So the vintage ornament haul continues. Yesterday at AngelFest at St. Paul’s in Exton I scored a vintage tea towel and a professional grade loaf pan…and a Santa nutcracker !!!

Yes, you know about my vintage ornament disease, but if you know me, you know it extends to nutcrackers too! Not just any nutcracker, either. I tend to go for the more traditional nutcracker, leaving the golfing and fishing and nutcrackers like that for other people.

Yesterday, when I got to AngelFest the things the church was selling directly in their cute house on the church property was pretty picked over, but upstairs where they had ornaments and holiday decor, there was this Santa nutcracker with his $5.00 price tag…he was standing in between two nutcrackers priced at $40 or there abouts (and truthfully the other nutcrackers were priced too high). So I snapped him up! He was so cute I could not believe he was still there!

And yes, then yesterday on the way to a friend’s house in Elverson, we stopped at the Smithfield Barn. I had to pick up my vintage Christmas tablecloth…and go through more vintage ornaments!

Apparently some of my friends went out yesterday looking for vintage ornaments and didn’t see enough. LOL I was not the only one buying them on Friday, but ornaments like that do not last— you should see how they fly on eBay! When someone says they’re going to be selling vintage ornaments at a barn sale or a fleamarket, go early. And be prepared to dig through ornaments. (Carefully because if you break it you buy it.)

Anyway there were MORE ornaments out at the barn when I got there…so sigh…I bought a few more.

And no, I do not need a Christmas ornament intervention, there is a method to my madness. In addition to the Christmas tree of a traditional size, I have decided I am going to have small trees in multiple rooms.

So I have been scouring church sales, garage sales, flea markets and the Smithfield Barn for small table top and even smaller sized trees. Most of what I have acquired look like the traditional feather tree. If you can find real goose feather vintage feather trees they are incredibly expensive, so I decided to seek alternatives. And I have not paid much for these trees.

Putting little trees in multiple rooms, means that I will have to be very disciplined with my other decorating or it will look like Walmart burped in my house. And that is not the look I am going for. I have no desire to have people feel like they’re dizzy when I walk in my house at Christmas time. I just want people to feel the magic.

My parents always did the more traditional silver and gold dominated Christmas tree when I was growing up, but my taste sort of evolved in a different direction. I love the look of vintage ornaments, and I also love the look of nutcrackers and folk art Santas.

How do you dress up your home for the holidays? Tell me!

And also, before I forget, the Smithfield barn is open today. You can also often find vintage ornaments at Frazer Antiques and sometimes at Resellers Consignment too. Also worth noting is a store in Ardmore, PA on Lancaster Avenue that always has fabulous vintage reproduction ornaments and unusual new ones that are quite beautiful. The store is Past*Present*Future.