Fresh Air Activity

 This morning I went to the Artisan Market on Teeples Pond. It was delightful to be outside in the fresh air strolling from booth to booth looking at interesting wares. It is on a farm surrounded by soybean fields in Milford, Indiana. This event is held once a year in September.

Our friend who is a woodworker had many items for sale.

The wooded area with a pond is beautiful. We ate a "second" breakfast around 9:30 after greeting our friend. My husband enjoyed the sausage gravy over biscuits; I had a Danish pastry. They also have a lunch menu. There is a restroom attached to the food building. 

Even if a friend or family member has little interest in shopping, there were nice places to sit and enjoy the scenery while waiting for the shopper to finish.

The sticks and brown bags of s'mores ingredients didn't have many takers this morning, but maybe later in the day people might want to snack. 

There was a nice variety of items to buy.

These thunder gourds were unlike anything I had ever seen. The gourds were nicely decorated but had a metal coil that went up into the bottom which had been replaced by drumhead material; when the coil was moved, a loud reverberation was heard.

There were metal decorations, carved birds, jewelry, tie-dyed T-shirts, ink pens turned on a lathe that I didn't take photos of. Tomorrow there will be a few vendors that were not there today. You can read about some of the vendors on the link I provided at the top of this post.

Warsaw Farmers' Market

 This morning I went to the Kosciusko County Farmers' Market in Warsaw. I was pleased to see more vendors than when I was there earlier in the summer, but still disappointed that the produce vendors were small in number. Below you can see my purchases.

We already sampled the oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips at lunch. Still waiting for us are our snickerdoodles. I plan to grate the large zucchini to freeze for baking bread in the next few months.

The pink earrings do not go as well with my wardrobe as I had anticipated; I can use them with a few items though. 

These zinnias are not drooping at all like my last batch. Relieved. 

Living with change can be hard. Of course we all are having to deal with the pandemic.

We learned this past week that our dentist has fully retired. The last we had heard he was semi-retired. The dentist that bought out his practice leaves me wanting more. We will probably have to look for a new dentist after a decade of using the same one.

We also learned that our advisor at Vanguard has abruptly left the company. We have been assigned a new advisor who hopefully will be able to look at the work done by the previous one to get up to speed. We plan to have a phone meeting sometime in the next month to become acquainted. We are pretty low maintenance having a meeting every 6 months in the past two years. We do want him to understand our priorities, however. 

The shorter hours of daylight are starting. My personal days on earth are growing shorter too. One of our neighbors died of COVID this past Sunday. Reminders that we are on the ending side and not the beginning side of our lives. 

Mandalas

 When we stopped at a Goodwill store in Ottawa, Illinois (a town near Starved Rock State Park), I bought two coloring books.

Since I have some free time the next 2 weeks before Winona Literary Club and Grace Village Choir start up again, I did a little coloring from the Mandala book.

The weather has been so pleasant currently that I sat in the sunroom looking out at my moss roses and the nearby trees and grass with my patio door partly open for fresh air. I put my new lamp from the recent estate sale to good use.

I am trying different mediums: crayons, colored pencils and markers. 

My thought is to do 3 more mandalas so that when autumn colors fade I will tape a group of 5 mandalas on my sliding glass door. I will probably only color one more next week, then do two when it gets colder and unpleasant to walk outside.

I am not really into coloring pictures. I tried a few times before especially during the pandemic shutdown. I can see that the mandalas are going to be too much alike for me to keep doing them. I will switch to the gardens book which has more variety. But only after I have met my goal to have 5 mandalas.

Neighbor's Estate Sale

 You may remember that I had neighbor who died from complications from surgery for a brain tumor this spring. She was a single lady, a retired school teacher. I had known her thru involvement in the literary club. I served election board duty with her one year, too. She volunteered for Grace Village to deliver the announcements and internal mail to the condo mailboxes for several years. More recently, I would see and greet her as I walked past her house.

Her family hired an estate sale company to clear out the belongings from her house that they did not want to keep. The sale started this morning at 11 a.m. When we came home from church we drove by and could see a fairly large crowd of people. The street was parked up with vehicles. We decided to go ahead and eat our Sunday dinner.

Around noon I walked over to the sale. I had looked at the company's website (given in the ad) and was interested in getting one of the glass paperweights shown in a picture. The site did say that they would only be allowing small groups of people to enter at a time. 

I had to sign my name on a list of people waiting to go inside. They were at number 80 when I arrived and I was at about 130 (the overflow pad was unnumbered). At 12:50 they announced that the rest of us could go inside (maybe 40 people). I didn't see the paperweights, but was happy to find some placemats and kitchen towels marked $1 each.

These two mats still had the manufacturer's sticker attached. Had never been used.

Only one of this butterfly mat but I may use it to place decorative items on.

There were two of these autumn leaves placemats. One has a slight stain which I think I can spot clean.

Two autumn towels just in time for the coming fall season. I noticed while waiting in the yard that a tree a few blocks over had already turned red. I am noting undertones of yellow in other trees.

 I bought a very nice Vera Bradley eyeglass case for $3.

The top red diagonal line trims a pocket in front of the glasses section. Perfect! My old case with a pocket was fraying and getting dingy. Now I have a new case where I can store my cough drops and clip a pen to the edge. Not sure I will use the pen much now that we are attending a different church that has no bulletin on which to make notes. Always good to have a pen handy though, and since I need the glasses for reading I carry the case in my purse.

 The potpourri jar was an impulse buy as I stood in line to pay. The line circled back through the living room. I might use it to display sea shells if I find many on our 2022 Florida winter trip. 

 Then I spied what I had really wanted: a little blue paperweight. I had totally missed it the first time through the house (or it was moved from some other location). This would make a nice lasting memento of Judy. 

Do I need this stuff? No. But they brightened my day. The towels and placemats will wear out, but the little paperweight will be around a long time.

Tomorrow the sale continues with half off of the prices. I thought most of the things were reasonably priced. I did see a little reading lamp that I might go back and seek out. My cleaning lady won't finish until 10:30 so it will probably be 10:45 or 11 before I get over there. There were some lovely furniture pieces, but I don't really have room for those. I might look through the box of needlework kits. I didn't want to pay the full price, but at half off I might find something to keep me occupied during colder days.