Sunday - 20 Dec/15

CBS Sunday Morning (as usual) to start the day.

A treat today - Diane (and Alberto) - friends living near Vera Cruz, Mexico phoned. Diane has been a friend of Charlotte's since school days. We called to wish them a Merry Christmas and got the answering machine. We left them our new cell phone number and Diane called this morning.

We really miss visiting them; however they advised not to come as travelling, even for locals, has gotten much more dangerous in Mexico these days.

They are planning to visit Canada again this year where we live - halfway to the North Pole. Between visits they keep in touch through phone calls.

Overcast today; however the clouds are light not dark. No chance of rain and temps in the low 70 F range. It will be back up to mid-80's F in a few days.

The 70 F range is more like our weather back home in the summer.. It was a good day to visit a flea market. We left with the top off; however the side windows remained up today.

Our choice for today was Renningers Mount Dora Flea Market and Antique Center. It is the largest flea market that is close to the RV resort that is open on the weekend.

Two large buildings and a number of open air shopping areas house a wide variety of dealers from produce stands, clothing shops, and oddity vendors, to high quality antiques and collectibles. We regularly visit here.

I stopped at the Lost Art Leather Group booth and had Tom craft a new belt. My old belt was down to it's last notch. I did not want another $5 special as they only look good. The $5 leather is poor quality and soon looks shabby after just a few uses. Tom only provides top quality leather that lasts for decades, not weeks. Tom soon had the nice piece of black leather I chose custom finished with a classic end. He also gave pointers on how to condition the belt as he did just that to the finished product. It is harder and harder to find good hand crafted items these days. Tom did a fine job.

We have a few regular vendor booths that we visit. Sweet Oasis Honey is one of those booths. They have become our choice for Tupelo Honey. Unfortunately, they were out of this popular choice and would not have more until just into the New Year. Charlotte decided on a small container of local raw honey to tide us over.

We continued on through the aisles and soon stopped at another regular indulgence. We bought a bucket filled with a few dozen (not saying how many) mini-donuts. Half were cinnamon coated and half powdered with confectioner's sugar.  We ate as we shopped. So much for lunch!

We thought of making a few more purchases; however we decided to forego the tempting items. We did indulge in a small sample size of "Boiled Peanuts". We were too stuffed from the donuts to buy a regular size. This booth sells Charlotte's favourite. They win the honour because they are "So Salty".

Well that killed off a few hours and gave us exercise. We probably didn't "Break Even" on the calorie count due to our donut indulgence.

Charlotte did a little more hand stitching (Swedish Weaving) while watching (listening) to a few more B/W Bette White classics from our collection. These "Guest Towels" make nice gifts which she often uses as a "Thank You".

Supper was our Cream of Mushroom Soup "Special". Bet you thought we had an Andy Warhol Print! (grin) We use regular Campbell's to which we add only whole milk, a half pound of fresh sliced mushrooms (fried in butter) and salt and pepper, to taste.

Finished the day with movies rather than TV.