Vintage Christmas

I love vintage, and Christmas is no exception. One day I'd like to be all decked out like this:

{Image Rhonna Farrer}

...but I made some strides this year. I found some little bottlebrush trees at Walmart and at some drug stores that have a vintage vibe (and they were like a buck each!). They lived with Mom's things in the wardrobe:

I love love love little cardboard village houses, found a couple this year. They're only a couple bucks each as well, making for an affordable, cute display!

I love my Cracker Barrel Santa:

Dad has had this Santa for a long time, it's cute:

I found an antique place that sold vintage reflectors that go on big Christmas lights, you don't see these much:

I love vintage ornaments, and I loved the box too:

I used them and some vintage bells I found to make a garland over my closet door. The tinsel was from Walmart, I loved the shape!

I also found these sweet little molds, I'll turn them into ornaments one day. I think it'd be sweet to have a vintage kitchen themed tree when I get a kitchen of my own.

And there's new ornaments that look old, gotta love it!

I loved these quilts that I saw at Cracker Barrel, might have to copy them!

Aren't yo-yo's sweet?

When I was up in NY shooting the wedding I killed some time at this HUGE antique mall. Loved it! Couldn't buy everything, but it was fun to look:

Gotta love vintage Christmas linens!

You don't see many vintage tree stands, I liked this one but the $18 price tag was too much:

Aren't all these Santas cute?

And there were some great village houses, so tempting!

I think vintage Christmases are the best!

Christmas

Like I said, Christmas was really nice. We had a nice day together.

Here's how our tree turned out (it's so perfectly shaped that we were asked if it was fake, ha ha!):

I got a couple of new birds, loved the rufflebutt on this one:


I also bought this sewing basket ornament in honor of all my sewing this year:

This metal carousel is one of my faves:

I like to wrap presents creatively- this was a Nightmare Before Christmas dvd!


I got a good haul- Bathroom Reader book and Sesame Street dvds!

Wire mini dress form for my crafty area (I'll get one someday!):

A hardcover PP&Zombies! Now with 30% more zombies!

Fabric from my Grandmother:

We like to give vintage goodies to each other- I found this lusterware salt and pepper set for my mom. We like lusterware, we inherited a tea set. It's unusual to find this blue color, most is peach or green.

Dad got some fffff...fudge (one of the funniest pieces of merchandising to come from that movie!):
We got a yodeling pickle, that's right:

Cute moose basket from relatives in Alaska:

It came with Slug Butter, lol!
"The Yummy Spread That Slimes Your Bread"

Lars helped Laura open presents:


Bought Mom & myself a stereoscope card from the Keystone Viewing Company (we went to the museum last summer) that depicts the damage from the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.



Also bought Mom a vintage pansy dresser scarf (she loves vintage textiles and pansies!):

I embroidered a train dishtowel for Dad, he does the cooking around here:

Yummy cinnamon rolls, our tradition:

Later that day Mom and I fed the neighbor's swan and ducks:

There were also deer very close to the house, they were fun to watch.

In all it was a nice day with my family, and I got a nice haul! ;)

Pre-Christmas

This ornament (a present from my visiting teacher) sums up my holiday season:

It really was one of the nicest Christmases I've had in awhile. The whole month was really great. As you saw, Ame's shower and the Nativity display were great. The Christmas devotional was great. I also had fun swapping white elephant gifts with the YSA. From what I gather, Rene's wedding in Utah went well.

We got a really good tree from our local nursery:

It was fun to see people's lights:

The Corry green was lit up nice as well:

And so was our house!

We had fun shopping at the mall as a family:

I loved this display tree at Old Navy!

Laura had Grant shopping with us too, he did surprisingly well:


I have a tree growing out of my head, lol:

On the 23rd, us YW (and some RS and Primary) went caroling, which was so much fun. We had wanted to do it last year but schedules and snow prevented us. The girls were so excited, many of them had never been caroling before. We sang all around the local nursing home, the people there were happy to see us. We then went to a couple of member's homes, it was fun to sing to them as well. I also had really nice VT visits with my ladies that same day.

On Christmas Eve, we walked outside as a family and left bread and apples for the deer and critters. We also always read the Christmas story in the Bible on Christmas Eve and hang up stockings as well.

We got our tree up late (we're always late but this year we were really late!), Mom and I got it in the house on the 22nd and we weren't finished decorating til the 24th, but I didn't really need a tree to make me feel merry, it came from within. I really tried to focus on others instead of worrying about me and I think that really helped.

Dan & Sissy

Way back when on December 19th I took these photos for people that I know through YSA. Dan and Sissy originally weren't going to have a photographer (First Ame, now Dan and Sissy, what gives? Why bother if you aren't going to get good photos out of it? Ha ha) but we struck a deal- they got pics, I got experience with my new DSLR (not many marry out here) and I also got to add to my portfolio. It was fun doing this since I haven't shot a wedding since '06! Now that I have a DSLR, I'd like to get back into my photography business- it kinda took a backseat cause I couldn't afford to upgrade to a nice digital camera.

I even got to attend their sealing, it was very sweet. I haven't seen one since 2006 (Yay John and Nancy!) so it was nice to be able to hear those sweet words that bind families for eternity.
I took photos after their sealing, Sissy didn't bring her gown to the temple, hence the black coat and boots. It's hard to photograph people in the snow-everything turned out really gray. Thank goodness for Photoshop! A tweak here and a tweak there does wonders.

I took over 400 photos that day, so I can't show them all, but here's a few:

Loved the nativity outside the temple, what a cute Christmas card:
They had a ring ceremony later that day at the church building two hours away in Fredonia, NY. Neither had family at the sealing, just a few friends attended that.

Yep, they had a Hummer, lol.

Sometimes long exposures can be cool:

Their cakes were pretty, the reception had (of course) a Christmas theme:

Her train:

Dancing:

The guest book:

The beautiful bride:

The reception was at The White Inn in Fredonia. Quite a lovely building:

Hope they live Happily Ever After. They are cute together.