It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...Inside Edition!

The Super Fabulous Schneider Christmas Tree of 2017 went up yesterday and we are really proud of how it turned out!  We got a fresh 7-foot Fraser fir and filled it with lights and decorations from our childhoods and vintage things we've picked up here and there at estate sales and antique and thrift stores.  

Here is the rest of the house!  Larry and I went through 14 huge bins of Christmas decorations and downsized to seven, keeping those things that we were sentimental about, of course, but we were really so extra, it was crazy.  We just had so much stuff, we couldn't use it all every year and some things haven't been put out in several years.  So we donated it all to the church's thrift store so somebody else can love on it this year and maybe many years to come. And our attic will be much lighter for it!

This gingerbread tea pot and mugs definitely made the cut!  I've had these for seventeen years!  I used to go to and host House of Lloyd Christmas Around The World parties and these were a host bonus I earned one year.  I don't do that kind of thing anymore but I sure collected some pretty stuff when I did.

I got these super cute Temp-tations Christmas mixing bowls from QVC a month or so ago.  They are soooo sweet!

My favorite vintage Christmas dish towels.  Squeeee!

A tiny little Santa in the kitchen window.

Larry and I made this paper wreath the other night.  We hung it on the kitchen door and he added a couple of birds.

Here's another old sentimental lovey.  I got this Santa more than 20 years ago from ABC Distributing and for years and years and years, Mama and Daddy hung it by their front door and filled his pockets with candy canes for their "Christmas travelers" as Daddy calls them, a nod to our most beloved Christmas movie, The Homecoming.  Now he hangs at our back door, for the same reason.  If Hawthorne and John-Boy show up at our door, they'll be sure to get a candy cane.

We picked up this talking musical Christmas donkey recently (he's really not as sad as he looks!) and I covered the back of the only remaining chair from Larry's parents' first dining room set with a Santa cover.  

My vintage Santa mug collection.

At an estate sale recently, I found this Southern Living Christmas cookbook, dated 1988, the year Larry and I met.  I had to bring it home.

We've got 28 blow molds to check and test and a huge 6-foot Santa lion to go outside with Snoopy and the Santa train and all the rest.  We'll tackle them next weekend!

A Day in HOTLanta!

Larry and I drove up to Atlanta this morning to go to Scott Antique Market.  We'd been wanting to get up there for years and we finally made time and went!  We had the best time!  That place is huge.  So huge that they have shuttle buses to take you from the North building to the South building and then back again.  

Before we went to the antique market, though, we hit an estate sale over in the Virginia-Highland neighborhood, in a tiny little 1,200 square foot bungalow, built in 1935, in desperate need of some TLC, but is STILL selling for $555,000!  Location, location, location, I reckon.  I'm guessing by my HGTV-watching experience, that it'll take about $50,000 to fix it up and that's just the cosmetic stuff that I can see.  I have no idea what's behind the walls and under the floor.  Anyway, it was an adorable little house and we got some cool stuff there.  We got a whole basket full of stuff for FREE because Larry climbed up into the attic and pulled down an old WWII footlocker for them.  In that basket were 43 Keurig coffee, tea and hot chocolate cups, some diabetic testing strips, a bottle of Sun-Ripened Raspberry shower gel from Bath and Body Works, a 1981 kitchen tea towel calendar (I love those!), a small Pyrex flamingo pink casserole dish with the lid (!!) and a cute little striped glass pitcher just perfect for lemonade.  I got all that and Larry picked up a vintage Navy peacoat, an old Georgia flag and an old Army/Navy helmet.  Oh!  And we found an old General Electric clock radio, one like I've wanted forever.  That sale was definitely worth the stop!  The neighborhood was beautiful, everybody was walking their dogs and babies and there were little shops everywhere.  We joked that we need to live in a neighborhood like that, if for nothing else but the diversity.  $600-$700K houses, though?  Naaaah.

Here are all those Keurig cups!  It's really funny how God works sometimes.  I had JUST YESTERDAY said I was going to get some coffee cups and bring them to work for our Keurig in the office and then, boom, the Lord brings me to these. 43 for FREE. 

This is the peacoat.  Oh, Larry looks sooooo handsome in it.  It fits him perfectly and there were even two other ladies there eyeing him at the estate sale when he tried it on.  Down, girls.

How amazing is this old clock???  And it works!

 

Here's the helmet and Santana's very first album.  We picked it up at Scott's for $2.

We got to Scott's about noon and we went to the North building first, not knowing any better, bless our hearts.  Don't go to the North building.  It's full of expensive carpets and expensive art and stuff you can't afford.  It's all pretty to look at but you'll leave it there.  I promise. 

See, pretty to look at.  $2,500 to $4,000.  We left 'em there.

 Freddy-the-Frog Mercury, as Larry called him.  $395

We're always looking for globes for Ami.  We looked at this one.  

 

I really did LOVE this vintage counter and stool set, though!!  $4,800 and they coulda been MINE.  Sigh.  We don't have anywhere to put it anyway.  Sigh.

 

Thanks to my good buddy, Erika, who on Facebook told me to get the heck outta there and get down to the South building, we hopped a ride on the shuttle bus and went down there.

MUCH more our speed! 

We walked around outside until we were about to burn slap up (oh, Lordy, it was HOTTTTT) and then we walked around inside, where it was nice and air-conditioned and they had fried catfish.  I found a Pyrex Daisy bowl, some political pins and oh my goodness, two sets of clackers!!!  I've been looking for clackers everywhere.  I found 'em outside, in a box, just sitting there waiting for me.  The whole clacking thing came back to me immediately and I'm proud to say that I remain the reigning clacking queen!  Larry was quite impressed.  Kinda like he is when I recite the Preamble to the Constitution to him.  What can I say?  I am a child of the 70's and I loved me some Schoolhouse Rock.

Here are the three pins I got.  Michael Dukakis was the very first person I ever voted for, in 1988, when I was 21.  I was so proud.  Been votin' Democrat ever since.

Larry actually found a lot of stuff he liked today!  Patches and pins and helmets and peacoats.  He racked up!

Here are my Pyrex bowls and that sweet little pitcher. I already had the largest Daisy mixing bowl but not the one that's this size.  Larry said I was not leaving Scott's without a piece of Pyrex.  So I didn't.

And the best part about our day??

Atlanta has NO gnats.

Gloria

When I was a little girl, my Aunt Gloria had chalkware fish on her bathroom wall.  And I loved them.  Since I've gotten really interested in all things vintage, especially things from the 60's and 70's, I've tried to find some.  I have not seen ONE at all the estate sales and thrift stores we've been to and the folks who sell 'em on eBay and Etsy want way too much for them.  I recently joined a vintage lovers' Facebook page that I absolutely LOVE and last week, one of the ladies was selling a chalkware fish!  For cheap!  Free shipping!  I jumped all over it.  

I got her yesterday.  And named her Gloria.  I just love her.

 Look at her lips!

Christmas-y weekend!

A little group of us got together yesterday at my cousin, Debee's house and had our Christmas family party.  We have a long way to go to get back to Hall Christmases of yesterday, when the entire family got together on Christmas Eve at Maw's and we opened gifts and ate and laughed and then hurried home to jump in bed so Santa Claus could come.  We all lived in the same county and it was much easier then.  Now we're all scattered to the winds and it's hard to get back.  But we're working on it.

Bless Debee's heart, she'd just had surgery two days before but she still wanted us there.  We had a wonderful time!  Yummy food, lots of laughs and tons of love.  Maw was smiling down on us for sure.

 

Debee puts up three beautiful trees every year!  Here are just a few of her many ornaments on her Georgia Bulldog tree.

Instead of exchanging gifts every year, we do an ornament swap and it's so much fun.  Everybody brings one, everybody gets one.  We started with the youngest to the oldest this year.  Everybody gets up, goes up to the tree and chooses a gift.  I got a most appropriate orange tabby kitty ornament and Larry got a Santa cowboy.  We loved 'em!  Ami took this picture of us as Larry was coming back to his chair.

 

When we left, we went antiquing with Ami and Brian at the antique shops in nearby Bolingbroke.  I was in Vintage Santa Heaven at this store!  I actually hollered when I saw this little section.  Ami got to it first and tried to tell me to move on, there was nothing to see there.  Ha! 

 I ended up getting this sweet little Santa...

  
And this little angel with the broken hand.  None of us are perfect, right?

(Update:  I have found out that she used to hold two gold bells and they are what has broken off.  She's a Lefton 1950's spaghetti trim Christmas angel and was in a set of three.  Google is a wunnerful thang!) 

We got up really early this morning, had cups of hot chocolate in the hot tub and this afternoon, I took a long nap with Banjo and Tabbie Hoffman at my side while Larry cleaned up the house and did the laundry.  I made a couple of Christmas presents, made another pan of peanut butter fudge and some white chocolate cinnamon-sugar pretzels to fill tins for our neighbors and for the lady who brings our mail.  We watched an amazing Christmas movie called Lost Christmas, a beautiful story of pain and loss and love and second chances.  If you haven't seen it, you should.  It might become a Christmas tradition!

We separated our gifts into piles of which ones are going where and had hummus and crackers and cheese (and peanut butter fudge!) for supper.

Last weekend before the big day!  I was oh so happy to be snuggly warm in my little house with my love and our furbabies and not out there in the crazy shopping my feet off!  Four days left!!

Eight days!

Christmas will be here in eight days!!  Next week.  Eeeeek!  We are ready, though.  Been ready, actually.  We're just taking these last days and enjoying them to the fullest!

Last night, we rode over to Yonker, a little town near Eastman, to see the Christmas light display that the Tripp family puts together every year.  Joe and Marie Tripp have been doing this every Christmas for the past 30 years and in recent years, have gained a little attention in the media.  They were even approached by the ABC television show, The Great Christmas Light Fight, but declined because as Mr. Tripp told me and Larry, they "wanted too much".  They want every little surface covered with lights and Mr. Tripp said they "weren't gonna fool with it."  I liked that man.  He gave me and Larry our own personal tour, showing us this snowman and that Santa, telling us where he got 'em and how he fixed 'em, that he got a bunch of stuff from a local bank that was getting rid of their Christmas decorations and how he waited and waited and got lights at Lowe's last year after Christmas 75% off.  I told him he didn't want everything that comes along with being on a TV show anyhow, just look what happened to Honey Boo Boo!  He cracked up!  Said Mrs. Tripp wouldn't have nothing to do with you if you liked Honey Boo Boo.  Uh oh.  :)

Here are some of my favorite pictures!  It was all SO beautiful and we had such a lovely night to walk among the lights; it wasn't too hot and it wasn't too cold, it was just right.

Santa's only there on the weekends so his chair was empty last night.  It was right comfy!  We had a great time.  I loved all the vintage blow mold figures they have.  Mr. Tripp said people have collected them for them over the years and that he wouldn't even know where to begin selling everything IF they ever decide to stop doing this.  Um, I know where you can start, Mr. Tripp.  Meeeeeee!!!

I want this one right heah.

Today we went to the antique mall here in town and I got a few more things for my vintage Christmas tea cart.  I told Larry I might need another cart!

I got a sweet little The Night Before Christmas book that was published in 1950, a springy Santa that pops up out of the chimney, a cute little snowman ornament and two Santa match holders.  The one with the little pom-pom on top is being sold on eBay right now for $50!  Straight crazy.  I paid $2 for him.



I chose this unique Santa mug to add to my collection because I don't have one anything like it and because I liked his coloring, white with just a touch of blush on his face and that one pretty blue eye.  He's different and special.  And he's got the winky eye that I love, too.

We got this old Santa cardboard cutout, too.  LOVE

I squealed out loud when I saw this little book!  I didn't even know there were Buffy books!  I loved my Mrs. Beasley literally to pieces when I was a kid.  She's still with me, too, and we're both old ladies now.  Mama used to fix my hair like Buffy and everything.  I love this little book!!  Merry Christmas to me!

I found these adorable little bulls to put on my Pyrex shelf.  They were with the salt and pepper shakers but they don't have holes for the salt and pepper to come out! They are as cute as they can be!

And these little squirrels are salt and pepper shakers.  I just loved how different and unique this little set was. 

A week from tomorrow!!  I'm so excited I could bust!