A Very Vintage Christmas

A few months ago we bought a lovely little house.  The house was built in 1951, had the same owners since around 1960, and not been updated since about 1975.  The previous owners lived here until they died, Dorothy in 2005 and Paul in 2009 (Amazing what you can learn from Google).  Paul was quite the fix-it guy, and Dorothy added many lovely touches as well, so there are new surprises around every corner (two nights ago I dreamed I found a new closet with a full-sized refrigerator/freezer in it).
The attic, in particular, is full of excitement.  (We told Paul and Dorothy's son that there was still stuff up there, and he said we could keep it.)  I knew there were some Christmas decorations up there, so for Family Night I asked Andrew to bring down their Christmas stuff with our box.
He brought down 20 boxes.  Nineteen of which were not ours.  It was getting late, so we opened one or two boxes, looked cautiously inside and went to bed.
The next day, I went through most of the boxes, sorting them into, "Maybe keep," "Donate," and "Trash."  After I had gone through everything, I called up my wise friend Camilla I knew could give me honest feedback, and also knew the difference between "vintage," and "ugly."
In the end, I took a whole carload of tinsel, plastic santas and homemade decorations to the thrift store, and I am happy to have a home more festive than ever before.  Some of the decorations are on trial.  We'll see if I feel like boxing them up for next year after I spend a month looking at them.  Here are a few of my finds.  Sorry for the photography.

There were two artificial trees in the attic, and I thought they looked pretty good!

There were enough of these beautiful glass balls to fill two big trees.

We got about seven of these little friends.  They don't stay on the tree very long,
I find them all over the place.  They must be very mischievous.

One of the best finds was a village worth of these little cottages.

The baby Jesus is one of the few evidences of their Christian faith,
and the only thing left over from a nativity set.

The sleigh is a music box, but I think I may have broken it already.

There was a whole box of these miniatures.
They don't seem to fit anything else, but I'm sure we'll find a use for them.

And now back to my current home project!