Antiquing and good food

Duane and Linda and I decided to hit some of the local antique shops in Duane's neighborhood yesterday.  Seminole Heights is a great place for antiquing with the shops, great little restaurants and cool bungalow houses.  Duane lives in a bungalow that she has lovingly restored and it has charm by the truckload.  We stopped at an estate sale in a beautiful old house that was being sold.  Unfortunately, the sale was in it's second day so it seemed that every piece Linda looked at (mostly side tables) had SOLD written on the tag.  Bummer.                   


Our first real stop was at the mid-century store Kaleidoscope.  We love looking through this beautifully decorated and carefully curated store.  I found this cool aqua ceramic hanging light and Linda found a lovely rug for her home office in the colors she's using for that room.

 

Then we headed over to an antique mall just a couple of blocks over      

and Linda and I both hit pay dirt.  I found another piece of matte white pottery for my collection (still to be blogged about -- with pics -- at a later date) and Linda, the tea drinker, found an English Brown Betty teapot.   We were happy campers!



                           

 We were all hungry for lunch by then so we stopped at one of our favorite places, Nicko's Fine Foods or, as we call it, Nicko's Diner.  Good breakfast food and sandwiches.  On the weekends you can get breakfast all day.  Nicko's has been around forever -- it's supposed to be the last steel diner in Tampa.  They have a booth there called the 'Elvis booth' because Elvis Presley ate there after he performed in Tampa in 1956.  We actually got to sit in the Elvis booth yesterday.  There's a little plaque and there are some pics of Elvis above the window of the booth.   Kind of adds to the southern diner ambiance.

                                         

After lunch, we were all feeling ready to hit some more shops so we headed to one that Duane told us about that none of us had been to before.  Small but well curated -- very nice lady owns it.  Duane REALLY struck gold there.  She found this really fab light turquoise formica table with white painted metal legs to put in her kitchen as a breakfast table.  Duane also scored a set of 12 vintage Vera cloth napkins.  The store was having a 25% off sale so she did quite well.  The three of us decided that one of our next missions is to find the perfect chairs or stools for Duane's new table. I'm sure we're up to it.

After taking a swing through Sherry's YesterDAZE Vintage Clothing & Antiques which is always crammed to the rafters with items from clothing, jewelry, furniture, household items and antiques, we were pretty pooped.  Sherry has a website where she also sells some of her items online here.

Her store was written up in The New York Times and is definitely worth a visit if you're into anything vintage.

I suggested one last stop for an afternoon dessert before we headed back to Duane's house.  (I always have room for dessert!)  We decided to stop at  The Front Porch Grill (below).  It's located in a large old house that is supposedly the oldest house in the area -- built in 1900.  I had the chocolate ganache with whipped cream and Duane and Linda both decided on the chocolate creme brulee (also with whipped cream).  Then I couldn't pass up adding the grill's homemade french vanilla ice cream.  Duane had some, too, and Linda (who was trying to be good) tasted it.  REALLY good.  We decided that since we had been very bad girls with our shopping, we may as well finish off the afternoon in sinful decadence.