Though more predictable and conventional that Hillcrest Junk , Midtown Antique Mall is my favorite place to shop while in Little Rock. Located at the intersection of Rodney Parham and Markham, this mid-size antique mall has a hugely varied selection of vendors and merchandise — from super-swanky to your very basic booth. That’s my favorite kind of mall — I don’t like the ones where every booth is mega-expensive, with only the very BEST of antique merchandise (I like to get some grit under my fingernails while shopping!), but I do like to peruse those types of booths every now and then…so the best of both worlds can be found in malls like Midtown.

The booth rental is really reasonable in this mall (I was considering having my booth in LR instead of Fayetteville), but because of that, they have a waiting list a mile long. Still, if I were in the market for a booth in Little Rock, this would DEFINITELY be my first choice — it’s busy every time I go in there and the staff could NOT be nicer.

The prices are so great here that most of my Arkansas vintage purchases came from Midtown — I’ll show you those in the next couple of days!

Okay, so I told you about Odana Antiques in Madison. One of my favorite booths there has an amazing selection of children’s books from the 30s and 40s. I have to decide how much I’m going to spend before I even enter the booth or else I’ll end up spending waaaaay too much money.

My plan is to frame them for the booth, but the problem is that they’re really too big for any of the frames that I have on hand currently — they’re odd sizes, like 18 inches by 18 inches. (That’s why I took photos of them instead of scanning, which would have been a better way to show you the amazing detail.)  So I’m trying to figure out a way I can maybe use a combination of fabric, ribbon, and sewing stitches to somehow create a banner to hang in a baby’s room. The illustrations are just too cute not to display in some way.

This is from a book of nursery rhymes, illustrated by my new favorite children’s book  illustrator, Ruth Newton. Each of these is cutest than the next.

This is another one by Ruth Newton called “Let’s Play Train.”

So I got all of these books plus two sets of paper dolls for around $70. If I can figure out how to frame/display them, they’ll be worth every penny. Heck, just looking at them makes me smile, so I figure I got more than my money’s worth already.

So, the husband and I are back from a lovely 3-day stay at Sundara Inn and Spa in the Wisconsin Dells to celebrate our second wedding anniversary. (To whoever had two years in the betting pool on how long the marriage would last: sorry!) This is our third time staying there and I highly recommend it. We stay in the villas, which have a full kitchen, so even though it’s a bit more expensive than staying in the main building, we save money by bringing our own food and eating in. I have to say, I love the Dells. There’s something so delightfully kitschy about the area, and I love that you can clearly see the line between the old Dells, with all of its fifties, neon charm, and the new Dells, with all of it’s corporate overkill. (Predictably, I prefer the old Dells.) I also love the kind of wistful nostalgia the place has in the off-season. There’s something winsome but lonely about deserted roller coasters. We still haven’t seen it in the summertime, but I can imagine we wouldn’t like it as much.

Because my husband is so incredibly awesome and allows me to do things that are appealing only to me, even though it’s his anniversary too, I did some thrift/antique shopping in the Dells area and also in Madison, where we spent Friday. Also LOVE Madison. I’m jealous of people that went to college there. It seems like the quintessential college town. I’m working on my photos from some of the stuff that I came back with, but in the meantime, allow me to tell you about the best antique mall in the entire world: Odana Antiques .

Seriously: I go to every antique mall in every town I’ve ever been in, and this mall wins hands down. You know how even a good antique mall will have two or three booths that are just awful? This one has nothing but the best booths I’ve ever come across.  There’s such a huge variety of styles, periods, and items, but I love every single thing I see in here. And the prices are really, really good.

I asked if I could take some photos, because a friend is looking for a cabinet and I found a few that were priced so well (specifically, that hoosier cabinet in the first set of photos — that’s only $295! It’s huge! And the colors are adorable). The prices are pretty good across the board — especially when compared to Chicago prices. Like, so good that I might take a quick trip to Madison just to shop here if I was looking for something specific.

I almost got that mirror in the first photo of the second set — it’s an old department store mirror, 2-sided, and has a nice size and heft to it. Only $65! I think it would be adorable sitting on top of a dresser but as I couldn’t figure out how to use it in my own home, I decided to let it go.

What I love so much about this mall is that every square inch — and it is a BIG mall (I kept getting lost) — is beautifully staged and marketed. Every corner and every wall is just lovely. There is no wasted space. I am assuming that they are very choosy about their vendors, and only take people who have proven track records. To sum up: get to 6201 Odana in Madison. Some fabulous Christmas present options await!

I got this vase at a yard sale for $5. It’s big, about two feet tall, and heavy. I was simultaneously repulsed and attracted to it. The colors are kind of muddy, earth tones, pretty far away from my usual palette.The flower (lotus?) is wrapped around it in a kind of creepy way, like it’s strangling the neck or something! But maybe that’s just my active imagination.

I wish I could find out something about it. I mean, it looks old, but it kind of looks faux old, roughed up for effect. The bottom is stamped Terraline and I can’t find much info about it. I found something about a Terraline pottery studio in the late 1800s but nothing recent. I would be very surprised to find out it’s that old. It’s in pretty good shape for being over 100 years old!

I still can’t figure out why I was compelled to buy it. I have it kind of stuck in one of my glass-fronted shelves in the living room, where it looks out of place…I’d probably put it in the booth if I could figure out how to price it!

One more example of how I end up with so much CRAP.

I have summers off. Which is AWESOME. Seriously, why aren’t we all public school employees? (Oh, wait, I’m remembering our last staff meeting and all the bureaucratic crap involved with working for a big school district. Never mind.) This summer I got into the habit of hitting  thrift stores on a regular basis. Like, every day. And, if I’m being honest, which is necessary when you’re admitting that you have a problem, there were a few times that I hit one thrift store TWICE in one day. And I realized that to get the really good stuff, you have to be that vigilant and regular. Here’s something I found when I was making regular rounds to the Salvation Army in my neighborhood:

But that’s my sickness, and there’s only so much therapy and drugs can do. There are people who actually bribe Sally employees to save the good stuff in the back for them, and there are people who show up hours early and knock on doors for yard sales, and there are people who use the Internet to find out the phone numbers of people having sales the next morning and call to see if they can show up days before — and I’m never going to be those people. I’ll sit in my car and wait ten minutes if I show up early to a sale, even if it looks like they’re ready for business. I’m just never going to have that killer instinct, even if I manage to make a business with this! And I’m okay with that. Regrets, I can live with. Rudeness, I cannot.

Clearly, the only solution is to visit my favorite thrift stores twice a day, five days a week. I can take weekends off, right?

So. Does the world really need another blog? I spend hours surfing on the Internet and find so many outrageously creative, inspired, well-written blogs that cover all of the things that I’m so very interested in and for a while I thought the answer was a resounding “no.”

But then I got interested in photography, and started moving towards my thrift store/yard sales/estate sale finds becoming more of a business than a hobby, and I realized I wanted a place to keep track of it all as well as share it with family and friends. And, frankly, I think I was freaking some of my friends on Facebook out by posting my yard sale finds every weekend (frequent wall messages included “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU DO WITH ALL OF THIS STUFF?”) so, I thought, I’ll keep all my obsessions in one place, and share it with like-minded people.

That means you. Thanks for reading.

Here’s a little about me: I live in Chicago but am originally from the south (Arkansas, to be exact). I miss both the people and climate of the south but I love the opportunities and culture of the city. I’m a guidance counselor at an inner-city school and, on a daily basis, feel overwhelmed, sad, humbled, and thrilled about the students I have the privilege of working with. I have been obsessed with old stuff since I was a child and my mom and dad took me yard saling with them. I’m currently on a few waiting lists for antique malls in Arkansas (the ones in Chicago are simply too expensive — upwards of $300 a month!) and hope to partner with my sister-in-law and mom in that venture.

Remember the tax stimulus rebate we got a few years back? I used that along with some other money I had saved to buy a Nikon D80 and am still struggling to learn to use it. Just this past summer I learned to shoot on a manual setting, so I have made SOME progress!

Check back for reports on my constant and all-consuming vintage shopping. And, hey, thanks for being interested in yet one more blog.