Follow me on my pathtojunkentreasure as I hunt for treasures at flea markets, garage sales, rummage sales, thrift stores, estate sales and even on the side of the road. I'll share my love of ironstone, hammered aluminum, vintage Christmas, vintage jewelry, doilies and tablecloths, flower frogs, garden items and anything rusty and chippy. You can find me at Carriage House Antiques in Crystal Lake Illinois. Please join me on my pathtojunkentreasure!

Friday, December 29, 2017

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! Hope you had a Blessed and happy day.


I couldn't resist this Santa! The face is awesome.  It's new to my collection. I went to work at the Carriage House one day and there he was.  He came home with me.

Here are a few more pictures of holiday decorating in my house.  I take the tree down around January 1st but leave the other decorations up until January 7 which is my Eastern Orthodox Christmas. 


The tree looks so nice when it glows.


There's one lone present under the tree.  The boys wrapped my present and then left it for me days before Christmas.  So sweet.


Love this blow mold Santa. He looks great on my front porch.

The weekend before Christmas there was an estate sale not far from me.  Of course I couldn't resist. I didn't get to any sales in December so it was time.


The sale was well worth it. I found many great items. 

I'm taking all the Christmas items out of my space at the Carriage House this weekend. The first week of January my items will be discounted 20% to clear out the space so that I can bring in fresh items. I love revamping my space! I have found so many great things that I can't wait to bring in. I spent some time today planning for it.

I will be updating my list of favorite flea markets with dates/times in the next few weeks.  Stay tuned....

Happy New Year! May your year be Blessed, full of happiness and good health.

Happy treasure hunting!


Monday, December 11, 2017

Some More Christmas Decorating

I keep finding ways to add more decorating to what I thought was my finished holiday decor.  Some of the pieces are just too nice to put away.


Santa looks cute next to the hammered aluminum and the floral basket is just too nice to not display. I keep the angel planter out all year long. (minus Santa of course)


I like the simple look of the silver tinsel tree with the hammered aluminum pitchers.


Here's another look at one of my aluminum tinsel trees with vintage ornaments.


This one is decorated with vintage figure ornaments. There's that awesome Santa that I found this year sitting nearby.


We have a real tree every year, that we purchase at Menards. The past two years the trees have been picked over on Thanksgiving weekend.  We managed to find this one that was really healthy still. I decorate this tree with craft ornaments, ornaments the boys made, ornaments from our vacations and just ones that I like. I usually buy a few new ones every year. This year I did get rid of quite a few.


Here's another angle look of my "trees".



A few weeks ago at an estate sale, I bought ten cement planters.  This is the one that I'm keeping. Sometimes I get ideas out of the blue and this was one of them. I usually display a pitcher/wash bin on my buffet but I decided that the planter filled with vintage shiny brites would look better. I put a ribbon decoration next to it for a more festive look. (The ribbon was a topper on a package that we just got. I like to keep the packaging to use in other ways. It's my favorite part of the gift.)



Another idea that I got was from looking at Facebook last night. This is my version of a gumball machine snow globe.  I had my mom's gumball machine put away for years in my cabinet. I used it for candy when the boys were young but haven't since. I had all of the decor displayed throughout my living room/hallway, so I just walked around and found the ones that I thought would look best inside of it. It's super cute and was so easy to make. I'm planning to use it for the other holidays as well.

Enjoy your decorating and keep looking for those sales. Happy treasure hunting!