It's Begining to Look a lot Like Christmas..........

Or not.

But I would like it to look like Christmas, which is strange. I was just lamenting to one of my more decorator inspired pals that I hate how we go from Halloween decorations (in early September) to Christmas taking over before we are even allowed to Trick or Treat.

Then last week, I went in to Michael's. They had row after row of Christmas decorations, ribbons, garlands, ornaments. Don't even get me started on the craft supplies. To push me over the edge once and for all, they threw in a huge container of those cinnamon and orange soaked pine cones.

Screw Thanksgiving. I'm already fat and don't need to eat and entire left over pie as a consolation for staying out of the mall on Black Friday. Besides, I think I am ready to switch out my current fall tablescape.........



Yes, it really does look like that.

I have a confession to make. Last Christmas, I was a bit of a grinch or bitch or some other four letter word, depending on who you ask. I didn't decorate.

Not a bit.

I didn't even get a tree.

I was having one of those....."Christmas is so much work and I have to do everything and none of you ever help because you are all jerks incapable of appreciating me or anything that I do for you which is everything by the way and none of you care any ways because if you cared you would say the house looks lovely and thank you and I end up working so hard for nothing and so we will have no Christmas and that will show you because that is all you deserve because you all suck so there."

About 3 days before Christmas, Austin said "I can't believe you really didn't get a Christmas tree." So, of course, the only person that really sucked was me. I tried to turn it around and say that we are going for that whole minimalist thing. We will still be all together as a family and that is all that matters, which IS true, but I missed the spirit of the season. Missed it by about 1,000,000 miles.

I adore Christmas. My favorite childhood memories are of my mom going all out in every room in the house. Unpacking the Christmas boxes, unwrapping the decorations. It was almost as good as Christmas morning, oohing and ahhing over the beloved treasures only seen a couple of weeks out of the year.

So, this year, I am going all out. Day after Thanksgiving.

I will still eat a whole pie, but it will be for the energy and sugar rush needed to deck this house out. I will put Buddy's spin at Gimbel's to shame.

It should be fun as it will give me a chance to put to use all the vintage goodies I have acquired over the past year of estate sale-ing to use.

Following is the equivalent of the scrapbooking sticker sneeze......the blogger's picture sneeze.

Here are some of my favorite finds that are helping me to get in the mood...................

Vintage Chenille covered ornaments with mercury glass centers.
Can I just tell you how much I adore the 70's colors....avocado, orange and harvest gold.

Snowman ornament. I am not sure of it's origins, but it looks very Made in Japan to me. Since he has a Styrofoam head instead of spun cotton, I am thinking he may be a reproduction.

1950's Holt Howard winking Santa mug.

Two cute Made in Japan ornaments. They have all the best features, don't they? Velveteen paper, rhinestones, perfectly tarnished bells and Dresden golden paper trim.

I nabbed over a dozen of these vintage pins at a very recent estate sale. They were .50 each. Yes, all that chenille pissed off snow man face goodness for .5o!
I adore them. Adore them. Seriously. Adore them.
They are new "old stock" and even though they are completely the Made in Japan style, they are tagged Marshall Fields & Company and even cost $2.50 back in the day!!

These two cuties are a bit worse for the wear, but for $1 each, I could not resist their faces. I really need to figure out a way to clean them up without ruining their flocking or vintage appeal. For now, though, I am happy with their holiday sweetness.

Vintage elf Christmas paper scrap.
I really want to frame this somehow, but not sure how to make it work.

The colors on this one lands this in my top 10 favorite angel finds. Because at this point, I have bought so much shit that I need to break it in to top 10's by categories.

Finally, this is one of my favorite "vignettes."
Yes, I said vignettes.
So there.
This one has some of my best treasures. I adore bottle brush trees and have tons of them everywhere. Add in a sculpture of, well, I don't know what it is, but I adore him. I have his brother (who is done up in shiny eggplant and gold) in my bedroom. I should do some research so that I know what I have, but I do know that they were from an artist in San Fransisco. They are tagged '04 and with the initials HL. Blizz is the amazing snowman done by an incredible folk artist, PineStreetJunction. Finish it up with my childhood favorite Hagen-Renaker minatures...this one is a deer.....and a Made in Japan golden flocked velvet angel.

Are you in the mood yet? I am. Check back in on me on Black Friday. Hopefully all that pie won't change things.

Fun and Games

I have been so busy that a large amount of the "Estate Sale of the Century" finds have been sitting just waiting for me to take the time to open, admire and share.

I think it says something that I haven't gotten around to going through all the packages that I purchased, but more about that later. On the plus side, it should help me from doing more shopping since I can just dig in to this bag of treasures when I feel the need.

Yeah, like that happened.

I just had to stop at another estate sale this Thursday. Hit the mother-lode of "Made in Japan" vintage chenille package ties and vintage velvet ribbons. I try to kid myself that I do not have a problem by hiding them in the stash of items from the last sale. So if it seems that I post time and time again about the incredible finds of this sale, I might be lying. But I digress.

Every crafter, scrapper and altering artist knows that we have a thing and I mean a thing, for games. Vintage game pieces, bingo cards, and the like just seem to send us in a frenzy. I don't play bingo, Scrabble or checkers, but I'll' be damned if I can't find a way to stick a game piece on any random layout, card or tag and trust me, I am not alone.

So, of course, when I saw they had a table full of toys and such, I was there throwing things in my bag almost sight unseen.


There was a bag of about 40 mixed vintage wood checkers for $1.50. In addition, I grabbed two more complete boxes of 24 for $1.00 each. What I will do with 70+ checkers is not really the point, so don't ask me about it again.




Okay, this find really made my heart skip a beat. A while back, my awesome pal Pete had sent me a link to an Etsy seller that had some of these cards for sale. My exact comment to her was "Why can't I ever find these?" Low and behold, three weeks later, here they were! Now they weren't black like the cards we saw, but I grabbed them up for $2. I wasn't sure what I would do with them since the red didn't really jive with the Halloween vibe I was going for, but once again, it was Pete to the rescue.....Vintage Inspired Gothic Valentines. How cool is that? Almost as cool as having a friend with inspiration to spare.

What is it about Bingo that we love so much? Again, I have cards on layouts, tags and all sort of altered items, and don't get me wrong they look awesome. I can't resist them, but why? I don't play Bingo. The only person I know that plays Bingo is my Ex and as much as I would love to do a layout about him only leaving the house to go gambling at the Bingo parlor with his Mommy and his Aunties, I think it might be seen as mean....... Okay, back on topic, now. I found this complete vintage Bingo set including cards, markers and all for $2.


Get a load of this awesome set of dominoes. Do you see the lovely dotted texture on the marker side? How about the incredible detailed engraving on the back. The fact that they are tagged Japan..... *sigh*.........and all for the price of a candy bar.



Finally, I found this huge bag of vintage letters. I am assuming they were from some game. Maybe a spelling or school game? I thought they would be great to spell out a page title or one of those altered and inspirational sayings like this.........

Or maybe this.........

Estate Sale of the Century

Last Friday, I hit my personal estate sale lottery. It was just the most amazing sale. A break out in cold sweat, oh my word I must have everything in this house, heart pounding, frenzy of an estate sale.

I know, I need help.

I know I do.

But really, you had to be there.

I walked out with about 5 bags stuffed full of all of my favorite vintage finds and more. I just have to share with someone, so its going to have to be here. It will take numerous posts and I hope you stick with me and share my excitement. If not, I hope you realize I *know* that I have issues and this is one of them. Besides, my only other option is to share with Jon and I fear that will lead to an episode of "Hoarders" in my near future.

On to the good stuff!!

This was in the garage. On the floor. Tossed aside. I picked it up because I am nosy and pick up everything not nailed down. Then I started a little bit of hyperventilating. That is not an exaggeration. It was about 110 degrees in the garage, so can I blame it on that?

I saw a glimpse of something special in the bag, but didn't want to let on and perhaps jack up the price. See how I am slick like that? So all nonchalant, I asked for the price. He said, "Is a dollar too much?" I said I had a dollar handy and I was good to go! When I got home, look at the treasure I found..............

This was the $1 bag as I found it.

This is a peek in the bag, a glimpse of what I first saw.

Once I sorted it all out, this is what I found.....*sigh*

There were about 3 dozen of these pink, sugary, glittery bells. I have never seen them this small before, just about about 1/4 inch tall. Made in Japan and with perfectly tarnished mercury glass beads in the center of each.

There were some small spun cotton birds, dainty and covered with clear glass glitter.

The majority of the bag were these vintage flowers. They are perfectly aged in a way that tea dying just can not achieve and so delicately made out of amazing crepe paper.

Look at the subtle hint of the original pale pink in each of the buds.

A handful of aged mercury glass beads.

Aren't these just the most adorable acorn tops?

Okay, this one is just weird. Strange angel face. I don't know if he would bless me or not and that is the most un-fluffy cloud I have ever seen, plastic or not.

An orchestra of pink angels. Look at the way the gold on the wings has achieved the perfect patina. The worn gold with a tinge of aqua and green. These normally wouldn't be my style, but I admit, I don't see myself giving these up any time soon.

Here are the lovely angels in chartreuse.

And again in baby blue.

The complete Heavenly band.

I can't tell you how happy these kinds of finds make me. It is such a silly thing, but it just seems like such a score. I know its not important in the grand scheme of things. Its just stuff. Stuff. Stuff that will probably end up in a bag in my garage 20+ years down the road from now. Stuff that will make my son wonder why did she keep all this crap? Make him say "I knew she was crazy for craft supplies and Christmas decorations but damn, this is kind of just ridiculous." "Let's just put a $1 price tag on all of it and hope it sells."

I know that stuff won't make you truly happy in the end.

But for now, it does.

And I am okay with that for the most part.

Besides, its officially my stuff now. Mine. While I have it, I am going to love it, enjoy it and maybe even eventually share it.

I Love a Good Junk Drawer

I have become addicted, addicted I tell you, to estate sales.

It started simply enough. I joined a swap on one of my favorite crafty sites and instead of swapping paper goods as usual, it was a vintage / thrift store swap. How clever! Buy items for each letter of the alphabet and mail them off to your partner. For instance, J is for mini Jell-o mold; A for a chenille angel ornament, etc. It was a scavenger hunt and boy was I game!

Here are a few of the groups that I sent......

M is for Millinery.
K is for Keys.

P is for Poker Chips.

O is for "Over the Garden" Pamphlet.


Of course, I ended up spending MUCH more than the $1-$2 per letter. I was going to those "Antique Malls" we have here in Texas because I didn't know any better. I hadn't much thought of it before, just assumed that there was some special and secret source for their inventory. A source that would never be available to me. Even though I was paying retail prices, it seemed worth it because I could never find or inherit these lovely old things. Don't get me wrong, I still love them to death, but,

.........Cue the clouds parting, the chorus singing..............

EstateSales.Net

Mecca, Nirvana, the Holy Grail for thrifty, vintage loving girls and boys.

I check this site daily, sometimes more than once, just to see what is going on. As the sale days approach, I check it again and again. And usually, just to be safe, one more time. You know, just in case.

Where to go?
What to buy?
Where are the hidden treasures?

As much as I admire the antique furniture, the lovely depression glass and the vintage clothes, my favorite finds are often the strange little bits of life that you find tucked away here and there. I find that the best estate sales seem to have one person working there that is of like mind. They go through and put together little bags of this and that and I can't seem to resist.

For a few dollars or less, you get small treasures and special trinkets which seem to beg me to question them.

Why was this saved?
Where did they find it?
How many homes has it had and how many years has this been hidden away?
What memories does it invoke?

I can assign whatever value I want and I tend toward the fanciful. It seems appropriate.

Here is one of my recent favorites.........

Small set of carved wooden feet, the black metal poodle, a ship in a bottle, vintage ink, a wooden rubber duck, a tiny windmill......... aren't they all just lovely?

For some reason, it reminds me of being a child, collecting shiny bits and hiding them away. A wooden letter in a pants pocket, a mailing label secretly taken from someone's desk, a metal lighthouse that Grandpa gave, taken to school in a backpack.

I guess I like the thought that they carry their own secrets, an unknown history and that maybe I am now a part of it. I like to think that some day, some where, after my time has come and gone, another person puts down a dollar and carries them on down the road to their next adventure.