Laugh Out Loud

I stopped to buy milk the other day at the Big G grocery store over in Marengo, Iowa. I like these small town groceries, and I laughed out loud at this sign. LOL!

Picking the Pickers

So we made a stop on the way to Chicago at LeClaire Iowa to visit the Pickers. I've blogged about them before. I'm a fan of the TV show American Pickers, and DD hadn't visited the Antique Archeology store before so here we are on a rainy Friday morning!

 The new building-which you probably heard about on the show-looks great! It's a lot bigger than the old building. There are a lot more room in the new building. And they replaced the old hillside rocks with big blocks allowing a little bit more parking.

 Plus almost all of the old stuff is for sale. We liked the lamp made with electric insulators for shades here. It was for sale, for something like $245, I think. But you could always buy a souvenir!

 I remember the episode when Frank & Mike Picked this bike in a wood frame.

 Then we stepped over to the old building and had a lookie loo over there.  Most of the old stuff in the old building is not for sale.

But you can sure buy souvenirs!
Did I mention that it was FABRIGANZA next door at Expressions In Threads, and I DROVE ON BY!!!!!

Chicago SIghtseeing

So we knew we wanted to go see "the Bean" at millennium Park in downtown Chicago. We parked in a crazy expensive parking garage-$27 for about 2 hours-and walked out to the park. 

 There are a couple of big wall type of fountains and they change colors and make pictures by some electronic magic as you watch them-pretty cool! Then there's the "big green space" which is where they often have concerts and events. It has this overhead decorative art work covering the whole area. Pretty cool.

 Then just a few steps away is The bean. It's an artwork made of polished stainless steel and was crazy busy with tourists!

 I'm not very good with the selfie business....

 It was pretty funny, we must be pretty polite folks, because it was almost impossible to not walk in front of someone who was taking a photo! We were dodging cameras everywhere! Look though, see we are reflected in the bean! Cool huh!?

 The tall buildings are always fun to see. SO we walked on down to Michigan ave and all the big stores.

 One thing we noticed right away about Chicago-there are security people, event security, park security, store security, traffic security, everywhere you go security!

 Look at those big iron posts holding up the railway line. YES! We drove under the rail line for a long time. It's kind of an eerie feeling and loud when the train goes overhead!

 We went into the Lane Bryant store across the street-they had a security guy there too-it was a nice store but not any larger selection of stuff, just a lot larger space.

 Look at those cool old pillars in the Macy's store-at the other end they had chandeliers! Of course my camera is dying by now...as usual, will I never learn!!!Get an extra phone battery! So then we headed out to Naperville to rest our tired feet at the Hilton Hotel there. Thank you Priceline-name-your-own-price. $67 bucks got us on the 8th floor at the Hilton in Lisle/Naperville.

 Nice room, comfy bed-pillows were feather pillows, but kind of flat, but that's the only thing I could even begin to complain about. Look at the cute coffee station outside the bathroom. I think that's a really nice touch, so many hotels have the coffeemaker on the desk or in the bathroom-YUCK! And I don't even drink coffee!!

 But I have to point out that if you choose to drink that bottle of Evian water there on the bottom shelf, it's gonna cost you $3.25.

 Nice bathroom! I really loved those heavy glass doors! The shower head had a massaging feature too-ahhhhh, so relaxing!

 The hotel was booked to capacity with many weddings and lots of tourists and at least one girl's lacrosse team, but it was still quiet and peaceful. SO the next morning is our big day to hit Antiques Roadshow. We planned to park at McCormick place-only $21 to park for the whole day-and grab a bus or train to go do some more sight seeing.

 We walked along lake Michigan, dodged a few geese and a couple of seagulls.

 HI Honey! There were big yachts and little fishing boats, very fun to see.

We hiked along for quite a ways, and turned in to the museum area and along the outside of Soldier Field, thinking we'd find a bus stop or a train stop, but even though we followed the signs, we missed out on the fun of public transportation. Also a big college football event near Soldier field. Lots of tourists and lots of traffic! Before we knew it, the time was gone and we had to hot foot it back to the McCormick center for Antiques Roadshow....oh boy, we are going to be late so we flag down a taxi. Smart girls that we are! Too bad our taxi driver doesn't get that we need to be at the lakeside area of McCormick Place and tries to drop us in another place, we kept telling him to go to parking lot C but he must have been sign illiterate...anyways, $15 in taxi fair later we are where we need to be! I felt just like those folks on The Amazing Race TV show when their taxi driver gets them lost!!

Antiques Roadshow

So I'll just post this real quick. We had fun at Antiques Roadshow. This time we DID have to stand in a couple of LONG LINES . The event was organized pretty much the same as the last time we went in Madison, WI. When you approach the area for appraisals you get a ticket to go to that area of expertise. 

SO for the belt buckle that once belonged to Hub's Dad, we were sent to the Tribal  Art table which included western art...sounds wacky but that was it. So we only had two people in line ahead of us, and we spoke with a knowledgeable fella, he punched our ticket and told us that this buckle was a trophy buckle and they are collectible and he'd never seen one with short horns like this, so it may be slightly more valuable, he estimated it tat $200 to possibly up to $500.   COOL!

So we go on to the next place the
one for the civil war journal and tintype photo. That was at the Arms & Militaria table. Again we only had a couple of people ahead of us! I was pretty thrilled to have Rafael Eledge appraise our items! We always like his spots on the show. Anyways he looked through the journal and I told him the dates there and the discharge paper that we had. He said the journal was in pretty bad shape, but was interesting listing folks who died or where discharged and he said he would value it at about $200.  I asked if he had a guess about what some of the figuers in the book were and he said he guessed poker or card game winnings, since the date on the journal was March 17,1863 and he was discharged on March 27,1863.  We speculate that this journal was helping him pass the time in the hospital. Mr. Eledge also valued the tintype picture at around $200 also. He said it was not an original photo, but was printed on the tin from another original, Like the original in the gold frame we had.  He said  that's why you can see the nail on the top left edge of the picture-the photographer took a picture of a picture nailed to the wall! So we moved on to our next item the lamp.

The line for Decorative arts was pretty long.
We waited a little over an hour in line there. The time goes pretty fast if you chat with the folks you are in line with. We met a lot of very nice people, with everything from a door knob possibly from the Chicago Board of Trade, a lady with a diamond ring from the 1800's, a guy with a collection of police billy clubs-learned a lot about those things! and just so many interesting things that I'd never seen before. DD and I chuckled to our selves sometimes when we'd see some one walk by with an item we'd seen before somewhere and appraise it our selves! Anyway we fianlly got our turn and our appraiser was Wes Cowen! WOW! I was pretty thrilled, we love him on History Dectectives as well as the Roadshow. DD plunked the lamp on the table and told him this was the ugliest lamp in the world, he said oh no it's not the ugliest, there are plenty that are uglier that his one! Perhaps a lighthouse collector could be interested in this one and he wondered if the globe was original-probably not-and he said well, $25 would be a fair price for the lamp. We had such fun with that appraisal! 

So we only had my stick left to get appraised.

We headed over to the Collectables line.....OH MY!!!!!!!

Yes this line was HUGE!

 We got inline and chatted a little bit, but I think everyone was kind of tired of talking about their stuff by then, we were sure wore out since we had hiked all over the Soldier Field/lakefront/museum section of Chicago. 

 

It was 3 o'clock, we had been inside the McCormick Center since 11:30am. I looked at DD and said, so what do you think? We waited about and hour, and the line moved a little bit, not fast at all, I told DD I'm Ok with what we got done, I'm OK with what a lady standing in line told me about my stick. She has an Antique shop in Michigan, and she told me that my stick was actually a measuring stick that a person would use to measure how much fuel was in a gas tank. I told her, that I had worked in a convenience store and they fuel guys still used a long stick to measure how much was in the underground tanks then, a lot longer stick but, the same idea. Anyways, I still don't know how much the stick is worth, but I like it and I guess it's good enough to know what it is, at least what it might be!LOL!

As we were leaving we stopped by the table for Liberty Mutual and won a couple of prizes-a T shirt and a to go drinking mug! Hey it was a great day, and we were bushed! Time to hit the road and go home!