Christmas Decorators Anonymous.

If there's a 12-step program for people who can't stop decorating for Christmas, then I think I may need to sign up.  Christmas has exploded in this house, and I am guilty as charged.

First came the Christmas mice.  I had just two porcelain Christmas mouse figurines, as cute as can be, bought years and years ago in New York.  They were made by Josef Originals, and are very collectible and sought after on eBay.  Last year, I found three more porcelain Christmas mice in the thrift store..... last week, I found five more.  They're not Josef Originals, but they're vintage and adorable, and of course they'll never see my booth at the antique shop because I don't plan on selling them.  Especially because I found this little porcelain plaque at the thrift store this morning that says "Not a creature was stirring..."   Well, if that doesn't belong with my parade of Christmas mice..... and that's where it is right now.  In order to get the full effect of the little plaque and all the mice, I had to do some serious re-arranging on the tables in the living room.

Then.... just when I thought it was safe to go back into that living room...... this afternoon, our neighbor G gave me two boxes of vintage mercury glass ornaments.... each round ornament has the tiniest tear-drop shape at the bottom, and a dusting of glass snow at the top, near the hook of the ornament.  Very different, very old, and so very worthy of their own tree.  I have a gold feather tree in the living room, and I had vintage beaded satin ornaments on that tree.... the kind made in the 1950s and 1960s, with beads and sequins and pins.  My aunts used to make those years ago, so when I found a box of them at an estate sale, I decided to keep them all for that gold tree.

However..... the antique glass ornaments from G.... they're now hanging on that gold feather tree and looking as if they were always meant to be right where they are.  All of the beaded ornaments are now in a box, and I will sell those at my antique shop booth. (25 ornaments in, 25 ornaments out.)

The house looks beautiful... decorating this big old house is like decorating a doll house, except we can actually live in it.  I keep walking through the living room even when I don't need to now, just to look at those mercury glass ornaments... so pretty, and so protected by G's wife over the years. I'm guessing they're from the 1940s... each one was wrapped up in a cocoon of tissue paper. Neighbor G told me that his wife boxed up them more years ago than he can remember.   I was thrilled and surprised that he wanted us to have them.  "You have all of that antique-y stuff... these will fit right in."

They do indeed..... and I'm guessing those snow-dusted glass ornaments are very happy to be out of that tissue paper and ready to sparkle through another Christmas season. (And another, and another....)