Vintage Winter Memories

Now that my shows are  over, I am concentrating on selling some of my holiday vintage and antique papers online. I only have another five days or so that I can send in time for the holidays, so I am on a listing frenzy for the next few days.  After that, I sale it out, and if it does not sell, it gets put away for another year, or else it goes into the pile that gets cut up.

These prints are in my catskillpaper Etsy shop; they invoke a time in a my childhood that was magic.  Somehow all was made better with the advent of Christmas, and these images remind me of a time when I really believed that magic happened.  I still remember the smell of our artificial tree as I entered the room, and the vintage  pixies that hung from the table top tree,  the real tree my grandmother had in Queens, coolly lit by huge blue bulbs.  Snippets of Nat King Cole wind through my head, along with Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and It's A Wonderful Life.Twinkling stars became the stars over Jerusalem, and maybe Rudolph's nose.  I smile when I remember new boxes of crayons, color pencils, and Venus of Paradise color by numbers, Etch-A-Sketch, Spirograph, Block City, Tinker Toys, and all those wonderful gifts under the tree.

I still believe in magic.  It has just matured. Now magic lives in a kiss, in the beauty of the first snow fall, a gathering with family and friends.  I think it is magic that I get up in the morning, and squeeze every moment from the day.

So in spite of a rainy day here in the Hudson Valley, at a time we wish for snow, I leave you with some warm winter images and I hope you all have some kind of magic in your life!