Flea Markets & a Peddlers Sale, the finial episode

For those of you who haven't read my blog in the last couple of days, I've been posting about the past weekend my mom and I spent in Southern California going to some flea markets and a peddlers sale.

We had the trip all planned out. Riverside California first. From there we would go to Costa Mesa and shop the peddlers sale on Friday and Saturday. Sometime Saturday we would leave Costa Mesa and head down to San Bernardino to a "swap meet" on Sunday. We had known about the "swap meet" for years and had always wondered what it was like. Did they sell vintage and antique pieces or was it a place where you could find just plain old junk (like tires for a car, used lawn movers, tools, that sort of thing). We would spend the night in San Bernardino and get to the swap meet first thing early Sunday morning as it was gonna be really hot there.

We told Erin who was a seller a the peddlers sale about the "swap meet" and she thought that a swap meet was a place where they sell tee shits, sunglasses, that sort of thing. Erin told us that the Irvine Flea Market was taking place on Sunday as well. My mom and I were at the Irvine Flea Market back in May and we really enjoyed shopping it, lots of vintage treasures. My mom and I had a brief discussion and we decided to go to the flea market instead of going to the swap meet. The change in plans were in motion.

My mom cancelled the hotel reservations in San Bernardino and we were off to New Port Beach (New Port Beach is about 10 minutes from Irvine) to the Radisson Hotel to stay there Saturday night.

(These darling place mats with the ruffles were bought in Riverside, California)



As I parked my SUV in the parking lot of the Radisson, I see a familiar face looking inside the passenger window, it was my sweet friend and co worker Kristen and her husband John who both live in Henderson, Nevada about 2 miles from me. As my mom and I got out of the car, I looked at Kristen and we both laughed and asked each other "what are you doing here?" After we told each other why we were there and shared the change of plans that lead us there, the four of us went to the bar to talk and have some drinks as happy hour was about to begin.

We stayed at the bar for about three hours, talked and laughed, we had a fun time.

Kristen has her own website called Cashchatter.

It's a website loaded with all kinds of information to save you money, at the grocery store, hotel deals, rent a car, coupons to use, free stuff and don't we all like to get a good deal every once and a while? Make sure you check out her website when you get a chance.

Kristen's husband John has his own website as well, called viadots . It's a user friendly website and a great place to visit where you can buy domain names, it has web site hosting and tools to help build a website, make sure to visit his website.

We found such wonderful and adorable things at the Irvine Flea Market, met some great dealers and had a lovely time shopping, talking and spending lots of money.:))

We left Irvine and started our way back home, but we still had this curiosity, what do they sell at the San Bernardino swap meet? We had to find out for ourselves since San Bernardino is on our way home.

We arrived at the swap meet and we headed in. What did we see?, Yep all kinds of junk!!! Junk just thrown on blankets laying on the ground, tools, used dirty baby clothes, lawn mowers, TV's with antennas on them, sheets, towels, cheap drinking glasses, just junk, until I saw this

A rusty crusty vintage cast iron candle holder, love it!!

We stayed at the swap for about half and hour and headed home. We learned a few lessons on this trip.

Change in plans are sometimes the best made plans. Of all the hotels we could had stayed in, we run into my friends, Kristen and John. Kristen and John decided to go to New Port Beach on the spare of the moment as well and had just made their hotel reservations at the Radisson as they were driving to New Port Beach.

If you hear two words put together in the same sentence, "swap meet", don't go, learn from our lesson!!

I'll be back tomorrow for another segment of "Chippy Paint Fridays."