Pink, Gold, and Silver Tablescape

Happy First Day of Winter my bloggie friends!  Today I am sharing my dining room Christmas tablescape which is lots different than in years past. When I started pulling out my Christmas goodies this year, I remembered some pale pink vintage ornaments I had and decided to set up a pale pink, gold, and silver theme rather than my usual burgandy and gold.  I found some gold chargers at a yard sale this summer which made a nice underlayer to my mix and match Limoges dinner plates that have pink flowers on a white background with gold accents.

My little French cherub candleholders are regulars at my table and are perfect for this tablescape since they aren't terribly tall, avoiding having to peek around them to see your table mates.

The pretty vintage balls that were my inspiration ended up in a round Limoges casserole dish and then were set on a vintage Italian florentine tray.

I used pretty pink roses and mixed them with some Christmas greenery in what are usually mercury glass votive holders I got from Pottery Barn a few years ago.

I typically always do this embellishment to my chandelier.  I drape vintage mercury glass garlands and then hang vintage ornaments from them.  Sometimes I have ribbon bows to attach them, but this year, I went simple and just used ornament hangers.

My mom and dad had a few pieces of gold Pickard china which I inherited and incorporated...a cream and sugar, salt and pepper, and a little dish.  I also used my mom and dad's silverware, King Edward by Gorham in addition to some antique silver plate napkin rings. 

Moody lighting compliments of Mr. Cloud. LOL!



I love to tie tulle on the back of my chairs.  This time I used a pale pink tulle and alternated between sparkly silver tulle and sparkly gold tulle.  Lastly, I added a little ornament on each one that I got at Hobby Lobby when they were half price.

A fun little vignette on my dining room sideboard featuring a couple of my great aunt's hand painted plates flanking a pretty maiden plate that I got at an antique show a number of years ago. My little snow angel makes appearances here and there during the Christmas season.

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas.  I'll be working right up until Christmas Eve, but then I have a 3 day weekend with my family and friends.  Enjoy your time with your dear ones as well.  My 16 year old got his driver's license yesterday.  YIKES!  Time goes by so fast, so enjoy them while you can.

Sharing with Between Naps on the Porch Tablescape Thursday and Bev's Pink Saturday

Until next time,

Simple Christmas Mantle 2015

Hello Bloggie Friends and Warmest of Holiday Wishes!  I'll bet you thought I fell off the face of the Earth, didn't you?  It has been WAY too long since we visited.  Let's jump right in, shall we? Christmas is always one of my favorite times around this old house.  I love pulling out all of the stops and making my Victorian sparkle.  One of my favorite areas to decorate, like many of you, is my mantle. Some years it gets a fancier treatment than others.  This year, I decided I didn't want to move everything off and make such a production of it, so I just changed up the books that I use as lifts and added some greenery and a sweet little snow angel and I have to say, I'm quit pleased with the look.

The books are old red and green ones that I gathered up from various bookshelves around my house.  I like to use old books for color and as risers for a variety of things, from vases to lamps to underneath cloches.  If you keep your eyes peeled, you can often pick up some pretty ones for a few dollars at estate sales, antique shops, and even garage sales, especially if you aren't too picky about condition.

I live in Colorado where it is decidedly non-humid, so real greenery is not a great option in the house unless you are into crispy greens, which they usually become in a day or two.  My trick to get the feel is to use some nice faux greenery and plop it into my pottery vases.  I add a small glass of water in there too and cut some evergreens from the yard or sometimes pick up a greenery bundle from Trader Joe's and put them in in the water.  This keeps the greens fresh enough to last for a while and since there aren't too many of them, they can be easily changed out if they need to be without totally having to disrupt the decor.

I hope you are having fun this week with your own decorating and I look forward to getting around and visiting some of you as time allows.

Until next time,



Sharing with Come As You Are Christmas Open House

Time in the Studio...

Hi Bloggie Friends,

Christmas time is almost upon us.  Yikes!  I am so incredibly behind.  One reason is I've been spending more time in my studio which is a good thing.  I made these pretty little altered boxes which hold what I am calling prayer ribbons/bookmarks.

Each one is different.  I altered the boxes which were vintage pharmacy boxes with vintage wallpaper and antique paper, lace on some, ribbons on others, a beautiful image of either Mary or Mary and Jesus, and, of course, a little glitter. Finally, a special word was added.

The medals came from France and the beads are all vintage from my stock of treasures.

The crinkle on the ribbon part is intentional.  Hope people "get" that. WINK...

These little pretties are available in my Etsy shop Elegant Farmhouse and would make a great gift for either yourself or someone else.  Hope all is merry and bright wherever you are.

Sharing with Feathered Nest Friday.

Until next time,

It's Finally Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Hello Friends, how have you been?  Long time no see...I could regale you with all of the reasons for my absence, but I think instead, I will just share this year's mantel.  It is quite a departure from last year's very white and very peaceful "Mary Did You Know?" theme.  I have to say here that I admire all of you who get your decorating done right after Thanksgiving and every year I think that "next year,  I'll be one of the early ones" and every year, I get to it when I get to it, usually, well...about now.  I guess that's just how I roll and maybe instead of stressing over it, I should just embrace that it takes me a little longer to decide I want to get my holiday on.  Yeah, I think that's what I'll do...I'm 50 years old now, I can do stuff like that.  LOL!  

As usual, I digress.  Back to the mantel.  I made this vintage ornament wreath several years ago when they became kind of popular and you could only find them in a few cool shops and they were made with real vintage ornaments and they were super pricey, like close to $100.  I, being the dedicated DIY'er that I am, proclaimed, "I could do that and it wouldn't cost $100 either."  I began scouring eBay for vintage ornament lots and the glass garlands on the cheap.  In usual fashion, I'm sure I went overboard and bought many more than was necessary which is probably how I came to have like 10 strands of vintage glass garlands and boxes and boxes of vintage ornaments.  I'm fairly certain if I were to add up the cost of this baby, it wouldn't be a dime over $95 plus my time, so chalk up another shrewd business deal to my column.  OK, maybe not that bad, but after all of the glue gun burns I incurred on this one, I'm not sure it was really worth it.  Digressing again...anyway, I'd not had it out in a couple of years and I decided I'd really like to use it so, I cleared my mantel that is usually layered with several white mirrors over top of the big antique gold one and suspended the ornament wreath with a fishing line.  I took a couple of big glass jars that I already had and filled them with some of the aforementioned glass garlands and vintage ornaments.  I liked the look of that and wanted to keep it simple in a fancy way, so I just added a couple of mercury glass votives and called it good.  That is, until a day later when my cute 9 year old boy was helping me with the tree and just disappeared, going up to his room.  He reappeared a moment later carrying his treasured nutcracker that he got at an estate sale a couple of years ago.  He put it on the mantel in front of the wreath.  Despite my control freak tendencies, I had to admit, I liked it.  Then my 13 year old disappeared and came down bearing his Christmas snow globe which he added to one side.  I liked it, too.  I told the 9 year old to go bring HIS Christmas snow globe down and we added it to the other side.  Then, we ALL liked it.  Best of all, it was a family effort and that is really special.  What do you think?

On a completely different note, I have to tell you that on Friday, my local Annie Sloan Chalk Paint and Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint stockist, Shades of Amber, brought in the awesome Marion Parsons, aka Miss Mustard Seed, to do a few little workshops and book signings for her book, "Inspired You".  I had signed up for one of them, mostly because I really wanted to meet THE Miss Mustard Seed.  I know, I'm kind of nerdy like that...anyway, the seminar was very fun, Marian is SUPER nice and down to earth as well as being unbelievably energetic and talented. AND I got a picture with her.  Pretty cool, huh?  I'm hoping that being that close to her maybe rubbed off on me, but time will tell and I guess you guys can be the judge at some point.

Thanks Marian, for sharing your life, your home, your talent, and even some of your sources with all of us.  You're a peach!

I see by the computer clock that it is WAY past my bedtime, so I guess that's it for now.  I'll be back this week with a little more Christmas inspiration as well as some chit chat about Marian's book. 

Until next time,

Mary, did you know...

Hello Friends, I hope you are all well and happy and enjoying this beautiful season.  I was so behind in my decorating I really was feeling a need to keep it simple yet appropriate to the season.  I went out shopping a little before Thanksgiving and just the sheer volume of  "stuff" on the shelves and the tinsel-y shininess and the hustle and bustle made me want to run out of the stores and take a shower to wash off the dirt of the conspicious consumerism.  I don't know if it's my age or what, but it really bothered me this year.  SO, I decided to do a revisit of my last year's mantel and tweek it a bit taking a cue from some favorite things that put the emphasis on the reason for the season.

I had coveted admired the amazing Jeanne d'Arc angel wings, but the $95 price tag was not even remotely in my budget. I happened to be looking at Oriental Trading Company's catalog and came across their angel wings for a whopping $14.99 with shipping. Now, I have to say, they compared in no way to the JDL wings, but with a little help from a bag of white mirabou feathers from Michael's (another $2.99 I think), they are good enough for me. I clipped the elastic things that hold them on your arms because I couldn't see a way to get them out of my way to hang them, then wrapped them in wide double faced satin ribbon that I washed to remove the sizing so the bow would hang nicer (floppier). All in all, I'm happy with the result although if anyone has a giveaway on those spendy JDL wings, let me know cause I'm in! :-)

As I was working on my wings, I had Christmas music on and heard one of my favorite songs, "Mary, Did You Know?".  I was inspired to take some of my favorite lines from that song and put them on simple hang tags.  I added a little glitter around the edges since the tags just needed a little more "somethin, somethin".  Of course, my JDL madonna had to come out to say hello as well.

A relatively simple white poinsettia garland that I had on hand made a nice addition when paired with the fairy light string I made last year out of little coffee dyed tiny muffin baking cups. 

My JDL inspired candles returned this year and couldn't have been a nicer addition given the theme.

Antique mercury glass also back for a repeat performance...looks perfect with the Pottery Barn votives that were very reasonable at I think $3.50.

I recently purchased a couple of gorgeous, very old prayer cards that featured the baby Jesus.  I wanted to feature them on my big pillar candle but couldn't chance ruining the original, so I made a copy of it on a nice cardstock and went over the gilt scrolls with my gold paint pen.  I've done this on other reproductions of old pieces and it gives it that authentic look that I love.  I don't think anyone would be the wiser.  I punched a couple of holes in my card for my jute twine to go through so it would stay relatively flat and tied it up over a layer of old crocheted lace for a nice layered effect.

Lastly, one of my favorite mirrors that usually sits on the mantel was moved to the wall and I added the heart cut from a German book topped with one of my faux zinc crosses and some greenery.  I love the simplicity of it.

There are still some crosses available in my Etsy shop, Elegant Farmhouse.

More fun with copies of pages from the German book...

One of my nativity sets that my husband got me soon after we married.  I love it.  It is a great visual of the reason for the season, the birth of Jesus.

I'll show you more of my decor soon, but for now, I think that's enough photo overload. I'm sharing the goods this week with Kathleen at Faded Charm and her wonderful White Wednesday Party, Kim at her Wow Us Wednesday Party, Debra at Vintage Inspiration Friday, Courtney at Feathered Nest Friday, and Bev at Pink Saturday.  Go over and show the other participants some blogger love, won't ya?

Until next time,

Zinc Ornaments..or ARE they???

UPDATE:  Faux zinc ornaments are now up on my Etsy shop. Victorian ones will be up Monday night.

Let's just be clear on one thing...I love zinc.  Old, weathered zinc makes my heart sing.  Even if the look is a little rustic for my Victorian "looks like Grandma's house" home, I try to get a little Jeanne d'Arc here and there wherever I can sneak it in.  As you probably know though, cool antique shaped objects like crosses don't exactly fall from the sky.  With this in mind, I decided to make my own zinc Christmas ornaments.  I think these large ornaments turned out pretty darn cute, what do you think?  And they really look just like zinc.  But what are they you ask?  They are paper mache.  Yep, paper mache.  I had one at work the other day and my coworker swore they were at the very least, some kind of metal.  Then I handed it over to her and was she ever surprised.  I made several up and I will get them in my Etsy shop this weekend in case you love them as much as I do.  I will do a tutorial just as soon as I get a chance; I foresee myself using this little technique many times and I'd love to share it with you.

I also made  some of these beauties and foofed them up with 2 or 3 different paints, images, glitter, lace, and whatever else struck my fancy.  I'll have them up in my shop this weekend also.  I got the idea for these from the Christmas issue of Jeanne d'Arc Living.  It really is a nice issue (yes, aren't they all, right?)-lots of serene decorating ideas.

Most of my images, including the ones you see here, are from the Graphics Fairy.  Thank you, Karen for such great material to work with.

Until next time,



I'm going to be sharing these with some linky parties. Hope you can hop along with us to some great destinations for inspiration galore.

White Wednesday
Feathered Nest Friday
Vintage Inspiration Friday
Potpourri Party
Show and Tell Friday
Vintage Inspiration Friday at the Picket Fence
Pink Saturday
Creative Things Thursday
The Charm of Home
Funky Junk SNS 
Farmhouse Friday 
Brag Monday at the Graphics Fairy

The Last Collection for this Year

Santa from my parents' tree

Sharing lots of pictures of MOST of my Santa collection.  It is like seeing old friends every year when I pull them out of the boxes.  Most are new, some are old, all are quirky in their own way.

Had to have this vintage skiing Santa since I live in Colorado

A gift from my husband on one of our first Christmases together

Old Santa with clay face

Love this grumpy faced chalkware Santa

Vintage sleigh being pulled by old mercury glass reindeer

Custom made Santa on sewing machine w/crazy quilt cloak

Second grade project-SO precious!

And finally, the real reason for the season.

Thank you all for all of your support and friendship over the year.  Hope your Christmas is full of beauty and love.  I will be taking a little break from blogging until after the new year, but I'll be back with "ta daaaa"  another giveaway.  Stay tuned.  Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and all that you hold dear.  Linking this post to Debra's Vintage Inspiration Friday, Cindy's Show and Tell Friday,  and Beverly's Pink Saturday.

Until next time,