Happy Halloween!

Here are a couple photos of Halloween here at ChezQT!

I got only one new blow mold this year, but it is a good one- the one on the far left.

If you look closely, you can see that some of them are wearing "costumes" aka fake mustaches courtesy of my kids. We had a little fun with faux facial hair this year.

Since I had a bunch of new fall colored Pyrex, I set up a display of that this year. I used that creepy oil painting I picked up a while ago for the background, and added some spray painted curly willow branches (my brother has one of those trees in his yard) for a 3D effect. 

This year's big finds were mostly vintage paper decorations. (Thanks to Mick and the Thrifter Sisters for getting me hooked on those! :) This honeycomb ghost was NIB until we hooked him up to our chandelier...and added another fake 'stache. 

And this pumpkin from last week's haul has found a home on the back of our front door. 

Happy Halloween from ChezQT!

A Vintage Christmas

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at Chez QT, so here are a few snapshots of some of my vintage Christmas decorations. (Forgive the dark shots, it was nighttime and my camera is not a good one!)

This is the decoration on the back of my front door. Mercury picks, reflectors, glittered pinecones- all original!

My Christmas blow molds. For some reason I have not been able to find a snowman- yet- but check back next year! The pair of angels I actually bought deadstock from Sines. 

I have a pair of these vintage stockings- aren't they cute?

 I decorate our live tree with only vintage ornaments. 

I love looking at them- I could look at these all day....

These are really huge- that blue one in the lower right is regular size!

I love bubble lights with vintage ornaments!

My aluminum tree- it's only 2 feet tall. I decorate around the bottom with vintage aluminum corsages. The tree topper I just found this year. (See my Pyrex trying to sneak into the picture?)

Some of the ornaments on the aluminum tree. I love these homemade eggshell dioramas. All of these ornaments are vintage miniature size ones.

Some of these balls are really tiny- the one in the center and the one at lower right are only about

 an inch in diameter!

I actually have vintage window candles too- these have red and green bakelite bases with red cardboard tops. 

Hope you had a very vintage Merry Christmas!

Halloween blow molds!

A couple weeks ago, Zootsuitmama posted about her incredible blow mold collection, and asked readers to share theirs. Well, I'm finally getting around to it!

I've gotten a couple new ones since last year. The black cat holding the pumpkin (2nd from left) is the most recent, I think. I love this one. Also, since we changed our living room decor around since last Halloween, I've had to change my usual decorating formula. I still haven't quite worked it out (Christmas will be a bit different too) but I do like the idea of grouping the blo molds all together inside.

Last year I lined them all up on the steps to the front door, and it caused a couple to get a bit faded. Plus, since they're so lightweight they got knocked around a bit. I think it's safer to keep them all in this year.

I've also been doing a bit of thrifting of course- found a few nice things and some Pyrex. I'll be posting about that over at the Pyrex Collective III- check it out!

It's beginning to look...

...a little like Christmas around here. We've started putting up decorations, and have a few new items this year. I found some really great holiday items over this past year, and while many of them went into my Etsy shop, I saved a couple for us.

Here are some of the newer vintage items around Chez QT:

A pair of bottlebrush trees and a little flocked deer on top of my TV-quarium. I should now say that this is my "prize-winning" TV-quarium, LOL, thanks to the good folks over at No Pattern Required, one of my favorite blogs. Unfortunately, the TV-quarium will have to be moved somewhere else next week, as this is the place we put our Christmas tree.

One of a pair of vintage stockings I'm using as decorations around the entrance to our living room. I make the white pine garland myself every year- over 25 feet. It's very easy; I should do a tutorial one of these days.

I found four of these bakelite and cardboard window candles at an estate sale this summer. I have other red window candles and I needed a couple new ones- these are perfect. They are also nice and heavy so they don't have to be taped to the windowsill. (Don't you hate that? LOL)

I have some new blow molds also- the two angels were 99 cents each at Sine's 5&10. Really. This store still has stock from the 50s and 60s and has never changed the prices over all these years. Instead of putting them up in the living room like last year, I decided to put them all in the downstairs window. I don't know if I like this or not, but we'll see. I do know that I need at least one more, because groupings of odd numbers look better. See how I can rationalize another collection? :) This is why I have more stuff than space.... heehee!

Don't forget to enter my giveaway! Now that we're up to 100 followers, it's official- game on! Get your name in by Friday, and at this point you have a pretty good chance of winning!

Halloween at Chez QT, 2011

These last few years I have really been getting into the Halloween spirit, and decorating up a storm around Chez QT. I think it is one of the few holidays I enjoy as much, if not more, than my kids.

Since my kids are so small (6 and 3) I try to stay away from the blood and gore, monsters and such. They're too young for that sort of thing. I focus instead on generally creepy things, like bugs and naturalistic/decayed things. I'm big on groupings of slightly weird objects as well, like last year's display of stopped clocks (up again this year).

My kitchen sideboard. It's nice to get out some silver and not polish it for a change, LOL. The pumpkin on a candy dish pedestal is a real pumpkin from last year that we hollowed out down to the skin and dried in the oven. It's basically ever-lasting now, and filled with faux leaves. 

I love bugs this year! The branches are curly willow from my brother's tree, spray painted black. We used a lot of them all over the house.

My son found these skulls in the woods- one is a fox and the other a coyote.

More curly willow stuck in a fat lava pot with a mum. This is probably one of the best shots of the new TV aquarium, with its new test-pattern backdrop. (Why I couldn't get a decent shot before, I'll never know...)

I love this idea- reminds me of something out of a magazine. Normally I have cornstalks on the front porch, but ours were all ratty after the hurricanes and not fit for display. Thank goodness for the curly willow! (And did I ever mention how much I love galvanized stuff? The bucket is an old sap bucket I trash picked from a dump in the woods ;) 

Jayson grew all of our pumpkins in the garden this year- it was a very good year.

Also note my Halloween blowmolds, all lit up and happy at night (like some of you are, I'm sure, LOL)! I put orange flicker bulbs in the front carriage lights also- that is such an easy, cool effect, I wonder why more people don't do that.

And finally, RIP Dracula...

While it looks nice and sunny, I turned around and snapped this picture of the cold front coming in!

If that's not scary, I don't know what is!

Thrifted Thursday: Blowmold Bonanza!

I know it's a tad early for Halloween stuff, but I just got these yesterday. If I don't share them today, I'll forget about them. Of course, the best time to buy seasonal decorations is always out of season!

I picked these three up for about 50 cents each. They all light up, but my favorite is the witch in the middle! They're the perfect size- about 18 inches- to sit on a windowsill or front steps. They will go nicely with our trash-picked Pumpkin Man from last year.

Thrifted Thursday- A Little Bit of Christmas

I went on a bit of a shopping spree this past Wednesday. I didn't intend to buy anything- I was only at the thrift store to drop some things off, I swear! But then I saw this cute carolers blow-mold for $6. I have a couple other Christmas blow-molds, so I think this is the beginning of a new collection!

Then my son (aka "Eagle Eye") saw this neat salt & pepper set. It's stainless with red plastic trim (not bakelite, but looks like it). On the bottom it's marked "occupied Japan". I imagine that this might have been produced by a former WWII munitions factory, judging by the shape of the canisters (very similar to a 50mm shell casing!) and the precision of the machining- the bottoms unscrew with really fine threads. It was $6.75- not a bargain, but it was too intriguing to pass up.

I bought this souvenir pillow as a Christmas present for myself. Not because my brother was in the Navy (he wasn't), but because I recognize the aircraft from my former life at a Naval aviation museum. The aircraft in the middle left is a Convair XFY "Pogo", an experimental vertical take-off/landing (VTOL) plane, of which only one was flown in late 1954/55. It was a rather bizarre aircraft, so I was surprised to find one depicted here. For $6.50, it's a piece of history I had to have. 

I had to have this handbag! I loved the shape and color. Unfortunately, I didn't look it over as carefully as I should have. The zipper needs to be replaced, and I sure can't do that myself. It's going to be a very expensive repair if I decide to get it done, which I probably won't. Maybe I can find a use for it as a storage container for gloves or scarves.

Last but not least, I bought this 1960's men's jacket for 75 cents. The thrift store where I bought these things has gotten so big (and expensive, IMHO) that they actually opened an "outlet store", where they sell clothes in bins for 75 cents apiece. That's more my price range, so I dug this out, along with a pair of 1930s suit trousers, and a few cardigans. The suit trousers are high waisted with a watch pocket in a wool herringbone. They actually fit me (I'm 5'2") so I'm keeping them to wear myself, a la Katharine Hepburn. ;)

The jacket (also the blue rayon 40's shirt behind it- so cool!) above is destined to go to the Etsy shop I'll be opening in the new year. My plan is to pass my bargains on to my customers, so you can be sure you'll get a good deal as well! I'll let you all know when the grand opening will be, and maybe we can have a virtual grand opening party!