Christmas Thrifting & My Brand new Aluminum Tree

Over the past week Christmas items have been showing up at the thrift stores.  I've had a few stunning finds. First I found three boxes of ornaments. One of pink and green with glittered scallops made in Poland, the other box of was of darker pink and blue ornaments made in the USA. I also picked up one box of modern clear ornaments that will look quite pretty hanging from the chandelier.

After that original trip I found an adorable Vintage candy garland and a hand sewn Rudolph the Reindeer door knocker. It looks like one of those lovely Bucilla kits that my Grandfather's aunt would sew and give to people every year.

Vintage Candy Garland - Hand Sewn Rudolph Knocker - Boxes of Ornaments

The best item at all that I thrifted was a bag of vintage ornaments! It was around 50 reflectors, hand painted, and solid balls. Most of them were from the 40s and 50s, and a few were from Western Germany. I took them home as soon as I could and transfer them into a box to keep them until I put them on a tree.

Now on to the actual antiquing. I was lucky enough to spend a day with a friend in the suburbs and we went to antique mall. I had just sold of a ton of books to half priced books in anticipation of my eventual move and had money to burn when out of my eye I caught a familiar box.

7ft Sapphire Aluminum Christmas Tree

It was nothing other than a Aluminum Christmas Tree! Now I've always told myself that I'll never buy one. Not because I hate them (already own a silver tinsel tree), but because they are so expensive. But this one was just the right price. I managed to snag this one at a steal for $75! Sure it's not garage sale prices, but considering I spent $15 less for my six foot silver tinsel tree a few years back, and Aluminum trees go for $150 plus on ebay!

Areah helps set up the tree - It even has pompoms

It took a while to set up. The original owner has not organized the branches and thus I had to measure all of them to make sure I knew where each one went as the tree had five different branch lengths, some with only a 1 inch difference.

I can't wait to put all the ornaments on my tree.

DIY Frozen Champagne Wreathe

I made this awesome wreath recently weekend and I felt it needed sharing on the blogsphere.

Here's a close up of the glitter effect!

Supplies:

• Plastic Wreath
• Gold Spray paint 
• Ivory Spray Paint
• Brown Spray Paint
• Spray Adhesive
• Spray Varnish/Clear Spray Paint
• Twinklets Diamond Dust
• A Bow
• Wire for Hanging

1. Shape your wreath. This is very important to do beforehand as the spray paint won't permeate past the outer parts of the wreath. If you try and shape it later then you'll have to respray the whole thing.
2. Attach a wire to the back for hanging. It will be rather annoying to attach the wire when the wreath is covered in glitter.
3. Give the front and back of the wreath a heavy base coat of ivory. This step can be skipped, but I did it to save on gold spray paint as I was running low.
4. Paint the front of the wreath gold. If you painted it ivory don't worry about having that show threw, just make sure you can't see any green at all.
5. Now take the brown spray paint and holding the can a few feet away from the wreath while giving the wreath a light dusting of color. This is just to mute the gold a bit and make the wreath a little bit duller. If you're all for super shinny gold feel free to skip this step as well.
6. Wait until all the spray paint has dried and then apply the spray varnish on the whole front of the wreath. If you prefer Modge Podge you can easily substitute it here and apply it with a Sponge brush.
7. Dust the wreath with Twinklets Diamond Dust. I used a small spoon to apply it quite liberally on the whole wreath. I also went and applied some other glitter afterwords but it just wasn't nearly impressive as the Diamond Dust. I wish I had just stuck to the Diamond Dust personally.
8. If you used spray adhesive coat the front of the wreath with spray varnish or clear spray paint. 
9. All that's left now is to attach a bow and hang it on the wall. I bought my bow from the thrift store. It was actually a bow that Target didn't manage to sell last year, so instead of paying $5 for it I got it for $1.

There you go folks, a simple and easy tutorial for a Chick wreath.

Training Cats

I have two cats, a Siamese and a Sphinx. I think everyone should have cats, even evil dog people. But then again my cats are awesome and love each other like siblings. As you can see Areah, my Siamese loves crushing Maeby my Sphinx.

But the real reason they are awesome is not because of how adorable they are, it's because they are trainable! Sure I can't get Areah to stop knocking cups off the table without removing all cups entirely, but by feeding them treats I've taught them how to give me high fives! It currently only works when I give them treats afterwords but I'd love to learn how to trick them into giving me high fives all the time.