Downtown Orange and Paris in a cup

This last weekend was filled with shopping, something I hadn't really done in a long time and was much needed!

I'm not going to dig into our finances, but let's just say we came into a little extra money recently, and if you knew me, you would know that I try to be smart with our money, to save, and make sure we put it towards our future priorities and bills and such. But I'm also a shopper, I need that fix every once and a while, and shopping online just doesn't cut it.

So I was really thankful that I was able to get out last week and do a little shopping.

This post is of Saturday March 15th.

I've been craving to go antiquing lately, and so far in California, I haven't found a lot of vintage/antique shops around, just one here and there, but not like in Michigan where you have towns everywhere chalked full of antiques.

so I was doing research friday night, to figure out where we might be able to go. and found a cluster of red dots (on Google maps) over in Orange.

Looking further into it, it looked like this little area had a ton of antique shops.

So we decided to take the day out and explore the area.

Once there, we found out it was actually Downtown Orange, and I must say, it is officially the cutest town I've seen out here in California, other then the palm trees, it reminded me so much of home. The reason being apparently orange is one of the only places in California that hasn't torn down its early 19th century buildings. They have kept and restored a lot of the old buildings (which a lot of Michigan is, that's why I love it) and so it has that beautiful small town charm that comes with it. 

and oh boy was the place bustling. There was people everywhere, we found it very difficult to find a parking spot. But as we were driving around, I noticed the town was absolutely FULL of antique shops.

Michael and I agreed that we would love to live there, we even started looking at the prices of places in the area, maybe in the future *crosses fingers* 

Once we did find a parking spot, and checked out a couple stores, I did find something I wasn't too fond of.

Apparently people in California really do their research before selling because almost EVERYTHING was super expensive. I'm not stupid, of course I expect that a lot at antique stores, but never have I been to such big antique stores, and figured i would be better off on Etsy :p

Now I did say "almost" everything, one of the first shops had some antique sheet music for a great price and I just fell in love with some of them, they were perfect for the house (framing)

and I did hit the jackpot at the last store we stopped at.

One of the sellers was selling a set of purple glassware, 4 cups, 4 appetizer plates, and 4 dinner plates, in perfect condition, everything for $35. Not only is that a fantastic price, but the dish ware was stunning! There was no way I could give that up.

So I did get some really good steals, and by that time it was 2:30pm and we hadn't had lunch or much of a breakfast, so we were staved, and we figured we were probably done for the day (since we wanted to stop by crossroads before they closed) There was so much more to explore, we really only hit 3 big antique stores in this town that has at least 6-8 of them. So its a safe thing to say, we will definitely be back to Orange! and I'm very much looking forward to it :)

Our next thought was to take our box (they put our glassware and other things in a nice box for us) back to the car and then find a place to eat, but as we were would around the block back to our car, we passed a little place called Paris in a Cup, and people outside were sipping tea in china cups. 

the place looked so quaint, I just had to check it out first, considering they also had macarons :p

Once inside, we noticed a back room, that looked like a french shabby-chic tea party.

As it turns out, the place is a france-inspired tea restaurant, that usually only accepts reservations unless someone cancels last minute, and stops seating at 3:00.

And guess what, it was 2:40, and they had a table open.

it was like a sign from God!

Of course we accepted it and the nice gentleman at the front of the house, stored our box in the back for us :)

I've never been to a place quite like it. Everyone drinking hot tea with teacups and teapots. Cute little sandwiches and desserts on tiered platters, scones and baked potato soup in little glass tea cups.

The whole places was gold with black and white accents. Ornate mirrors and chairs, and little chandeliers. Of course it was a little gimmicky, but it was a delightful experience.

The big thing was the tea, not I'm not a tea person, so I opted for the french vanilla lemonade, which honestly, was better then I expected, and I'll be sure to try and make it at home.

But Michael had gotten ginger peach black tea, and it was the best tea I'd ever had, I kinda took over his cup after I decided to also try the rose apple tea, and didn't care as much for it.

But the texture was so much better then hot flavored water (which is what I call tea). Very sad that they were out of the ginger peach when we tried to buy a box :\ 

It was an interesting experience, and fantastic day!