It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

 Christmas has come to our tiny apartment (which is not much bigger than this house!) and I thought I'd show you some of the vintage decorations we've found.

 This charming little house was found on ebay.  I placed it among my bottle brush trees including a favorite one behind the caroler which I love because it used to belong to my grandma Hazel.

The top shelves of our bookcases are always reserved for these little holiday vignettes.  Here are some cute old Santas and reindeer.  I especially love the old log cabin with the Santa head sticking out the chimney.  The reindeer looking up at him makes me smile because he almost looks like he's thinking 'is he stuck again?'

This shelf is for the tiny village houses I found at the flea market.  They are so charming and have holes in the back so you can light them up at night.  The houses with figures in the yard are getting kind of expensive so I just hunt for little figurines and add them myself.  Voila!

 My little wall cabinet below is filled with mini merry makers - snowmen, snow babies, and Santas all no more than a few inches in size:

The next scene features a Steiff reindeer and a Santa by the Ino Schaller company from Germany.  It is made from the same mold that Ino Schaller used over a hundred years ago to create the antique Santa candy containers so sought after by Christmas collectors. 

 The house above is another modern version of the ones so popular in the 1920's and 30's.  The snowman was a Christmas ornament but I just snipped the string off and now he's the perfect addition to the snowy scene.

This Santa above was originally an ornament too but we found some of these little boxes at the flea market so I snipped off his hanger and glued him to one to make a cute little candy container.

 The old plate shelf above our sofa is reserved for all those little Christmas odds and ends.

One of my favorite collections is the one below. 

When I lost my dad a few years back I found I wanted to know more about his childhood and my ancestors so I studied a lot about Sweden and their Christmas customs.  Since then I always hunt for vintage Swedish holiday decorations such as these Dala horses, Swedish angel chimes, and straw ornaments.  It just makes me feel closer to my dad and our ancestors.

 A Swedish Santa and a straw goat.  I guess the goat was the equivalent to Santa's sled.

I love this little elf candle chime. The candle's heat causes his arm to raise up and ring the bell on the little pig's back.  Pigs are a symbol of good luck in many European countries.

Another symbol of good luck in the coming year is to find a bird's nest in your Christmas tree.  Rick and I actually found one years ago when we brought our tree home from the tree farm but since we only use artificial trees now we add a tiny one from my bird's nest collection and create our own good luck!  Hope you've enjoyed seeing some of our Christmas collections.  We have a little more but will save them for another day.  

Happy Holidays!

Vintage Turkeys: How Your Grandma Decorated For Thanksgiving

You know I love anything that has to do with holidays so of course I've been searching the flea markets, thrift stores and eBay for vintage Thanksgiving decorations.  Here's what I've found:

These are some of the items your granny might have used on her Thanksgiving table.  There are colorful paper party plates, crepe paper nut cups, a honeycomb turkey for the centerpiece, place cards and paper mache turkeys.  Most of these were made in the USA around the 1940's or 50's.  Here's a closeup view:

 The little handcrafted pilgrims made from pine cones (above) and wooden clothespins (below) are especially charming.

The larger turkeys are candy containers and made in Germany around the 1920's to 40's.  You remove the head of the one on the right and that's where you'd find the candy.  These were probably party favors given to the children.

These next turkeys are a favorite of mine because they're so comical.  They have big springs on their necks which make their heads bobble and each has a different hat.  I wonder how many different styles of hats they made? 

I love these Skookum Indian dolls and even though I didn't purchase them to be part of my Thanksgiving holiday collection they fit perfectly with the turkey / pilgrim theme don't you think?  These came as kits that housewives could earn a few dollars by putting together so each is a bit different in how they're decorated and dressed but they all have the Indian blanket wrapped around them and they almost always look to the right. 

My trusty little wall cabinet always houses the miniature holiday items.  Tiny turkeys and my favorite candy container: a little boy in a big straw bonnet.  

And as always it was custom to send Thanksgiving wishes in the form of a postcard.  These are from the early 1900's and because I'm a vegetarian I absolutely love the ones where the turkey isn't sacrificed for the Thanksgiving dinner. I always wonder if these cards were created by a vegetarian from the past. :)

This card is the only exception because it matches my favorite candy container!  Wonder which came first: the card or the kid?

 

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

 

A Trip From Sea To Shining Sea

Recently Rick and I made a short trip back home to the Pacific Northwest for a visit with the family and a little walk down memory lane.  We landed in Portland, OR in the wee hours of the morning and after about 5 hours of sleep we drove up to Seattle for a day of sightseeing.

Of course a trip to Seattle would not be complete without visiting Pike Street Market!  The newest addition to the area is the wall of gum!

My sister and niece were with us and of course we had to contribute to the colorful wall.

My contribution is the pink bubble gum heart.

While there we had to stop into Ye Olde Curiosity Shop which is an emporium of oddities including this dog (Petri-Fido) that really made me laugh!

As you can see it was a very foggy but beautiful day.  The Space Needle:

They have a 200 ft high ferris wheel down by the waterfront so you can get some really great views of the city on a clear day but not that day!  It was a great first day of our trip.

The next morning we visited our old workplace: Fort Vancouver NHS in Vancouver, WA.  The Fort is an old Hudson's Bay Company fur trading post that was run by the British in the mid-19th century.

My favorite part of the Fort was the large period garden that Rick and I managed when he was a Park Ranger and I was a Maintenance employee there.

In my first year of working at the Fort I was a Park Ranger / Fee Collector and had a lot of time on my hands so I did some research on one of the families that lived in the Fort in 1845.  They had a young daughter named Cecelia Douglas and I thought it would be fun to create a sampler, pretending to be her, that would feature her family history and show her needle-working skills.  I was hoping the sampler was still being used as an interpretive tool and it was!  Later I realized that the day we visited the Fort, Oct 24th, was Cecelia's birthday.  How cosmic is that?

The next day we spent driving up the Columbia River Gorge which is absolutely beautiful, especially the Oregon side which is dotted with waterfalls and great hiking trails.

This one is called Horsetail Falls.  Can you see why? :)

The big Antiques and Collectibles Sale at the Portland Expo Center was happening while we were there and it was fun to see some of the old dealers we used to buy from when we lived there.  We were  especially happy to see Robert Merck, a fantastic antique Christmas ornament collector who wrote a book a few years back called Deck the Halls.  I was so thrilled to get a little Halloween candy container from his booth.

We didn't have much room in our suitcases but we found a few cute vintage Halloween and Christmas decorations for really great prices.

It was a super fun trip and it was great seeing our family and shopping for vintage goodies too!