A Tale Of Two "Southern" Restaurants

As usual, just when I think I am about caught up with presenting vintage Native American jewelry, more comes in! I picked up about 100 pieces which I had on consignment these past several years, the person I was working with no longer has a permanent store so I am going to give selling on my own a go. I have my work cut out for me but I will take it slow and do what I can. Kuochun went along with me (he is so supportive!) and since we were in the Schaumburg area, we took Mother's car because it was due for an emissions test.Of course Kuochun wanted to get something to eat afterwards and we decided to try The Southern Cafe in Roselle, located on Roselle Rd at I-390. It is very similar to The Southern Kitchen in Arlington Heights (more on that later) but I thought the food, at least what I ordered was taken up a notch. I always get breakfast food at these places so I decided to go for lunch. All of the lunch meals come with a bowl of chicken and shells soup which I thought was amazing. It was the perfect temperature that I could eat right away, instead of being scalding hot and did not taste too salty. I selected a chicken wrap, I cannot remember what was in it exactly but it was a healthier choice with raw spinach and some other ingredients. It came grilled with the two sets of hash marks on it and it was absolutely delicious. Kuochun can never resist the "Gumbo-laya" and he loved their version as well. All around us people were ordering pancakes and they looked fantastic. I highly recommend The Southern Cafe and will definitely be back.

On Tuesday, Mother had an appointment with a new podiatrist in Arlington Heights to have her foot checked. It was a large and beautiful office, bustling with activity. She had been going to a podiatrist in Elk Grove Village and never had a problem getting a medical pedicure but this doctor said Medicare does not cover this and was not going to trim her nails. Luckily he did do it this one time but we will need to find a medical pedicure place and get both of us on regularly scheduled pedicures. I have been working on it for years but have not been able to get Kuochun to go for a pedicure yet. One of the shows I watch is Doubling Down With The Derricos, they are such a nice family with 14 kids and they live in Las Vegas. They have a set of quintuplets and it was their birthday. The three girls wanted to go to a nail salon but of course the boys totally did not want to go. Their dad actually gets pedicures and encouraged the boys to give it a try. They did it for their sisters but ended up loving the pedicures so much they cannot wait to do it again! I told Kuochun about it and he might be a little closer to giving a pedicure a try. Although nothing can beat Medi Pedi Scottsdale and Kat's masterful dry pedicure, I am sure we can find a runner up around here.

It is really important to keep Mother's creative mind going (and I could use the help) so I gave her a project to do. Last year we ordered a bunch of Mexican floral-themed stamps on Etsy which actually came from England. Mother turned them into the most beautiful cards for the Tucson Gem Show pieces and it really makes them look special. I ordered some more stamps from the same shop, including these darling birds and leaves. I also selected four leaf clover and horseshoe stamps which I thought would be so cute for the Southwest Style jewelry. Mother started experimenting with the stamps and was so proud to have ordered a set of colored pencils on Amazon on her own which arrived the same day. I said I have that Amazon delivery time beat! I ordered a clothing steamer, Bic ballpoint pens and Bic whiteout tape (by the way, I totally recommend the whiteout tape, it's so much better than Liquid Paper!) a little after 4:00 PM and everything was delivered to my front stoop a little after 7:00 PM. Amazon Prime is the best!

I digress but the purpose of the project is to create amazing cards which coordinate with each cowhide or leather sample I have to use for product photos. Here are the experiments so far. The birds are really cute and have names like Ferdinand and Betty. I am looking forward to seeing how the lucky stamps turn out but the ball is in my court. I need to make these cards on my Cricut machine in various colors. These are Mother's photos which I cropped a bit so her entire dining room was not showing.

There were five estate sale packages to complete this week so instead of diving right in with the "new" stash, I decided to post another small lot, this time with Southwest Style pieces. Most of these pieces are new arrivals and I added a few pieces from my personal collection which I love but have never worn. It seems like these days I am not getting out much other than going to doctor's appointments and errands for my loved ones. The hope is that things will get better on that front but in the meantime I plan to pare down my collection to my favorite everyday pieces here in IL and the most interesting and special pieces in AZ because there is much more of a chance to get out and explore the area there. I had such a wonderful time at the Heard Museum show in March and adore the jewelry I purchased there. Lately I have been passing on cute pieces I would have purchased in the past and I will be saving my pennies for next year's show.

I thought this was such a cool, unique lot of Southwest Style jewelry. The pretty pin inside the dragonfly necklace was an oldie but goodie but it did sell to a repeat customer and the rest are awaiting new homes. Mother said don't worry, they'll love these pieces in Arizona! The dog days of summer selling continue. Note to self - it would be a good idea to take the month of July off from lot posting from now on.

I just had to highlight this awesome pin by Albuquerque artist Grady Alexander. I was not familiar with his work but when I received it I knew it was very special. This piece is not online yet but is available for sale. As far as pieces that are now online, I was able to finish the Leo Feeney lot of jewelry and get a good head start on the brilliant blue turquoise lot from July 9.

It is amazing that I was able to get any jewelry work done because Mother had seven appointments to go to and Kuochun's 8:00 AM with the cardiologist made eight. The early bird appointment was worth it though because he came out with great news, his blood thinner has been discontinued. Fingers crossed that he will be able to stay off it as he was bruising and bleeding from the smallest cut so easily.

Mother had two rehab sessions for her legs and she is striking up a rapport with her physical therapist, Tom. Luckily he felt it was OK for her to proceed with the rehab because he was not sure during the consultation. She has already felt some improvement. Tom said it will be a lot of work but he feels the edema can be put under control. Unfortunately there were no openings so she is not scheduled to go back there until August 3. She is on a waiting list in case something opens up.

The rest of the week was predominately estate sale paperwork and my other usual estate sale tasks but we took some time out to have a get-together on Saturday at The Southern Kitchen in Arlington Heights. It was Kuochun's idea to thank the folks who helped us out on the homefront while we were in Scottsdale. Everyone ordered something different and seemed to enjoy their meals! I am watching my calories so I ordered a simple breakfast of a Belgian waffle, two scrambled eggs and sausage. I have heard that Belgian waffles have a lot less calories than pancakes. Kuochun could not resist the "Gumbo-laya" once again and his report was it was very similar to the one in Roselle and they are both good. He was tempted to get the catfish but they only had fried and he has been very good about avoiding fried food as much as possible. Although now that I think about it his dish probably has a lot of butter in it.

After the get-together we went to Wheeling to another store where I have jewelry on consignment. It is a new store - shortly after they opened they had a devastating flood on Christmas Eve and had to completely rebuild. It took four months and they are open again and almost have all of their displays back in place. I picked up my payment for a ring that had sold and was able to sell some sterling silver non-jewelry pieces to a collector who happened to be in the store at the time. These pieces were so pretty and I did not want to scrap them so I am glad they went to a good home. The storeowners said they are now off to a good start and within the next two weeks they will set up another display with a lot of my items. I am looking forward to seeing what they can do! They are very nice people and I wish them every success.

That is all for now, see you next time!