Farmhouse Christmas

Christmas has come and gone, again, and it feels like it all happened in the blink of an eye. I didn't get to decorate as early as I'd hoped, but I still got two trees up, the porch decorated, the hallway decorated and stockings were hung. It was a lovely Christmas here, just the two of us and the two doggies, and it was very low key and simple. I have lots of pics to share but let me start out with this one first:

Yes! This happened this past Saturday night at a local resort here in Asheville. After a really nice dinner, the man told me he wanted us to have our picture taken in front of this huge tree by the professional photographer, and much to my surprise, once we were in front of the tree and the photographer was busy snapping away, the man dropped to one knee and asked for my hand in marriage! Completely SHOCKED, as if you couldn't tell from the look on my face. lol 

Now, on to the holiday decorating pictures. My white office tree which is primarily decorated in minty pastel shades of green, blue and pink, with lots of vintage ornaments mixed in. 

 

 

 

 

 I've always had a 'themed' main room tree -- for several years it was blue and silver, then in 2008, I switched to copper and aqua and browns and that was my plan for my main floor tree this year until the man expressed his desire to have a colorful, non-matchy tree, which kind of gave me palpitations at first since I'm always so matchy-matchy on the main tree but after some thought, I decided why the heck not. I mean we live in this beautiful old farmhouse, so a mismatched, retro style theme would be perfect. 

Unfortunately, I requested my mom to bring my aqua and copper ornaments for the main tree, thereby leaving all of my retro, brightly colored ornaments in SC in their garage, but I scrounged up enough extras here that I've been hoarding for crafting purposes that I was able to pull off a retro themed tree!! I ended up loving it SO much that I doubt I'll go back to my formal-ish tree until/unless we move into a much bigger house that has a formal living room! 

 

 

Once I had the tree decorated with all the brightly colored Shiny Brites and West Germany and Poland ornaments, I figured I'd continue the vintage theme and use a vintage Christmas tablecloth as my tree skirt. I used one on the table too and filled my Tom and Jerry punch bowl with vintage ornaments and tinsel garland. 

 I've wanted to make a wreath like this for several years but never got around to it until now. It is huge and I love how it turned out. I used over 50' of vintage tinsel garland and over 70 vintage light bulbs. It is perfectly kitschy and I am tempted to hang it up inside year round! 

I continued the retro Christmas theme on the banisters of the stairs in our hallway. I put up green garland and then put ornaments every couple of spindles, hung from ribbons and topped with bows. I decided red and green was a good, old-timey look that went with the retro theme.

And I decided to hang up this vintage Santa Mail felt creation from 1957 by the door. I bought this thing back in 2011 at a rummage sale at an assisted living facility while I still lived in MD. It cost me a dollar but it is priceless to me. I love it so much!! It's holding all of the holiday cards I received this year! 

In our bathroom I put up my small tabletop tree and used pink and green ornaments on it. It's my tacky flamingo tree! I ended up putting the majority of my flamingo ornaments on the main tree because they are too heavy for the branches of this little tree but I still love it, even though it's mostly just the ball ornaments. I used some doilies I found last month at a thrift store to make a tree skirt for this one. 

In my office I have a couple of shelves above my desk that usually hold my spaghetti poodles and other dog decorations but I took those down for the holiday and put up my Gurley candles in their place. 

Despite not having children, we were still up by 7:30 yesterday, thanks to Mr. Marty. I don't know how he knew that it was Christmas, but he did, and he would NOT go back to sleep. He sat by our bedroom door, whining, until we got up and told him we'd go see what Santa brought. He was so excited. He sat right by the fireplace waiting for us to get their stockings down and pull out the goodies. Santa brought him and Scarlett 2 new toys each, some cookies and some sausages for puppies. And then they each got new fleece material for their beds. Marty got 2 bow ties and his sissy got a new coat, since she's always cold. 

As you can see from the following pictures, Scarlett was not at all interested in being awake at 7:30, nor was she interested in gifts. Marty played with the toys and then took a nap. That was how the day went, actually. We opened gifts, ate breakfast, took naps, ate lunch, took more naps and generally were lazy like sloths! It was the perfect day. I said last Christmas that this year I hoped to be in the mountains having a nice, quiet, low key Christmas and that is exactly what happened!

I am so excited for 2014 and all of the wonderful new beginnings we'll have. We are planning to wed sometime next year, though we have no idea where or when. The man starts a new job in January, for which we are both very thankful and excited about. After several really depressing years, I have to say that this year has been amazing and I know 2014 will be even better. 

 

The Season of Giving

It's also the season of receiving. Last week, I received a bacterial stomach infection. It was most lovely and provided me with much joy. NOT! It did, however, land me in the hospital last Wednesday where I proceeded to spend 7 hours in the emergency room receiving numerous bags of fluid, various shots, a couple of prescriptions, all whilst "donating" several huge vials of blood in the name of research. It was quite the experience, I tell you. This was, of course, right on the heels of Thanksgiving, a week in which I was stuck at home with another sinus infection. That's right -- I've basically been sick non-stop since September. My poor immune system has taken quite the beating this fall but I'm happy to report that after last week's *ahem* episode(s), which btw, took an entire 6 days to get over, I am feeling about 99.8% better. YAY!

Anyway, I participated in my first swap the other week. The wonderful Cristina over at Born to Fly was hosting a great vintage Christmas ephemera swap and I was lucky enough to get in on that action! I had so much fun sorting through all of my newly acquired Christmas cards, pairing those up with some other goodies, packaging them all up and sending them on their merry little way. Our packages are all swapped out and in route back to us and I cannot wait to see what everyone else sent. I should be receiving my package today, I'd guess, given the close proximity between Cristina and myself.

I finally got my white tree up yesterday and it's chock-full of pale pink, blue and minty green ornaments with a good dose of vintage Shiny Brites thrown in for good measure. I know I say it every single year but I freaking LOVE this tree. I swear if I'm ever lucky enough to live in a house with a big enough space in the office to have a tree year round, this sucker is going to stay up. It just makes me so happy to see it. Matter of fact, I came downstairs at 6:15 this morning, turned on the little space heater in my office, brewed a pot of coffee and then came in here and plugged the tree in and just sat and enjoyed my time on the computer with the glow of the tree behind me. LOVE IT!!

I don't believe I've ever had a tree topper on this tree because I could never find anything that seemed to fit the overall style of the tree so this year I created one! I had bought a bunch of these sequin picks last year which I normally put in the branches of trees but I started playing around with a few of them yesterday and realized they'd be a good tree topper. I pulled the ones I'd put in the tree back off, grouped them all together, secured the lot with rubber bands and then affixed it to the top of the tree and arranged the "branches" of the picks. I think it looks okay -- kind of wild and crazy but so what!






























Last Monday, before my little bout with what can only be described as an intestinal DEMON, my friend came over and helped me sort through lots of bins of stuff that Will pulled off the attic. I went through a TON of clothing and donated a lot of it and then I went through bins of linens and really pared down the *LOVE & KEEP* pile and let's just say that the "love but need to sell" pile is tremendous at this point. I'm putting myself on a buying hiatus until which time my stash is more manageable. I will most likely be moving here in a couple of months so I don't want to have to cart all of this stuff from my current house to the next one. That means I'm going to be extra busy listing stuff in the next few weeks.

Oh, and before Thanksgiving, I had TWO interviews! One was with the company I had a phone interview with back in October and it went really well! The other was for a job I applied for back in September with a company that's only 10 mins from my house. Well, seems like I was the first choice for the first company and now I'm in a holding pattern at this point -- hopefully full time employment comes quickly so I can get on with my life!!

Anyhow, I'm outta coffee and need a refill so I can have the motivation to get busy listing stuff so I should go. I hope you all have had a wonderful holiday season so far and that I'll be able to catch up on blogs sometime in the near future!!

A Pictureless Blog Post

Good Saturday Morning my vintagey people! How's the weather where you are? It is another cold & frosty morning here in Maryland. I LOVE THIS WEATHER! It's actually colder now (31°) than when I got up an hour and a half ago! This is great weather though -- cold & crisp & crunchy first thing in the morning and then it warms up to around 60-65° by late afternoon. Perfect fall weather. And it's been nice & dry so no leaky basements. Yay! Did I mention there's still some color on the trees? Yeah, I'm thankful for that. Two years ago, it snowed on 18 November. I'm looking forward to winter and to snow but I really truly hope that we don't get another 5 feet at once this year. Unless of course I have a snowblower to help out because I don't think I can go through that again! Of course, with my current um, situation, I'd gladly accept being snowed in ALONE for a week or two. Now, if the reverse were to happen, I would be absolutely MISERABLE. Ah! But, like I said, there's no snow in the immediate future so I don't have to worry about that yet.

So, as I said before, this is a pictureless post. I'm sorry!! Unfortunately, I have no pictures I can add to this little blog post -- I am sorry to say I still haven't sorted through that big ol suitcase I bought at the estate sale two weeks ago. I did actually open it up and start to go through it but I ran out of time! That's how it always works, right? I mean it's not like I could just open it and not actually read through the letters and cards and before I knew it, I'd been sitting here for 2.5 hours! I think my plan of action is to pull out some big ol manila envelopes and put like items into those -- one for Christmas, Valentines Day, Birthdays, Easter, etc. Then one for letters -- there's a lot of letters! There's also various other pieces of ephemera like a few drivers licenses, business cards, greyhound racing stuff. It's going to be exciting to finally get it sorted but I think it's going to take some time!

So, today I'm heading out for a 28 mile voyage in hopes of snagging some super great deals at this big ol sale that's being promoted as an "estate" sale and claims to have 2 big ol barns PACKED FULL of crap! Yay! The person running this sale cleans out estates and said that most of the stuff has been sitting in storage for 50+ years. There's pictures on Craigslist and it looks promising. So, I'm going to go the the ATM, get a little bit of moohla and then head on over to this sale. Wish me luck -- the ad said something about vintage Christmas and one of the pictures shows a Shiny Brite box (yall know I can spot a Shiny Brite box in a picture full of misc crap!) and the ad said lots of items were $1. Please, God, let the ornaments be $1/box!!

Hope you're having a swell weekend and that you find lots of great vintage goodies whilst out & about today!

You Know You Have an Obsession When...

...you'll buy an entire bag of crappy ornaments to get to the one good ornament inside!

This little ornament is my favorite, I think. It's scratched up but I still love it. I love the color and I especially love the pink stripe!




And even though this one isn't a Shiny Brite, I really like it too! The colors are great and I like the design.



I love my tree so much I'm seriously debating leaving it up all year! It makes me so happy to walk in and see it in my room.

I've spent a ton of time yesterday afternoon and this morning uploading pictures and listing great new items in my shop, My Vintage Whimsy Etsy Shop! . And, through some googling, I've found 2 new-to-me thrift stores within 15 miles of my house so I'm going there today to check them out! One of them is another Value Village so I just know I'm going to be totally in love!

I hope you all are having a great day!

A Sneak Peek...

Here's my work-in-progress retro/vintage Christmas tree! What do you think?

It's Beginning to Look a Little Like Christmas...

But I still have a way to go before I get everything exactly how I want it. The tree in our foyer is up and half decorated. It looks great so far but I need to finish it tomorrow. And *MY* tree, the one in my scraproom/office is up and mostly decorated and I am totally in love. I went out and bought a 6.5' tall, white, pre-lit tree and it's decorated with all of my old Shiny Brite's and other vintage ornaments. I cannot wait to get it done so I can take pictures and share with y'all!

I cannot believe it's already 7 December either. This month is already flying by!! Of course I had a fashion crisis last week which had me at the various malls in the area shopping for 11 hours one day and another 5 the next. I was in desperate need of finding something to wear to the Holiday Reception we had to attend tonight at Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's house. Do you have any idea how much I hate to shop for clothing? Uh, I was so frustrated after spending 11 hours in the stores that I literally started crying. I was tired and ill and nothing fit right and I couldn't find anything I thought would be appropriate for this little shin-dig. Ugh. I didn't even make it to the Value Village on Thursday to try out my new card which gives me 25% off on Thursdays!

The aforementioned party was this afternoon and it was pretty swanky! Granted, it was held in a huge white tent but damn, that's the nicest tent I'd ever been in! The Air Force band (orchestra?) was playing the entire time, there was an open bar(!!) and the food was decent, although kind of weird for a cocktail party! I didn't expect to see mini cheeseburgers and grilled cheese sandwiches, hot dogs cut in half, bowls of popcorn and macaroni and cheese, but whatever. lol There were quite a few kids there so I'm sure the food choices pleased them but I think it was, I dunno, not tacky but weird. Even the port-o-potty trailers were all swanked out. Heck, those toilets in trailers were nicer than the bathroom of the first house we rented here in Maryland! We were shuttled in to the actual residence and then we had a photo with the VP and the Mrs and then went into the tent and socialized. I just assumed that the VP and his wife would come into the tent at some point but they never showed! Of course our party was their second of the day and at that point they'd shook hands with roughly 1000 people so they probably just wanted to go sanitize their hands, take some Airborne and get some sleep! All in all it was a nice time and I've figured out that NW DC is way nicer than the ghetto parts over near the Base!

I am still debating if I'm going to fly out to Jackson for Christmas. I've found an even better price for a flight than I found last week (and much less than the 2,200.00 one!) and I really really want to go back out. While at the party today, there were all of these pictures of Mr. Cheney out in Jackson during the winter, and just pictures of the scenery itself with tons of snow and I tell ya, I felt a tug in my heart because I really do want to be there. I told Will the other day that if I had known in August that I probably wasn't going back out for Christmas that leaving would've been much, much harder. If I had known when I drove away that that was the last time I'd see that area I would've been so sad. And I've been kind of in a funk lately because I thought I'd be here alone and my husband would be there seeing all of the beautiful snow and winter wonderland and maybe I was feeling jealous.

So, do y'all think I should go? If I have to stay home, I'll be sad but I'll make the most of it too. I can thrift as much as I want, I can hit up all of my favorite antique stores, I can go to DC and go ice skating or up to PA and go snowtubing. On the other hand, out in Jackson I can see so many fabulous things I just can't see/do here in Maryland. I can't drive down the road and see herds of buffalo or elk. I can't drive down the road and see the amazing Grand Tetons. And snow. I don't see much of that here, although it did snow (and stick!) yesterday. Ugh, I am just so cheap that I hate spending that much money on a flight. Not to mention the total pain in the ass that flying has become. If I do fly out, I'm sending all of my bags with Will on Air Force 2 just so I don't have to check any luggage or deal with any of that crap.

Anyhoo, tomorrow is of course Monday and we all know by now that the VV does 25% off on Monday which means I need to get to bed early so I can be up/dressed early. I also have to stop by the post office and mail off another package. Someone bought that totally cool Halo Tree Topper I posted last week on my Etsy page. I had almost decided to keep it and put it on my tree but I'm happy to have made another sale too!

I hope to get things somewhat organized tomorrow so I'll have time to visit all of my bloggy friends. I'm starting to go through withdrawals since I haven't had time to visit lately. Hope you're all doing fabulous!

Vintage Thingies Thursday- Christmas in July

I'm finally participating again in Vintage Thingies Thursday, hosted by Lisa over at Confessions of an Apron Queen. Visit her blog to see all of the other people that are participating too!

Today I'm sharing with y'all some of my most favorite possessions - my collection of vintage Christmas ornaments. Back in the fall of 2003, shortly after Will and I got married, we went on vacation with my parents to the mountains of east Tennessee. One day my husband and dad were off doing some manly things so my mom and I set out to find thrift stores. We ran across one that had an entire section of Christmas stuff, including tons of vintage and antique things and it was almost like I had died and gone to Heaven! All that glittery goodness just waiting to be purchased and I couldn't wait to get my hot little hands on all of it! Okay, maybe not ALL of it, but a lot of the stuff that was vintage found a way into my cart! Thus began my obsession with vintage Christmas stuff, especially Shiny Brite ornaments!

Here are some of my fine purchases from that day back in 2003-

First this lovely set of lights. Aren't they adorable? I actually have two sets of these and they are quite old but don't work. So, they sit in their boxes and each year I open the box and stare at them and wish I was able to string them on my tree. Oh well, I still like looking at them even if they don't work!



Next are several boxes of misc ornaments. Some are starting to show wear & tear, we've even broken a couple over the years which makes it even more amazing that they've survived for all these decades. Of course they were probably bought at a store, brought home and lived in one house for the next 50 years. Unfortunately, we move a lot, which means a lot of things are broken. Such is the life of the military family I suppose.









Here's a cute little set of bells. I love these. One year after we moved to Maryland we were living in the cutest little beach cottage and the entire front of the house had been converted to a sun room which the owners had painted a pale yellow. I went out and bought tons of gold, yellow and sage green ornaments that year and then added these little bells. The tree looked so fabulous!



And here are some of the great ornaments I bought earlier this spring at one of the first yard sales of the season. I drove 30 miles to go to this sale that was advertised all over Craigslist as being full of vintage things. Either I got there way too late or the people selling stuff exaggerated just a bit but I did manage to snag all this Christmas stuff for just a couple of dollars. I didn't look thru the box of misc ornaments at the time since everything was wrapped in Kleenex but I was THRILLED when I got home and started unwrapping and saw all of those hot pink ornaments. I looove hot pink.












I also picked up this little strand of lights that have glittery covered bells. I didn't expect them to work either but I was pleasantly surprised when I plugged them in!!



And finally, when the husband and I married, we inherited one of those huge ceramic Christmas trees that his great grandmother had painted some time back. I instantly fell in love with all the little plastic lights and how it lit up at night and was just so pretty. Imagine my surprise when a couple of years later I went to an estate sale and found a lovely trio of white ceramic trees. They were so gorgeous. I really, really wanted to buy the whole set but they were so pricey. I opted for just picking up the smallest one and left the others. Each year I kick myself for not picking up the others and having all 3. Oh well, live & learn I suppose!



Yes, I am clearly obsessed with Christmas. We've always had numerous trees. I cannot wait to start decorating and I think I even get slightly depressed come January when it's time to take all of our decorations down. If the husband and I ever move to a location that has a Christmas store year-round I am seriously going to have to go back to work and apply for a job there. So, tomorrow is the 25th which means only 5 more months until Christmas right? I cannot wait!!

Thanks for stopping by and checking out all of my vintage thingies this week!