New Buffet, Wooden Spoon & Christmas Tree

Yesterday was one of those days. I felt like I won. The stars were aligned and everything that could have gone right, did. Please let me explain.

Laura and I have been wanted to walk on a new (to us) rail trail down in Farmington for a while. The parking for the trail sits next to a small antique store that’s got a bunch of neat goodies inside. The first time we visited the area a few months ago, we peeked through the antiques and found a few things we liked. Once of them was a buffet. Up until the point of visiting this antique store and having what a buffet was explained to me, I really had no idea this piece of furniture existed. After looking at it for a while though, I found value in it. The best part of our discovery was that the fine folks who run the store were asking only $65 for the piece. How could we resist? I’ll tell you how. We were driving the car and I wasn’t about to go all the way back to the house to get the truck. I’m just not like that. And obviously, we weren’t about to throw a buffet on the roof of the car. Unfortunately, we had to leave the buffet behind.

Let’s fast forward to yesterday. We knew we wanted to go for a walk and we thought it would be nice to take that walk on the rail trail down in Farmington. It hasn’t really snowed here yet and the sun was out in full force. Since the temperature was in the 40s, the conditions were ideal.

Whenever we don’t drive the truck, we miss out on something. That’s just the way it works. We’ll decide to drive the car somewhere and when we’re half way to wherever we’re heading, we’ll see a sign that says, “Free Gold – Only For Those Who Are Driving Trucks.” I’m telling you, that’s the truth of it. We don’t take the truck out a lot, most likely because it gets about 8 miles to the gallon of diesel fuel. Yes, that could be it.

Anyway, we decided to take the truck to the trail. I had the vision of the buffet still sitting in the back room of the antique store and I made a promise to myself that if it was, I would purchase it. $65 was just too good of a price to pass up.

Here’s my story. We drove down to the store, I walked inside and straight to the back room where I had originally seen the buffet. Laura was poking around and some stuff out front. I called the fella who was working there to come back with me. I asked him about the piece of furniture.

ME: How much are you asking for it?

HIM: Oh, let’s see. It says $65.

ME: Is that the best you can do?

HIM: Well, let’s take a look at it. Hmm, it’s of good quality. Can you see the dovetails in the drawer joints?

ME: Yes, I can see that. I’m not really sure if I want it for that price though.

HIM: Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll give it to you for $50.

ME: That’s good. Um, I’m not sure if we have enough room in the house for it.

HIM: I’ll give it to you for $45.

ME: Sold.

I love this kind of stuff. It makes me feel like I’m in Chinatown. Here’s the buffet.

It’s made by a furniture company called “Temple-Stuart.” I never heard of them, but I guess they’re good.

I think this piece was made in the 60s. It’s all wood and pretty heavy, so I’m satisfied.

Anyway, after we agreed to purchase the buffet, I paid for it and asked if I could leave the truck in his parking lot while Laura and I went across the street. We originally wanted to visit the antique store over there as well and I had noticed someone selling Christmas trees nearby. Since we had the truck, it would be great to grab a tree. He agreed and we left.

As I walked into the other parking area, I saw the guy who was selling the trees. I asked him how much he was charging and he told me that they range from $5 to $35. I almost choked on my tongue. I asked him to show me a $5 tree and he pointed out one that was about 10 times better than the tree Laura and I pulled out of the woods last year. After that, I asked him to show me a $10 tree and he showed me the one he had set up in the stand. Laura liked that one, so I said that we would take it. We’d just needed to wait a bit because we wanted to look in the store for a while and then to walk on the trial. After we were finished with that, we’d drive over and load it up. He agreed because we was pretty desperate. He earlier disclosed that he’d only sold two trees in three days. I felt so bad for him.

We need to pick up some more Christmas lights, so I’m going to hold off on showing you a photo of the tree until we get it all set up the way we’d like. Right now, we have some lousy looking LED lights, which are horribly disappointing to look at. Ugg.

After we did the tree thing, we went into the other store to look around. There wasn’t as much good stuff there, but I did manage to find a bamboo wooden spoon that I liked. I know the worth of these things because I just ordered one on Amazon for almost $5. When the woman behind the counter told me she wanted only 50 cents, I couldn’t resist, again.

After all our shopping, we finally made it to the trail. Everything was neatly tucked into the same area, so we didn’t have to drive around at all. What a treat. The best part of our walk was that we discovered that the trail was really nice. It meanders through some great pines and actually passes by one of the local ski mountains. Well, this one is a hill, but it’s still nice. Here’s a photo of the trail. We’ll get some of the mountain next time. We were running out of sun.

We really had a nice time yesterday. The fun folks we chatted with, combined with the cool weather, sunshine and good deals, made me a very happy camper.