Tea Time!

Tomorrow is the first day of July - where has the time gone?! Hope your summer is off to a great start. I am back home from my epic road trip through the mid-south and still have several sets of great pictures to share.

One of my favorite places to go when I am visiting friends and family in my hometown is just about 15 minutes away from where I grew up: LaTeaDa tearoom and gift shop in Clinton, IL. One word sums up this place: YUM! Owned by great friends of our family, this tea room is extra special; I had my bridal shower there, love their food and tea, enjoy shopping at the gift shop, and especially like that it is a small family-owned and family-run business. I try to get there each time I am home. Reservations are definitely needed as the place is packed each day for their lunches, complete with delicious soup/salad/sandwich entrees, heavenly desserts, and tasty teas. Lots of groups from all over Illinois take outings here because it is that good!

 

The old home is in pristine condition and offers the perfect setting to escape an ordinary day.

 

Ambiance is quaint and intimate and all guests are welcomed with a personalized plate!

Their lunches are delicious. I had a seafood salad on mixed greens - I love a salad that uses greens rather than boring iceberg lettuce. I also had their famed "LaTeaDa" tea, which is a special family recipe but I do know there is something citrus-y about it (only because that's how they describe it!). LaTeaDa tea is the only sweet tea I will ever drink; I love sugar in everything but my tea, yet this is the one exception! And of course I had to have one of their homemade desserts - there were about 8 specials that day and I had the carrot cake (so good!), while my mom had keylime pie and my sister had some chocolate chocolate pie. 

Upstairs, there is a gift shop that is filled with small decor items, jewelry, clothing, purses, and other unique gifts. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm so glad we had a chance to visit while I was home and I could really go for a glass of LaTeaDa tea after landscaping and scraping paint in 100 degree temps!
It was 108 yesterday in Austin, so I can only imagine what July will bring...

Have a chic week!

~Sarah

Third Sunday Market in Bloomington

What's the best way to recover from a two-day road trip? A trip to the area flea market of course! Despite not arriving to my parent's house until close to 11pm on Saturday, my mom and I got up at the crack of dawn to get some deals at the Third Sunday Market in Bloomington, IL. This event is not to be missed by anyone in Central IL who is hoping for a piece of the past without breaking the bank. For me, this show is right up there with Warrenton as far as quality of merchandise, variety of junk, and great prices are concerned. Definitely a much smaller scale, but there are at least six barns full of goodness plus lots of outside vendors too. And you can't beat the Midwest for farmhouse finds!

I have been lucky enough to be home for the 3rd Sunday Market on many trips home in recent years. Last year, I wanted to plan a trip to coincide with the show, so I checked the website and didn't see the future dates posted yet. I submitted one of those 'contact us' forms to ask when that summer's show dates would be so I could be sure to attend one, and a guy politely wrote me back with the dates of the 3rd Sunday of each month. As I read his response, I realized just how ridiculously dumb my question was. It was one of those moments when I wonder how I can hold a steady job. At any rate, in case you are wondering when the Third Sunday Market is, it is indeed the 3rd Sunday of every month from May to October. So the next one is July 21.  

The order of the pictures for this post is a bit messed up thanks to spotty internet connection in the boonies, but up first are some pictures of a vendor from the rabbit barn. (This market is held at my county fairgrounds, so we call the barns by what animals they house.) I think you will love the look of the vignettes from Mariann of Willows in Dubuque, IA. After seeing her space in the rabbit barn at 3rd Sunday, I can only imagine how gorgeous her goods are at her shop, which is in a beautiful old brick building. 

She had a patriotic theme at the front of her space and those lockers were divine!

Great idea for the 4th of July. 

Her style combined French country, primitive farmhouse, and vintage industrial.
It all blended together so well. 

Her booth was busy! I hope she had a great show.

Here are some other pictures of the fine displays from the rabbit barn:

 This was not in the rabbit barn and should have been in the sheep barn:

This sign is awesome. As a 4-H alumna who showed sheep for 10 years, I certainly love the 4-H symbol and the sheep part, but really, who wouldn't want to be a Hustler?
That term immediately makes me think of Snoop Dogg.
I was a member of the County Capri club.
Capri means 'goat' in Latin. I would rather be a hustler.

Next up was my favorite vendor. I was immediately drawn to this outdoor booth by the vibrant potted plants and bright chippy furniture and veered off my path to the cattle barn to see what this place had to offer. 

Turns out, it is the booth of two friends, one of whom has done only one show prior to this! Shout out to Melinda Hanafin Decker of the La Tea Da Tearoom in Clinton (if you haven't been yet for the chicken salad sandwiches and La Tea Da tea, you must!) and Kelsey Graber Ohnesorge (and her mom Julie Graber) of The Backyard Barn. Their space looked amazing and I spent countless minutes wandering and examining all of their extensive collection of junk. I got several things here and am really impressed with their set-up, as this is only their second or third show. Their booth was packed and it was hard to get pictures without shoppers! I also took these on my second run through their space, and lots had already sold. Hope they had a great show, and I hope they become regulars at markets around the area. 

Kelsey used these at her wedding with Mason jars and fresh flowers!

What I love about shows and shops is the opportunity to use live foliage to add color, texture, and depth to displays. It is amazing how much better junk looks with a few plants! 

Here are some other pictures of the scene at the market:

Ball jars are EVERYWHERE in the Midwest!

Wish this was coming home with me.

Or this.

It was so crowded! I enjoyed running into several people I knew while shopping. 

Hope they found as many great deals as I did!

This is the loot I got from the market:

I made out like a bandit hustler. 

Have a chic week,

~Sarah

High Fashion in Little Rock

Hello from Illinois! Happy Father's Day to my dad, who is probably the only dad who reads this blog. But if there are other fathers out there reading, happy day to you too! I am glad to be home spending some time with family, and I enjoyed our lunch of gas station pizza and grocery store cake. Do we know how to treat dad or what?!

It was a whirlwind last few days of driving here from Austin. I left Friday morning and the first place I stopped was the tire shop, where I got an already-patched tire repatched. Got on the road and spotted some lovely fields of sunflowers somewhere south of Dallas. There was a rest stop directly in front of a field, so I stopped to smell the flowers. They are huge!  

The sunflowers were camera shy.  

These flowers were a bright spot after taking a little tour through the West. West, TX is the tiny little town near Waco that was devastated by the fertilizer plant explosion just about two months ago. The streets are lined with dumpsters and every house is spraypainted with a giant X or the letters OK. Windows are boarded up, the middle school had billboard signs draped over the gym as a temporary roof, signs for roofing companies decorate the lawns, some houses were reduced to rubble, and the intermediate school was destroyed. The damage pattern didn't seem consistent - some houses appeared unharmed on the same block as some that were a total loss. Nonetheless, the entire community was affected and my heart hurts for that poor little town. 

Back on the road for about another hour when I decided the shaking in my car wasn't ok. Stopped for lunch and a tire balance. 

Big shout out to the NTB in Greenville for taking good care of my car in a short time frame! 

All that, and I wasn't even out of Texas yet! I had to get back on schedule, as I was meeting my mom in Little Rock. She flew down just to drive back with me! It worked out perfectly; she landed about 10 minutes after I got into town. We stayed across town from the airport, so we got to see some of the city on our drive. We had a nice relaxing dinner at a little Italian spot named Bruno's, where Bruno himself cooked up some great pasta dishes and made sure it was to our liking. 

The next morning, we made a stop by the Clinton Presidential Library, which was really cool. I have only been to one other presidential library (LBJ's in Austin) before this, but I want to visit as many as I can - they are filled with great exhibits and of course history. 

 

 

 

 

What a great year 1997 was - I graduated high school and went off to college.

Though I love politics and even started out as a poli sci major, I can't lie - my favorite part of the museum was viewing the Oscar de la Renta collection. This exhibit will be at the library through December and features some extravagant attire that First Ladies Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton, and Laura Bush wore to inaugurations, as well as some gorgeous dresses worn by Hollywood stars. The room was quite dark so that the exquisite fabric wouldn't be dulled by the lights. No flash photography allowed, but the phone takes some pretty great pictures in the dark! 

 

 

Sarah Jessica Parker wore the long poofy gold dress, Jennifer Garner the long slim gold gown, and Taylor Swift wore the short dress. Can't remember who wore the silver dress on the left.

From the far left, a suit worn by Laura Bush, dress and cape from Nancy Reagan, and pantsuit from Hillary Clinton. Chelsea Clinton recently wore the silver dress, and Hillary Clinton wore the velour dress for a White House Christmas picture.

I don't think anyone in this picture has been a President or First Lady.

There were more displays of the designer's collections (though unrelated to the White House):

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 Fashion and reality are often at such odds with one another, at least in my world!

My mom and me in front of the full-size replica of the Oval Office.

That stop was the high point of the day. We made a couple little stops along the way in Missouri, but nothing quite compared to the Oscar de la Renta exhibit. 

 Our trip was culturally diverse - from designer dresses to do-rags, we saw it all.

Hope you had a great weekend - check back soon, as I have lots of pictures from today's Third Sunday Market to share!

Have a chic week, 

~Sarah