My Christmas Mantel (Sort Of)

OK, so I don't really have a mantel. We have a wood burning stove, but I am going to count it as my mantel. Sort of the same thing - they both have wood involved.

I have a lot of vintage items that I decorate with for the Holidays, some that I inherited from my Mom and some that I have bought over the years.

This is my Mother's NOEL candle holders.

They have paper labels that say Japan on the back of them, but don't have a maker's mark. I think they are from the 1950's and from the design of them, they look like they could have been made by Lefton or Napcoware.

They have a quaint holly and berry design to them

and are candle holders, but for very thin candles.

Santa climbing out of the chimney is a bobble head bank made by Ucagco. Strangely enough I always thought this was from my Mom's childhood (which would have been the 20's and 30's), but when I Googled this item to get a more precise date I found that it was made in the early 1960's, which would make him from my childhood. So he's actually quite young!

I bought this Santa at an antique mall a long, long time ago. He's made from paper mache and I've been told he was a candy container from the 1940's.

I also have this exact same Santa which was my Mother's and always stood under our tree at Christmas when I was little. That one had an unfortunate encounter with my childhood dog though and he lost his legs in the skirmish, so when I saw this intact Santa at the antique mall I had to have him.

This hard plastic Santa is one of my favorite pieces. I bought him on eBay a few years ago. He's a light up Santa, but I never seem to put him close enough to an electrical outlet, so I just took the cord out of his back for now.

This Christmas bouquet is covering up an ugly orange medallion on the stove door.

Not sure why I had to tell you that, but it's the truth. If you want to see how ugly it is you can go to this post HERE where I show it to you.

In case you're wondering, we never actually light a fire in the wood stove (the wood in the copper boiler is just for looks). We had a bad experience with it when we first moved into the house and now I'm chicken to try it again. We didn't set the house on fire or anything, but it did get quite smokey in here and thoughts of dialing 911 were going on.

I'm Dreaming Of A Silver Christmas

I've been collecting some silver pieces this year. Mostly at garage sales and thrift stores, normally paying less than $4.00 for a piece. So when I started seeing lots and lots of silver in the Christmas decor magazines I was excited.











All images courtesy of Country Living.
Now, if I was just starting out in life and didn't already have a ton of red, white and green Christmas decor in my basement, I would definitely go all silver. There's just something about the smooth, sleek, gleaming surface that calls to me. But, alas I can't just chuck 30 years of Christmas decor and start anew. So I think I'll casually bring some of my silver into my Christmas decor this year and try to mix it in with my brighter traditional colors.

I am linking with Debra at Common Ground's Vintage Inspiration Friday. Yes, I know it's Saturday, but better late than never.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope you have a wonderful holiday! I'll be MIA for a few days while enjoying time off with my son and hubby!

Kitchen Table Centerpiece

Just wanted to quickly share a few shots of my kitchen table centerpiece I threw together.

We aren't eating in the kitchen, but it's pretty much the center of the house so I wanted something a little more Thanksgiving-ish on it rather than the chicken in a basket. So I stuck a few stray Fall items in my wooden tray that held my ironstone pitcher and door knobs.














OK, off to bake some pies. Well, take them out of the box and put them in the oven. That counts as baking, right?

I will be linking with A Stroll Thru Life's Table Top Tuesday.

Thrifted Silver

I found this silver casserole dish at a new thrift store I came across.


It was fairly tarnished which I normally love, but I have plans to use it in my Christmas decor and I wanted it shiny for that project.


So with a little bit of my silver polish and a whole lot of elbow grease I got it cleaned up.


Except for the lid. As you can see the lid isn't all shiny and bright like the rest of it.


Now when I bought this I did not think the lid was original to the set, but I wasn't really concerned about it since I plan to use it without the lid.

But if you look at the flower at the top of the lid handle


it matches the flower on the left of the base handles.


I still don't know why the lid isn't shining up, but for $1.91 for the set (Pyrex insert included) I'll live with it.

I'll be linking with Coastal Charm's Nifty Thrifty Tuesday later today.

2nd Try On Chenille Ornaments

OK, I tried these guys again and this is what I came up with.


I took Cheryl at ZanyMayd's advice and used less chenille bumps.

I used one for the arms and two for the body/legs. And I bent up the arm and leg ends so they weren't as pointy. I did add a stem to attach the head to, but I suppose I could have just attached the arms lower in the first place so I would have a good place to glue the head.


In case anyone is interested in trying your hand at these (let's not all hold our hands up all at once now), this is the contact sheet I made in Picasa with just heads from vintage postcards on it.

I didn't want to print out a bunch of postcards and then cut just the heads off (waste of precious ink), so I saved them in Picasa, copped out just the heads and then made a collage out of the head shots using the contact sheet as the type of collage with a page format of 8 1/2 x 11. Then I printed them out on card stock through Picasa with a print layout of 4x6.


(FYI - I have no idea why this says January 2002, but I couldn't get Picasa to use the correct date.)

Look they're all holding hands singing Kumbaya!


I think they look better than the 1st try, but still not what I was thinking they would look like. I still may use them on my Shiny Brite ornament tree though.

Crafting Gone Bad

I am an amateur crafty person. I mean I can use a glue gun, sew a little and do some DIY projects, but I am by no means a artistic person by nature. I guess I would be more of a left-brained person.

But sometimes I get in an artsy craftsy mood and things sort of click together on the right side of my brain and I create something sort of neat. Something inspirational.

This is not one of those times.

When I tea-stained my chenille stems for my candy canes I also did some bumpy stems for a different project. I wanted to make these cute guys


which are a take off of these vintage chenille santas.


Instead they came out looking like this.


Even scarier up close.






Does it help if I bend his arms in half? Maybe not.


These guys will have to wait until my crafty side kicks in again.


Hope it's before Christmas.