared high-fives all around over it. It was pure magic. Man I love those girls.

Again, another exhausting but great day. We tied it all up with dinner at our favorite restaurant again and show and tell at the hotel. Sunday I was out of money and really, really beat so I dropped my friends off at the show and went to the nearby Barnes & Noble where I prerused books and relaxed in the quiet while they shopped for a few hours. We loaded the last minute deals at noon, stopped for gas and Taco Bell and were on the interstate heading home by 1:30pm.

People, the tiredness. I called JK last night after I got home when I realized that her make-up bag had been stuffed in my bag. She said she'd try to come by mid-morning and pick it up. At 4:30 I still hadn't seen hide nor hair of her and when I called it was just as I suspected. A whole lotta nothin' going on over there except napping and some more resting. Sounded familiar.

Laundry is going again. My special finds that require dishwashing have been dishwashed. Other items have been put away in their sacred places of display. Some stuff is still sitting on the kitchen counter . . . next to the kids' cereal bowls from breakfast. I took a long nap. I'm recovering. And very happy.

Baby Bump's Ultrasound Countdown: 2 1/2 days.