On Friday We Shopped

On Friday morning THGGM and I picked up my aunt and went thrift and antique shopping!
As you can imagine, it is WONDERFUL to shop with someone who enjoys the same sort of shopping as we do.
My aunt is the one who has influenced my decorating style more than anyone.
No matter where she has lived, it has always felt warm and welcoming.
I'm sure that has more to do with her presence than her homes, but never-the-less, I've always wanted to achieve that "feel" in my home.
I'm not her, but as they say, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness".  And she IS great!
This Roseville Pottery plate was a fabulous find.
I wouldn't know a thing about Roseville Pottery if is weren't for shopping with my aunt.  She had a few pieces of it when I was a kid, and I remember admiring it.  After I got home from Wisconsin I looked it up on Ebay.  Clearly, the seller did not know what they had.

This baby plate was another great deal.  THGGM found this at St. Vincent's thrift store in Waterford.  It was a mere $3.99.  I'll have a bit of rearranging to do on the shelves where I have my baby plate collection, but I'm going to hold off until after Christmas to do it.  That will give me something to look forward to doing after the Christmas season is over.  And yes, I REALLY do enjoy rearranging things.  SMALL things.  THGGM enjoys rearranging large heavy things like cabinets and furniture.  I do NOT enjoy that.  And believe it or not, I do plan to pair down my collections into a manageable amount of my favorite pieces.  At least that's the plan.  (Hey.  Don't judge me!)

Aren't the graphics on this child's cup adorable?
I know!  I thought so too!
One just never knows what will be available in thrift stores and antique malls, so it adds extra excitement to find EXACTLY what you didn't even know you were looking for!
If you think I like to shop, you would be sorely wrong.  Clothes shopping I find tiresome, grocery shopping I leave to THGGM who doesn't seem to have any trouble with all the choices there are, and car shopping?  Ugh.  No thank you.  But if there might be a surprise inside for me?  That is the only kind of surprise I even like.

This battered and worn book had such a cute picture on the cover.  It's hard to believe that it was a favorite among the very young though.  After all, it is about etiquette.  I've been reading bits of it here and there and was quite amazed to read that even in the 1920's children were taught not to speak to strangers.  Apparently there has NEVER been a time when children have not had to be careful about who they interacted with.  Listening to people today one would think that evil is a new concept that sprung up out of nowhere in the past decade or so.  Not true.
We all found things that brought a thrill to us that day!  It really is fun to shop with people who appreciate the same things you do.
And, I must admit that I seem to have gotten my fill of shopping for a little while, anyway.  Today THGGM and I went to one of our favorite thrift stores, but only to BRING stuff.  Seriously, if it weren't for groceries, we barely buy anything new anymore.  We also stopped at one of my favorite antique malls just to look around.  I did find a few things I thought I may have needed, but then I remembered that I truly didn't so I left them there and thought about how I should bring them a few more boxes of things to sell before I buy anything else.  After that we hit an outlet store and knocked TWO gifts off our Christmas list.  On our way back home we passed my very most favorite thrift store which would be closing in 30 minutes.  That was a comforting time frame for THGGM who agreed that we could make a quick pass through it.  Surprise!  I found something I never could have dreamt of.  A book, titled "Psalmen, Lof- en Bedezangen", published by Eerdmans-Sevensma Co. in Grand Rapids, Mi.  I cannot read Dutch, but I can read music, so of course I am now the proud owner of it.  It does not have an actual copywrite date, but from what I can find, the company was only Eerdmans-Sevensma from 1911 to 1922.  The author has two separate pieces written on a page with the dates of 1896 and 1903.  Apparently, this author (or, compiler of the music) was an organist (same in Dutch as in English) at a church in Bolsward, Friesland, Netherlands.  I'd like to think that at some point at least one of my three grandparents from Friesland might have heard him play.  But I'll never know.  It IS interesting to imagine things, and it keeps me out of trouble, I guess.
And now I will run this through spell check, read through it again to see what wrong words I used that pass through spell-check, post it and read through it again, correct a few more errors, and then wake up in the morning (hopefully!) and read it again noticing that there are STILL errors in it.  Yes.  I'll do that.  Once, I was good at spelling, now, sometimes I can't even figure out what I was trying to say.  (Please say this also happens to you.., PLEASE!)