Antiquers Anonymous...It's A Ten Step Program

When the lovely folks as Slegers invited me to back my vehicle inside their warehouse to load it up, I knew I had a problem. OK, maybe it's not as bad as it sounds. Truth is, I only got a few fantastic items, and Denise got the BIG DADDY. She snagged an antique double school desk, complete with ink well. GORGEOUS! In all the excitement, I didn't get a picture of it, but maybe if I ask nicely, she'll send me one and I can share it with you. Anyhoo, I got to drive into an antique warehouse...score one for me and scratch another item off of my strange and unusual "To Do" list.

In case you're curious, here are my goodies. I found another trog - this time in light wood. My other one is in a dark wood, so this is totally different. (At least that's what I keep trying to explain to Russ. He's not buying it either, by the way.) I also found a long, skinny type of trog and a round sieve. It might not make any sense to you, but I have a picture in my head of what I can do with these treasures, and that's all that matters. Just go with it.

Check this one out. It's a square trog. I know. It's the coolest, and is now home to my phone books. If you don't own a square phone book trog, then you really don't know what you're missing. I recommend you go out and buy one right now. Go ahead. I'll wait. Here's the last of my purchases....my scale. Russ keeps asking what my fascination is with scales since we moved here, and I really can't explain it. They are just very interesting to me. I have a few pieces of blue and white enamelware, so the second I saw this one, I knew it just had to come home with me. A scale, fresh flowers, and my Starbuck's mugs. It just doesn't get any better than that. (Except maybe if one of the mugs was filled with coffee...)

P.S. Here's a pic of Denise's awesome desk! She's a beauty! (And if she encourages the girls to do their homework without any hassles, then she was well worth the money!)

Speculoos Cookie Molds And Mooooore

I have been bad once again. I haven't blogged anything for about a week. In my defense, the hubby was away on a TDY and I just didn't get out and take pictures of things like I normally do. Well, I did take pictures of a few things, but The Teenager doesn't want pictures of her playing volleyball and sweating making the rounds on the Internet, so I was banned from blogging about that. (Now the picture that created in your mind was SOOOO much worse than the actual pictures I took, and that will be my revenge against The Teenager! I'm just saying.) To make up for my bad blogging behavior, I forced myself to get out today and go to the antique shop. I didn't want to, mind you, but I knew that you wouldn't be happy unless I had something to blog about. I drug Denise with me this time (I'm sure her husband will thank me for that) and we found lots of lovely goodies to entertain ourselves with. I did have something specific that I wanted to buy, though, and I am very proud to say that I stuck with it. I picked up three Speculoos cookie molds.

Speculoos cookies have been referred to as either spice cookies or ginger biscuits. They taste kind of like graham crackers, with a hint of gingerbread thrown in for good measure. You can buy them at the local bakeries and grocery stores, and they are delicious. They are traditionally made around Christmas time, and the dough is pressed into cookies in these hand carved wooden forms. They also have a Speculoos paste that is really yummy! It looks like peanut butter, but is much sweeter. It tastes more like caramel, and spread on the Speculoos cookies...mmmmmmm! For another treat, follow Brandon's advice and try the Speculoos ice cream. That's the only type of ice cream he wants to eat now, and they serve it up at freshly made at Leonidas in Peer. Anyway, back to the important business of shopping. These molds were on my wish list, and they will look quite nice hanging on my kitchen wall. As I was checking out the molds, this beauty caught my eye. I'd seen them before and always loved them, so today I decided that this one was coming home with me. It's a beautiful, hand carved wood bowl called a trog. I had some ideas about what it was used for, and my number one guess was something that they put bread dough in to rise. Baked goods are very popular in this country. Google translator was soon to send this idea crashing to the ground.

Farm animals are also very popular in Belgium. The word trog is Dutch for trough. So now, I will be decorating my house with something that was once used to slop the hogs or feed the cows. Somehow, it seems to work. This way, when someone asks my kids if they were raised in a barn, they can say with all confidence, "My Mom is working on it!"

Note to hubby: If you happen to read this entry, they had this pair of lovely chairs at the shop as well. If you were to happen to drive by there in some large vehicle, and they happened to find themselves in the back of said vehicle, I wouldn't have a problem with that. I'm just saying.