Weekend Fun

I finally made it to Canton! Yay! If you're a Texan and not familiar with Canton, you need to do some research and plan at trip - just to say you've been. I was born in a family of shoppers so it was like a shopper's dream for me. Too bad I was also born into a family known for saying "I could make that!" My friend who invited me along and I found ourselves saying that over and over. So much so, that we almost used the bathroom reserved for vendors by saying we are future vendors! Ha! 

If you've never heard of Canton Trade Days or First Mondays - I'm not sure what the real name is - imagine acres and acres of flea market type stuff and several fair exhibit type buildings full of booths with all kinds of stuff for sale and then multiply that times about 50! The big sale only happens one weekend a month so there are thousands of people roaming around this place looking at junk and looking at high dollar unique clothing and furniture. And lots of fried, not good for you fair food at every turn! If I had found the mini donuts before I ate my corn dog, I would've skipped the corn dog and had a couple dozen mini donuts fresh out of the fryer. Yum!

It really is hard to explain what it's like. I think my friend read somewhere that it's like 180 acres of shopping! Honestly, I knew there would be so much to see that I'd never see it all, but I didn't imagine the traffic. I totally blocked that detail out of my mind, I guess. It took me 30 minutes to go about a mile when I got into the actual town of Canton. Then, it took another hour to get out of the parking lot as the mass exodus happened when the vendors all started closing down. Worth every minute of it, though.

I need to go back because there are things that I wish I had bought, but didn't! I ended up buying a large MDF W and some MDF trains to hang on the boys' wall, an old window that I'm going to repurpose, and a food chopper! The 4 of us in our little group all got one. The guy said he was giving us a group discount or something. If not for the awesomely, easy pico de gallo he was whipping up in this little chopper, we may have just passed him by. I've actually already used mine and am ready for an opportunity to use it again! I really hate to google it and find that I may have paid too much for it, so I'm not going to go there. If you ever come visit, though, I can whip you up some great pico de gallo in no time flat. I can vouch for the fact that the blade is very sharp because I already cut my finger on it!

Next time I'm definitely going overnight and going to spend 2 days browsing. It may be my reward to myself for enduring this deployment that we're only 4.5 months into, but seems to be never ending. Who wants to join me?