First Monday Trade Days

I found out about this craft/trade fair called First Monday a few weeks ago. It's been going on since the 1850s and is apparently quite famous.  They had everything there. Homemade salsas, soups, and dips, fine linens imported from China, jewelry, pet paraphernalia, antiques, and my favorite...people's attic junk that they hauled in hoping to make a few bucks.

Right before leaving, I happened to see on the website that pets were allowed.  Layla hates crowds.  She gets very nervous and shaky so we don't bother taking her on outings like that.  Skip is the opposite.  He loves anyone who will give him attention.  As lazy as he is, if you get him out of the house and walk him around with lots of people, he summons the energy to go for hours.  So we decided to give Layla a chew bone and throw Skip in the car.

There was an amazing amount of girly merchandise. 

I can't decide if I'd really want to meet the person who would put their child in this.

They're...so...shiny...

My sister would looooove this.

O God, I'm not going in there.

This was just awesome.  I will buy this if I ever have a girl.

And then there was the super-country merchandise...

Yeehaw! Go get it, cowboy!

This is actually quite clever, and a great way to recycle those old wagon wheels and wine barrels.

Poor cows...

This was hilarious.  They were only $5. I wanted to send one to my mom.

I'm pretty sure there's something very wrong with this..."Let's see... where could I find some classy home decor to show folks that I love me some Longhorns and Jesus?"

There was a little section of wine merch.  I wanted to buy all of it.

This would have to be a little more figure-flattering but I like the idea.

I want to make one of these for myself.  It's a bottle rack made from dismantled barrels.  I just need to find a place where I can buy old barrels...

Here they made a table and chairs from the barrels.  So cute!

There was one awesome stand that had lots of antique medical equipment.  If this bottle hadn't been $55, I would have taken it home and made it my new Southern Comfort decanter.

Skip had a blast.  There were lots of dogs at the park but most were either being carried like purses or wheeled around in carts.  Let the damn animals walk! They're animals! They evolved to use their own four legs to move from place to place without assistance!  I think Josh and I were actually more worried about Skip's safety than he was.  Some of the pavilions were very crowded and it would have been very easy to step on a little turd like Skip but he was loving it.  Every kid we passed had to run up and pet him (Dangerous as a general rule.  I trust Skip completely to be calm and loving around all strangers but I'm amazed at how many parents don't teach their kids to be more careful around strange dogs.).

Pet me!

Now we've come to the category of merchandise I'd like to call WTF.  Lots of people obviously came with a bunch of junk they found in their attics or garages and decided to see if the could sell it.  Some of it I would consider antique and cool but some was just, well, WTF.

Here we have a nice collection of clown art.  But wait, what's that on the right?

Oh God! It's a malnourished, crying, nearly naked, clown child wearing a crucifix. Quite disturbing. 

Eel skin, anyone?

Angry black man says to get off his lawn!

Finally! I've been looking for just such a collection of lecture hall seating!  I can still smell the farts of 30 years of bored students!

Ahh, and here we have some..Native American mannequins?

Oh, and one with a deer head.  How nice!

This is EXACTLY the sort of place I want to buy undergarments.

This was just funny.

Someone selling "Graps".  One of my biggest pet peeves is misspellings and I swear, nobody at this place could spell to save their lives.

Oh, and here we have a tiger!  No stripes on said tiger but he was strapped in there pretty well.  You'd think the guy was afraid he'd jump out.

Then there was just some random cool stuff we saw in between all the craziness.

This is so me.  Furniture AND dogs?!  I'm in love.

Other than this butcher block island having crappy drawer slides, it was gorgeous and I want one.  I don't have a place to put it but...silly details.

Skip taking a nice rest while I grabbed some lunch.

Mmm! Gumbo.

Josh's mom loves Coca Cola anything.  She would have died over this cute table and chairs.

We bought some of this dip mix from Canaan Farms.  You just add the spice bag to some sour cream and some mayo and voila!  Instant dip.  It was so yummy.

I couldn't go to a fair and not have a funnel cake, so we got one on our way out.  Skip plopped down in the hard gravel while we waited for it so we knew he was just about out of gas.

Yup, poor little guy passed out as soon as we got in the car.  

We're totally going back to this First Monday thing whenever we get the chance.  It was so fun to people watch and see the cool things they can come up with.  It got us and Skip off the couch too so that was a plus.