Antiquing at the beach

You have to love an antique mall that has a 50-percent off room, and the Old Armory Antique Mall in Foley, Ala. does. There I found this "Southend on Sea" teacup for $8, so it was $4. This piece, you see, is the first thing I've bought to go in my beach cottage. While I do not in fact have a beach cottage just yet, I've decided to go ahead and start collecting for it now. It will (Lord willing and one day!) be furnished in those pretty watery blues and greens we associate with the sea, and this teacup and saucer look a little dark in my photo but are a nice clear, cloudless-sky kind of blue. The backstamp tells me the pieces were made by Devon Pottery in England, and Southend on Sea is a seaside resort in Essex, England. I *must* have England represented in the beach cottage, don't you think? And bone china will be too "precious" to use there, I imagine, so this sort of teacup is just perfect.

My favorite find at that antique mall, however, was two goodies I have wanted for simply years: porcelain egg coddlers. If you want to know more about egg coddlers, click here for a great introduction. These rose egg coddlers are by Royal Worcester. When I saw these two marked a reasonable $12 each, and then with an extra 30% off sticker, I was very happy.

When I screwed off the lids to make sure they worked properly, and they did, I was amused to find inside one of them a receipt showing that the antique mall vendor got an even better deal than I did! Somebody paid just $2.50 apiece for these at the Waterfront Rescue Mission, a nearby thrift store, back on Aug. 22, 2012. Wish I'd gotten to them first--but I still got a good deal, so I can't complain. (And I'll let you know when I've made my first coddled eggs and tea for breakfast!)

Do any of you collect Lefton's Christmas holly pattern dishes? I do, now. Starting with this piece found for $1 at a flea market in Elberta, Ala.

It even has the original Lefton sticker on it!

Also in Elberta, I found a book ($1) about making quilts out of vintage handkerchiefs. Remember when my parents gave me that box of 71 a few months ago? Apparently it takes just 7 or so to make a hanky panky quilt. I think I'm good to go!

And while in Seaside earlier in the week, I came across some gorgeous bracelets made of vintage clip-on earrings, but I wasn't going to pay $50+ for something I could make myself. The Elberta flea market turned up these beauties in my beachy color palette for just $3. Soon, I expect to have a new bracelet to wear to teatime and other frou-frou occasions.

And those are all the "antique" goodies from this year's seaside travels. These are definitely my favorite kind of travel souvenirs, but at this rate, the beach cottage is going to take a while to furnish!