Cool Stuff: One Faire Day

Nick and I had a rare treat on Sunday: Both of us were able to slip out early to the Alameda Antiques & Collectibles Faire while the kids were at friends' houses after Saturday-night sleepovers. Normally only one of us gets to go (that would be me), or the whole family attends together but we can't manage to get everyone out of the house until later -- and then we have to listen to the kids whine the entire time about how we're torturing them by dragging them out to look at a bunch of "old stuff." I'm sure their future therapists will hear all about this abusive behavior someday ...

(Question for you other flea-marketing parents: How do you do it? I see kids there with their parents every month, and they don't look like they're on the brink of mutiny like our kids always do. We've even tried to bribe them with the promise of churros and a small budget to find their own treasures, or attempted to make a game out of spotting things -- but all to no avail. If you have secrets for making flea markets a reasonably enjoyable family affair, I'd love to hear them.)

Anyway, I'm happy to report that the Faire's new location isn't much different from the old location, and that the gorgeous view of SF remains intact. We didn't have an agenda this month -- I'd already blogged the Faire and there was no one thing we were on the hunt for. In fact, we came home with only one $7 ceramic dish in which to toss keys on our entry table. (Sadly, Nick would not let me take home the cement garden deer, below.) But it was so nice to just wander around hand-in-hand, checking out the wares, chatting with the vendors, and enjoying the sunshine.

I snapped some pictures of things that happened to catch my eye, and only realized later that there were a few themes at work: I seemed to be drawn to turquoise (surprise, surprise), patinaed metal and shiny silver objects, old bottles, objects from the ocean, and, um, disembodied heads.

A photographic scrapbook of the day: