Getting Ready For Thanksgiving

Hello friends! I'm super excited for Thanksgiving this year since it will be the first one in our new house and with my new double convection oven! Today I'm going to be going over my store list and checking it twice and maybe I'll even head out to try to get most of it bought to avoid the last minute chaos. I really love Thanksgiving and I don't do Christmas beforehand. I have just a few things out this year and it's all that's really needed to add Thanksgiving beauty to our home. 

I just created a little junk vignette around my chalkboard on the big buffet in the front room. Love it! Easy and quick.

On a small side table I grouped my favorite turkey tureen, a yard sale pheasant my mom just surprised me with, a Jim Shore Scarecrow and some various pumpkins and gourds. I decorated my little ivory tree with leaves and mini-gourds. We recently repainted our living room with a historic 1920's color, (I actually ended up having to make it from several colors to get the color I wanted) it's a dark rusty orange so all of my fall decorations look great.

 

I've messed around with the buffet in my living room several times trying to find the perfect way to display this awesome $5 yard sale turkey I found a couple of weeks ago.

I got rid of tons of fall decorations when we moved, but I couldn't part with these vintage Gurney turkey candles. They always look so sweet grouped with my brown transferware and fall dishes.

I also kept all of my antique turkey platters but they are still packed away. I was missing them and contemplating digging them out but I saw this one at a thrift store and decided it would be enough to satisfy my turkey platter fix for this year, and saved me the hassle of unpacking. 

Outside I've cleaned up all of the summery decorations and packed them away. Pots are being cleaned and the gardens cleared out and leaves raked. I'm still enjoy the last of the herbs and pumpkins through Thanskgiving.

The Rosemary is wonderful and I have been using it in my homemade simmers to keep the house smelling fall wonderful and fresh.

Are you ready for Thanskgiving? I can't wait!

Amber

Thanksgiving Cabinet Vignettes and Dining Room Tour Part 3

 

Happy Sunday everyone! I hope this day finds you resting up for the busy week ahead. Today I am showing you part three of my dining room tour, highlighting my corner cabinet vignettes. The batteries for my good camera ran out and I can't find the charger anywhere, so Iphone photos are the best I can do for today, but I hope you'll still enjoy the post.

 

 Here is my little shabby corner cabinet, which is great for creating seasonal vignettes. I added the Frenchy scrapbooking paper to the walls last October, and I love the brown and black for fall especially. This year I used several of my vintage Thanksgiving trinkets to create the shelf displays. I will show you close-ups throughout the post.    

The corner cabinet is along the same wall as our buffet which make taking pictures difficult due to the glare. This view is looking in to the dining room from the kitchen. Grainy pic, but I figure you can get an idea of the "feel" of the room.

 

Yesterday I hung my favorite curtain panels for Thanksgiving. I take them down at Christmas because the colors are too suggestive of fall, but right now they are wonderful and add a cozy autumn warmth.

                                                          

                              The pattern matches my Johnson Brothers turkey dishes perfectly.

 

 

Along with my vintage treasures are true treasures from my little boy. On top of the cabinet sits a pinecone turkey that he made in pre-school (he is hiding from the butcher). Just a few days ago he brought me the giant leaf which is displayed on an architectural salvage piece with vintage  Thanksgiving postcards and old lace. He knows how much I love the things he brings me!

 

 

Here is the right side of the top shelf. I love how the little feathers in the vintage apothecary jar are the same colors as the scrapbook papers, yet add another pattern for visual interest.

 

Last year I displayed my vintage celluloid pilgrims and indian doll as a cloche display and I liked it so much I decided to repeat the idea (gasp!) I prefer to change things up each year, but it's also fun to repeat your favorite themes, as they evoke a sense of tradition.

 

Love everything about this display, except the fact that I only noticed the gourd in the cloche is growing hair!

 

I just took another picture, (minus the moldy gourd) to try to get aware from the glare but I just couldn't. Anyway, you can see the little turkey candle and the small doll a little better. My son is only eight but he is a true picker, and this year he found the little Native American girl doll at the flea market for me for .25. He remembered I had the others that I use at Thanksgiving! He has inherited my ability to" junk for the future!" So of all the dolls, she is obviously my favorite now!

 

 

  Here are the second and third shelves. More vintage dishes, silverplate, a post card, and a vintage Gurney turkey candle. I especially love that totally retro, plastic fall wreath under the pumpkin tureen.You hardly every find vintage Thanksgiving wreaths anymore.

 

 

                                            And lastly, my favorite display... the turkey in the straw!

I hope you have enjoyed Thanksgiving in our dining room this year. I know our family is really going to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner gathered around our farm table for the first time. I would love for you to check out Part 1 and 2 of the tour if you haven't already. Just click the links below.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

 

 

                                  Junkaholics Unanimous: Thanksgiving Tour Part 1

 

                                        Junkaholics Unanimous: Thanksgiving Tour Part 3

                                                   

                                                           Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

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Thanksgiving Mantel/Dining Room Tour Part 2

Welcome back for part two of my Thanksgiving tour! Today I am showing you my Thanksgiving mantel and buffet. I hope you will check out part one if you haven't already. You can see my farm table and some other little Thanksgiving touches I added around the dining room. Just click the link at the end of this post. Hope you enjoy the tours!

 

 This year I wanted to do something different on the mantel, but I had no clue what, so I started thinking about the junk I hoarded collected over the summer to get inspired. The idea really came together quite quickly once I remembered the old galvanized chick feeder out in my garden. I decided to simply fill it to overflowing with my favorite faux garland, some mini pumpkins and gourds, and some dollar store candles embellished with burlap and little Thanksgiving hang tags. I took a few deer antlers from the table and used them as well. I displayed my favorite prim turkey whose tail feathers are so long they got cropped out of the picture! For visual interest I used an arched mirror-less mirror, and layered an antique oval mirror to reflect the light of the candles. I like the contrast of the dark wood on the mirror against the shabby metal frame, as it adds just enough brown to balance out the mantel design.

At Halloween I created a "Queen of Halloween" vignette on my mantel using this vintage bronze trophy. (See it here: http://junkaholicsunanimous.blogspot.com/2013/11/best-of-halloween-2013.html) Once the Halloween was packed away, I decided to keep the trophy  on the mantel for Thanksgiving and fill it with a gorgeous variety of turkey feathers and a matching spray of florals and berries from the garland in the chick feeder. A winning combination, I think!

Yesterday I added the large acorn ornaments that I found in an old basket while cleaning. I didn't

remember them at all, and just got lucky that I was cleaning out baskets in time for Thanksgiving so I could use them.

 

I am so obsessive I almost went back and retook all of my mantel pictures because my red shirt is reflecting in the mirror and clashes! I should have worn white or ivory! I digress. Easily.

Anyway, I love, love, love this year's mantel! Our farm table may very well be the best $10 ever spent while junkin', and has inspired the use of more natural elements mixed with vintage junk, which I think it's the perfect style for our home.

 

A little blurry but you get a good view of the trophy.

 

Love the glow of the candles at night casting shadows, along with the cozy warm colors. I will miss the warmth of fall. I'm enjoying every last minute of it. 

 

Below is a picture I took with my iphone but I wanted to use it since it shows the most of the mantel from another angle. It's hard to get the full mantel in any shot because our farm table sits where you need to stand to get the whole thing.

 

Now that you've seen the mantel in the daytime and evening, let's move on around the dining room...

 

My buffet is one of my favorite things to decorate, but nearly impossible to photograph due to the large picture window behind it. I hope you can get an idea of how it looks in real life. I have enjoyed creating this chic and elegant display, where all I did was tweak a few of my everyday buffet vignettes for Thanksgiving.  The center features my vintage jewelry bust, "Grace." You may have seen her in my Halloween posts all decked out as the Belle of the Halloween ball. Now she is cozied up in a warm ivory scarf and looking dreamily ahead toward the upcoming Christmas holidays.

 

The buffet is packed with vintage pretties, amber goblets and salad plates, vintage amber glass bottles, loads of tarnished silver plate items, a few vintage turkeys, and my Johnson Brothers

"His Majesty" turkey teacups and saucers.

 

I am so in love with fall that I try to bring as much of it indoors as possible. To the right are some little ironstone leaf dishes filled with acorns my son picked from the yard. He and I went for a little drive to see what gifts nature could spare and we found these lovely orange and blue berries. I believe the orange is bittersweet. So pretty in the amber bottles!

 

 

 

 

Well dear readers, I am going to do my best to get part three of Thanksgiving up tomorrow, depending on whether or not my health cooperates. I still want to show you my corner cabinet, since that is where most of my favorite vintage Thanksgiving treasures are.

 

As for now, this last picture has inspired me to fix myself a cup of green tea and to check out some of your inspirational Thanksgiving and holiday décor. If you would like to see more of my dining room, click here: http://junkaholicsunanimous.blogspot.com/2013/11/thanksgiving-tablescape-and-dining-room.html

 

Have a great weekend!

Amber

 

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Thanksgiving Farm Table/ Dining Room Tour Part 1

 

Well here we are, a week before Thanksgiving and I am just now getting around to posting my Thanksgiving decorations. I can't believe how fast November has flown by. As most of you know I am battling chronic illness and it takes everything I have to keep up with things, so it's taken a while for me to get a post together and time has just slipped away. I hope Christmas doesn't go by too quickly! I love Thanksgiving, and I am savoring autumn's last big hurrah all this week.

I have been excited to share my Thanksgiving tablescape with you, since so many of you commented and pinned my farm table post last month. If you missed the post, you can see it here: http://junkaholicsunanimous.blogspot.com/2013/09/10-find-antique-farm-table-and-fall.html. I have junked a lot in my life but I have to say that I think this table takes the (gluten free, egg free, casein free) cake!

 I had a different look going on before Halloween with a lot of natural pumpkins and gourds and leaves, but I wanted to change the colors a little more for Thanksgiving by adding some browns and I did this simply through the use of pine cones and just a touch of grapevine. I kept the deer antlers and one of my muted Cinderella pumpkins, along with the green acorn squash I used for Halloween. I also added two cool-hued pumpkins for something different and to compliment the floral design on my teacups and plates. I found the candle holders in my junk stash. I had never really found an every day place for them in the house but they were too pretty to get rid of and they turned out to be just what I needed to complete the elegant/rustic look I wanted. I love the end result.

I  love these dishes, marked Myotts Bouquet, made in Staffordshire England. I found a whole set of plates, cups and saucers at the flea market for $5 a couple of years ago. They have just enough brown, gold and dark burgundy to work beautifully in fall décor.

I added a little scoop of spicy rosehips and cinnamon sticks to each cup. Smells like autumn!

 

Love the frosty gray "patina" on this pumpkin, along with just enough soft orange and green to blend with the other pumpkins.

 

 

Love this picture, but I did just notice that my little boy put his cup directly on the table and it sat overnight and left a mark, and I forgot to fix it before taking pictures. Usually there is some sign in my posts that a happy little boy is allowed to "live" in our home! A random lego in a vignette, a lone Luke Skywalker stranded on a remote base under the table...

This is the corner you can see in the background of the previous picture. I fell in love with that old chippy screen door last fall and brought it home not knowing where in the world it was going. I tried it a few places but loved it most here, where it evokes a little vintage farmhouse/cottage feel.

I enjoy a touch or two of primitive, especially around the holidays. This scarecrow is my favorite prim guy. He visits our cozy cottage from late August through Thanksgiving.

 One of my favorite primitive Thanksgiving decorations is this pillow featuring the image of an antique Thanksgiving postcard wishing the reader a "A Hearty Thanksgiving."

Another favorite vintage pillow that  I reserve for use in  November is this one with  beautiful pheasants.

Here are some owls that I showed in my early fall and Halloween posts. They have flown all over the dining room this fall! Now they are in a completely new vignette, just perching  til right after Thanksgiving. Then they'll fly south to the basement for the winter.

 

As for me, I'm flying north to the bed!

 

Hope you'll continue on with part two of Thanksgiving tour, which focuses on my mantel and buffet:

 http://junkaholicsunanimous.blogspot.com/2013/11/thanksgiving-mantel-and-dining-room.html

 

Good night!

 

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