Lawn Ornaments and a Doll Show

On Sunday K and I spent the day driving around odd places, including the lawn ornament place in Darien, where I bought this skeptical little concrete mermaid:

They didn't have too many mermaids--if I had wanted a gargoyle, I could have gotten plenty in sizes ranging from 8 inches high to 8 feet high. I had to ask to find even one mermaid, and the one that the staff guy pointed out to me was 5 feet long and 500.00, which was more mermaid than I needed. So I went inside and asked the owner if he had just the "one big mermaid" and he took that to mean that I wanted a procession alley of big mermaids instead of one smaller one. So we finally got that straightened out and I took home the small mermaid.

Earlier in the day we had gone to the Marriott in Naperville to check out the doll show.

It was a gorgeous day and K didn't want her photo taken:

But of course I took one anyway, though inside it didn't seem like the kind of venue where photography was encouraged--it was mostly antique and vintage dolls so it was less useful to me than a purely bjd convention would have been, but K liked it and I did find some clothes and props:

I was very happy to get the punchbowl set and Akutenshi07, who was there, brought me a little tea set from the last doll swap that happened over Memorial Day! So cute (and super nice of her!)

Akutenshi also brough her Soom Thera, Fhiona, now painted up and looking less shy and very happy with her beautiful red wig and sweater top (I wish I had gotten a better photo of all of her, including the cutie feets!)