My Vintage Soul

Last-Minute Halloween

When your children are little, Halloween starts Oct. 1 and the anticipation builds all month.

But when your children aren't so little and are away at college, you finally acknowledge the calendar on Oct. 28. You do so because your children still expect you to (and will be checking your blog to see their favorite decorations), and because last year was an awesome year for vintage Halloween finds. If you don't put them on display now, then you won't until next Oct. 28. Maybe.

So with that in mind, here's a quick tour of Halloween in my house:

Traditional display of dime-store trick-or-treat containers, reproduction horns and paper mache candy containers on the Hoosier cabinet.

 

New this year is a bigger and better vintage candle display. I swapped something for the Gurley witch with Barbara, who, naturally, is lucky enough to find them on a regular basis. The pumpkin with the hat is also Gurley.

More Gurley candles and a cat party hat.

Vintage cookies cutters, vintage cardboard cat and a metal noisemaker.

HUGE Beistle skeleton that is on the back of the front door.

Here's a new look for the foyer: The Beistle jack-o-lantern came from a garage sale two years ago.

And finally, one of my kids favorites, a reproduction lantern that hangs from the light in the foyer.

Happy Halloween!

Secret Sale 2: A Pastel Past

About 20 years ago, I was lucky enough to be inside this house. It was at an estate sale, the kind of sale that you remember well even two decades later.

The house is on what was once the grandest street of Syracuse. Sadly, today it's a mishmash of commercial buildings, apartment houses and a few old homes. But until the 1960s it was where the city's industrial giants lived in beautiful houses that were under a canopy of Dutch elms. This house, built in 1916, was the home of the founder of the Bendixen Tobacco Co., which was best known for manufacturing the Yara brand of chewing tobacco.

Fortunately, in the years since that sale the house has been beautifully restored. But when I was inside, it was more shabby than chic. Still there was something about it that was still quite grand. I distinctly remember that just about every room was decorated with elaborate moldings in various pastel shades. Coincidentally, my most memorable purchase at the sale was also pastel-inspired. It was this beautiful oversized Easter basket. At $10, it seemed like quite an extravagant buy at the time but I convinced myself that I would keep it forever, and I have.

Last Friday, prompted by a Craigslist ad for an estate sale with Christmas ornaments, I went to a much more modest home a few miles away from the Bendixen house. The ornaments were OK, and I bought a few. I also bought what was in a brown paper grocery bag, especially when the woman running the sale said that her father used them to decorate the Bendixen estate.

There must have been at least 16 honeycomb tissue balls in that bag. To say that they're big is probably an understatement. They're H U G E, probably at least 24 inches across when open.

I immediately thought of how they matched the Easter basket that I had bought nearly 20 years earlier. I can picture them hanging from the ceilings in one of the rooms with the pastel moldings. In addition to the multicolored ones, which are my favorites, there are also those with subtle stripes of pink, green and a pale, pale yellow.

I'm not sure what I'll do with them although I'll probably hang a few in my house in the spring to complement that Easter basket. Knowing where they came from, I think they need a much grander and more pastel venue to display them the way that the Bendixens did.

Secret Sale 1: My Fixer-Upper

I wish I could say that I've spent the last two weeks -- while you've been reading Today's Trivia Question over and over -- in some exotic locale, warmed by island breezes.

But I haven't. Actually, I've been dealing with the realities of my life, which include in absolutely random order:

1. Two bad windows, which I couldn't afford to replace, so Mr. VS and I fixed them.

2. Two bad tires, which I couldn't afford to replace but had to so my car could pass a state inspection.

3. And, perhaps like an idiot, I am getting ready for two craft shows in November, so I am gluing and painting in every spare moment that I'm not fixing windows or changing tires.

In spite of all this, I did manage to get to a few sales in the last few weeks. In fact, two of them were the best kind of sales: Surprise sales. Those are the ones that you know nothing about but just stumble on, which makes the treasures you find even better.

At Surprise Sale 1 -- a church "harvest sale" -- I discovered something that brought me full circle to the subject of home improvement.

Like my own home, this one is a fixer-upper. Let's take a tour.

It's a metal T. Cohn dollhouse that dates to 1948, and it some wonderful amenities:

A beautiful accent window.

Never-needs-watering landscaping.

Cute and classic bathroom wallpaper and tile, but are those ducks or swans?

An even cuter nursery in a circus motif, although I'm well past the nursery stage.

Window treatments included, but I'm not that sure about those pattern combos.

And now for the issues, and, sadly there are a few, but if you were 63, you'd have issues too. In addition to a few missing metal tabs, there are the floors on the second floor. This is either rust or the result of serious scrubbing fetish.

But I'm sure that somewhere, some vintage-loving household will give it a happy new home via Etsy or Craigslist. In the meantime, I'm savoring my surprise sale find because be it ever so humble, there's no place like this home.

And what did I find at Surprise Sale 2? I'll share that later this week. Yes, this week. I promise.