Fun Little Road Trip!

I finally felt almost back to normal when I woke up this morning, so I decided to search for some estate sales to visit. I didn't find any, but that didn't keep me at home! I decided to take a trip to Lansing to visit a few of my favorite places.

I went to April's Antiques, Mega Mall, Lamb's Gate and The Little Red School House. I also stopped at Hobby Lobby-my new favorite place on the planet!! It was snowing, but nothing was sticking-so driving wasn't bad at all.

At April's I found a set of 3 (that was supposed to be 4) Vintage Fiesta plates in the original red/orange color. There was a really nice guy there, named Jeff who looked also, but couldn't find the 4th plate, so he brought up a stack of vintage Fiesta plates in other colors, and let me pick one from the stack to make the 4th. So, I ended up with 3 red and 1 gray. My first gray Fiesta anything. I'm not sure I like it enough to keep it. It might end up in the booth someday.

The next stop was Mega Mall, where I got a couple of insulators (dirt cheap), and an old metal soap flake pitcher (also really cheap!). It was a really hoppin' place today! The parking lot was packed and shoppers were all over! I was not impressed with the guy that rang up my order. He was so busy talking to a woman on the side, that another worker (who was already ringing someone else up), had to get him to wait on me. The whole time he was ringing my stuff up, he was having a personal conversation with the woman!

How RUDE! I've never had such poor service there before. Usually, the workers are over the top helpful, and professional. I hope this was a one time incident, because I like the Mega Mall, a lot, but if that is going to become the normal-I'll go to 90 other places before I'll go back there again. That's how important "customer service" is to me-even just the tiny little courtesy of their full attention when ringing my stuff up means the difference between shopping at one place over another to me.

I only bought 3 little things, so the few short minutes it took to ring my stuff up, take my money and say good-bye, would not have killed either one of them to have stopped their private conversation. Ok-off my soap box...for now. I get cranked up over stuff like this. I've worked in retail, and I guess I am of a dying breed that still thinks the customer comes first. I know things like this don't matter to most people, but if I was that guy's boss, I'd make sure he never did it to another customer again, or he wouldn't be working for me anymore.

After Mega Mall, I went to the Lamb's Gate (in Grand Ledge-just outside Lansing).  I LOVE shopping there! I always find something, and the staff is wonderful! I picked up a vintage red Fiesta teacup and saucer-today seems to have been the day for vintage red Fiesta!

After Lamb's Gate, I was headed to the Little Red School House, but got side-tracked when I saw a Hobby Lobby. I'm kind of glad we don't have one close to us-because I'd be in some serious trouble! I think Hobby Lobby is to me, as Home Depot is to Kevin! LOL!

I did finally make it to the Little Red School House, and I was thrilled that they were open until 8pm (since it was almost 5:00 when I got there!). All of the booths were full, and a lot of dealers were having sales so it was a fun treasure hunt! I picked up a very kitschy set of flamingo salt & pepper shakers, a shiny silver garland (for my mantle shelf next year) and a yellow Pyrex fridgie.

I texted my friend Auntie about the garland because I thought she might want me to pick one up for her, and I waited for a few minutes in the parking lot because I was sure she'd want one, but after a few minutes, and no reply,  I decided to head for home.

Driving was going just fine until I got about 13 miles from my exit. Everything came to a quick stop, and emergency vehicles flew past. Traffic kept inching along, and eventually I came up to a pretty bad accident with vehicles in the median flipped over! I was only about a half mile to a mile behind them! Had I not waited those extra couple of minutes...I could have been in that!! Thank you Lord!

When I got home, the snow here had stuck and after about a dozen tries to get up the hill in my driveway to the garage...my car is spending the night outside. I couldn't get the snow blower started, and the shovel from the garage is misplaced (where ever one of the guys left it last), and the ice melt stuff isn't working! Not such a great ending to what was a pretty awesome day (except the irritating few minutes at Mega Mall-but I'm over that now!)

Here is a snap of what I got today...

 I've got some old decals...I think I'll put one on the soap flake pitcher. There was another one there I almost bought, but someone painted it with a granite-type texture paint--totally ruined it! On the bottom, you could see the original color was pink---sigh!

 I can't wait to throw in some old ornaments and see what it looks like!

I bought this stuff at Hobby Lobby...going to try a craft project I found on Pinterest. I just hope it turns out better than the Christmas tree shaped thing made out of fruit that I tried for our family Christmas get-together! The fruit ended up tossed into a bowl, and Eric took his chocolate fountain-nobody even knew that  2 hours before the party, I was pulling my hair out trying to make it turn into a cute little Christmas tree! If this one turns out, I'll show you, if not...you'll never hear of it again! ;)


Here's a quick drive-by shot of a house in Grand Ledge with a bazillion blow molds out front! I tried to get a good shot of it for you Shara-but I missed a good dozen or more! Thought you could use a smile! ;)