Vintage Christmas Monday

I'm joining Joan's Vintage Christmas Monday blog party!

All of the digging through bags of overpriced junk at the thrift is worth it when you find a bag that contains these:
Yum. Makes me want to put my shoes on and run to the thrift store again! Thrift store treasure hunting is like gambling--usually you lose but sometimes you win, and those wins make it all worth it!

This was found at an antique mall. Love the original box!And these were found at my new favorite vintage store in town, Pink Attic Cat:

More toadstool ornaments for my collection (are those Smurf houses?) and a fun little green mylar spray that wants to be a Christmas corsage.

Still haven't got the Christmas decorations out. Hoping to change that soon!

Thanksgiving leftovers

I'm getting all the Thanksgiving decor ready to put away so the Christmas decorating tornado can commence, but wanted to show you this before it disappears into a box for another year. I initially started this collage to put in my etsy shop, but 1) I took too long to make it so couldn't get it listed in time and 2) I fear I might like it too much to let it go!

I've said it before, but these bits & pieces collages are SO much fun to make. I love having a way to use up all the precious little treasures I've collected, and a 3"x3" square is a whole lot less intimidating to fill, even if there are a dozen of them to do. I think this is my 5th bits & pieces collage, and it certainly won't be my last.

Hope you're all enjoying the weekend. I'm going to try to get the house cleaned up today so I can start bringing up the Christmas boxes. I can't wait to get a look at all of my vintage Christmas pretties again!

It's Thanksgiving Time!

Thanksgiving Time
by Langston Hughes

When the night winds whistle through the trees and blow the crisp brown leaves a-crackling down,
When the autumn moon is big and yellow-orange and round,
When old Jack Frost is sparkling on the ground,
It's Thanksgiving Time!

When the pantry jars are full of mince-meat and the shelves are laden with sweet spices for a cake
When the butcher man sends up a turkey nice and fat to bake,
When the stores are crammed with everything ingenious cooks can make,
It's Thanksgiving Time!

When the gales of coming winter outside your window howl,
When the Air is sharp and cheery so it drives away your scowl,
When one's appetite craves turkey and will have no other fowl,
It's Thanksgiving Time!

Vintage Christmas love

I screamed SO loud when I read this email:

Heidi Heidi Heidi YOU WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CONGRATULATIONS! Please email me all your info so I can get her on her way to ya! YAY!

concerning this beauty:that my visiting mother-in-law actually came running to see what was the matter with me! Oh my gosh, I am SO excited! Jen's work is completely gorgeous and original and I simply cannot wait to see it in person, sitting on my table where I can look at it and examine each little detail and drink in the vintage Christmas goodness all December long. :) Thanks again, Jen!

Another bit of Vintage Christmas love is that I've joined the Vintage Christmas Monday blog party hosted by Joan at Anything Goes Here! I'm a little late so I don't have a post for yesterday but I'll be joining in next Monday for sure. It's the most wonderful time of the year at the thrifts, you know, and I've already been hitting them hard, scouring the racks for the vintage holiday goodies that I love so much. I'll also be stocking my etsy shop over the coming days with the few finds I can bear to part with. :) Back tomorrow with pictures of what kept me busy this weekend.

etsy Treasury love!

I'm just tickled! An item in my etsy shop, The Merry Magpie, was just featured in an etsy treasury on the front page!! I don't know how to post the photo of the treasury, but here's the link: bellalulu's red & turquoise retro treasury. Thanks for including me, bellalulu!

The coolest popsicle maker ever--the Zoku Quick Pop Maker

We still have snow on the ground so when I'm looking for a treat this time of year my thoughts don't automatically go to popsicles, but I think if I had a Zoku Quick Pop Maker I might change my mind!I saw an ad for the Zoku in a magazine and was intrigued. It's currently exclusive to Williams-Sonoma and on their website there's a great video that shows the Zoku in action. Basically, it's a popsicle maker that needs no electricity or freezing time--amazing, right? The mold unit is made of aluminum and has a liquid inside that gets extremely cold (much like the bowl of an ice cream freezer, I'm guessing). You store it in the freezer and when you want to make ice pops, you simply put in the plastic sticks, pour in your liquid and the pops will freeze in 7-15 minutes! It's kind of like magic, although I'm guessing to a kid that would be the longest seven minutes EVER. There is a tool provided to loosen the pops so you can remove them from the mold, and then you can use it again twice before it needs to go back into the freezer.

This looks so fun! I think perhaps I'll be asking Santa for this. :)

Pink giveaway winner & Need advice on a lamp

I'm a wee bit late posting the winner of my In the Pink giveaway. Yesterday we pulled out the Goblet of Fire...
And my trusty assistant helped me choose the winner She even wore pink for the occasion! And the winner is:
Commenter #7 shoeboxofphotographs, who happens to be none other than my dear college roommate and friend Shonda! Looks like little Miss B now has decorations for her pinky party. :) Thank you all for visiting and entering!

So the second part of my post title...
is this lamp. (Man, that's a lousy picture--it's hard to take a picture of a clear glass object!) I bought this lamp during a pre-Halloween thrift run for $1.99. It stayed in a bag under my desk for a few days until I realized in my Halloween party house-cleaning frenzy that I needed more light in a particular room, and remembered my "new" lamp. I plopped it on a table, swiped a shade from another lamp and turned it on--I confess I didn't even clean the dust off first!

In the weeks since Halloween my little two-dollar lamp has really grown on me! It reminds me of these from the Simply Shabby Chic line at Target:

This one is $29.99

And this one is $44.99

except for one thing: The previous owner got crazy with the spray paint and changed the metal fittings on the lamp to a baby blue color. I don't hate the color, it just doesn't work with my decor. I know how to wield a can of spray paint myself and thus the metal pieces are going to get a color change but I'm not sure what to choose, so I'm looking for your advice, esteemed readers!

Here are the guidelines: The walls in the room where the lamp will live are a deep red. There are accents of brown and my favorite aqua blue in the room. There isn't really any other metal in the room. There are two pieces of furniture with their original white chippy paint and two pieces of furniture in a warm oak. Because the job will only require a small amount of paint, I want to use a color I already have so here are the options:

• silver
• chrome (a bit more dull than the silver, which is a shiny metallic)
  
• black
• antique white (blogland's favorite Rustoleum Heirloom White, to be precise)
  
• aqua blue
  

What would you choose? I don't have a shade in mind just yet so I'm open to anything!

Posh Squash and a furry visitor

Oh, how I love my Posh Squash!
Last November on our girls' weekend trip to Phoenix, I purchased the wee pink squash on the left. It's teeny and made of the most beautiful rose-colored velvet. I loved it so much that even though it's a pumpkin it has stayed on my desk for the past year, where I could admire it's soft pink sweetness. When I found out that Kim from Olive Juice & Company was selling kits on her blog for her "Posh Squash" you better believe that I hopped over there in a hurry and ordered! I received the kit back before Halloween but just haven't had the time to get them made until now.

The pattern and construction itself is ridiculously simple--in fact, you can probably find instructions for free on the internet by Googling. What makes these so beautiful is the scrumptious velvet in the loveliest fall colors that Kim hand-dyed and included in the kit. I did use a thrifted skirt to make the brown pumpkin, an idea I got from Amy. I'm afraid the kits are all sold out for this year but bookmark Olive Juice & Co, because hopefully Kim will do them again next fall.

In other news, we had an unexpected guest the past few days:

Awwwwww! Isn't that a sweet little furry face? We played foster parents to a little ferret for the past few days. On Tuesday afternoon we discovered him hiding beneath the steps in our garage. We put food & water out but he disappeared that night, only to reappear in our neighbor's arms the next morning--seems he bunked with them on Tuesday night. He was out wandering again yesterday around noon so we let him back in the garage, where he stayed until about 30 minutes ago.

Maren was obsessed with him, as you might imagine. He's really friendly and ferrets don't exactly roam wild around our subdivision, so we knew he was somebody's lost pet. I was all set to make "FOUND" posters this afternoon but the neighbors spotted a "LOST" sign one street over, so they called the ferret's owner and made a joyful reunion. Turns out they are our back-fence neighbors, so little Westley (his mate is Buttercup! CUTE.) probably did a prison break out the dog door and hopped the back fence into our yard. It was a fun little diversion and I have to say that he's pretty darn cute for a weasel!

In the Pink--a giveaway

I don't think they call it nesting after you've given birth, but it feels like ever since Porter was born 8 weeks ago that I've been nesting like crazy! I've been so driven to clean out closets and organize and finish projects that have lain forgotten and half-completed for months. I think perhaps it has something to do with being so happy to NOT be pregnant anymore--just enjoying the ability to move around and bend and not feel so awkward and ponderous anymore. Even though I'm sleep deprived it feels like I've had such a surge of energy and I'm really enjoying it! My productivity level has gone way up and for a Type-A personality like me, that's a great thing.

In all of my cleaning and organizing I found several items that I had stashed away and I noticed that they have a similar PINK theme. I know there are plenty of you out there that love pink too so I put together a little package of fun pink goodness to give away!
There's a Martha Stewart pink tissue paper pom-pom kit, a cute little metallic pink bag with two bottles of OPI nail polish, a wee pink office set with a stapler and other office tools, a pack of fun pink playing cards and a pink felt chandelier.

To enter, just leave a comment on this post sometime between now and Friday at noon MST! I'll pull out the Goblet of Fire and have Maren help me choose a name and post the winner later that afternoon.

New swap!

There's a new swap open!Head over to Sweet Goodness Swaps to check it out and get info on how to sign up!

Two of my most favorite local antique/vintage stores had their holiday shopping kick-off events this weekend, so even though I still have a bin of Halloween stuff sitting in the middle of the front room I went to check things out--it's never too early for vintage Christmas, in my opinion! I bought a few small treasures, but mostly I just looked at the spectacular displays and drank in all the yummy vintage Christmas goodness.

And speaking of vintage Christmas goodness, do yourself a favor and hop over to J. Nichelle Holiday! What this girl does with vintage ceramics, bottle brush trees and glass ornaments will make you drool. See what I mean? Seriously. That's some vintage Christmas goodness, right there. And she's having a giveaway, so go enter!

Tuesday thrift find: aqua duckie planter

Not technically thrifted (found at a little artsy/vintage store instead) but it was thrift-store priced so it had to come home with me!

Halloween roundup

I love Halloween, but every year I'm glad when it's over. Whew! On Friday night we had our annual Halloween party. This year's theme was the Haunted Library and we asked our guests to come in costume as someone from a book. They complied and came up with the most clever costumes! We had:

the Princess and the Pea (two of these actually--one princess and her baby as the pea, and one princess and her husband wearing a big green letter P),

Little Red Riding Hood & Robert E. Lee, Curious George & the Man in the Yellow Hat, Hester Prynne & Dimmesdale from The Scarlet Letter, the Evil Queen from Snow White & her poisoned apple, Where's Waldo & Wanda, Arthur Dent from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy & Mother Goose, two characters from a Terry Pratchett series, and not pictured is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Here's The Mister and me:The Mister is dressed as Greg Mortenson from Three Cups of Tea (he's missing his tea cup), and I'm Waldo. With all the books out there, what are the chances that we'd have two Waldos? My first idea was to be Nancy Drew, but I didn't come up with that plan until Tuesday morning and I knew with the impending snowstorm that I wouldn't be able to put together a costume in time, so I went with Waldo instead--I already had the striped shirt in my closet. The party was fun and I'm so glad everyone came and dressed up!

It was so nice to have Halloween on a Saturday this year. Somehow it felt less rushed--that is, up until 4:00 pm, where we rushed around like maniacs for 90 minutes trying to put together costumes before heading out the door to our church's Trunk or Treat party!
I will fully admit that dressing up as the characters from Alice in Wonderland is something I've wanted to do for years, but I'm brunette and I never could convince anyone to be Alice to my Queen of Hearts. I think this may have been the last year that I could suggest to Maren what she was going to dress as, so I had to take advantage of it and make her be my Alice! Originally I purchased a pattern at a thrift and was going to sew her an Alice dress myself. That brilliant idea lasted about five minutes, until I remembered that I don't sew, especially when putting in gathered sleeves and a zipper are involved. Thank goodness for eBay and the Disney store.I couldn't decide if I wanted Porter to be the White Rabbit or the Cheshire Cat. It would likely have been easier to find him a ready-made bunny costume, but I have a thing for the Cheshire Cat so that won. I had to get creative for this one, as they don't sell a ready-made C.C. costume for infants. Instead I bought a pink kitty cat costume (thanks again, eBay) and a roll of purple duct tape from the craft store and I made my own stripes!Okay, so it's not perfect but you get the idea, right? And at least he was warm!The Mister and I whipped our costumes together pretty much at the last minute. I had planned to be the Queen of Hearts and borrowed the foofy red dress from a friend. I used a tiara from Maren's 2008 costume and a red sequined heart from my craft stash for the crown and made a heart scepter with Maren's fairy princess wand, red cardstock and red glass glitter. I wore a black wig and made the white collar out of white posterboard that The Mister taped to the inside of my shirt collar as we were walking out the door.

I love The Mister's costume--it was an idea we had that morning and he was able to construct using only what we had in the house. He MacGyver-ed together his card guard suit using a cardboard box, and old sheet, coat hangers, a stapler and duct tape and I think he looks pretty darn good! He was nice and warm too, which is good because he took Maren out trick-or-treating in the snow while I stayed warm with Porter at a neighbor's house.

Now to get it all cleaned up and on to the next big project!