Out and About on Beautiful Fall Day

Yesterday was one of those gorgeous Fall days that I LOVE.  The kind of day that puts a spring in my step and makes me SO happy.  It was int her 40's in the morning, but warmed up to the 70's by mid day.  Cool enough for a light hoodie, warm enough for Capri jeans.  PERFECT.

We loaded up about 9:00 and headed towards the War Eagle Craft Fair.  We drove for miles down winding narrow roads with the leaves drifting down.  Oh, it was just lovely.  The leaves are just starting to turn - mostly the Maples are starting to have shocks of bright red deep within the leaves near the trunks.  I just love this time of year.  

The War Eagle Craft Fair is on one side of the bridge, the Sharp Show is on the other side.  One side is fine arts and crafts and is jurried, so only the very best all handmade things are on that side.  That is a nice side to look.  The other side has handmade and some JUNK.  That is my favorite side.  :)  We parked and waited in line to cross the bridge on foot.

When they say "GO", you GO!  You can't stop and take photos so everyone just snaps away and hopes the get a good one in the end.  

Headed towards the Mill.

Wonder how that guy ahead of me would feel knowing he was on my blog.  

The Mill was built in 1832 and has been a working Mill ever since.  You can still buy flour in sweetly printed floursacks, biscuit mix and jellies of all sorts.  They have a huge variety of enamelware that I adore. Red splattered, blue splattered, green, yellow, blue - you name it.  We did go in to the ground floor this visit, but it was really, really packed and I get very claustrophobic in places like that, so I had to get out of Dodge. We prefer to go out there when it is NOT craft fair time when we have the whole place to ourselves. 

This was at the Sharp Show way in the back by the Chainsaw artists.  You could just see a very small portion of the craft tents and people, but you can see that it is BIG.  There is something like 650 Vendors.  I love to look at what people are selling and making and what sort of displays the are using.  I got a lot of good ideas and I was tapping them out into my phone so I could remember them.  I want to do more shows, but I could NEVER do a show like this one - From set up to tear down it is six days with a four day show.  Nuh-Uh.  Not going to happen.  

After we saw everything on that side, we got back in line to cross the bridge again.  

By this time, we were ready for lunch.  There is every kind of food vendor there you can imagine including a Salad Hut and waffle cones.  A lot of it looked good, but this frugal Mom had a bag packed with PB&J, cheese, celery, chips and water.  I just seem to enjoy an outing like this more if I pack food and don't get all hung up in what to get and how much money is it going to cost.

We sat by the water and enjoyed the cool breeze and all the people running down to the water's edge to take photos of the ducks.  People are so funny now that everyone always has a camera at the ready.

You can't take photos of the crafts or the displays, so that is the end of my photo from there.  We went through all the tents and saw all the beautiful handmade goods - fine art, pottery, jewelry, etc.  Lots of pretty wonderful things.  

And then we were done.

But, then my kind of fun started - JUNKING!

All along the roads up and down the highway and in every yard, there is JUNK strewn about.  You can see from the car if it is crafty stuff, yard sale stuff or more swap meet stuff.  I prefer the more swap meet kind of stuff.  We stopped at one place where there were about seven different people set up with stuff.  I didn't get a lot, but I did find a few fun things.  

I thought this little JAPAN snowman was sweet.  He still has the 10¢ original price on the bottom.  It wasn't until I put this on Instagram that I see he looks a little demented and kind of like a vampire.  With a SHOVEL! *Cue the slasher music!*

 I dug these little china babies out of a big bin of salt and pepper shakers.  They aren't SP shakers, so I don't know why they were in there.  But, since they were $1.00 a pair, I'm glad they were.  Love me some babies. 

Cute little girl planter for 50¢.

Baby chicks from the S&P bin - again, not S&P's.  But adorable.

The rest of the things I actually got at the Craft Fair.  

Three little red wooden handmade cars for $1.00 each.  I'm going to tie bottle brush trees on them and take them to the Bazaar/Booth.

A sweet old chocolate box.

Filled with a vintage ten pin game.

It was a wonderful day filled with fall leaves, cool temperatures, good company, PB&J's, crafts and JUNK.  What more could I possible ask for other than spotting Justin Timberlake in the crowd?  :D