St. Patrick's Day

A good day today...... my friend/neighbor V and I went into Alvin (home of baseball great Nolan Ryan) to look around the antique and resale shops there. Alvin is a very old, quaint little town with lots of interesting shops. I don't know which are more quaint--the shops or the people who own them.

I truly enjoy V's company.... she reminds me of Frankie in so many ways. (This V isn't my next-door neighbor V.... this is V from around the corner.) She also loves antiques and her home is chock-full of them, just like ours is. She sometimes goes to the shops with her husband S, but most of the time S waits in the car for her. He enjoys the rides to the little towns, but doesn't enjoy the shopping all that much. She and I went to three antique shops, the third one being the largest--- an old supermarket that was converted to an antique co-op. That third one is owned by one of our friend J's customers, and he remembered me from J's shop, so he gave us some nice discounts on the things we found.

The things we found..... most of them, we had to leave there in the shops. Not enough room at the inn, is what we kept saying. Neither of us have any more floor space for furniture--- well, we actually do, but our houses would look ridiculously crowded. So we just oohed and aahed over all the pretty furniture from the 1940s, then walked on by and told each other how much money we were saving.

Both of us found some small items.... V bought two sets of glasses--- one for every day, and one to put away for the holidays. She also found an vintage jewelry box, made of patterned glass. I bought two dinner plates that I can use with our set of green Myott china, and I also found a beautiful Homer Laughlin serving bowl that was just too pretty to resist. I found lots of glasses, which I didn't buy, and lots of beautiful teacups which I also didn't buy.

One thing I did buy--- a very pretty porcelain flower basket with two white doves sitting on the edge of the basket. It's fairly large, about 18" or 20" in diameter, and the entire thing is made of porcelain. It's on the front porch now, looking very pretty in the corner underneath the stained glass window. I'll fill it up with Easter grass and those plastic eggs. Come to think of it, I can decorate it for different holidays, or fill it with a pot of pretty flowers for the summer. Only $15 for that sweet thing, so I couldn't resist that either.


The best news of the day---- C's mom called this evening, to tell us that she and C were back from Vegas. Both L and C hated, hated, hated Vegas... a nice place to visit for a couple of days, but neither of them want to live there. L investigated the school districts, and didn't find one that she wanted for her daughter. They looked at houses every day they were there... too small, too expensive, too everything but what they wanted. (They couldn't afford the few that they would've have settled on..... so expensive out there, I swear.)

When they got back home here, L called their realtor and took their house off the market. Her husband is now re-thinking the Vegas job.... and, wonder of wonders, his old job called him and made him an offer that L doesn't want him to refuse. It would mean working in Louisiana again, but that's where he worked before, and that's only a three-hour's drive away. So now he's thinking about that, and weighing it against the Vegas job.

My husband and I are keeping our fingers crossed, and hoping that they decide that Vegas just isn't the place for them. Honestly, we know that they could move at any time, but please heaven, not to a place like Vegas. Not for C.... we just knew that wasn't the place for her, and we never said a word to her parents.... but I'm so happy that they found that out for themselves.