A Holiday Table Project

I found a number of these small metal wreaths at an antiques and collectibles market the Saturday after Thanksgiving. No one was quite sure what their original purpose had been. I loved their white-washed gold, and I puchased five, immediately knowing how I would use them. The day before had been a holiday for me and instead of spending the early morning hours among shoppers, I had lounged in bed with a cup of coffee, watching HGTV Christmas decorating specials. It seemed that every holiday vignette had the chairs decorated as beautifully as the tabletop, and this was my inspiration when I saw the wreaths.

I gathered sparkly ribbon, a cream-colored cardstock and a damask print scrapbook paper, alphabet stamps from a vintage set, gold metallic ink, gold DMC thread and a circle die cutter. I punched out cardstock circles, stamped them with each family member's initial, and glued them to the scrapbook paper circles. I rubbed the edges over the gold stamp pad to gild them. I puched a hole in the circles with a large needle, threaded them and brought that thread up through the ribbon and knotted it. The metallic thread did not hold the knots well, so I put a drop of glue on each knot to secure it. The wreaths were suspended by the ribbon. I tied the ribbon into a bow and kept it from slipping when the chairs were moved by placing a small peel-and-stick glue dot underneath.

The wreath place markers were a pretty new addition to our holiday table, and even the three guys admired them!

It's Christmastime!

Happy Holidays!

Long Time Gone

My poor

blog has

been sorely

neglected

of late because

somehow, in this terrible

economy, I have been blessed with a full-time job. For the first time in nearly 20 years, I am not a stay-at-home mom or a mom with a part-time job chosen to fit around her children's schedules, but a full-time, salaried employee with all the responsibilities that go with that, and it has been a bit overwhelming. Between the 40+ hours a week, the need to play catch-up with my computer skills after hours, and to find a professional wardrobe, many other things have been pushed into the background, including my blog. I am back to blogging, however, and I will learn to balance everything as so many others do. Gone are my thrift store Wednesdays, but I will never completely abandon the vintage treasure hunt. I found this rusty tin and Czechoslovakian bracelet for a couple of dollars each at a great new Goodwill store.

This elegantly chippy Italian magazine holder was a curbside find. It will make a nice place for scrapbook paper or perhaps all those wonderful Somerset publications that keep appearing at my bookstore. The first issue of Where Women Create was stunning and inspiring. Congratualtions to everyone who had a hand in creating it, and to everyone who was featured there.

And, I did take a minute or two to drape Madame with a beribboned lace piece that someone must have begun putting together as part of a camisole or nightgown, but never finished. It was stuffed in a $2 bag of lace at a thrift store. I think this bit of frippery makes her look more like a Mademoiselle, don't you? I also picked up the latest issue of Artful Blogging and was so happy to see Tiffany's Show Me Your Form featured there. I had a great time participating in that blog challenge. And now I'm off with my real life dress form, my daugher, who has a fitting for a dress she will be modeling in a charity fashion show.