Why I Oughta...

Back a few weekends ago, we packed the kids up in the van and headed up to Wisconsin.  The goal for the trip?  A visit to the Elkhorn Antique Flea Market .  Started more than 30 years ago, dealers, pickers, treasure hunters and lookie-loos descend on the Walworth County Fair four times a year (May 21, June 25, August 13, September 24 this year) to wander around and look for treasures.  We've been to the Kane County Flea Market , Shipshewana in Indiana and plenty of other one-off's or season ( Christmas ) vintage markets and antique malls . And, I have to say:  I think this was by far the most comprehensive and best of the bunch.  There is so much there that we didn't see it all.  And while there's *some* junk, there's LOTS of treasures.  Deals?  Fewer to find than you'd think.  But the 'merch' as they say was high quality stuff.  And, perhaps that's why the dealers were pricing their stuff the way they were.  I mean...I'm not expecting Gara

I came across this table of mini helmets recently at an estate sale and had a fun time poking around the collection.  If you know guys born in the 60's or 70's that like old, vintage things and have an affinity for sports, they're probably nuts about gumball helmets .  My brother-in-law up in Park Ridge has a thing for gumball helmets.  Has a collection.  Has even made his own helmets, which is kinda neat.  While I can appreciate them, I'm not drawn to them - unless I see an Illini one, of course - and passed on these.  But, I did send the photo to said brother-in-law.  These don't appear to have any age to them, right?  All pretty much modern day versions? The part that jumps out to me here, though, is the four baseball caps at the bottom of the photo.  They appear to be NFL team hats like Quarterbacks wear on the sidelines.  Those are a thing now?

We saw this three-piece set at the Kane County Flea Market a few weeks back and I stopped to take a photo of it, but didn't buy.   I've used 'teh Googles' about six different ways to try to find a description of this thing, but can't, so I'm not sure what it is/who made it.  But is sure is cute. If I was a kid, I'd be all over this set and would love how the bowl, mug and plate stack up to make me a cowboy.  It feels like this thing has a proper home and hopefully someone walked by after us and discovered it and brought it home to it's proper place and home.  Someone saved it all these years and it is worth being in someone's life.  Just not *our* life right now.

Despite never getting a trophy showing off a punter during my time in Jr. High or High School or even college down at the University of Illinois, I have NOW rectified that and am the proud owner of this sweet vintage punter trophy!  I picked it up at the Kane County Flea Market during the same trip when we got these Fraggle McDonalds cars and the Chipettes glass . I had never seen a punter trophy before, so you know the old rule:  when you see something you've never come across before, you need to buy it.  So, I knew I had to have it.  Fortunately, Nat was looking at a vintage book in the same booth and after decided she wanted it, I packaged up the book and this guy.   I think the vendor figured that if she didn't sell this thing to me, she wasn't going to sell it to anyone as the buyers for a 60's era vintage punter trophy are rare, I'm guessing.  So, she gave us a great price for the book and basically threw the trophy in for nuttin'.  Pretty sweet deal

On the same trip to the Kane County Flea market where we picked up that rad Chipettes glass from Natalie's childhood , we also gave each of the girls ten bucks to buy whatever they want.  The Babe bought some dollie cloths that fit her American Girl doll, but the Bird?  She went all-in on toys.  And specifically, she dug though a few different zip lock bags of vintage fast food toys to find these three Fraggle Rock toys from McDonald's.  Turns out, after looking on the web just now, this isn't a complete set.  There was a fourth . But we do have Gobo Fraggle in the carrot car, Red Fraggle in the radish car and Wembly Fraggle along with Boober Fraggle in the cucumber car.  We're missing Mokey Fraggle who was, apparently, in an eggplant car.   Full details of the set and even more about some special Doozer cars can be found at the Muppet Wiki site . But, I have to tell you, that seeing her select these guys - amongst other things like My Little Ponies and Barbies a

A week or so ago, we went out to the Kane County Flea Market with the kids to hunt for some treasures.  We found a few including this The Chipettes vintage glass featuring Brittany, Jeanette and Eleanor that I couldn't pass on based on Nat's affinity for this bunch. This feels a bit like I'm heading down a rabbit's hole with vintage glassware and I think I'm going to have to get a bit more choosey going forward.  But, I do, like to think about having some vintage items in our everyday use instead of as decorations and the such, as is the case with most of our Christmas stuff. The idea of grabbing some of these glasses from my childhood (I'm really after the McDonald's Muppets ones that my parents had...) and getting them into regular rotation in the cupboards is a nice way to bring some 'treasures' into our everyday life.