A tale of tarnish and teatime

On Friday and Saturday, I visited several local antique stores to get a head start on shopping for vintage Christmas collectibles. With the renewed interest in vintage Christmas, it's getting harder to find the old stuff, so I like to look early, and I hit the jackpot at one store, leaving with three big bags of wonderful old finds that I can't wait to decorate with. Not surprisingly, I found a few tea things, too, and one thing I took a risk on was this tarnished snowman tea tray. It's obviously not vintage, but it doesn't look quite new either. It was $18, and I started to leave it, because what if it couldn't be cleaned up? But then I thought of all the times I've regretted *not* getting something and realized I would probably regret leaving this behind.

And this is just the result of my first quick polishing, but I'd say Mr. Snowman Tea Tray is going to clean up just fine! I was so pleased, because I used these tiered tea trays for more than just teatime. I have one in my bedroom to hold jewelry (most of my jewelry isn't in the jewelry box simply because I like to see it so I can remember to wear it). For Christmas and other holidays, I use tea trays to display ornaments, small teacups, or other decor. And if I'm going to a Christmas potluck (and I have three on the schedule so far), it's fun to take some treats on a tea tray simply to have an offering that's a different height than all the others. So … yay for a new tea tray!

Unrelated to Christmas, this pink teacup was calling my name. My inner girly girl loves things with bows in the design, and I've also been collecting frilly-looking vintage goodies to feature in my vintage valentine book whenever I get around to writing it (maybe by Valentine's Day of 2024). This looks like a good Valentine's Day teacup, don't you think?

And I posed this new figurine here just so you can see the small size, but I still can't believe my eyes were sweeping past some old car figurines and spotted this Lipton "omnibus," as it says in the fine print.

It just seemed like something that might be fun to use in a teatime display one day, and the price was right. Now that all of that early-bird-shopping stuff is out of the way, I'm ready to decorate for Thanksgiving!