Weekend Junk Finds: It's a Wonderful Life Houses

Today's junk finds were actually bought on a weekend back in 2011, right before Christmas, but I never posted them then. I literally bought them on Christmas Eve last year, which was a Saturday. So technically they are Weekend Junk Finds, just not from a recent weekend.

Literally two days before I had read about the It's a Wonderful Life village houses on one of my favorite blogs, 320 Sycamore. Because it was Christmas Eve, all of the Christmas stuff at the thrift store was 50% off.  I first noticed one house, and then another. And then even though I'd already walked through all of the Christmas aisles, I headed down them again and found three more houses!

Then I packed them away in my crazy vintage Christmas closet (remind me to show you that mess sometime) until this year. I had hoped to get them listed on eBay before Thanksgiving but that didn't happen. I didn't get them listed until December 2.

 This morning when I woke up I got the notification that the last one sold! Woo-hoo!!

Just wanted to let you know so that while you're trolling the thrifts this year in search of vintage Christmas goodies--keep an eye out for these! They're not really the style I'm looking for and I don't have room in my house for a village, so I've probably walked right by them in the past. It was only Melissa's post that clued me in and you can bet I'll be on the lookout for them in the future!

I've linked up with the Nifty Thrifty at A Living Space and Apron Thrift Girl's Thrift Share Monday.

Weekend Junk Finds: Vintage Christmas Loot

 Blurry photo, sorry--it was taken with my phone and looked fine on the little screen. This represents the fruits of my Black Friday shopping. When you're in a tiny town where the only major store is Wal-Mart, you have to get creative. I hit the local thrift stores and turned up these. I'd rather have a pile of pink vintage Shiny Brites than a $79 flat screen TV any day!

The beautifully tarnished vintage glass glitter on this sleigh stuck out like a shining beacon on a thrift store shelf full of ugly figurines (one of those seasonal eye exams Barbara is talking about). It's a fun piece--it's marked Japan on the bottom but the fun thing is that the sleigh itself collapses almost flat! The flat part in the middle is actually two pieces connected with elastic string. They can be folded together, pushing up and making the glittered sides of the sleigh come together. Very handy for storage!

Why, oh why did the fashion of wearing a festive Christmas corsage pinned to your winter coat die away? Who's up for helping me to bring it back? My collection is getting to the point where I could wear a different one every day for the whole month.

 And one last small-town thrift store find. I saw this rubber-face Santa on my way out the door, after we had already paid. He was on the floor and I walked right by him the first time. I wasn't sure if I ought to spring for him, so I took the Phone-A-Friend option. Actually, I texted the owner of another rubber-faced Santa, who said she'd buy him.

I'm pretty sure I knew that would be her answer before I even hit "Send". I went back for him and I'm pretty glad she talked me into it. ;) My Santa is 24" tall with a rubber face, gloves, and boots. He's not in perfect condition by any means: there's a chunk out of the back of his peplum (the belt is cleverly attached to the peplum, to give him the appearance of wearing a separate coat and pants), there are marks on the rubber and some paint loss on his face and hair, and the tip of his hat seems to be covered in a glob of melted candle wax. I like him more and more every day! There are some faint markings on his gloves but I can't read them so I don't know anything about his manufacturer. Does he look familiar to any of you?

We dragged the Christmas tree up from the basement yesterday so that I can spend the week getting things decorated. I must admit that right now, the thought of having to haul out all of the boxes and bins, make a gigantic mess figuring out where to put everything, and then stow all the boxes again has me feeling completely overwhelmed. I have two events this weekend, and I have some other projects going on as well, all with top priority so I'm starting out the month already feeling completely stressed out. I think by a week from now I'll be feeling much better but for now I'm already feeling the holiday crunch.
What's your best tip for dealing with holiday stress?

Vintage Christmas Math

MINUS

EQUALS

Now that's my kind of math homework!

Weekend Junk Finds: Christmas in July

I heard it, calling me from the thrift store. And since The Mister came home early for a change, I had the opportunity to heed the call. Look what it was:

 

I have long coveted the vintage costume jewelry trees I've seen on other blogs. I've come across a few at antique stores, but who wants to pay antique store prices? Not me, when I know that if I'm patient and listen closely, I might be able to find my very own tree for a few bucks at my favorite thrift store!

 

I know these things are probably the height of tackiness, but man, I LOVE them! This one is a pretty and well-made version. The base tree shape is made of silver mercury glass beads, and then the jewelry is glued on top. There's a spot on the lower left where a jewel is missing but I have plenty of pieces that I can use to fill in. Hardest thing about that will be deciding which one!

 Other vintage Christmas that was waiting for me that night: a cute puzzle and a LGB.

And rounding out the thrift store haul is a cute book about rainbows and three pewter goblets that will be perfect for my Harry Potter-themed Halloween party.

And there was even FREE junk! A friend and I went out shopping on Saturday and just happened to walk by a bookstore that was closing. At that particular time, everything remaining in the store was FREE for the taking! There were thousands of old magazines and some huge wooden bookshelves, but what interested us was the dozens and dozens of old wooden fruit crates that the store owner had used as magazine shelving. Some were nailed/screwed together so we had to leave them, but otherwise we loaded up with as many as we could carry! On my way out the door, I spied this little chrome stool and snagged it as well. The vinyl and foam on top are destroyed and there is rust on the chrome legs, but I think I may be able to clean it up and recover the seat. If not--well, it was free so it won't hurt me to trash it!

Did you find any good junk this weekend? I'm linking up with Apron Thrift Girl's Thrift Share Monday!

Weekend Junk Finds: Vintage Christmas goodies

For the first time ever, I actually signed up on a list for an estate sale! I don't generally get to do this because most sales are far, far away from my house. It's bad enough to drive over for the sale, but to drive over and back again the day before to sign up on the list is just not going to happen. And with little kids, I can't get there early to sign up on the day of the sale either, so I just have to be content not to worry about being one of the first in the house.

For this particular sale I got lucky--it was only about 10 minutes from my house, so it was no problem to pop Porter into the car and run over. I ended up being #19 on the list which doesn't seem that great, but I was the first one into the room with the vintage Christmas goodies (my goal!) and I was able to get everything I wanted, so it was a success!

This is what enticed me to the sale in the first place! I saw them in the ad for the sale on EstateSales.net (which you really should sign up for because it's FREE and a great resource!) and even though it meant that Porter would miss his nap on two consecutive days (the day I signed up and the day of the sale, since it started at 2 pm) the lure of mini Shiny Brite ornament boxes was too strong to resist.

There were also big Shiny Brite ornament boxes as well. One was in my all-time favorite Shiny Brite box

I LOVE this lid! I only have one other one like it but it's my favorite because of the image of Uncle Sam and Santa Claus shaking hands.

There were other vintage Christmas goodies as well. I found two bells made of wire and PINK mercury glass beads, and two boxes of reflectors.

And a whole pile of the random little vintage Christmas bits that make me disproportionately happy. Especially when they come packaged in a darling little vintage shoebox like this:

I think I might have to try my hand at making some vintage-style Christmas corsages with all of the little bits I've been collecting.

Did you find any good junk this weekend? I'm linking up with Apron Thrift Girl's Thrift Share Monday!

Weekend Junk Finds: Vintage Christmas

These fun goodies were actually from the same estate sale as last week's finds, but I saved them to show on their own because vintage Christmas goodies should never have to share the spotlight. :D

Everything that I bought was thrown into couple of box lots so I couldn't see exactly what I had until I got home and pulled it all out. I was definitely pleasantly surprised! I love the big snowman--he's a cardboard candy container but he seems to be covered with a layer of wax. I'm not sure if that was intentional or accidental, but either way, he's charming! His snowman compadres are of the pinecone and styrofoam ball variety. There were several Styrofoam crafts among the items that I bought. The green trees were attached to their bases with toothpicks and decorated with tiny mercury glass balls whose wires had been poked into the trees.

Here we have a giant version of the green Styrofoam tree, and a smaller version that has no ornaments, only a dusting of tarnished German glass glitter snow on the branches. In the other part of the forest is a stand of bottlebrush trees, a pair of foil angels with shocking hairdos, and another pinecone snowman sporting a strange blue paint job and resting on more Styrofoam.

Pink vintage Christmas gets its own picture. :) This guy is made from a spun cotton head, a fuzzy chenille stem body with a pipe cleaner candy cane and a pair of pink glass ornaments, all anchored into --you guessed it--more Styrofoam.

And last, the best kind of Christmas flotsam: spun head angels, tiny pink-tinged reindeer, sugar bells, pipe cleaner snowmen and a tiny skier, a bunch of small-sized mercury glass picks, and a pair of fantastic corsages made from foil leaves, mercury glass beads and shiny candy canes.

This weekend I went downtown to a beautiful historic mansion to visit a craft fair. I bought only a few things, but the place was hopping and it was nice to see that buying handmade hasn't gone out of style! Did you find any treasures this weekend?

I'm linking up with Apron Thrift Girl's Thrift Share Monday!

Confession time, vintage ornaments and more stripey straws

Confession time: I did NOT get the tree or the last box of ornaments put away yesterday. I was too busy spending time with some girlfriends, hitting the thrift store, getting cupcakes with Maren, playing Just Dance 3 with my family and buying frames for our family portraits. Would you have wanted to give up one of those fun things to clean? I didn't either, which is why the tree is still standing in the front room! TODAY....I swear....

When I was taking off all of my beautiful vintage ornaments the other day, I couldn't resist snapping a few beauty shots:

Yum. And that's not even all of them!

Also, I forgot to show you all the cute new Christmas stocking that I ordered this year:

I ordered it from this Etsy shop: Bebe Sniklefritz. She's somewhat local so even though I ordered it late, I managed to get it in time for Santa to fill it up on Christmas morning. I've loved her stockings since last year and this year I finally gave in and ordered. The stocking is nicely sewn and I am IN LOVE with the retro print and of course the aqua and red!

I'd love to order coordinating stockings for the other three in my family but I'm not sure I can get Maren and The Mister to go for it. Rats! Porter's not old enough to have become attached to his Pooh stocking, which was a last-minute Target buy a few years ago because I needed something. Maybe I'll just order one for him now before he knows any better!

One more thing, before I go back to the ornament mines...remember the bowl of paper straw bits that I had leftover after making my Striped Straw Wreath? (which, by the way, I'm totally leaving out for Valentine's Day!)

I knew I could make something fun out of them rather than just toss them in the recycling bin. I actually tried to get Maren to do it because I knew it would be easy enough for her, but she wasn't interested so I just did it myself. I used some yarn and some red plastic faceted beads from my stash and made this cute garland!

I just strung the straws and beads on the yarn preschool-style. It took no time at all, and I had enough straw bits to make a good 10 feet of garland. I hung it above a window, but next year I'm going to use it on my Christmas tree. I love how the straws look like peppermint sticks and the facets of the beads catch the light and add just a little bit of sparkle. Not bad for 'trash'!

Christmas 2011 wrap-up

 I've just been easing myself into this new year this past week. Would it shock you to know that my Christmas tree is still up? Oh, all the ornaments are off and it's shoved into the corner instead of in the middle of the window, but still. I worked hard on it on Friday, making approximately 452 trips up and down the basement stairs to put things away, but it wore me out and I had to take a break for the weekend. I'm determined to get it DONE today! I'm almost there, just one more box of ornaments to put away and the tree, so I'm ready to just get it over with. I am sorry to see the tree come down--it really was beautiful. I'm not quite ready to put up my Valentine's just yet, but I might put out a few winter-themed decorations in the meantime.

I did want to make a few notes about our Christmas. Last year, I was a mess. A stressed-out, unhappy mess and Christmas was not nearly the fun time it should have been. Really, I couldn't wait for it to be over so that I could just rest. Having Maren out of school from Thanksgiving until New Year's was a large part of that, as were The Mister going out of town, being involved in a swap, and a few other things in addition to the normal Christmas activities.

This year, I knew things had to be different. I started thinking about it in October, and trying to identify ways that I could make this year better and not turn into a crazy Christmas-hating shrew. I can't say that I made any major changes this year, but I can tell you that this Christmas season was SO much better than last year!

Things that were different this year: The Mister didn't go out of town, and Maren was only out of school for the traditional 2 weeks instead of 6. I tried to get gift ideas early and order things early, though I wasn't as successful at this as I would have liked. I didn't participate in any swaps, I did New Year's treats for our neighbor gifts so those could wait until after Christmas, and I didn't stress that I didn't get our family cards done until after New Year's (heck, they're still not here yet!). I did have one moment of minor freak-out when I started to panic about getting it all done, but it was averted by a kind husband who ran to the store and bought cookies at 9 pm when the homemade ones didn't turn out. But there were no locking-myself-in-the-bathroom sobbing fits like last year (or the year before), so I'm counting it as a victory!

Christmas Day itself was so much fun! The Mister and I kept looking at each other and commenting on how GREAT the day was. Even though we had to get the kids dressed and haul everyone to church at 11:00 a.m. this year because the day fell on a Sunday, the meeting was full of beautiful music and only added to the celebration of the day. The kids loved their gifts, and the gifts we got each other were thoughtful and surprising and much appreciated.

Our dinner was simple--I procrastinated until Christmas Eve morning so I had to take what I could find at the grocery store. I ended up with a ribeye roast (on 50% clearance, woo-hoo!) and it was delicious! Because I was only cooking for the four of us, two of whom hardly eat anything, I just made the things we like best: the meat, mashed potatoes, crab legs, and sparkling cider. I bought rolls and didn't even bother with veggies or Jello or anything else, including dessert. It was absolutely delicious and it was wonderful to not be stuck in the kitchen for hours.

Truly, on Christmas Day my heart was filled with JOY. I remember standing in the shower that morning before Church and thinking how blessed and lucky I am to have so much, and a family that loves each other, and a dear husband. I felt JOY in the reason we celebrate that day, that the Savior came to earth as a sweet baby.

Christmas 2011 was so wonderful that I'm determined to make Christmas 2012 even better! I didn't get to do much crafting and I didn't get as much listed in my Etsy shop this December as I had wanted. I think the key to making those things happen this next year is to get my gift shopping done by December 1. The coming up with ideas/shopping is absolutely the most stressful part of Christmas for me.

I have never been able to be one of those people who shops all year long and then is done by Thanksgiving. I'd like to, but I have birthdays, Mother's and Father's Day spread throughout the year so I feel like those take up any gift ideas I might come across. I don't know, maybe I just have really difficult people to shop for. I try really hard to come up with thoughtful, unique gifts for the people I love--I'm sorry, but I view gift cards as a cop-out so unless the circumstance is extreme, I'm loathe to go that route. This year I did put The Mister in charge of buying gifts for his own family, and that helped a ton as far as taking the stress off of me. I'm going to really make an effort this year to hunt down ideas and get them executed early! I truly do think that will give me less to worry and more time to enjoy the season.

A Very Pinterest Christmas

Hello, everyone! I hope you had a wonderful holiday--I did, more on that later!

How did I ever get along without Pinterest? I'm coming up on my year anniversary with my Beloved Pinterest, and I have it to thank for quite a few of the fun things I made this Christmas.

First was the gift we made for Maren's teacher, a Disney/Mickey Mouse nut. I first saw these cute Mickey Mouse Oreo cookies months ago and knew I wanted to do something with them for her Christmas gift.

Source: http://twopeasintheirpod.wordpress.com/

Instead of making pops, we just made cookies so that more would fit in the jar. Maren helped me pick the yellows out of 2 tubes of mini M&Ms for Mickey's buttons. We also decided to make some Minnie cookies, using Wilton pearls for the polka dots on her dress and two tiny heart sprinkles put together for her bow.

Then, Groopdealz had a deal for vinyl monograms, and the rest of the gift was taken care of! A visit to IKEA (not a quick visit--it's impossible to make a quick visit through that place) took care of the jar.

I hope she liked it. Actually--I hope she got it! I sent it to school with Maren the last day before break, and only found out later that the teacher was out that day. I hope maybe she stopped in before Christmas to pick it up.

Another gift I made was for The Mister's co-workers. Last year when the Christmas junk at Target went to 90% off, I found a big stack of Christmas cards that came in the niftiest tins with a clear plastic window in the top. They were originally $8.99. I immediately donated the cards, but kept the tins to use this year. When I Pinned this adorable Santa snack mix:

Source: http://cookiesandcups.com/santa-party-mix

I knew just what I would make to put in the tins!

The little Santa hats made from Bugles turned out so cute! I'd definitely make this again. This isn't one of the tins--I had a bit of leftover mix that we placed into cellophane bags with Santa ribbons for a few other people.

One of my church jobs is that I get to work with 8-9 year old girls. I pinned these glittery Christmas ornaments because they seemed easy enough for the girls to make successfully.

Source: http://thegreenbeanscrafterole.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-that-glittersminus-mess.html

I don't have a photo of the ornaments we made, but they turned out so great--they are so pretty and sparkly! The hardest part was finding the Pledge floor wax that you squirt inside the ornaments to get the glitter to stick. I found mine at my Commissary, but later I did see it at Wal-Mart. It costs almost $7 per bottle, but you only use a tiny bit for each ornament, so one bottle would last you a LONG time. Like, decades. Or, you can do what I did and let all of your friends pass around the bottle to make ornaments with their kids!

For breakfast a few mornings before Christmas, I made these fun, festive waffles:

Source: http://www.rutherfordfamilyhappenings.blogspot.com/2011/12/decorating-christmas-tree.html

only I have an aversion to artificially-green foods, so I left the green food coloring out of our waffles.

I didn't have blueberries or raspberries, but I did have blackberries and pomegranate arils to decorate mine, complete with a dusting of powdered sugar snow.

Earlier in December, I also made this cute banana snowman treat for the kids:

Source: http://littlestlearners.blogspot.com/2011/01/eeeeeeeeeekkkkk.html

though again, I didn't take a photo of my own version before the kids gobbled them up, but we used mini chocolate chips for the eyes and buttons.

For Maren's class party at school, we had the kids make these cute snowmen out of tongue depressors.

Source: http://adayofwonders.blogspot.com/2009/12/advent-book-activity-snowmen-at-night.html

Since it's not technically a "Christmas" party, we went with the winter theme and this craft was perfect!

For time's sake, I prepainted the sticks and we used hot glue to attach the buttons, felt scarf and the ribbon hanger.

And one last gift, this one for the ladies I visit each month. I actually didn't Pin these clever soap bottle tags until after Christmas, but we didn't visit our ladies until then so it was okay.

Source: http://darlingdoodles.blogspot.com/2011/12/12-days-of-gift-mas-gift-1.html

I love free printables!  This link includes a free printable sheet with the cute tags and I used my scalloped circle punch to cut them out.

I actually still had bottles of last year's Christmas-scented soap that I bought during BB&W's big clearance in January. Soap doesn't go bad, so I didn't feel weird giving it this year. If I'd had more time to prepare, I would have included a cute festive hand towel to make it a more substantial gift. Next year!

Whew! Seriously, what would I have done without Pinterest?