Christmas vignette, a little late...

I never had the time to show you some of my Christmas decorations last month.  Even though it's way late to do so, I am sitting on my little indoor sun porch with the cats watching the snow we should have had a month ago.  Poor Klondike is just sitting there winking at me - she has a cold and her sinuses are all plugged up and swollen.  

Ahh, cute kitty!

This is a little display I made above my craft storage bookshelf... I hung up the lids of some of my vintage Christmas gift boxes and cut out some trees from the pages of an old book.  I found the little crocheted things at the thrift store.

Enjoy the snow!

Merry Christmas!

Shiny Aluminum Christmas Tree!

Handmade (not by me!) Tile and Hex Bolt Ornaments... So Pretty!

Merry Christmas to all!

It's Christmastime! Bottle Brush Trees and Spools!

 

Yay! Who doesn't love the classic red and green colors of Christmas...

 I am especially excited to traveling to Fiance's Grandma's house, which truly is over the river and through the woods, way up north in Wisconsin. I plan on knitting and reading and eating - and that's about IT!

I love this bright red glitter.  I want to cover everything in my house with it!

I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving weekend! 

Quick and Easy Pom Pom Craft

Of course I had grand ambitions of making tons of Christmas crafts from vintage items for my Etsy Shop, but for some reason it just doesn't seem to work out.

All I seem to be capable of is making a mess.

Yes this was my dining room.

 Anyways, I did manage to make a few cute things...

One project started out as old Christmas tree light reflectors.  I have a few that are really nice quality, and then a few that are not so nice.  These not so nice ones are really thin metal and a little bent up...

Even though they are still pretty cute, I had a good idea...

And now they are even cuter! All you have to do to make these is hot glue a pom pom to the center of the reflector.  For the hole at the top for the hook, I simple took a hammer and slammed a nail through it, which only took about two taps.  Quick and easy!


Shared my craft at Just a Girl

Do any of you get easily overwhelmed?  Well I sure do...

Sometimes I live in this fantastical world in which every craft project I can dream up will be super easy to make and turn out beautifully...

Then reality hits, and I realize that I have no patience and subsequently give up on all my projects that don't turn out right the first time.  I am a perfectionist with no patience.  I should take a picture of the dining room craft room and show you guys the disaster I have there.

Oh well... at least I have a very talented sister with a steady hand...

Who I commissioned to make these darling rabbit plates for me... I have about 7 that I plan on listing on Etsy in the next day or two...

For now I have a few vintage Christmas items going up in the shop.  Here's a sneak peek -

Vintage gift tags...

 

 

 

 

 

Vintage Gift Boxes...

Enjoy your weekend! 

I'm back! And with Christmas Crafts!

For those of you wondering where I've been lately, I have been overwhelmed by schoolwork for my graduate degree.  Thank goodness DePaul's fall quarter is over this week, and I'm done!

I'm free!  Now all I have to do is make crafts for Christmas!

MERRY pom poms and tart molds!

Over the summer I picked up any little bits of vintage Christmas decorations and supplies I could find, and now I get to put them to good use.  I am planning a little Etsy shop update filled with merry holiday items this Saturday.

Linked up at Primp and at the Shabby Creek Cottage! AND at Vintage Wanna Bee!

This Week's Finds...

I'm a little late to the party in getting these pictures up, as I had an overly busy and overly social weekend. Now that I am going to be a vendor at a few fleas later in August and September, I have been in treasure hunting overdrive.  Tomorrow I will be at my first ever auction, so I will have lots to tell about that... but for now here are some of my finds from the weekend.  

I LOVE these!  I might save these for pricing things in my display, or for use as table markers at my wedding!

Will probably go in the Etsy shop..
And for my favorite find this weekend, which I will probably keep for myself...

A Tom and Jerry Set!  Complete with 8 mugs and a punch bowl.

I had to look up why it is called a Tom and Jerry set.  Several online sources attribute the name to the London author of a book entitled Life in London, or the Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn Esq, and his Elegant Friend Corinthian Tom.  Supposedly the author created a new type of eggnog that included both brandy and rum as a means of promoting his book.  For a recipe and more information, visit here and here.

I love the little deer on this mug, as well as the shape of the Christmas trees.  I wasn't able to find more about  this pattern online, but I did find quite a few other types on Ebay.  Cute!

Linking up at ATG!

All I have to say is pincushion.

Hi.

I made a pincushion.  It was super easy.

"Hello!" from my owl friends...

To make this pincushion, follow along with this Martha tutorial...  I found the fact about pincushions being placed on the mantels of new homes to bring prosperity to be very interesting.  

I am planning to make some for my home.  I think it may help me feel less sad about taking down the Christmas decorations.  I love the whimsy and lights so much.

Buckeyes!

Had my last day of school before break yesterday (!) and finally got around to making a recipe I found for for buckeyes at Smitten Kitchen.

I highly recommend them - they were easy to make and taste delicious - not too sweet.  I will say, however, that they gave my poor sad electric mixer a run for it's money.  The batter was much to thick for it's little motor, but as long as I kept stopping to clean out the blades it seemed to do alright. 

Christmas Mantel Wonderland

The holidays have arrived!  I finally managed to find some time this weekend - and spent lots of it around the house finishing the Christmas tree, baking, and decorating.  For reasons I can't explain, Christmas is the only time of year where I get crabby if I don't have time to craft.  There is no explanation for it - although I guess I just can't stand to be away from tinsel and glitter for more than a few hours.  What can I say, shiny things delight me.

I decided to spend this time finishing my Christmas mantel, after being inspired by many great ideas online, notably this one at Mod Vintage Life.  Although I have been collecting little things for a while now, I needed to pick up some supplies.  Too bad I went out in a blizzard (anyone see the Bears game today?) to discover that every craft store in the city of Chicago was out of fake snow spray and ornament hooks. Oh well.

I love my little glitter covered deer...

 and glitter covered trees...

I started out with a collection of magazine trees I've been making in my spare time at work, as well as little trees I've been finding at thrift stores and my little glass insulators.  I wondered, "how do I make these all look like they are from the same world?"

I decided the answer was glitter and Snow Tex.  Lots of it. 

I'm not entirely satisfied with it yet, I think the trees could be more glittery.  It's hard to get a feeling for it with these pictures... I am also not done with the wreath above...next time I have some daylight I'll try to get some better pictures...

Stay Warm*

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Linking up at...

Show and Tell at Blue Cricket Design...

More Christmas Goodies

Well, I'm finally making it back to this little blog space.  I've been down and out with a cold for a week straight now, and haven't hardly had any energy to share anything here.  I've been meaning to write about my visit a few weeks ago to the Economy Shop in Oak Park - what a fabulous surprise that was!  The Economy Shop began as a thrift store for the benefit of local charities in 1919; it has been operating at its present location since 1924.  I have never really seen anything like it - basically, it's a thrift department store.  That's right - A THRIFT DEPARTMENT STORE. With fifteen departments spanning three floors, and plenty of Christmas knickknacks to boot, I was in heaven.

Everything is neatly organized, clean, and easy to sort through - they even had a CRAFT SUPPLIES ROOM! Look at this little tree I got for 80 cents!  Also notice the little reindeer underneath.  I plan on covering them with Martha Stewart glitter I bought with a coupon the other day (YAY! Martha glitter - I have to tell you I've been pining for it for months!)

I also got some little blue ornaments for pennies, and two small casserole dishes.  Then I found a set of old fashioned Christmas lights which were 50 cents a strand plus 10 cents for each replacement bulb.  I was able to test them there, and I must have fiddled with these for twenty minutes or so, screwing in different bulbs until I had the whole strand lit.  Then when I got home they worked for about three minutes before the fuse blew.  Hopefully I can just put in another and get it up and running, although I might have unknowingly put in some bulbs that were to high of voltage or wattage or ampage or whatever.  Troubleshooting to come I guess.

If you are in the Chicagoland area, and would like to visit the Economy Shop, they are open Saturdays and Thursdays,  Here is the link to their website for more information.

In other news, I've been collecting a lot of little things for Christmas crafts, and I'm fearful I'll never have the energy time to make anything!

Linking up with Apron Thrift Girl...

The Death of Christmas

Yesterday I took down my Christmas tree.  The poor pitiful future pile of mulch, stripped of all its Christmas glory, dripping pine needles and leaving my hands covered in sap signified the end of one of the nicest Christmas vacations I have had since I was a kid.  It was quite sad.

(  It is amazing how bad a Christmas tree can look after you have taken all the lights and decorations off of it.  )

This vacation was different from ones in the past in that I actually got to celebrate it- and it was awesome!  I have been working in restaurants (and before that, retail - equally less generous with holiday off time) and had become used to bargaining for which holiday I wanted off the most, playing politics with managers to try and get enough time to travel home in time for Christmas dinner (or Thanksgiving's, if that was the holiday I was able to procure).

No more!

I'm a substitute teacher, so I get the same vacation time as a little child!  And it's wonderful!

I utterly packed my vacation time to the brim.

And now it is time to go back to work.  I picked up a job using our online scheduling system called Subfinder at about 1:00 A.M. this morning, and would have canceled it today if I hadn't woken up past the cancellation deadline this morning.  The perk about being a sub is that I really can work whenever I want, but need to find the discipline  on mornings like these, after a two week long joyous vacation with snow and great food and travel and buffalo hunts to get back in the car and make the long early morning drive to a middle school in my hometown.

It's Christmas time...

I saw these fun "Tomorrowland Holiday Trees at Wise Craft and I just had to try and make some for myself.  They were oh - so - easy, and fun to boot.  I am a terrible sewer and usually give up on any project I start after I deem it has become to hard - but I was able to finish these in a short afternoon!  And it didn't hurt that the felt was cheap.  Next time I might try to make my own felt (a craft FAIL blog post in the near future perhaps...).

Here they are!

Rural Wisconsin = too much cheese and sausage.

I have been spending too much time reading other people's blogs rather than writing my own.  I also have been very busy vacationing.  Not since I was a freshman in high school was I able to enjoy the holidays with such workless abandon - and it has been wonderful.  I am a substitute teacher (more on that in another post) and with that job comes some great holiday off time. 

After school ended on Friday the 19th, I came home and packed up for a trip to see my boyfriend's mother in Rhode Island at 5:00 the next morning.  While we were there, we had a blizzard (18 inches of snow - woohoo!) and then 4 days later, due to weather in Chicago, were lucky enough to be the last flight out of the east coast toward home.  Then, after an evening of rest, we were up at 4:00 A.M. to start the 6 hour drive to rural Wisconsin to see my man's grandparents.  All of this traveling finally concluded Sunday night, after a quick jaunt down to West Bend to see my family, and finally into our Cat's love starved and attention hungry kitty arms.

Rural Wisconsin...oh what can I say.  We went last summer and I was lucky enough to be taken for a  ride on this:

There is a large Amish population where they live, and his Grandparents commissioned this from someone in that community.  According to the boyfriend, I was lucky enough to get a ride because I had  charmed them into liking me - a good thing.

We also spent a lot of time playing with cute things like this:

His Grandma informed us during our winter visit that this kitten later got sat on by a cow and died - a bad thing.

This winter, we spent a lot of time looking for my favorite kitten I had fallen in love with last summer:

It was very cold out this trip, and all the Barn Kitties were snuggled up hiding somewhere, so we never found him.  That's the boyfriend's cousin trying to give the cat bunny ears - a 7 year old thing. 

What made this winter trip the most exciting?  The buffalo hunt across the street!

We were in the country all right - but don't get me wrong, I spent my summers on a farm in South Dakota as a kid, so even though I consider myself a city slicker I know a little about rural life.

The story is really anti climatic.

Across the gravel road, there is a small buffalo farm, owned by a man who's ex wife has a restraining order against him. (On a side note: he seems like an interesting guy, and I know all the gossip on him - evidently he also deals drugs - the boyfriend's grandma is convinced he's running some kind of organized weed dealing ring.)  On account of this restraining order, he isn't permitted to handle his own guns, and therefore needs a friend to come and do any shooting for him.  Well, the owner of the farm rode into his field on a tractor with another man hanging off the back with a shotgun.  Around and around they rode, with many buffalo stupid enough to come within inches of their hunters; the man with the gun, incidentally and to our delight, continually falling off the tractor.  After 45 minutes or so of this, a buffalo was shot, and then another, and both were dragged toward the farm and butchered.

Could it have been one of these?  Yummy. 

On a side note, his Grandma pointed out several times that this drug dealing divorced farmer now lives with what she called his "live in woman,"  which made me wonder if she knew I lived with her grandson and if she would use the same words to classify me in our relationship.