ATTENTION, SHOPPERS No doubt, holiday consumers who turn a sickly green upon hearing the word “mall” will search desperately this month for alternatives to the slew of chain stores. Some people will test their artistic capacities by creating their offerings; some will purchase presents online. Still others—thousands, we are told—will load up their baskets with unusual items from the Houston Ballet’s Nutcracker Market in Houston (November 7-10), the King William Garage Sale in San Antonio (November 9), and the twenty-fifth annual Chi Omega Christmas Market in Dallas (November 14-16). More than three hundred booths at the Nutcracker Market will display goods ranging from cowboy-shaped Corian cutting boards ($12) to Barbara J. Sims brocade pillows ($1,200). Chi Omega market visitors can pick up a Czech Heritage Shoppe antique gold-frame mirror ($795) or a pound of pecan toffee from Susie’s South Forty Confections ($16.95), among other things, and even stand in line on November 15 to get jewelry and porcelain pieces appraised by Carol Prisant of the PBS series Antiques Roadshow. The residents of fifty houses in San Antonio’s King William neighborhood will let shoppers poke through cardboard boxes of whatnots until they come across that fondue pot for their special someone. Or maybe those bargain hunters will just find a few things for themselves. Happy hunting. (See Dallas: Other Events; Houston: Other Events; and San Antonio: Points of Interest.)
