Last weekend, I went with my family on their annual pilgrimage to the antique show up at Round Lake.  It's something they do yearly.  This was only my second year, though.

While I do love antiques, I don't generally enjoy antiquing.  Or at least not the way my family does it up here.  It usually involves hours and hours and hours in the back of the car (read: five minutes to a day full of car-sickness and the inevitable pulling over to puke on the side of the road...if not in the car) as we venture from dusty barn to dusty barn (read: allergies overload on top of feeling puky).  Since living up here though, I've discovered that from time to time, I do really like going to these big antique shows as they are outside and once there, we walk.  And I also like going to auctions once in a while.

I do love the village of Round Lake though.  It's really cute with lots of really beautiful homes with giant porches (I go weak in the knees for porches).  A sign in the center of the village explains that it was formed as a camp meeting place for Methodists.  I just thought that was such a funny and specific reason to form.  Like, did the Methodists really require their own entire village space to meet during the summer?

I didn't take tons of photos but thought this child's pony was really adorable.  I can totally imagine a proper little boy playing with it one Christmas morning.




And these were just too weird not to share with y'all.  The whole dressed up mannequin was on sale.  I forgot to write down the price but I think they were @$300/each.  A low price to pay for your very own creepy roommate.




As I've noted before, I live in a city with AMAZING iron works.  So my eyes now seem trained to pick the good pieces out in a crowd.  I fell in love with this gate.  It was stunning.




Do you see the detail?  A lamb resting under a shade tree!  I mean, have you ever seen this design in an iron gate before?  I wanted it.  I didn't buy it.  I have no where to put it.  But I still totally wanted it.




And this was both a highlight and a low light of the day.  High was when we discovered this great band over on one end.  A modified big band I guess.  They were really great and it added a lot to the show.  So fun!  Low was when the woman to the far left in the white shirt got up and started singing.  Oh my.  So bad!  I don't know why they chose her to sing because she was so tone deaf.  It was really really bad.  At first it was funny how bad she was.  And then it was more a mix of sad and annoying that the song stylings continued.