i'll tell ya what i want. what i really, really want...

my favorite find of the day: a 1950s china girl bobblehead. she looks like me!

somedays all a girl wants is a nice day in the sun, all to herself. a day filled with shopping, hand-cut french fries, driving too fast on sun-dappled winding roads through ancient redwoods, and a good book on the beach.

well, that's how i spent my saturday and it was GLORIOUS.

i hopped in the car and headed over the golden gate bridge (for those of you not from here, no, i never do get tired of seeing it!) and up towards sonoma.

first stop was vintage bank antiques in petaluma, an old gold mine boom town. this place is AMAZING. a decomissioned bank filled with antiques top-to-toe. you can even walk through the old vaults.

i could have spent hours here, but i was itching to head a bit further north on the gravenstein highway (yup, we gots the apples!) to sebastopol, another ag and gold mine boom town just a few miles up the road.

first stop is always llano house. it's beautiful little cottage and barn filled with depression glass treasures and great vintage chairs.
no luck for me though so i headed to my favorite, ray's trading and salvage.
ray's is filled to the brim with vintage cast iron goodies and salvaged doors (which i plan to acquire a dozen of when i am ready to restore all of the doorways in my house). in his yard i found these lovelies, which came home with me.
click the photo to look closer - don't you love the *mustachioed lions' heads* in the centers?!

they will soon become a loveseat-sized park bench in my backyard - for lovers (in the victorian sense - get your mind out of the gutter!) to canoodle on when we have backyard parties.

with that success under my belt, i happily headed to fft and found a pair of these! *swoon*

if you've seen photos of the house exterior, you know it is DROP DEAD GORGEOUS. however, someone did a runner with our original doors. i'm thinking this pair might be the perfect replacement. what do you think?

then i headed to the big-daddy of sebastopol antiques, the antique society. i got lucky again and found a pair of embossed thonet-style chairs...
a great bottle opener to mount to the wall in the backyard...

well, this just about sums my style up in one picture, doesn't it?!

and a pretty little gilded bud vase for the guest room.
after all of that, i was famished and hit sequoia burger, a little mom-and-pop burger stand, for one of my all-time favorite burgers (and a SMALL side of their hand-cut cajuns).
fortified, i hit the bohemian highway (yes, that name is FOR REAL)...
and ended up here...
on the beach in monte rio. and i (finally) read water for elephants, cover-to-cover.
it was a GREAT day. just what i wanted.