Antiquing in Allen, Michigan...

Whew! What a whirlwind day today was! Three of my friends from work (Debbie, Pam and Chicken's Auntie) and I set out on an antiquing adventure to Allen, Michigan. With road construction, it took us about 2 hours to get there, and once we were there, boy did the time go by fast!!

Allen is known to be the "Antiques Capital" of Michigan. I read in an article posted on the wall of one of the shops that 20% of the town's revenue comes from antique sales!

We started at the Allen Antique Barn-2 floors and 300 dealers! Wow! What fun! It was HUGE! They had really decent prices on their items too-what a pleasant surprise!

Our next stop (barely needed to drive it was that close!) was Capital Antiques-another great shop that was wayyy bigger than it looked!

When we finished at Capital, lunch was long overdue-so we walked next door to Outpost Grill & Restaurant.

 I got chicken strips and fries-the cole slaw was homemade and very good!

Pam got the Grizzly burger...mmmm...it looked great!

Debbie and Chicken's Auntie got soup and salad and we all split an order of onion rings.

Neat little displays in the restaurant.

Then we just walked from shop to shop. There were 5 shops in all-the smallest one was probably about 1500 square feet the rest were four to five times that size. We passed another 6 or so shops on the way in and the way back home, but we ran out of time and had to just drive past and hope for another adventure to check them out.

 We shopped til we dropped today-what fun! It was kind of bittersweet, because Debbie is moving to Atlanta in a couple of weeks to be closer to her daughters and sons in law and precious grand daughter. While I'm really happy for her and her husband to be hear their family, I will really miss her!! She is such a sweet, caring friend who is always encouraging and supportive. Her job now, is to find some good shops in Atlanta and plan out a trip for us down there!

We all got some neat treasures today. We had lots of laughs and good times! I'll add some pictures tomorrow of what I got-I'm too tired to take them and post them right now because after a full day of driving and antiquing, I ended up playing a double header volleyball match tonight (2 1/2 hours) and I am T I R E D!!

This was definitely a prince of a day - I would highly recommend that if you have the time, take the trip to Allen-you won't be disappointed!

This is what I bought...

 2 small yellow Pyrex refrigerator dishes with lids in mint condition, a large yellow Pyrex refrigerator dish with lid in excellent condition, a green Pyrex bowl, a clear glass Pyrex cake pan and a clear glass refrigerator dish with a lid in mint condition (I've already washed and used it!)

Using the new cake pan-lemon cake-YUM!

Isn't that awesome to be able to see the cake through the sides??