First Monday - Canton, TX

We had a great trip to Canton on Thursday. First Mondays is a huge, monthly flea market with all sorts of antique vendors, junk dealers, food vendors, and many pavilions full of boutiques. It is an entertaining place for us where we can relive the past, but at the same time we can find things for our future. This is a great weekend getaway for folks from Oklahoma City.

There are lots of vendors that sell Mexican iron things such as my flying pig. I found him adorable. About 5 years ago this would not have been my taste at all - junk. Then a couple of years ago we made a trip to Arroyo Seco, NM, to my favorite jewelry designer while we were vacationing at Red River, NM. The jeweler has a shop in the tiny artist village. At one of the few shops they were selling these flying pigs. The shop owner told us that Julia Roberts has a home nearby and she has one of these pigs flying above her ranch gates. Then I had to rethink this junky, oddly painted, badly welded piece of tin. Well, I saw them again Friday and this guy just spoke to me. "Take me home and put me someplace and remember when you bought me and how much fun you were having." Here he is on my counter in my kitchen, but I expect he will be moved outside soon. It was raining today and goodness knows, we would not want this masterpiece to rust.

There is a vendor there that grinds corn with his hit or miss gasoline engine. It makes the most obnoxious sound, but my husband has to check it out every time. Something about odd engines that intrigues him. This time I bought some cornmeal, thinking ahead for okra season. Now I remember that I didn't plant any. I made cornbread with it today so it will not go to waste, but it did go to waist.

These are some of the plants I brought home. There are dozens of plant vendors with the greatest prices. The blue and white petunias were $5 per basket. The gardenia was loaded with buds and was $12. The others were $7 and $10. Take this list of flowers to Lowe's and see what you would pay. All of them are so healthy and are pretty en masse which draws you right to them.

On this trip we didn't find any antiques that we wanted to bring home. Hubby found a unique Jackson rubber band powered BB gun and a couple of pellet gun parts. Other than that, we just took our time and scoured over all the glassware, vintage jewelry, linens, furniture, etc.

We made fast walk throughs in the dozens of pavilions. These buildings mostly house new decorative items; lots of clothes but not necessarily my taste; lots of pet supplies and dog dresses; many, many vendors of bagged soup and dip mixes; and tons of little girls clothes and hair bows. A woman could spend hours in these buildings without ever going to the antique vendors.

So if you haven't been to Canton, you are missing something special. It starts on the Thursday before the first Monday of each month and runs through Sunday. The lodging around there isn't much, but we have found a few places that fit our price range at Terrell or Mesquite. Go, have a good time, but check weatherchannel.com for the weather forecast because it can be very hot and humid in East Texas. Eat a funnel cake!