Another vintage Christmas ad

I just felt like posting something here on my Christmas blog today, but have nothing new and Christmasy to share.  So I decided to share something old ... a favorite candy bar ad from my collection of vintage Christmas magazines.  Note that this candy bar is "enriched with dextrose"!  Much as I love this ad, somehow that phrase doesn't inspire me to run out and buy a Baby Ruth®!

Rudolph Day for March

(Photo by Photos Public Domain)

 ... didn't amount to much.  Sundays in winter are busy for us, with Sunday School (Mr. T and I both teach), morning service, potluck lunch, and then a 1:30 pm afternoon service.  Still, the fact that Rudolph Day came on a Sunday this month shouldn't have made a huge difference.  That afternoon service takes the place of a 6 pm service, so technically we have most of Sunday afternoon and evening free.  Often, I get a lot of crafting done on a Sunday afternoon.

But not this time.  I just had ten minutes or so to spend on a Christmas gift-tag making project.  We  had phone calls to make and return, a sink full of breakfast dishes still to do (when grandkids are here, we make waffles on Sunday morning), and the weather had cleared from rain in the morning so we also wanted to get out for a nice long walk.  

Fortunately, I did get some Christmas crafting done on Saturday.  Just a little but it counts, right?  I cut out some more pieces for the pieced Christmas placemats I'm working on,
 
and did quite a bit of work on the tag-making project.  These were the projects I'd planned to work on during Rudy Day, so I did get something done toward them.

I see that the Rudolph Day for April falls on a Wednesday, which happens to be a very busy day for me when I'm not home much.  So I think I will need to plan ahead to celebrate the day on Monday or Tuesday and hopefully have a more productive Rudolph Day next month.

Vintage Christmas coffee ad

 As I'm sure I've mentioned previously, I inherited a stack of vintage Christmas magazines from my mother.  I enjoy paging through them, reading the articles and stories and trying some of the recipes and projects.  It will probably take me the rest of my life to get through all of them!  One of the most fun things for me is seeing the vintage advertisements.  Some of my favorites are the A&P coffee ads.  I thought this one was particularly nice because of the soft pastel Christmas tree in the background and also for the lovely, lovely coffee pot and cup and saucer set.  Blue with snowflakes!  Love it!  Wouldn't it be fun to find one like this?

the complete advertisement

Hope you have enjoyed seeing this as much as I did.  I found it in a 1957 Woman's Day magazine.

A Christmas place mat finished

Yesterday, I managed to finish a project (the first installment of it, anyway) that I had started a couple of years ago.  Back in 2010 (I think) I had finished a Christmas table runner, a project I had found in an old magazine.  It was actually from Decorating & Craft Ideas, the December 1980 issue. 

I loved the runner and planned to make the matching place mats.  I actually cut out the 12 petal pieces called for [for one place mat] and got them stitched together, and had cut out the center circle piece.  And there the project has stalled, stacked in a pile of fabric. 

Last week I decided to tackle finishing one place mat.  Here is the result:

The zigzag stitching is far from perfect on this first attempt.  That puckering is completely normal, I see from the magazine photo of the place mat, so I'm not stressing about that one bit.  I am very pleased with how it came out for a first try, and am planning to cut out a second one this week.  In fact, when I investigated further, I found that I had 6 more petal pieces already cut, so there is a head start.  I hope to make either 7 or 9 more place mats, for a total set of 8 or 10.  This project is a real fabric stash buster, so I may be able to hit Jo-Ann's Christmas in July sale this year with a clear conscience!