Sharkskin and Velvet

Hey y’all sorry I disappeared! It’s been super busy at the CollectoratorToo camp. First and foremost I broke my phone which caused all sorts of problems in and of itself, but I entered into the modern age and got a super smart phone. This phone has a PhD whereas my other phone had probably dropped out of elementary school! What I love about it most is I can blog from anywhere, post fun pics on the road because  I have a real camera on the phone now, and do just about anything I want to do when I want to do it. I am left wondering why I did not do this sooner.

I also got sucked up into the baseball playoff/World Series vortex. I am not a big sports fan at all, but I am a loyal fan to the Texas Longhorns and Texas Rangers.  See the Rangers were in the World Series this year and last year, which is a huge miracle if you grew up with them like I did (literally down the street). Because it was something I may only see once or twice (now) in my lifetime, like a chance to see a comet, I had to tune in. Never mind the fact that we lost, it was worth the pain of loss to see the experience. Baseball is one of those sports though I really do like in general. Something about it is still so old school and vintage America. I love that they have not modernized it too much other than the crazy ballparks. If only people would still dress up to go to games. You look at baseball crowd pictures back in the 1940s and they have suits and day dresses on. Heck yeah. Most people just seem to have lost the desire to look put together at all in public anymore…

Anyway, I digress. We also have had some our friends from overseas visit so we had a party. It was challenging in a fun way to figure out how to have a party with all my party-ware packed away, but I managed  through it although it wasn’t up to my usual par. We even played Skip-Bo as the party wound down (here’s my Skip-Bo card case by the way in all it's red velvet glory, I’ll write a whole blog on Skip-Bo soon because it totally deserves its own blog). Playing Skip-Bo made it close to my favorite kind of party. As I said before I always long to have the Dick Van Dyke style party where it breaks into a mini variety show or games ensue so this was pretty close!

Even with all this going on, I did manage to make it back to the flea market in town and once again my husband had better luck than me. No wonder he keeps agreeing to go with me to this flea market! We got this awesome sharkskin coat for his stage outfits for $3.  Course the lady also had this lambs wool wrap and muff I wanted, but it was $60. Hello. Not fair. In any case, we bought the jacket and the next day I found the tie to go along with it. He’s lucky he has me to design his outfits for his shows!! 

I’m back though now and I'll back to packing… more soon!

Cowboys and Indians at the Flea Market

It is a very rare day that my husband braves the collectorating road with me, but last Sunday was one of those rare days. We had been having a leisurely breakfast at one of Austin's  oldest diners (Nighthawk), which is near by one of Austin's most underused market areas. It would be a perfect place for daily farmer's market. I don't know why we have to wait until one day a week to go to a nearby farmer's market when my mom in the Dallas Fort Worth suburb area has two daily markets nearby! Anyway I digress... once a month they use the parking lot of the venue for a collectible flea market. It's a mixture of typical flea markety type stuff with some good mid century collectibles mixed in. On top of that it's small. I thought it might be a perfect no-stress, low attention span collectorating event we could enjoy together. He likes shopping, but just in bursts, not all day affairs like CollectoratorOne and I are prone to. In any case, I casually mentioned it getting no response and went on with breakfast. To my surprise after breakfast he pulled into the parking area! Score one for me! Well my winning went by the wayside fast because we walked away mostly with stuff for him. Mostly tie bars and cuff links. We found the mother lode for cheap which was exactly what he needed. I almost bought a couple of things but thought to myself do I really want to pack this.... so I resisted. What we couldn't walk away from tho was this awesome 1950 set of wall art for a little boy's room. Now I'll preface this with we do not have kids, unless you count the pets whom do not have their own room other than they seem to take over our room... But it was such an awesome set the little boy inside my adult husband had to have it for his man cave. Plus it was $5 for the set! Neat, huh? Admittedly, it's a little funny up there surrounded by pictures of Joe Strummer, Buddy Holly and David Johansen but it works somehow...