DIY Button Bottle Brush Tree Santa Mug

Sooooo, remember awhile back when I posted about buttons and said I was working on a project that I would eventually share? I had also posted about these super neat vintage Santa mugs I had found at a local thrift store. Well, I finally finished the little project today! Whew!!! It took a little while, mainly because I was bad about just sitting down and getting it done!

 So, I had collected quite a few different kinds of bottle brush trees last year, for my crafting projects. I also have quite a bit of buttons and was not doing anything with them. It dawned on me to just hot glue the buttons to the tree and then when finished, sit in the mug!

Some of the placement of the buttons are a little caddywhompus but oh well.  It is DIY crafting so it doesn't have to be perfect right?

 

Vintage Halloween Greeting Cards

Don't you just love vintage Halloween cards? I do! They are fun to print out and craft with:) My paternal grandparents used to send us a card with a little bit of money every year for Halloween!  I loved racing to the mailbox and checking to see what the card would like, each year:) 

Lastly, a true testament to my love of the holidays (and candy)...one of my most favorite books when I was a child...

I used to borrow it from the school library yearly and in between too!

Jack O' Lantern Blow Mold & Pumpkin Patch

I found my first Halloween blow mold light this weekend! It is also my most young blow mold light only being a little over 20 years old! He was grinning at me at the back of the Goodwill store for a whopping $1.99! He did not come with his light but that is okay, I can use one of my other light fixtures for him:)

 

You know what I love about him (besides his grinning face and very large size) is that fact that he is so bright, he looks lite up even during the day!  I didn't even have him plugged in for this photos!

 

 

 

We also went to the pumpkin patch and picked out some great pumpkins this weekend.  Going to the pumpkin patch is one of my highlights of fall:)

 

 

 

Vintage Christmas Blow Mold Lights

One of my favorite things to collect now, thanks to my friend Emily, is vintage or retro blow mold lights. For whatever reason, the last few weekends in my tiny town, have been awesome for estate sales! I can't believe how huge the giant Santa Claus is! Amazing! I am working on dating him (for my own curiosity) but all I can find is "Made in Canada" so far. Most blow molds I see or find, are the size of the smaller ones by his feet.  He will go great with my HUGE snowman I happened to find at the Farm Chicks Show this year.  

The two smaller Santa Claus lights are by "Empire" and dated to 1968.  Empire was a popular maker of children's plastic toys.  They made wonderful Christmas and Halloween plastic blow mold lights between the dates of 1967-1978, as I understand.  The Noel candlestick is dated 1970.

The nice thing is that all four came with their light bulb and cords!  Like anything vintage, sometimes it is hard to find all of the original pieces but I was happy to find cords and bulbs with all of these. 

 

Hubby Hallowen paper crafting

That hubby of mine got a wild hair this last weekend and started decorating for Halloween.  I mean, seriously, our house is in full on Halloween decorating mode!  I know it's early, but how can you stifle a husband's pure joy of decorating?  You just can't, it is too sweet.

He also did some paper crafting on Sunday, including this pumpkin he hung up and our console table.  It is so fun and amazing what you can do with some scrapbook paper!  I think his ideas are very clever but I might be a bit biased:)

He turned a simple wood pumpkin into this....

He took the inside of the windows of our console table and papered them with Halloween paper.  He says he would like to do wrapping paper for Christmas this year!  What a fun, easy and cheap way to decorate each year!  I'm glad he thought of it!

Lastly, we took two antique, glass, milk bottles and filled them with Halloween tinsel and battered operated lights, so you don't see cords.  Fun!

Well, that is one small corner of the great room in our house.  Lots more Halloween decorating to come!

Spray painting pumpkins

Soooooo fun! This last Halloween, on top of the pumpkins we had already purchased, a co-worker of mine gave me three pumpkins from his patch. I had always wanted to try painting pumpkins because to tell you the truth, I really don't like all of the work that comes with carving them. I figured that since I had got the pumpkins for free, this would be a good opportunity to try something different and if it didn't work out, well then I was only out time and not money:)

Green with glitter!  First spray painted it green and let it dry.  Then came back over the top with spray paint silver glitter.

The hubby painted his black.  We decided the third one should be silver.  The pumpkins were a pretty big hit with the kids. We had trick or treaters comment on the pumpkins and lots of kids touch them too!  I'm not really sure why they were interested in touching the pumpkins but it was so funny, they all gravitated to the pumpkins and would comment on them!

This is just random but I like to get into the fun too, so you can sort of see part of my costume here...

Oh summer can go already...I love the fall and the holidays that come with it!

DIY Push Pin Pumpkins

Since I started this blog a few months ago, I have gone backwards and posted some holiday crafts and decor that I have done in the past but are not on this blog. Like I said earlier in this blog, my posting will be random. As in, one day I might post about Christmas and the next day, Halloween. The whole focus of this blog is to celebrate holiday decorating and holiday vintage/retro ideas. I just post whatever hits me at the moment! This last Halloween I did some DIY push pin pumpkins. Soooo fun! Something you can do while watching tv!

First on the list, hit up the dollar store or craft store for the little foam pumpkins and some thumbtacks.  There are different types and shapes of pumpkins.  You can find different colors of push pins too.  I prefer the silver, it makes it look "industrial" as my friend Emily put it!

I started following the lines of the pumpkins, starting at the top and then going down.

I just kept pushing them in and pushing them in!  This is why I say it's an activity you can do while watching tv.  I worked on it and then took a break for a day, then came back to it, until I finished it.

Here was a different shape I did...

Once completed, I set them up next to another decorative pumpkin we already had. The funny part about these pumpkins is that once you are finished, you realize that the pumpkins weigh so much!  Like a baseball!!!

Just for an FYI, each pumpkin took about 600 push pins each. 

 

The Farm Chicks Show 2012

The hubby and I went to "The Farm Chicks Show" for the first time this year! It is held at the Spokane Fairgrounds. We arrived a half hour early and there were at least 500 people in front of us, in line already.  When the doors opened at 10 AM, the line moved pretty smoothly and we got in the doors at about 10:08 AM.  Now, get this, within those 8 minutes, people had already purchased furniture and decor items and were going back to their cars, to drop off their items, so they could go back in for more shopping.  Can you believe it?  WOW!

Bottom line, it was a fun show with a variety of items, variety of prices and we will be going again:)

Found this set of vintage Valentine's Day cards. Man, I have searched high and low for vintage cards and they are just really hard to come by!

My most favorite find of that day that I purchased was this giant vintage snowman blowmold. He came with his original light fixture! He is the biggest I have ever seen!  I love him!  Yes his paint is chipped and he is oooooold....but I don't care, I love him! 

(Don't mind the mess on our mantel...)

So, as you can see he is HUGE!  Our dog was scared of him at first but then my husband gave him a treat, by him and he warmed up to the Snowman a little bit:)

I also found this milk glass egg cup!  I put the button egg I made for Easter, in it.  If you would like to know more about making your own button egg, you can click here.

I also found a few neat sets of Christmas scrapbook paper and stickers for holiday paper crafts:)

I have to tell you, I think I have the best husband in the world.  He got up really early, drove me to the show, over two hours away, was by my side looking for treasures that I would love, and carried my big purse/bag the entire time that weighed a ton by the end!  He carried everything for me so that we wouldn't have to keep running back to our car.  What a trooper.  He got lots of looks carrying the big snowman out of show, as the ratio of men to women at that place was probably 1 man to 20 women!  I felt fortunate to have him support my hobby. 

When we got home that evening, he surprised me by taking me to the "Snow White and the Huntsman" movie!  I hadn't even heard of the movie before and he had, waiting for it to come out because he knew I would love it.  He was right!  It was very entertaining!

Vintage Christmas Egg Nog punch Set

One of my older sisters had inspired me with one of her thrift store finds. A vintage Christmas egg nog punch set! She brought it over to my parent's house last Christmas for everyone to use. I fell in love with it right away and started a search on my own:) At an antique store (with lots of different vendors) I found the bowl and some mugs in one area for a great price ($13) and than, in another area, I found just the mugs at $2 each. Well, those aren't "thrift store" prices but none the less, they were great prices for an actual antique mall.

I especially love the Santa Claus and his striped socks!

If you are interested in finding your own set for the holidays, you might try both eBay and Etsy.  You can type in "vintage egg nog set" or "vintage tom and jerry set" and you might have some luck.  These egg nog sets are probably from the 1940's - 1960's but I have had a difficult time really nailing down the dates in my "research" (which really means me trying to find info on the internet).