Antiques and Collectibles... and Abe Lincoln

The Antiques and Collectibles Show at Puyallup last weekend did not disappoint.

It was overwhelming. Over 400 booths is a lot to go through!

Thankfully Sara and I have enough "experience" going antiquing and thrifting that we are able to tell which booths might have something we're interested in and which ones most likely won't. It makes it a bit easier to get through them all.

I was mostly interested in boxes/crates and kitchen items.

Of course we saw a lot of crazy things mixed in with the neat and awesome things. Some booths had more crazy than awesome. I forgot my camera (I was in a hurry that morning!) so I wasn't able to get photos of any of the things that make us giggle/shudder. Liz was great at spotting the weird and has a few photos of the highlights with her take on the outing.

The most crazy thing we saw was Abe Lincoln. I first spotted him when we were in line buying tickets. A couple was having their pictures taken with what I thought was a statue of Abraham Lincoln--except the statue blinked. And then moved. Turns out that there was a group of Civil War reenactment participants taking part in the show, along with an Abe Lincoln look-alike. They had an area in the middle of a bunch of antique booths where people could come talk to them, learn about different events, take a look at some of their gear (like guns and uniforms), and of course meet the President. My favorite part was when they would take walks around the show... the soldiers escorting the President and announcing "make way for the President!" It was serious stuff.

We got to the show around 1030am and stayed until almost 3pm. We were exhausted and ready for a pick-me-up. I came away with a nice wood crate for $5 and Sara found a planter and a lantern, both of which will be great on their patio!



We went to lunch at this nice bagel and crepe place in downtown Puyallup that was quite yummy. (The crepes are huge! And the people were really nice. I still like the crepes from the place in Kingston better, though.)

After lunch Liz went on her way and Sara and I needed to make a quick trip back into the show. Of course, our quick trip turned into an excuse to re-visit a few of the booths since the crowd had thinned out a bit. It was really nice to take another look at some of the booths we went through earlier in the day so we could see them with fresh eyes and without being quite as overwhelmed.



I ended up finding a white glass mixing bowl (that matches another bowl I found at Goodwill a few weeks ago--on the right in the photo above)...

My GW bowl is a bit smaller and has a pour spout:



My new mixing bowl has two cute mini handles on either side:



You can see that they both have "bands" going around them. The small bowl has thinner ones just at the top and the mixing bowl has large bands on the whole thing.

I also found an awesome tea strainer.



Sara picked up a couple of black wrought-iron-ish chairs for their patio area that she plans to spruce up a bit with new padding and fabric for the seat.

On my last Goodwill trip I picked up this old 7-Up bottle opener...



I hadn't seen that style before at all... but of course at the Antiques show I started seeing them everywhere. The cheapest one I saw was around $3 and the most expensive one I found was $18 (it was Coca-Cola). I have no idea how much my 7-Up bottle opener is worth, but I figure it's an awesome find at 69 cents--especially since I had even less of a clue when I found it!

I had such a great time at the show with Sara and Liz! Hopefully we didn't scare Liz off of "antiquing" too much... I know where there are more shops in Puyallup and Sumner! :)