It's Thanksgiving!
This year for Thanksgiving we have a "new" dining room, and a new antique table and buffet. It was a very old set that I found in early October for a great price, but it had a tacky paint job and needed major TLC. Chakpaint to the rescue...love it now!
If you also take a look at last year's Thanksgiving post http://junkaholicsunanimous.blogspot.com/2011/11/thanksgiving-2011.html you can see the changes we made to this room. I had wanted a separate dining room ever since we bought the house four years ago. Because we didn't really use one of our extra bedrooms, we decided that with a little creativity we could rework the floor plan to convert it to our new living room. (I will be doing a separate post all about that later). The changes allowed for this wonderful open dining area and it seemed to triple the size of our usable space. And of course it gave me more to decorate which is always great!
One of the fun changes we made was replacing the ceiling fan with this super cool vintage-inspired Edison light bulb pendant light. This one came from Lowes at an affordable price and its nearly identical to Pottery Barn's. I was going to order the one from Pottery Barn since there wasn't much of a price difference and I assumed it would be higher quality, but the one from Lowes had better customer reviews and was a bit cheaper so we chose it instead. It is so unique and it adds instant vintage chic to the room.
The dining table is set with my traditional favorites, including the lovely Johnson Brothers "His Majesty"turkey teacups and saucers, ironstone pieces, vintage amber glass goblets and silverplate trays. In these pictures I have not yet set out my gold plated flatware or napkins, since I usually just wait until Thanksgiving for them.
Beautiful with the autumn morning sunlight streaming through...
....warm and cozy in the evening
I used a primitive turkey in a wooden box filled with burlap and fall goodies for this year's table centerpiece.
Note to self: Iron the tablecloth before Thursday. Thanks, I appreciate you.
This year I ended up getting creative with things I already had for my Thanksgiving decorating. I wanted a stunning centerpiece for my new table and something new for the buffet, and since a lot of items I normally use on my mantel ended up moving to the new living room, the mantel was also a blank slate. I even went to Hobby Lobby to buy some new things, but I couldn't find anything that looked vintage enough for my liking or to fit my "so cheap its practically free" spending philosophy. So back to picking around our own house, basement and yard for "new" items I already had. As usual, I am so happy with the result of NOT buying new mass produced decorations, although I do love Hobby Lobby and their beautiful reproduction pieces.
For my buffet I used an old runner that had been on the dresser in the guest room, a giant corn that ends up in a different area of the house each fall, the pumpkin sign I purchased at a consignment shop for $2 earlier this season that had been on my porch, several of the pumpkins and gourds left over from Halloween, a fleur de lis copper bucket that was in my project pile awaiting a chalk-paint makeover, a couple of flea market silverplate items that I had used in my Halloween decor, my prized $1 demijohn, some indian corn, a large autumn kale from the garden, a sweet vintage Native American Stories book, an orphaned transferware teacup and saucer with a fall farm scene, deer antlers, some autumn floral pics, a few vintage doilies, and one of my favorite old oval frames to "frame" the whole display and add visual interest in the background. I added my little boy's own estate sale find, a turkey snow globe. Such a conglomerate of different things seem unrelated but end up working as a harvest of junk goodies that form a festive holiday vignette.
When we moved some of our furniture to the new living area, this corner screamed for a corner cabinet. I found a very junky, chippy-shabby one and I added the salvaged screen door for interest. I dressed it up even more with lighted bittersweet and grapevines, vintage lace, and a big basket of ironstone and silverplate on top.
These three shelves are filled with favorites. Notice the Frenchy papers on the shelf walls? Scrap book papers, simply taped on. Love them!
Oh I get so excited at this little cloche even as I type this post! Vintage celluloid pilgrims, a Native American girl and a little deer...all from different flea markets on different days this summer. Don't they make a sweet grouping?
I love how this color scheme with the pinks and burgandys mixed in with the browns is still autumnal without bright orange. I will miss this display. I haven't gotten to enjoy it long enough. The saucer with the Native American hunter was yard sale find from last year. I think it works so well in this grouping.
Here are some vintage Gurley turkey candles, my favorite silverplate tea pot and some more misc. pieces of ironstone and transferware from this summer's flea market adventures. I like how this shelf display continues the color scheme of the shelf above it.
The beauty of how simple things like balls of string and twine on a bed of vintage ivory napkins always amazes me. Such a sweet little plate takes center stage.
Here is a view from the kitchen. I just love Sunny autumn weekend mornings so much. My favorite season! I would like to reach into this picture and scoot that pitcher back a bit though, it's making me nervous!
Finding vintage Thanksgiving items is not the easiest, so I was so excited to about this plastic Thanksgiving wreath. Probably the ugliest thing to most people but of course you vintage junkers know this was a great find!
I have vintage turkey platters here and there around the kitchen and dining room. I really have no place for them now that my ironstone collection has grown exponentially (I found 25 old ironstone platters for $1 each recently) but I get creative and find ways to make room for them somehow.
More platters above the cabinets
I love this "picture" of my ironstone platters!
Here is my mantel. As I mentioned earlier, it was completely bare since moving items into the new living room, and because my Hobby Lobby shopping trip was an epic fail (shopping retail always is for me) I came home frustrated but I couldn't stand the thought of not having anything up there. Then I got the simple idea to use my large Turkey tureen as a focal point and surround him with more of my ironstone and vintage postcards. After all, Thanksgiving is a food and cooking themed holiday, so what better time to have my ironstone pitchers and platters on display? Um, how about everyday???
I had considered looking on etsy for a banner, but I decided to make this one from some large vintage flash cards (The "T" card says "T is for Turkey" and has a pretty Turkey on the back), and I also used my son's artwork from previous Thanksgivings. Of course this banner is dear to my heart! I always try to decorate with artwork or crafts that my sons have made over the years instead of just sticking them in a scrapbook. My oldest son is in college now and he does seem to appreciate my sentiments, but my 7 year old absolutely is so proud of seeing what he made "when he was little" put on display with all of our other special decorations.
I am really pleased with this mantel. An antique flower frog displaying a postcard from 1910, mini-pumpkins from my Halloween decor, pheasant and turkey feathers, pitchers and platters, vintage hankies... are all, as Martha Stewart would say,"good things."
I couldn't resist adding this fun little vintage-kitschy felt pilgrim couple alongside more ironstone and postcards.
Oh my autumn, how I will miss your colors and pleasures.
I hope you enjoyed this post. I am sending you all "Good Wishes For Thanksgiving Day!"
"Gobble-Gobble!"
Parties:
http://www.uncommondesignsonline.com/
http://www.commonground-do.com/2012/11/vintage-inspiration-115-being-thankful.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed: blogspot/bCGJMl (Common Ground)
