Holiday Goodies!

WARNING: If you think it may be a little too early to be looking at holiday decorations, you may want to steer clear of this post.  Remember, you have been warned.

As anyone who frequents garage sales knows, you can always come across an abundance of holiday decorations.  Of course, my favorite type of holiday decorations are the vintage ones.  Lately, I've been having some pretty good luck finding them.

I was at an estate sale at a dirty little house last weekend and I saw this bag.  I didn't take the time to open it up because I really just wanted to get out of there and get back in my nice clean car with my bottle of hand sanitizer in the glove compartment.  I noticed that there were some little birds in the bag and that was good enough for me.  Look at all the cute little treasures I found when I got home and dumped out the contents

A bunch (flock?) of the aforementioned birds.  I actually collect vintage birds and along with Shiny Brite ornaments, they are what the majority of my tree is decorated with.

Absolutely adorable spun cotton head angels.  I didn't realize that these existed.  I have seen Santa ones, but never the angels.

A bunch of miscellaneous trim that I will probably just use to fill in areas.  Aaaaaagh.  I don't even want to begin to think about Christmas yet. 

I also managed to snag this honeycomb pumpkin as I was running out the door.  Don't worry, I paid my 10 cents for it first.

It's pretty common for me to come across vintage Christmas tablecloths when I am at the sales.  I buy up any of them that are reasonably priced.  I am hoping to come across one that Sister can make into a tree skirt for me.  I have been looking for a "new" tree skirt FOREVER.  Thanks goodness I have a crafty sister who can sew one for me.

There are four major estate sale companies in my area.  Two of them are pretty reasonably priced and two are WAY OUT THERE.  I try to avoid going to the way out there ones but the other day I just so happened to be at a sale in the same neighborhood as one of the sales they were having so I stopped in. I picked up these 4 Gurley caroler candles and the two deer ones.  They were asking $3.50 apiece but I talked them into selling them all to me for $10.00.  Still pretty high but better than the $21.00 that they would have been had I not haggled.  I reeeeeeeeeally wanted the little African American carolers but they wanted $15.00 apiece.  I know I will find them for way cheaper.  Someday.

To give you a little idea of how different the companies price things, I picked these Thanksgiving Gurley candles up at one of the other companies sales earlier in the week. I got all four of these for a whole dollar.  And the Thanksgiving ones are a little less common than the Christmas ones. 

When our mom was younger, her house burnt down.  She always tells Sister and I that she had a bunch of these candles and they were the only object that survived the fire. Um okay.  Candles survived the fire?  It may be worth mentioning that our mother was a teenager during the whole flower child era.  You make your own assumptions as to how she may have gotten this story in her head.

Of course I would find even more Easter cuteness after I put away my Easter decorations.  These poor little guys came out of the bag, got their picture taken, and went into the box with the rest.  Oh well, see you next year!

I found this while browsing on eBay and it caught my eye because

Miss Maddy has the matching mouse and her baby.  I didn't realize that the mouse was missing one of it's babies, though.  So sad!

Time to go get the kids from school!  Don't worry, I still have more holiday decorations to show all of you.  I will show them to you a little bit at a time. No more overkill like this blog.  I promise.

Until next time, blogger friends!

Sister Erica