miniatures — Page 51

Vintage-ing & Mini Tree Decorating

December 2, 2018 at 10:32 am by Claudia

Both of us woke up way too early this morning, but what can you do? I’m right on the edge of becoming testy, so I’m going to work overtime not to be so. I finished Susan Hill’s latest and now have to make the decision as to what to read next. A quality problem.

Other than that, this is what I’ve been doing – Yesterday, I decided that I would go to the local antique shop that I had planned to visit earlier in the week, but cancelled when I realized I needed to buy outdoor lights at Target. This little multi-dealer shop is very charming. My favorite dealer (the one who sold me the egg cup cubby cabinet) has a booth there. She has booths at three different antique shops, by the way, two of which I’ve been to very recently.

I’ve been wanting to find more putz sheep to add to my mantel shelf over my desk, and though I see them rarely, when I do see them it’s usually around Christmas or Easter. My search had been fruitless so far, but I had a feeling that if anyone carried some putz sheep, it would be this dealer.

As I was drinking coffee and scrolling through IG, I saw that she had two new posts up, both of which concerned her booth at the shop I wanted to visit.

One of them had photos of putz sheep.

Serendipity. And also interesting that she just added the sheep on Friday, so I wouldn’t have seen them had I gone earlier in the week. I scooted on over there and grabbed them. They’re in great condition.

I initially picked two of them and left one behind, but in true Claudia fashion, I felt badly for the one I didn’t pick, so I went back to the booth to retrieve it. I worried it would be lonesome. They’re old, they’re German and I love them.

This one has a bell. It also has a little bow on its tush, which I’ve never seen before.

I added them to my shelf upstairs in the office.

Smile. I love my little sheep. And my Lamb Chops. And a felted sheep that I have in my bedroom. And another fat sheep in the office. So does my sister, who also collects sheep.

If I had limited the damage to the three putz sheep, I would have been fine. But a stroll through the shop revealed other impossible-to-resist treasures.

This striking egg cup, which is actually more of the ecru color of aged ironstone, with a lot of crazing that you can’t see in this photo. I really love it.

This little vintage putz house.

Isn’t it charming? How could I resist?

And this Roseville baby’s plate, something I’ve wanted for a long time. It was so reasonably priced that I had to buy it.

It’s very heavy.

It now lives upstairs in the cabinet that holds some of my Roseville.

After that little treasure hunt, I came home, took photos of everything because I’m a blogger, and then started in on the decorating of mini Christmas trees, which turned out to be frustrating for a while until I figured out how to do it. Glitter now covers every surface upstairs. I’ve vacuumed twice. I know I will be finding it everywhere for a long time. I had to launder my clothes, which were covered with glitter.

This is why I normally avoid glitter like the plague.

But here is the mid-century modern tree, in progress.

I cut off a lot of the branches at the bottom, but I also want to cut the wire spine of the tree. I have wire cutters, but they’re made for much thinner wire, so I’ll probably make a trip to Lowes in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, I decided I needed to glue the ornaments on this tree because they kept falling off, causing me to curse out loud several times.

The ‘pine’ tree that I made is another story. I don’t want to glue anything on that tree.

I’ll figure it all out.

And finally,

I ran outside to get his picture of the house with outdoor Christmas lights.

Gosh, I love them.

Happy Sunday.

Miniature Trees & More Lights

November 30, 2018 at 10:40 am by Claudia

Well, I didn’t get to the antique shop because I looked for the porch Christmas lights and couldn’t find them anywhere, which leads me to believe they’re tucked away under the stairs with the other decorations. As I’m not ready to move the egg cup cabinet yet, I decided to go to Target and buy some more. Why not? They’re inexpensive and it’s probably time to get some new ones because, as you know, some bulbs are almost guaranteed not to work.

So I headed out and stopped at Target and Michael’s.

The lights are currently hanging from this cabinet and the stair railing so they lose the kinks in the cords. I’m going to drape them on the porch railing later this morning.

I found this guy in the china cabinet in the office, so he’s now on display.

But basically, the rest of the decorating will happen at the end of next week. Except for the dollhouses. They get done first.

I bought some trim at Michael’s.

They were marked 50% off. My idea is to clip off the little balls and hang them on my mini Christmas tree. I’ve never been totally happy with the way I’ve decorated that tree and I’m going to try to step it up this year.

If you’re new to the blog, you might not know that I made this tree several years ago. The branches are a preserved pine called lycopodium. My memory of that day is of glue covering every inch of my fingers and hands. I love it, though – it was worth it. It looks very realistic. But the pine is dark and it needs some colorful ornaments. I added one little ball last night just to see how it looks.

I also bought some battery operated lights there.

But now that I look at the box more clearly, I realize that the string is 8 feet long! Way too long for my little tree. Hmmm. I’ll have to come up with something else.

I also want to try to do something with this silver tree. My thought it to put it in the more modern dollhouse that I bought last year. It’s too tall, so I’ll have to cut it down somehow. I’d like to eliminate some branches so it looks less like a bottle brush tree and more like an artificial mid-century silver tree. Either that, or lots of ornaments to hide its bottle brush origins. Or, I might go with the smaller gold tree that you can see on the right and put it on a table.

Fingers crossed.

I like decorating the dollhouses. Even Don’s mini studio gets some holiday touches!

I’m off to eat some oatmeal, take a shower, and hang those porch lights. Don and I are going to Rick and Doug’s tonight for a movie night – Rear Window, one of my favorites. When we head back home after the movie, we’ll see our pretty lights as we come down the street.

I’m going to reiterate a couple of things I’ve shared with you in the past. Even though I have a Blogger blog and Google account, it has become impossible for me to leave comments on other Blogger blogs. I know others are having the same problem. So, even if it appears I’m not reading your blogs, I am!

The other reminder is this: when you choose to respond to a post by replying to the email version of the post, I have absolutely no way of responding to you. I can read your reply, but as it comes from a separate email address meant only for sending out the post each day, I can’t write you back from that address. Even though I’ve been clear about this several times in the past, the occasional reader gets ticked off at me because they think I’m ignoring them. I’m not. I’d much rather you respond in the comments section on the blog, but if you’re not comfortable with that for some reason, send your response to my email address which you can find by clicking on the envelope icon at the top of the sidebar. If you’re fine with me not responding, that’s okay, too.

Happy Friday.

In the Meantime…

November 9, 2018 at 10:08 am by Claudia

Since all of my posts have been about our trip to France and the British Isles of late, I thought I’d do a little catching up today. Some of these photos have been on Instagram, so if you follow me there, you’ve most likely already seen them.

I did some antiquing and treasure hunting over the past couple of weeks.

I was hoping to find one of these well-known marmalade crocks in England, but I never had the time to do any antique shopping. Darn! I had a feeling that the same woman I purchased the cubby cabinet from would have some in at least one of her locations. I gambled on my pick of the locations and it paid off, as she had several. This is the one I chose. It’s old, has lovely crazing and makes me happy. I also got a round ironstone butter pat as well as a set of six Noritake butter pats.

Yes. Another collection. I like them. And they’re small, which is now a necessity in this tiny house, already jam-packed with collections.

The other day, I stopped at a local antique shop and found these:

Another Fiesta/Harlequin egg cup in a dusty rose.

And a tiny little pitcher/creamer from England.

It’s been warm enough this week that I was able to open the front door and let the sun shine into the living room. But that’s changed as of last night. A hard freeze, with all the catalpa leaves on the ground. My porch plants look like they’re hanging in there so far, but it’s only a matter of time.

Sigh. Both Don and I remarked this morning that it seems like a big change happened last night and we’re heading into winter. This is always a hard transition for me and it gets harder every year.

The bush that I wish was elsewhere always wins me over at this time of year. This is a shot of our burning bush taken from upstairs in our bedroom.

I cleaned up my desk the other day, which had become completely covered with paperwork and things I gathered on our trip. Then I sat in my chair, did some work on my laptop and listened to some bossa nova music. Occasionally, I would turn the chair toward the dollhouse and eventually, I found myself looking for my rubber mallet. The result:

I demoed the staircase and the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen. I cut some dowels to hold the ceiling up until I come up with some pillars, perhaps flanking a kitchen island.

It looks a lot roomier, which is what I wanted.

Here it is with some furniture so you can get an idea of where I’m headed.

The island would probably be right behind that chair. I’m thinking of beams on the ceiling. We’ll see.

Finally, I was sitting here in the den on election night with my back to the window, which faces west. It had rained hard all day long. Don wasn’t here, he was headed home on the bus from NYC. Suddenly, the room turned orange and I turned and looked out the window, grabbed my phone and ran outside. The entire sky was this color:

I’ve never seen anything like it. As I turned back to the house, I gasped.

A rainbow spanning the sky behind our house.

A double rainbow:

On one horizon was a glorious sunset. On the other was a huge rainbow.

Then the sunset turned to this:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite so spectacular in our 13 years here. Yes, great sunsets. Yes, the occasional rainbow. But both at the same time? Never. It was incredible. I called Don, who was on the bus, and told him to look out the window and he managed to see the rainbow and the orange sky.

I took it as a good omen. Turns out it was.

Happy Friday.

Vintage-ing & Mini Tree Decorating

Miniature Trees & More Lights

In the Meantime…

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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