Weekend Junk Finds: Vintage Christmas

Now, to be honest--I didn't find this stuff this past weekend. Another weekend, yes, but this weekend I was too busy for junking! Saturday night I had some friends come over to craft and enjoy brownie & peppermint ice cream sundaes, which meant that I spent the entire day finally getting the tree and the rest of the house decorated. It took literally hours and started to feel like work rather than pleasure at about Hour 4, but the upside is that my house looks beautiful and at least I got it all done in one day! Usually, I have the mess and Christmas boxes strewn about for half a week while I decide, a little at a time, where everything will go. This year I had a deadline, so it forced me to make quicker decisions and just get it done!

I do love opening up my boxes and reacquainting myself with all of my pretties, and adding each year's thrifted finds to the mix. I've been hitting the thrifts regularly, searching for treasures! Here are a few things I've found this year:

Lots of pretty, bright ornaments in primary colors.

Lovely pale pinks and aquas too, as well as a vintage green swirly plate.

A bagful of random Christmas stuff that turned out to be much better than it looked on first glance! There's a plastic Shiny Brite nativity, a handful of sugared bells, a few spun heads, a tiny Christmas stocking, a hard plastic angel, and a few yards of really neat colored aluminum garland, which is now residing on my Christmas tree!

Handmade jeweled ornaments, the second such set that I've found. The base is satin ball ornaments, and then somebody used straight pins to affix ribbon, sequins, and pieces of broken costume jewelry to the balls. I found a set like this last year as well, so it must have been a common craft. I'm generally in the "more is better" camp when it comes to vintage Christmas, but even these are over the line for me. So thirty minutes later I had this:

 A nice little pile of vintage sequins, pearls and jewels to repurpose in my crafting. It did give me pause to wonder what crafts I've made that will show up in a thrift store in 30 years, that someone might buy and take apart to use for scraps!

Did you do anything fun and festive this weekend?

PS--I'm linking up with Thrift Share Monday over at Apron Thrift Girl!

Red and white striped straw wreath

When I flew to Arizona last month for The Mister's Ironman race, the woman sitting behind me on the airplane was looking at the December Women's Day magazine with this cover, which caught my eye:

And then what I realized that the darling wreath was made of red and white striped straws, I practically snatched it out of her hands to get a closer look! Then I spent the rest of our vacation searching for a copy of the magazine of my own, but didn't find one until we were at the airport for our return flight to Colorado!

On Wednesday, even though the decorations weren't out, I still have loads of gifts to buy and the tree is laying in pieces in the front room, I decided I was making that darn wreath! I already had the straws, purchased by the gross from Orson Gygi this summer. I bought them in-store, but they are definitely the most economical source from whom to buy the straws that I've seen yet. They also carry blue and gray striped straws.

If you don't have the December Women's Day magazine, you can find the instructions for this wreath and 5 other cute wreaths here. I was able to find the 6" flat floral and craft ring at Michael's in the aisle with the other wreath forms and floral wires. I simply used a piece of white computer paper glued it onto the form with a glue stick. From there, I proceeded following the instructions as written.

When I got to the final ring, I very carefully applied just a small amount of glue to each straw before sticking it down. I wanted to make sure that no excess hot glue would squeeze out and show since it was the top layer, but for the previous two rings, I just put the glue down and then placed the straw on top of it.

It really was easy, and I love how cheery it turned out! It took me almost two hours to mark and cut all the straws, then glue them one at a time, but the time went quickly since I was catching up on the final two installments of "Downton Abbey."

And now I have a bowl of leftover straw bits to repurpose--you had better believe I'm not just throwing those away! I have some red beads and white yarn and I think I'll have Maren make a garland with those and the straw pieces.

This was such a fun project! I know those striped paper straws come in all sorts of colors, and you could make a wreath out of any of them--black and orange and gray for Halloween would be neat, pink for a baby or bridal shower, or rainbow colors would be really fun as well! And if you can't find the striped straws, check out this clever paper 'pixie stick' sunburst wreath at Sassy Style Redesign.

Vintage Christmas books by Susan Waggoner

There's the $1 store, and then there's the $100 store. You may know it by another name: Costco. I'll tell you, I cannot seem to get out of that store without dropping one hundred bones on something or other, and it's usually not anything very interesting: diapers, wipes, TP, OJ, string cheese, butter. Knowing how easy it is to part with Benjamins, I usually steer clear of the books and movies section of the store to keep temptation at bay. This last trip, I was not so successful and it took me about 5 seconds to put these three books in my cart.

Each one was $11.99, which is a bit lower than the Amazon price. All three books are by the same author, Susan Waggoner, who has written several books with cute vintage illustrations on the cover. Waggoner has four vintage Christmas books:

Christmas Memories: Gifts, Activities, Fads and Fancies 1920s-1960s
 

It's a Wonderful Christmas: The Best of the Holidays 1940-1965

Have Yourself a Very Vintage Christmas: Crafts, Decorating Tips and Recipes, 1920s-1960s

Under the Tree: The Toys and Treats That Made Christmas Special, 1930-1970

Costco only had the first three on the list, but I've seen the last one in the stores. I've made it through It's a Wonderful Christmas, and am reading about the 1930s in Christmas Memories. So far there is a little bit of overlap of information between the two books, but not so much that I wish I'd only bought one or the other--I'll update when I finish Christmas Memories. The Have Yourself a Very Vintage Christmas book is new for this year, and it contains craft instructions in addition to the historical information. I haven't read that one yet either, so I'll come back and add a review when I finish.

In all, they're cute books; easy to read and they have good information about the history of some Christmas traditions we enjoy today (such as decorated store windows, sending Christmas cards, etc.) I'd definitely recommend them if you are a fan of vintage Christmas style!

Nutter Butter Christmas treats

Three cute, easy Christmas treats you can make using Nutter Butter cookies and dipping chocolate:

Chocolate-dipped reindeer with pretzel antlers! From laceyreimann.com, but I can't seem to find the original source post on that website.

http://myprettypurse.blogspot.com/2009/01/snowman-cookies.html

Snowmen sporting M&M buttons and TicTac noses. From My Pretty Purse.

Santas with white chocolate beards and red sugar hats. Love the white chocolate chip used as a pom-pom! From Penguin Stamper, via Brown Paper Packages.

I do believe I'll be putting Nutter Butters on the ol' grocery list this week!

Yardstick Christmas tree

Still no Christmas tree up around here--in fact, the Thanksgiving junk is STILL up! Ack. I brought the bin up from the basement and I started taking things down, but just haven't managed to devote the measly hour it will take to get it all done. The high temperature for today is forecast to be a lovely 10 degrees above zero, so I think it will be an ideal day for staying inside and getting rid of the turkeys and pilgrims once and for all! It's time to get Shiny & Brite all up in here!

In the meantime, I do have one small tree displayed:

I bought this darling yardstick tree at a craft fair from the girls who run this Etsy shop. The truth is, I have enough vintage yardsticks saved up in my garage that I could make a forest of my own trees, but the instant gratification of this one won out over my DIY sensibilities.

The star on the top is made from yardsticks broken in half down the width. I think it would also be cute to make a star out of folding ruler pieces. I have a couple that my kids have broken that would be perfect, in fact.

I love projects made from yardsticks! I bought a cute frame in Arizona made from a blue yardstick that I can't wait to put up in Porter's bedroom, and I bought an awesome $3 table at the thrift store this summer that's just begging for a yardstick makeover (which will have to wait until it's more than 10 degrees out). I even have a whole Pinterest board devoted to things made from yardsticks and rulers.

What's the coolest repurposing craft that you've seen using old rulers and yardsticks?

Ironman Arizona & Meeting a blog buddy!

Today it's snowy and cold and icy here in Denver, but just two weeks ago we were looking at palm trees in Arizona when when we traveled for The Mister's Ironman race!

If you're unacquainted with the insanity that is an Ironman Triathlon, let me break it down for you:

• 2.4-mile swim
• 112-mile bike ride
• 26.2-mile run

For a total of 140.6 miles

So you get to run a marathon, but before that, you get to swim and bike for a million hours. And THEN you get the pleasure of running a marathon. Crazy, no? Athletes start at 7:00 am and have to be finished by midnight, and in both the swim and bike stages there are time cut-offs as well. I think I'm putting it mildly that it's not for the faint of heart.

The Mister had done a half-Ironman triathlon (70.3 miles) last summer and decided he wanted to try for the Big Daddy Ironman this year. He has been training literally all year long, putting in hundreds of hours at the gym, in the pool, on his bike, working with a trainer, a nutritionist, and a coach. He is a good example to me of goal-setting and working hard!

The race was scheduled for November 20 in Tempe, Arizona, so we decided to take the whole family down south to cheer him on. We stayed at a Courtyard Marriott just 10 minutes' walk from the race site, which was extremely convenient. However, as a tradeoff--we were all squished into one small room, and we had the pleasure of hearing the freight train across the street roll by, horns BLARING, at ALL hours of the day and night. Porter has a hard time going to sleep when he's not in his own bed, and since it was imperative that The Mister get some sleep before his race--I got to drive Porter around on his own personal tour of Tempe & Phoenix each night to get him to fall asleep, then had to haul his sleeping body inside and up to the third floor and pray he'd stay asleep the whole time. Oh, and due to our schedule, 3 of the 5 nights I started this little routine at later than 10:30 pm.

The race with the swim started at 7:00 am and I didn't get to see that part--just couldn't handle dragging two kids up and getting them fed, dressed, and down to the race site that early in the morning, especially since I'd been up all darn night long listening to that stupid train! We did get to go and see The Mister when he came back to start his second bike loop.

We also got to see him when he finished his bike ride and started his run.

He looks pretty good for having been going for 9 hours already, right? After that, we didn't get to see him again until he came to the finish line at 10:21 pm. At that point Maren was freezing cold and whiny and exhausted, so much that she fell asleep in Porter's stroller. Porter was beyond wired and insisted upon being held (since sister was in his spot), and I pretty much felt like I had run a marathon of my own in trying to keep track of everybody, keep the kids patient and fed and dry-diapered, and stress over my phone's battery dying and being terrified of missing The Mister at the finish line.

But he did it, and I couldn't be prouder of him! It's an incredible accomplishment that few people are able to claim. He says he wants to do another one in a few years. It may be that long before I'm rested enough to consider it. Ha!

On Monday morning after the race, The Mister's agenda consisted mostly of laying on the hotel room bed, so I stole away for a few hours.

I got to meet the lovely Linda from Reminisce..and this and that! I've 'known' Linda through blogging since at least 2007. She is just as warm and sweet and friendly in person as you would imagine if you've ever read her blog! And let me tell you that her kitchen is even cuter in person than in the photos you see on her blog!

We had lunch and then Linda took me shopping to a few of her favorite thrifty haunts in her neighborhood. We visited SAS fabrics by the pound (amazing place..wish we had one in Denver!) and a couple of thrift stores. At the last store, we both found treasures! Linda found the darling glass cake plate shown here and a few other great things (including vintage Pyrex) and I found these:

which had to be hand-carried home on the airplane, but happily, made it all intact!

It was a busy and exhausting but fun weekend for us all. It was exciting to cheer for The Mister and see the results of all of his hard work, and an absolute pleasure to finally make a blog friend into a 'real life' friend!

And this is why I can never get anything done around here...

Alternate post title: Why has nobody invented boarding schools for 2-year-olds?

This is what happened in my bathroom this morning, in the time it took me to scrub half the baseboards in the stairs and run to the basement to switch the laundry.

He works fast, I'll give him that.

I read other blogs and always wonder how the authors manage to get so many projects done and cute crafts made.

They must not have two-year-olds in their houses.

Or maybe they have one of those mythical creatures of whom I've only heard about and dreamed of: a non-destructive, well-behaved toddler.

We don't have one of those in our house. He starts first grade when?

Pinned it and Made it: Thanksgiving edition

Welcome to the Thanksgiving edition of Pinned it and Made it! Last week I was able to make two more of the many things I've Pinned.

The first thing was this cute Thanksgiving Snack Mix. I've actually made something similar before, but I liked this one because it included a free printable tag to tie onto bags of the mix.

I didn't end up using the tag after all, because I made large bags instead of the individual-sized bags in the pin. I also wanted this to be a craft Maren and I could do together, using a set of cute little Thanksgiving stamps I got in my goodie bag at Spark No. 2 last year. I stamped the cute little pilgrims and Maren colored them in. I printed the meaning behind all of the snacks on the back of some kraft cardstock, and we mounted the pilgrim cards to the front side and tied the whole thing with brown felt ribbon from Stampin' Up! I made these to give to the other families we shared Thanksgiving dinner with.

The next pin was one I've had my eye on for a while. I originally bookmarked these cute acorn treats long ago, way before Pinterest. Then I saw these acorn treats on Pinterest, made using mini Nutter Butter cookies and a Hershey's Kiss, and fell in love with the way the pattern on the cookies resembles a real acorn cap! I wanted to make these to take to Thanksgiving dinner, but I had forgotten to buy a bag of Hershey's Kisses and I just couldn't bring myself to go to the store on the holiday.

So I saved them for the next day, which just happened to be a friend's birthday. For my girlfriends' birthdays this year, I've been making them cake stands out of vintage dishes and glass candlesticks. I needed a treat to fit on this stand, and the acorns were perfect, especially because of the leaf border on the plate!

To make it a little more fun (and to make sure that the recipient could tell that the treats were supposed to be acorns!), I cut out oak leaves from pretty colored cardstock and placed them around the plate. I also cut out a pair of leaves to act as gift tags, and tied them with pretty ribbon to the base of the plate. They turned out pretty cute and more importantly, they were YUMMY little treats to pop into your mouth!

You can see the rest of my Pinned it and Made it posts here. You can find the rest of my iins & boards here, or you can click on the red Pinterest link over to the left to follow me!

Weekend Junk Finds: vintage hankies, Christmas ornaments, and buttons

Hello, friends! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. We shared Thanksgiving dinner with some friends, which was wonderful--good food and great company! Then on Sunday, I cooked a turkey and all of the fixins' because to me, part of the fun of Thanksgiving is having yummy leftovers! I'm still washing dishes (love my vintage Pyrex, hate not being able to put it in the dishwasher) so I didn't get a post up for yesterday, but I wanted to share my latest junky finds.

A few weeks ago there was a rare estate sale not far from my home. I live way out on the south east side of town, and it seems like most estate sales are held in the opposite parts of the metro area--the older, more established areas, which makes sense. It's bad enough that I have to usually drag a kid or two with me, and driving 45 minutes to get there in the first place just makes it worse! So when there's a sale on this side of town, I'm there! This one was in an older home and although it was run by a professional estate sale company, the prices were really, really low! I found some fun things to buy and I know if I hadn't been trying to keep a certain 2-year-old from trying to break the antique toy trains, I could have bought more. Here's what I managed to stash in my bag before The Toddler Tornado went on his rampage:

This cool old astronaut pillow is perfect for Porter's vintage space and robot-themed bedroom! I believe it was $2. I also found two unused boxes of skinny red-bordered Dennison labels, a roll of old tickets in the perfect shade of pale aqua blue, and a pint blue glass canning jar, which is destined to become one of these just as soon as I find another zinc lid for it!

I cannot get enough of old felt and sequin Christmas decorations! This is a really fabulous example. What you can't tell from the photo is that it's about 3 feet tall! Rudolph is missing a red gem for his nose, but I can fix that up right quick.

More vintage Christmas: aqua blue Shiny Brites, and a pile of perfectly aged feather tree ornaments. I also found a pile of old velvet ribbons. Vintage velvet ribbons are so much nicer than their new counterparts!

There were quite a few cute vintage hankies at this sale, marked $1 each. I wish now that I had picked up more, but I had limited cash on me and a few items were unpriced so I wasn't sure how much I had to spend, and I played it safe.

Several of them were souvenir hankies. I chose this one because of our recent trip to Washington D.C. I love the bright apple green color!

Isn't this one charming? I love the airplane and the ship! It goes perfectly with my recent nautical obsession.

I've also found a couple of big bags of vintage buttons recently. For me, part of what I'm buying when I purchase the buttons is the total enjoyment of the time I get to spend sorting out the buttons.

After sorting these two bags, I was left with a good pile of mother of pearl and shell buttons, the charming baby card above, and lots of other fun little treasures.

What about you--did you have the chance to get out and find any junk this weekend in between cooking turkey and scouring the Black Friday ads?

Happy Thanksgiving!

George Washington's original "official proclamation," made at the request of Congress, establishing a day of Thanksgiving in the newly formed country:

Ghost of Blog Posts Past: Posh Squash

We're on our way home to Colorado today, so I have one last repost for you featuring a project I still LOVE!


This was originally posted in 2009:

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!

Weekend Junk Finds

Today I'm still in Phoenix, but I have some new junk goodies to share!

One trip to Goodwill to look for vintage Christmas goodies netted this cool vintage hard plastic lighted Santa.

He's on a Styrofoam base covered with some really pitiful-looking fake greenery and apples. At first I thought I'd just rip him off the base, but now I believe he needs some Shiny Brite and sugar bell magic, don't you think? With my trusty glue gun, I'll have him spruced up in no time!

A great old souvenir plate from the Harold Warp Pioneer Village in Minden, Nebraska (which is apparently still there), and a Lu-Ray butter dish missing its lid. It must have jettisoned by a dealer, because it still had the remnants of an antique store price label. Even lidless, I'm happy to find any Lu-Ray I can get my hands on!

Vintage ornaments in all sizes and shapes, with a mini glass tree topper to round out the collection.

This cute little oak chair was $6.99. Ever since the Great Desk Chair Debacle this summer, I've been on the hunt for a new chair. This one was cheap and in great shape so I grabbed it. I had originally wanted a chair to paint a glossy red, but I think I'm going to leave the oak finish rather than chance messing it up with paint. Again. I do need to recover the seat cushion but that's a 30-minute fix. The hardest part will be deciding which fabric to use!

This find had the ladies at the cash register oohing and aahing! It just so happens to be a close relative of the pink Therm-a-Jug I picked up at the Horseshoe Market earlier this summer.

The lids and spouts are different, but they're both darling! The white one is in very good shape--often I find vintage jugs like these with huge dents in the metal sides. With the addition of this new jug to the pink one and the red plaid one I thrifted a few years back,

it looks like I have a new (unwieldy and space-hogging) collection on my hands!

Did you find any good junk this weekend?