Antique Shopping—nerve-wracking but also enjoyable.

I love antique shopping. Love. It. It is seriously one of my favorite things to do. I will spend hours rifling through old pictures, old clothes, and wander through hundreds of displays looking for something I'll consider a treasure.

Recently I went to Austin Antique Mall because our house was being shown to prospective buyers so I had to get out of the house for an hour. Austin Antique Mall is one of those places that is hard to get to but so worth it in the end. I had good directions so I found it pretty easily but it is set back from 183 and the only indication it's there is a small sign.

As soon as I walked in to this place, my jaw dropped. It is humongous! There's over a hundred venders selling their vintage goods and this place covers all aspects of antiques. There were vintage clothes, cutlery, toys, hats, furniture, etc. I had died and gone to antique heaven.

You may be wondering why I put "nerve-wracking" in the title of this post when I enjoy antique shopping so much. Let me tell you about a girl who was deathly afraid of making her parents angry. These parents would take their daughter to Kirkland's and if you have never been to a Kirkland's, it is like an antique store but everything is new and crammed together making it hard to move around especially if the store is busy. So this girl would literally move as though her hands were tied to her sides because she was terrified of breaking something and having her parents pay for it.

This fear has followed me into adulthood so I tend to walk around antique stores like this:

Have a lovely drawing I did in 10 minutes that I took a picture of with my camera phone. FANCY.

I clutch my bag to me like it's a potential traitor that if I let it go it will abandon me and knock something over and that something will most likely be the most expensive thing in the store and then I'd have to call Mom and explain what happened and, even though I'm 20 and about to move out, I would probably be grounded or something or have to pay it off for the rest of my life. This is my fear when I go into stores with pricey, easily breakable items.

But if I follow my "clutch that bag to you like it's going to explode and break everything unless you hug the evil out of it" plan, I usually have a wonderful time in antique stores. I went to Austin Antique Mall with the express purpose of finding a bust to put on my vanity when I move to the Townhouse but I didn't find anything I absolutely loved or the busts I saw were huge and would probably break said vanity.

I did, however, settle on a tiny picture of a bird made out of feathers that was $18 and a tiny blue-green Nemadji vase that was $12. I ended up just buying the vase because I thought it would look awesome in my blue-white room plus it was cheaper. I'll probably go back and get that picture when I have more money.

The vase in question: