We saw these blue beauties, and knew we needed to talk about them:

I love that they are the same figure right down to the candle holder, and the candy dish sits on top of the holder–that says practicality but probably not quality.  I’m wondering if there weren’t originally two candy dishes, one of which suffered a fortunate accident.  By their color, they look like they have been in the surf for many a year–they have that sea glass patina which can be lovely, but smooths out details.  I went back to Goodwill this week to get a better close-up and they were gone!  On a related topic, someone bought the Venetian 3D picture too.  Hope it’s the same person, to minimize the fallout damage to innocent bystanders.

We love the bad craft projects:

What is it about clothes pins that says “let’s make a something” to bored crafty folk?    We personally think the chair works better than the clock; we can also testify that both were neatly done.  It must be lots of work to take all of those springs out of the clothes pins. Don’t you think Popsicle sticks would be an easier medium to use?

Kathy has a thing for these etched acrylic blocks–when they are detailed like these two:

The fish block was even signed along the right edge.  In case you’re wondering, the ghostly white thing floating above the fish, is the remains of the price tag.  That’s another pet peeve of ours!  The thrift store pricers stick those price tags in the most inconvenient places.

Because we needed just a little more fun, we headed out to the “bad” thrift store; it never disappoints.  Bingo, we saw these two within five minutes:

We think that maybe the young lady in the back got an eyeful of her competition, and knows she is in trouble.  Get used to it, girlfriend, life just ain’t fair.

Since we are trying to stay in the vicinity of a PG rating, it’s hard to know what to say about this pillow:

The pillow maker is not helping, since the pillow is aptly named “Puppy Love”.  I think people need to put their products in front of a focus group before rolling out something that is a straight up double entendre.

One of the things that can make a so-so product go bad, is the fabric used:

What in the name of Coco Channel would you make out of these fabrics?  Even the good quality plaid wool is homely; the polyester stuff is just nasty.

Last up:  as I was checking out, Kathy noticed this:

It’s a 1940′s wood veneer liquor cabinet.  When you pull down the front cover, you see the cool mirror interior.  We aren’t sure if the light in the back works, but it would put this right over the top.  We aren’t really into this kind of furniture; if it had been a 1950′s tiki bar, we might have had to wrestle for it.  ;- )

Our second anniversary is coming up, and we are open to writing any kind of celebratory post that you may want.  Please put your thinking caps on, and help us come up with a nifty topic.

  What were they thinking?  How did they eat this bilge?  Good questions, but you won’t find them answered here.  The Gallery of Regrettable Food is a simple introduction to poorly photographed foodstuffs and horrid recipes from the Golden Age of Salt and Starch.

The author, James Lileks, is a columnist for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Tribune, and this book is based on his website The Institute of Official Cheer.  He is a funny, funny man with a skewed perspective no matter what he is talking about.  We both love his sensibility.

Another reason we love this book, is our regrettable addiction to those very pamphlets he lampoons, and we own many of those featured in the book.  We’ll share those with you in a later post, but this can serve as their introduction.

I’ve scanned just a couple of pages, so you can get a flavor of his writing:

Some of our favorite things about these old pamphlets are the dishes pictured; they can serve as a directory of when pieces may have been produced.

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You’ve got to love the 1950′s when “the girls” played bridge but couldn’t consume any calories, while “the guys” got beans and wienies.  That picture of the hotdogs and beans almost looks like it came from a sci-fi or horror film, “It came from outer space …”  Now can someone please explain to me how anyone could think this was appetizing?

And finally:

I can remember eating jello salads with suppers instead of lettuce salads; thank goodness my mom wasn’t crazy about molding her jello salads, as these are incredibly nasty looking.

If you have any interest in vintage cooking pamphlets we highly recommend picking up this book; ditto if you enjoy humorous essays about the 1950′s and 60′s.

I can’t think of one child who wouldn’t be a bit worried about plopping their little behind in this chair.  Don’t you think he is just laying in wait for some unwary kiddo to sit down, so he can eat them?

He looks way too jolly to just be waiting for someone to sit on him.  I’m positive there is some nefarious purpose here.

Normally, we find things from Italy to be quite lovely and well designed, but this lapse in taste should never have been made, never mind brought home as a souvenir:

You have to realize it’s all in 3D and made of nasty gilded plastic.  Venice canal water would make a better memento, and you can bet there were never any starfish or seahorses that could survive five minutes in that stuff:

Well, if gilding the sow’s ear (OK, so I am mixing my metaphors!) is not your cup of tea, how about this little gem.  No wait, it’s not that little, and not much of a gem, but someone worked very hard on it:

I know, it actually doesn’t look that bad in the photo.  Trust us, it was.  It was made of a piece of driftwood with lots of little branches attached.  Try the closeup:

You may have to take our word on this one, but it was bad.  I am not sure why sometimes our photos are so outstanding as to make the worst thing look good.  Yeah, I am making that one up too!

Haven’t had a bad piece of original artwork for a while, so to make up for it, we present the Angry Flowers.  Well, at least we got angry looking at them:

Deb was trying to tell me about the antipasto, and it took me several minutes to realize she meant impasto (and I was an Art Major!!), but after discussing it, we decided it was about as anti-pasto as you could get.  No matter how you look at it, there was enough paint on that canvas to choke a horse:

You know from previous posts that these are a pet peeve of Deb’s, but we both had to concede this was about the worst one we had ever seen:

Seems to me he should be covering his mouth, not his ears.  Ugh …  What is the fascination with pickled disgusting leftovers?  No one would ever be stupid enough to taste these things.  Might as well have a skull and crossbones right on the label.

We were tickled by this:

An iron that old, and still with the box.  We looked, and it was well used.  Wow, after holding it in the store, we knew that housewife must have had muscles like Popeye to heft that puppy over the ironing board all day.  And they called women the weaker sex?  If I had to iron with that, my hubby would just have to embarrass me in public with his wrinkles.

This next one just perplexed us:

We just can’t figure out what is going on.  She is nursing her raging headache after looking at the tiny deer-like creature with the broken neck, and the three annoying elves trying to get her to try the punch?  Not to mention it is white plaster, with that horrible gilding that turns a particularly bilious shade of green.  Pretty much a miss all around.

To end on a positive note, we wanted to share this sweet composition doll with you.  No, we didn’t buy her.  This is not our style, but we can appreciate cuteness when we see it:

Her arm was in a bad shape, but who could deny a face like this?

Those little teeth are adorable.  I hope someone finds her soon, and takes her home to be loved again.

So there you have it.  We will be sending out a book review and our usual Friday finds next week.  Be sure and let us know if you have anything blog worthy, as we LOVE hearing from our readers.

This winter malaise seems to follow us to our shopping too–thank goodness we have a few left-overs from December to round out the post.  This also might be the first post in a long time where there is almost as much good as bad; we’ll let you be the judge.

Let’s start with something bad, to stay true to our mission.  I wonder what this crafter was thinking when putting this scarf together:

Talking smack about this scarf is like shooting fish in a barrel.  All that I have to say, is that it provides proof positive that beige doesn’t go with everything.

This poor girl was in the case located at the front of our favorite thrift–we wonder why?

Yeah, she might be vintage, but neither of us were tempted in any way, shape, or form to drag her home.  There are a couple of things about her that bother us:  her lack of hands and her shocked expression.  Actually, my Beloved Husband theorizes that her shocked expression is due to the loss of her hands.  That seems like the most reasonable explanation, so I’m going with it.

Not sure why this monkey even exists–we sure as heck wouldn’t buy it except for a gag gift, and maybe not even then:

You know, if you want a gift for someone, what’s wrong with chocolate, flowers, or gift cards?  Also, what does it say about the recipient that the gift giver thought of them when seeing this monkey?

I know what the maker of this plaque was trying to say:

In fact, the first part is really sweet; it’s great when fathers are heroes to their sons AND daughters.  I’m sort of bothered by the “first love” part of this sentiment.  Are they likening a daughter’s love for her father to romantic love?  If so–ICK!!!!!!!!!!  Maybe I’m being too picky and nasty here; if so, I’ll apologize right now.

Let’s wash that bad taste out of our mouths right now:

Both of us really liked this vintage laundry basket; what makes it so fun is the plastic liner, which is still in fair shape.  I would be leery of using it on a daily basis as the plastic is getting brittle, but there aren’t any big holes in it either.  Someone must have loved it a lot because they took such good care of it.

When we were in the parking lot getting ready to go, we looked over and saw this:

Poor baby, waiting patiently for their owner.  This puppy is almost big enough to drive that VW bus!

Next up are a few things Kathy has had saved up to use in a skimpy post.

We are searching for a new home which is proving to be a much harder exercise than I thought it would be.  The best thing is, with a new larger house, I will have more room for cool stuff; the worst thing is, with a new larger house, I will have more room for cool stuff!!!!  I am sure you understand.  Just for fun, I wanted to share just one of the groovy light fixtures in a recent place we looked at.

Sort of makes you want to gag.  The entire house was that vintage, and not in a good way.  Check out the rest of the room.

Sorry for the quality of the photo; had to use my son’s iPod, as who would expect to find blog fodder while house hunting?

While I am sharing, I also wanted to share a good thing.  Well, we liked it anyway.  For Christmas, Deb found these, and she was sure I needed them.  She was right, of course.

You know of my fondness for little wooden things, (Wooden it be lovely) so these tiny fellas fit right in.  They aren’t politically correct, and who eats watermelon at Christmas, but they sure are cute.

Keep tuned, we have some book reviews and fun(ny) craft pamphlet posts coming up as well as our usual Friday Finds.

Most of the time, we are pretty happy-go-lucky thrifters, but once in a while we see something that gets our hackles up, and makes us want to yell at some managers.  Take this first set of photos:

It’s a shelf full of decorator wannabes straight from the local bargain bin at the Bad Taste on a Budget decorator show room.  Taken by itself, we could have walked right by, but then we made the poor choice to look closer:

Can you see that price tag?  Seriously, $79.99 at a thrift store?  We had to pick up several other pieces just to make sure we weren’t hallucinating (not that we do that often, but Deb and I are both sort of dyslexic when it comes to numbers, you should see us trying to find a garage sale address sometimes!)  Some of them were priced even higher.  I know the thrift store looked at the original price, and decided that half price was a good idea, but I bet the original purveyor of bad art couldn’t foist these off on the unwary public at 90% off, and that’s why they donated them.  A little more, just in case you aren’t turned off enough:

To make these even worse, Deb had found a lovely old book with bird pictures in it.  She set it down to take the photos, and forgot to pick it up again.  When we went back to look for it, someone else had picked it up.  We are usually pretty philosophical about these sorts of things, but it was a really great book.  The sacrifices we make for our adoring public.

You know you have been scrounging around in second hand stores for too long, when you see this:

and spend the next few minutes scouring the shelves, because you know it just has to have a friend, and you need a photo of both of them.  Lucky for you, we were successful:

While searching the shelves for the partner in crime shown above, we noticed these:

How many paint by numbers can you do?  Seriously, there were even more, we just got the choicest ones out.   Can’t they put all that excess energy to use, say, painting my kitchen?  It might work, if I put little numbers on each wall, so they would be sure and know where the white paint goes. Maybe they would get suspicious when there was only one color, but, heck, they forgot and painted two of the same thing, so maybe not.  Just a little closeup for you:

We named this one the barnacle bowl:

Not sure where the potter was going here, but he was like the Energizer Bunny of potters, he just kept going and going … It weighed several pounds, so I guess if all else fails, you could chuck at any cat burglars heading into your place, and do some grave damage.  (To the burglar, not the pot.)

Deb, as a nurse, has some serious concerns about these two:

Looks like there was a major accident, and both of them need neck braces STAT.  Besides that, they are just plain ugly.  Maybe they WANT to have their necks broken to put them out of our misery.  By the way, we didn’t even set up this shot, other than to move something out from behind it.  Sometimes, we are pretty sure the store clerks have a odd sense of humor hiding behind those volunteer aprons.

We know you wouldn’t want us to let a week go by without inflicting some bad shell art on you.  I don’t know why these catch our eye so often.  Maybe because there are so darn many of them.  There ought to be a moratorium on animals making new shells, so these would stop.  Sorry, you’ve got to keep that old shell.  No casting your discards on the beach any more:

Yes, it is a basket this time.  Deb and I love baskets, but for some reason we passed on this one.  Could be the “lovely” turquoise and peach raffia though.

Trivia time here.  Can you guess when this was made?

Nothing like some bicentennial string art for you.  I’m sure it was “revolutionary”.  Groan.

We wanted to finish up with something fun, although, yet again, the store prices saved us from ourselves.  We thought this was great, but neither one of us wanted to sacrifice the space in our doll rooms for $19.99:

It was really cute, and seemed to be mostly there.  If, it had been less, I am sure one of us would have had to drag it home.  I know I would have adored this as a kid.

Here’s hoping your thrifts are bargains, and your finds are fantastic all the way through 2012, and if they are not, you know where to send the evidence.

Terri sent this pic of holiday wear:

Oh dear, where to start …  Well, if you have an over-the-top Christmas sweater, you can add these pants to the mix; you’re sure to win the ugly Christmas outfit contest hands down, for going the extra mile.  I’m grateful that the snowmen aren’t any closer to the zipper area; can you imagine the second looks that might cause?  Of course, now we begin to wonder how the back of the pants are decorated; from a distance, a backside decorated with snowmen would probably look like someone sat on a bench full of pigeon poop.  Thanks Terri for planting this image in our minds–turnabout is fair play!

Connie received a box of plastic WWII patriotic Christmas ornaments from her mother-in-law:

Here’s a close-up of the Santa and snowman:

They were given to her father-in-law for Christmas, when he was a child.  We had never seen these kinds of ornaments before, although plastic was widely used during WWII to save metal for the war effort.  Very cool decorations Connie–thanks for sharing!

Our final entry in the Christmas portion of the pos, is my neighbor’s fab fifties Santa and his reindeer decoration:

They have decorated their house with a look that works with a 1950′s ranch, using big light bulbs and simple trees.  One of those aluminum trees with the color wheel would put this display right over the top.

We have a few odds and ends of Friday Finds to finish up before the new year.  We feel compelled by compassion to warn you about the really nasty clown; he is right after this first set of pics.

We love vintage luggage; this set must have been very stylish when new:

We can imagine the lucky couple boarding a train for a trip to the big city with all their evening clothes carefully packed.  The label says:

We wish there was something we could do with vintage luggage, except using it for storage.  It’s just too big to display in our houses.

Everyone must know by now that we hate clowns, and usually don’t take pictures of them for the blog.  But every so often we run into something that can’t be ignored:

He is pinching his nose shut with his hand; I outlined the hand so you could see all the gruesome details.  Why is he holding his nose you ask?

Yes, someone thought it would be cute to make a planter of a clown on the toilet!  Truly we live in end times, if this thing is “cute”.  Uugghhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, back to our usual level of bad:

Maybe, just maybe, over-the-top sequin kitty can take the bad taste of clowns out of your mouth.  It’s just possible that with a few more beads and sequins, this kitty might cross over to the land of  “so bad it’s good”, but we’ll never know since we left her sitting right where we found her.

We have a couple of dolly finds that may amuse you:

What is it about this doll that says Basilica di S. Pietro to the buyer?  We just don’t get it; she looks kind of southern US with that big ol’ hat.

This girl has a Skipper face:

But her body is cheap and lightweight; nothing like a real Skipper.  She is a cute little clone, but this thrift store has terrible prices, and we rarely buy anything there.

We have two more fun vintage things:

We aren’t sure where this plaque would fit into a home’s decor, but those faces would make really cute dolls.

This cutting board is so funny:

We are mightily amused by vintage Japanese kitchen items; nothing says kitchen decor like a cock-fight!  The handle at the top is a knife, and there is a little phrase burned into the wood on the back:  Cut on this side ’n’ spare my face.

Finally, since this post has a clown, what the heck, here are some shells (which might well be our second least favorite thing):

Here is proof positive that shells DO NOT make everything better!  Why oh why did the maker put shells on a knitted winter hat?  Let’s put snowflakes on bikinis–it would be equally complementary.

Thanks so much for reading our blog for yet another year.  We wish you all a happy and healthy new year full of fun and laughter (and Second Hand Roses).

First up is Deb:  I have a thing for Christmas pins, especially Christmas trees:

Here are 22 of them; that almost takes me through the whole month of December with trees alone.  Of course they don’t all get worn every year!  I play favorites, and some just don’t hang right on anything less than a wool coat.  The nice thing about wearing a Christmas tree pin is that you can wear any kind of earrings with them:

I have a real mix of Christmas jewelry–vintage and modern.  I think it all plays nicely together.

I like reindeer pins (and their friend, the moose) almost as much as trees:

If you’re keeping count, by now you realize that it would be difficult to wear all of this in a Christmas season, without several changes of outfits every day.  I rationalize having this much Christmas jewelry by saying, “I have a pin for every Christmas occasion”.

Then there are pin and earring sets, and some bits and pieces that I have married into sets:

The silver and red earrings in the top left corner are aluminum pieces from Germany.  They look sort of Christmassy to me, so I paired them with a lonely poinsettia pin.  I bought the holly berry pin and earrings separately, but they seemed destined for one another.  Thank goodness I only practice matchmaking with jewelry.  Now, I’m not sure why those vintage Christmas tree earrings are in this picture (top center) but I’m too lazy to take another picture without them.

Then there is the group of Christmas pins without a real unifying theme:

These are mostly vintage, or copy-cat vintage.  The bell in the lower left actually rings and annoys everyone around me.

Finally, being me, there has to be a goofy set of pins (I refuse to believe that any of the previous pins are in any way “goofy”):

The Santa moves back and forth on his rocking horse, if you pull the bell.  I found the vintage plastic bell earrings somewhere else, but they sure go together.  I really have a thing for the vintage corsages, thank goodness they are big, so I don’t have room for them.  And finally, what’s Christmas without our canine pals?

And for those of you wondering where Kathy’s stuff is, here you go:

There are a few more things than that; I didn’t show the earrings, or the jingle bells that I wear all season to annoy everyone.  Notice the tree on the far right and the bell in the corner.  For some reason those two pins are everywhere, which is why Deb and I both have them.  And just in case you can’t read it, the frog is actually a Mistletoad!

We hope this post inspires some of you to dig out your Christmas jewelry, and wear it a couple of times during the season.  People seem to notice when you make an effort to look festive.

And finally, here’s hoping that your Christmas is merry and bright–the white is optional.

We collect this stuff all year long, as there is no season on Christmas at garage sales.  This bowl made me wish I carried a portable generator just to see it lit up:

Guess I could have just asked to have it plugged in, but where’s the fun in that?

Deb and I got the worst case of deja vu, this past week.  We came around the end of the aisle, when what to our wondering eyes should appear, but the cousin of the awful yarn wreath!  (See last week’s Christmas post!)

Someone must have had a heck of a surplus sale on white yarn.  You could knit two ugly Christmas sweaters out of this, and be miles ahead.

While on the subject of previous posts.  Remember we warned you about the angel mold?  We decided this one must have come out of it.  Actually, it is a smidge different, but you get the point.  There must be more molds somewhere.  If you see one, do us all a favor, and take a sledgehammer to it:

We’re pretty sure who ever painted this had recently seen the Stepford Wives, so here is the Stepford Angel?

And with hopes high, we headed to a different thrift store, only to run smack dab into this unholy trio:

See what comes of leaving one little mold out there?  They multiply like happy rabbits!

We keep attempting to lay off the seashell things, but doggone it, they just follow us around like a bad pull toy wanting their photos taken.  How could we resist these?

Guess it could have been worse; they could have painted them gold.  The hardware store must have been out that day.

I don’t know why crafts become the dumping ground of re-purposed items, but crafters were doing this long before it was chic.  If you don’t believe me, check out the following goodies.

What do you do with those old flowerpots just laying around?  No, don’t do something silly like plant them with herbs, and make a useful gift.  Make this instead:

It actually does have a pretty cute face, but I understand why, the minute Great Aunt Edna’s  back was turned, it made it to the thrift store.  We wish to point out the ubiquitous white yarn that makes up the tassel; whoever sold that white yarn must of made a bundle!

And let’s not make a patio, when these are so much better to stub your toe on:

I don’t know where you are supposed to keep a trio of brick paver snowmen during the year, as they would cause a hernia for anyone lifting the box of ornaments.  Maybe you could sneak them into a corner of the patio, and remove them just at Christmas time.  No one would notice those eyes looking at them.  The scarves might be a giveaway though.

This next entry came from last week’s estate sale, and we have to admit to rather liking them:

Cut from old furnace filters, and hung with ornaments.  As far as re-using an item, we think this is a success story.  Deb and I frequently regret not knowing the people from some estate sales.  We think these folks would have been our kind of people.

Now these are not homemade but they have that look to them.  I will confess that they would have come home with me, but the thrift store had $5 on them, and I am cheap, and afraid to face hubby with them:

Each crazy bell looked like they raided the chicken coop, stole the wire,  and hung beads on it, then put it over a light bulb.  Inside looked like this:

I frequently wonder what manufacturers think when these ideas come into the office.  “Yeah, those will sell like hotcakes, make a million of them.”  Who could resist chicken wire bells that are electrified?  Oh wait, don’t they call those electric fences?

As the holidays approach we want to wish everyone a peaceful and joyous holiday season, and new year filled with love and laughter!

And yeah, I almost bought this too.  Good thing Deb wasn’t there, she would have; she can’t resist deer!!  [Deb:  Deer, chocolate, and wooden boxes--just twist my rubber arm!]

Estate Sale December 2-3

Whole house full of fun vintage and antique items perfect for the holiday collector

• Furniture: 3 bedroom sets.  Living room and dining room.  Vintage chairs and tables.  Sofa sleeper.  Lamps.

• Collectibles:  Vintage Barbie clothes and dolls.  Vintage boy toys, children’s books and metal toys.  Kitchen collectables.  Primitives.  Antique bottles and tins.  Tools.  Rocks and minerals.

• Tools: Metalworking and wood.  Nice assortment.

• General household… dishes, glass ware, appliances, freezer

Whoo whee, we were going to be there with bells on!  And surprise, surprise, the dolls were right by the front door which isn’t necessarily a good thing.  The sales people said there were some vintage Barbies which got sold right away.  Not being experts, they had no idea exactly what dolls went with all of those clothes; from the clothing, we think it could have been later ponytails, bubbles, or even an American Girl.  We will now fess up to what Barbie goodies we did get.

Deb:  Here is a composite picture of what I bought for $18.50:

There are some homemade clothes, some shoes and necklaces that are for larger fashion dolls, and some strange nondoll things you always find with Barbie stuff–boxes, bobby pins, hair rollers …  But, what you probably can’t pick out from this picture are the shoes from Senior Prom complete with the pearls, and the blue pom-pom shoes from Lovely Lingerie.  There wasn’t another piece of either of those outfits to be found–who knows, the dolls could have been dressed in them.  I didn’t have Fancy Free, and the little “B” pin is perfect.  I gave Kathy the bottoms to the swim suit in my bag as well as the tiara to Sophisticated Lady.  We care, we share. ;- )

And here is Kathy’s haul:

The pile is pretty impressive; Kathy is especially excited by the mommy made blue squaw dress and this next gown:

A minty Junior Prom for just a couple of dollars, and it is so beautiful!!  To ice the cake, the necklace was in the bottom of a bag of stuff marked 10 cents!  Even missing the dolls doesn’t sting much, when there was so much great stuff left behind.

After we went through the clothing and accessories like a plague of locusts, we noticed the other dolls on the table:

They were awfully cute, with lots of well-made mommy clothes.

These kitchen toys were pretty adorable too:

We have to digress here just a bit to talk about the house.  It was 1950′s through and through, with very few updates.  We got a kick out of the bathroom, which for a change wasn’t pink or turquoise:

To the right was the cutest little corner cupboard, but there was no getting turned around to take a picture without annoying a lot of shoppers.

Obviously, the folks who lived there were crafty and handy.  We saw some pretty cool handmade wooden boats near the Barbies.  This room displays the woodworker’s toy-making talents:

Bet the kids had hours of fun with these toys.  The lady picking up the chair in the first picture was interested in why we were taking photos.  Of course, we told her about our blog, which amused her.

Okay, time for another true confession from Deb which fits in with the woodworking crafts.  Kathy says that she is always the one to confess to buying weird things, so here is my contribution :

I bought this  18″ × 16″ wooden flower arrangement for $3.  It’s well made, and so belongs in my 1950′s home (Beloved Husband begs to disagree).  I had to do some minor repairs on it after things kept falling off while I carried it around, but after some gluing and polishing, I think it’s pretty cool.  Anthuriums and Arrowheads are quintessential mid-century modern plants, and I think this crafter recreated them pretty darn well.

Actually, Deb has another confession to make from this sale:

Those vintage deer get me every time!  I did like a couple of his friends too.

After all that fun, we decided to check out the local thrift stores, and just skip our old favorites.  We saw this hanging on a rack at the first thrift store:

We tried to straighten it a little to make a better picture, and then realized that there wasn’t any fluffing that could be done to fix this mess.  It resembles a confetti explosion at a beige factory.

We love bird statues–usually:

We took both a flash and a nonflash picture to see if either would make sense, and the answer was “hell no!”.  We think that this was a typical vintage bird statue with two birds; one of the birds was positioned head-down with its wings spread, and the other was perched.  Then the feathers began to fly, which obscured most of the details of this piece, and voila, much badness ensues.

Right across from the feather frenzy was this souvenir piece from the Grand Canyon (we think):

There is a lot going on here with the two female figures, the tower and the light.  Yes, there is a red bulb in the back, that shines out the opening for the tray or ash try out front, and perhaps the tower windows.  You know that more isn’t always better, and this is a perfect example.

Lastly, there is a bit of a mystery about this next picture.  Like the chicken or egg conundrum, we aren’t sure what came first:

Was this little boy a Damien wannabee who spooked the horse, or was this an evil carousel which caused that strange expression on the boy’s oddly adult face?  Also, we are just a bit worried about the boy’s foot; it’s wrong somehow and contributes to the total weirdness of this oil masterpiece.  A worker at this thrift store compared this picture to those old portraits seen on Antiques Roadshow done by itinerant artists.  She is so mistaken, but we remained noncommittal until she was out of range, and then practically gagged in horror!

Well, from the length of the post, you can see we had a lot of fun.  Keep tuned in for more Christmas posts and our regular Friday posts.  If you come across some terrible Christmas decorations, and want to share–we are just the blog to do it.  Shoot us some email, and we will include your find.

Let’s just start with a lulu so you all know what you are up against:

Our first question is why make this at all, and if you’re going to do it, why turquoise?  Then we wonder who you’re trying to fool with yarn “snow” on top of this mess?  Really, it’s hard to quibble with the plastic beads and orange bows; the whole thing is so over the top that the decorations don’t register at first.

There are so many useful things to do with yarn–mittens, scarves, socks, sweaters, the list goes on and on.  Why would you waste perfectly good yarn making this?

It sort of lies there like cooked spaghetti, not an attractive appearance for any decoration.  Please, just crochet socks and mittens for needy kids; that’s a much better use of three skeins of yarn.

Well, if you have a yearning for more than yarn decorating your house, why not use this tablecloth on the dining room table?

I just had a weird thought–do we qualify as sado-masochists?  Masochists because we willingly go looking for this painful stuff; sadists because we inflict it on others.  Hmm … we might need to do a little soul-searching … yeah right!  Okay, back on track; this lovely tablecloth is made of polyester, which is further enhanced by gold metallic thread in the fabric and that edging.  The kindest thing we can say is:  it won’t easily stain, and if you need a drop cloth, it’s waterproof.

We do have a couple of examples of the ubiquitous Christmas figures–both knitted and crocheted, just in case crocheters think we are picking on them:

Gosh, we hope they are toilet paper holders; that would give their existence a useful purpose.

Even something as lovely as lace can be a part of crafts gone wrong:

These angel pins are backed with a lace/plastic bead wreath, and decorated with a pipe cleaner bow–gak!  Huge, ugly, and tacky–a triple threat.

Time to end with something that we thought was cute and well-done (although not too useful, we admit):

Not that we bought them, but if you wanted a homemade Santa, why not try this craft project using hurricane lamp globes and felt?

Well, so much for the fabric portion of homemade disasters.  Stay tuned for our regular post this Friday, and the next installation of Holiday Horrors.