Etsy Shoppin: Happy Memorial Day Edition!

                                             Antique Carved Patriotic Soldiers Wood Wall Plaques (set of 2)

We! Love! Holidays! And we! Love! THE U.S.A.! Memorial Day always seems like a practice holiday for Fourth of July, but that does not make me love it any less. Finally, it's time to spring the white strappy sandals out of the closet, make plans to go to the now-open area water parks, and attend cookouts til you're sunbaked yourself! I have to go do my patriotic duty and enjoy this holiday by eating way too many hot dogs and indulging in some kind of outdoor lounging, but I wanted to show you some of the AWESOME stuff you can see on Etsy relating to the red, the white, and the blue....of kitschy-stuff-I-want-to-own.

                                                            1970s patriotic embroidered bald eagle tie

  Unique Circa 1940s Vintage old WWII ARMY soldier Vintage Brooch,  Starlux Vintage Toy Soldier Figurine, Vintage 1940 WWII Jointed Celluloid Plastic Sailor Brooch

Bicentennial Square Dance Dress Vintage 70s red white blue gingham dotted maxi dress  Red White Blue Patriotic Cotton Sun Dress

1960's ENAMEL BROOCH and EARRINGS Flower Set / Red, White and Blue Patriotic / Vintage

The MARINES HYMN / World War II / Red White Blue Patriotic Cover Art 1940s

WWII War Album of Victory Battles

                       Franklin D. Roosevelt -- Campaign Poster -- 1933-1945

Look what Matthew got me as a special Memorial Day present (because I am spoiled rotten):

Could this be any cooler? More pics here. I'm not sure how big the linen will be when it comes in, but I think I want to frame it and have it somewhere in the living room. I know I need another framed picture like I need...oh, something I really don't need because I have too much of....but this was just adorable. I really can't get over the cursive banner "To-night I leaned across 10,000 miles and kissed you!".

Have a wonderful holiday, don't eat too many undercooked hamburgers, and I'll see you tomorrow!

Oh, and one more thing:

Kelly B is the winner of the first official She Was a Bird giveaway! Got a $25 gift card for ya, will have to email you for your postal address. Yay!

Photo Friday: Meet Doris and Ray

 The giveaway closes on Sunday! Why don't you ENTER to win a $25 gift card?

Good morning! On this very special episode of Photo Friday, I'd like to share with you some photos from an estate sale I went to in West Meade about two years ago.

Risqué! Also, way to go on really DOING the costume party thing! Go hard or go home.

I was buying a photo of a little boy who honest-to-Garsh looked like a child actor straight out of central casting 1950's tee vee land in a pretty gold frame. The woman at the checkout desk said that I could easily take the photo out if I wanted to put something else in it and I, sheepishly, admitted I was buying the frame mainly for the photo rather than vice versa. "Oh," she said, no doubt weighing, as so many do, the likelihood of me being a collector versus the likelihood of me being "some kind of weirdo who buys other people's family photos to display in their home", and I was ready to slunk away with my $2 frame-and-picture when she added, "So you collect old pictures?"

I decided to go whole hog for once. I said, "Yes, I collect old pictures". I explained I had a whole wall of photos at the house of people not-related-to-me, and told her how much I liked to pore over the backgrounds and the clothes and think up stories about how and why and where the picture was taken. I figured I might as well state my case and THEN get called a whack job. Maybe I was just in a talkative mood. At any rate, the lady goes, "Well, if you're interested in pictures, there's three, four whole boxes of them in that back bedroom closet that a cousin of mine was going to come and take, and then turned out he didn't want 'em. Why don't you go and take a look and see if they're anything you could use?"

The high waisted pants, the fedora, the cigarette. SWAGGER..

Obviously, I had a tiny freak-out-of-the-mind and went to check out the boxes. The woman's teenage daughter came with me and we pulled out four HUGE cardboard boxes of memorabilia. Besides YEARS of vacation photos, there were slides, yearbooks, Valentine's day cards...I could tell just by sifting for a moment that there were probably a thousand different pieces of ephemera, INTACT, in one collection, that nobody wanted. "This was my aunt Doris's house," the sales lady went on to explain, "She's my mother's sister. And she doesn't have any other relatives and we've got copies of just about all these old photos, so if you want them, they're yours to take." I had been shrewdly calculating how much money I had left to give the woman to pay for the photos and good Lord,  how-much-is-she-going-to-ask-for-all-this-stuff, and she just wanted it off her hands and not in the dumpster! Jubilation! I thanked her about thirteen hundred times and filled the trunk and backseat with someone-else's-memories.

I spent the whole rest of the day in my den sorting photos by decade and trying to piece together who was related to who. I have no idea why I didn't get the woman's number so I could ask her about some of the various questions that popped up. As far as I can figure it, Doris was Ruth's sister (and Ruth is the sales lady's mother). I think they both grew up in Nashville but Ruth got married and moved to Atlanta in the 1940's. Doris married a blond man around the same time period, and had a son named after him that everyone called "Sonny" (the boy in the frame who got the whole mess started). In the mid 1950's, Doris remarried (did Sonny's father die? Did they get divorced?) Ray, a lawyer who worked for Life and Casualty Insurance. What I love from seeing picture after picture of the two of them, unposed and posed, at home and on the road, is the sense of fun you get from them. Middle aged, comfortably well-off, and at all times ready to kick their heels off and have some fun!

Photos go better with fezzes.

All the photos here are from the early and mid 60's, when they would have been married for a while. How do you like the Al Ballanco Orchestra with their Peter Pan hats and table-cloth sarongs? See Doris's keyhole dress and the white angora wrap she's carrying? Oh, and Ray's wearing a plaid sportscoat AND a fez. YOU KNOW THIS WAS A FUN EVENT TO ATTEND. I wish they had social organizations nowadays like the Shriners and the Masons must have been like "back in the day". I want an excuse to wear fancy clothes, listen to a live big band, and eat as much barbecue as I want ("you can EAT!" the banner behind them reassures me)!

The ghostliness of early Polaroids! This photo below was taken in the house where the sale was held. It was a really weird sale because the house was in a very good part of town, but the house was one, 90% empty and two, had obviously not been lived in for a long, long time. Have you been to estate sales like that, where everything's a little sun-stained or mildewed from sitting, unused, for several years? The place where we got the chord organ looked like something out of Dickens...this wasn't SO bad, but it did make me think about how many houses there probably are where someone's gone to a nursing home and no one feels quite right about selling the house or clearing it out while they're still alive. Spooky.

She always has the nicest hair.

Anyway, you'll probably be seeing more of Doris and Ray over the next few weeks as I scan in some of the more glamorous/funny/neat photos from the collection. The oldest one I have is from around the turn of the century, and they go all the way up into the early 90's! There's a lot of interesting ground in between, I promise.

I. NEED. THESE. SUNGLASSES. OMG.

Have a good weekend! Get some good stuff! See you on Monday!

Weekend Finds

 ENNNNTERRRRR THE GIVEAWAAAAAAAAY......

Good morning! And if it wasn't a banner weekend for "the most random picks in the most random places". Take a look at some of the things I took home with me this past weekend! In reverse order of acquisition, let's start with the puzzles. Yeeeeah, I said puzzles.

Oh. Mah. Gawd.

I spent probably a half hour dredging the Goodwill in Hendersonville for a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g I could buy. Do you ever have moments on shopping trips where you're like "I did NOT come ALL THE WAY OUT HERE to NOT EVEN BUY ANYTHING" and have a sudden mania come over you while glancing into your empty shopping cart? Feeling grouchy, I was looking through the board games as a last minute act of desperation and saw the S.W.A.T. box peeking out from behind a dog eaten box of Boggle. I'd never heard of the tv show, but the crazy hilarious cover had me, and I was curious to see if there were any more tv tie-in games. WERE THERE EVER! I saw CHiPs and almost let out a yelp, and then actually could not believe my eyes when I found the Welcome Back Kotter box. This kind of "stuff Quentin Tarantino would buy" is just NEVER AROUND in thrift stores, and if it is, it's in a special collectible case up front with a ridiculously high price tag. 99 cents apiece, people! These puzzles were 99 cents apiece!

Another "wow" moment came at the Rivergate Goodwill (sometimes I like to make a gauntlet of visiting all four Goodwills on Gallatin Road, from East to Gallatin, because I'm just that addicted to thrift store shopping). I was digging through the record bin, which again, I was only taking a second look at after being bested in housewares and clothing with absolute bupkis. Two middle aged guys were also going through the bins and commenting on this classical pianist doing a two album set of Scott Joplin songs, or that former member of that big band doing a rhumba record in the late fifties'... signifying to me that they were serious collectors; ergo, if there happened to be some Doris Day 78 from the forties', they probably have already picked it up, so there's not much sense in looking for myself. However! I have to tell myself sometimes that just because the person thumbing through the racks with you has taste, they might not have your specific taste. Case in point: HOW DID THEY MISS THIS DON AMECHE CO-STAR RECORD? In mint condition? With the script? For 99 cents? "Co-Star", for the curious, was a party record game where the recording features a major star reading half the album, with appropriate pauses for you to read along with the included script, so it feels like you're "acting" with them. We found a copy of Vincent Price's "Co-Star" record online and used it, with FANTASTIC RESULTS, at the Vincentennial party we threw for his 100th birthday last year. I was interested to find others in the series (which also included titles with Pearl Bailey, Tallulah Bankhead, and Cesar Romero as your costar), but they're really expensive on ebay, even without the scripts sometimes! You can see where my excitement was palpable. I can't wait to try this guy out!

As for estate sale finds:

Cue strings soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann

My initial thoughts from an email I sent Eartha earlier in the week, post-baby-in-basement-finding:

I found a framed picture this weekend composed of a 1940's magazine cut-out of a baby's head and hands, dressed up with ACTUAL HUMAN BABY HAIR CURLS and a blanket and bonnet! Kind of like the ribbon art thing, kind of like hair art, but somewhere in between. Wild, right? I dug it out of a hoarder-basement in a house near the airport and the sales guy was like "I thought that was just a magazine print! Does it have hair?" Me: ((simply nods vigorously, not wanting to be taken for Norman Bates)).

I knew nothing about baby hair portraits until I read this post over at Honey Hi Vintage. It is not often that I discover a new vintage thing to be into! At the time I thought, well, that's neat, bet I'll never see one of those out in the wild. Maybe at an antique mall for like $100, but no way I'll find one sitting on its lonesome in a box of empty picture frames in a dig-your-own-sale style basement.

I think the early morning light makes it creepier...I apologize for my photography.

I found this washboard a couple boxes over at the same sale:

Who wants to join my jug band?

This and the baby picture were two of the only really "old" things in the Avon-collectible-and-tools-heaven that was the sale. I've never felt the need to own a washboard, but it seemed like an opportunity I didn't want to pass up. After mentioning the hair part of the baby picture, the sales guy says, "Oh, cool graphics on this washboard! This is in really good shape!" in a very Mike Wolfe, American Pickers kind of way.

It's funny how I instantaneously become stoic/not particularly friendly at this point of the sales process, especially when the salesperson gets all "did you know this is a..." on me. I have been burned a million too many times by estate sale people seeing that I'm young and "into" this kind of stuff and assuming that I don't know how much the blamed thing is worth or, worse, that I'll pay an inflated price out of inexperience and naivete. My favorite conversation, while trying to pick up a red straw pillbox hat I'd dug out of a disused, terrifying attic in West Meade: "Oh, that's collectible." ((Me, in my head: Yes! I know! I'm trying to collect it here!)) "I'd have to have twenty on that." What split do the spiders I had to face in, again, a completely untagged, unorganized attic get on that twenty dollars? Also, are you high? I think I dickered her down to $15, but she did act like I must not have enough money and obviously didn't understand the value of vintage hats, which was $5 worth of pride I might have liked to have kept. IN ANY EVENT, I was sure the guy was going to say forty dollars after he'd seen how cool my items were, but he ended up asking eight for both the washboard and hair picture. RESUME FRIENDLINESS! I was happy as a lark.

So THAT'S what you are...

Last but not least, I've had this forever, but I thought I'd show it to you anyway as I recently re-appreciated when Matthew's mom, Deb, came over to the house and noticed it hanging in the den. "Oh, how cute! I love sand pipers!" she said, eyeing the needlework that went into their creation. "I used to love watching them run in the surf, you know,  when I lived in California." I've had this picture since 2003... it was one of the first things I bought in Knoxville when I went up to college, on a half off sticker at the Kingston Pike Goodwill, for $10. It hung in three successive dorm rooms before coming with me to the house we rented off campus for my senior year, then back to my folks house, and finally to the house where Matthew and I currently live, always displayed in a place of pride. IN ALL THAT TIME, I did not know these were sand pipers! Living my entire life in a landlocked state, I've always called them "partridges" or "quails", knowing full well they look like neither, but not knowing what else to call them. I hang my head a little while admitting...you learn something every day!

Hope you guys had the luck of the Irish I did this past weekend, and if not, that you do this coming weekend! Find anything good? Any good/bad/hilarious experiences with snooty/friendly/off the wall sales people? Could you identify a sand piper with grace and aplomb? Do tell!

See you tomorrow for Photo Friday!!

Marchesa Casati (1900's-1920's)

Good morning! Have I told you, lately, that I'm doing a giveaway?

I think if there was a dead-serious, Edwardian, bohemian female counterpart to Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man in the World", it would probably be the Marchesa Luisa Casati, an Italian heiress who gives the word "eccentric" a run for its money. I was looking over some estate sale listing last weekend when the picture on the right (above) caught my eye, in the form of a vintage repro hanging on the wall of  a condo in Bellevue. The picture at the sale probably came from that wonderful series of Smithsonian re-issues in the 1960's that look just-like-you-have-a-real-painting-of-a-real-work-of-art, and I knew I was familiar with the artist (Bloomsbury group intimate Augustus John) but not the subject. Who was this gorgeous woman of mystery? A fame-less beauty...a figment of John's imagination....or....?

Unfortunately, I didn't make it out to the sale, but I did manage to pinpoint the girl by googling the artist. I also picked up a copy of the book Infinite Variety: the Life and Legend of the Marchesa Luisa Casati, by Scot D. Ryerson and Michael Orlando Yaccarino (remind me next time I need a stage name to recall that man's surname) from our very own NPL. The book was well-written but a little on the dull side when I opened it at random, recounting this and that Baronet's social position in the late nineteen teens', until the going got good around three or four pages deep, in a description of one of Luisa Casati's "get-up"'s:

Luisa looked even stranger in appearance...She had now added eyelashes two inches long to her enormous eyes, and her hair was more flame like than ever. She came down to supper in tight white satin trousers and announced her intention of visiting Oxford with us the next day. We were all rather nervous... but she mercifully arrayed herself in a huge black coal scuttle bonnet and so many furs that not a single undergraduate glanced at her.

I love thinking about this proto Marlene Dietrich vamp, looking like something out of an Edward Gorey illustration, flouncing around stuffy Oxfordtown near the turn of the century. Show 'em what for, Luisa!

"Dressed in Bakst's "Queen of the Night" costume, 1922.

In a world which has since known everyone from Isabella Blow to one extreme and Anna Sui to another, the gothic temptress figure of Luisa Casati probably wouldn't so much as raise an eyebrow. BUT IN 1910's EUROPE? Even for Europe a lot of her ensembles sound like something so far to the edge as to be hovering in outer space.

An Adolf de Meyer photograph, circa 1920's

A conversation with her hairdresser in the 1910's:

'I know now what I am,' she said. 'Since I've been in India I am sure. In another incarnation, I was a tiger. Now I am tigress. Look at me. Do you see?' ...Dressed in long, black, clinging gowns with no corsets and always accompanied by a tiger cub, she indeed gave the impression of a tigress.

The hairdresser goes on to describe how he henna'd Casati's hair in alternating stripes of tawny orange and black to further encourage the comparison, before also trying, as the mood struck her, shades of bright green and finally black during their acquaintance. While this is something Siouxsie Sioux could do with impunity seventy years later...think about how this is only barely a decade into the twentieth century.

WE. LOVE. THIS.

Lots of eccentric behavior accompanied the outfits. At a dinner party, someone asked Casati if a gold snake necklace she wore was of Egyptian origin. Casati she smiled and touched the necklace, whereupon the sleeping snake woke and slithered from her neck to her shoulder. What! What do you mean!  Casati also moved into a rented villa in Capri against the owner's wishes by some technicality of the law. What's so bad about that? She summarily redecorated the place with "gold curtains and heavy draperies of black velvet...black carpets and animal skins...ebony furniture. [One room was] now reserved for Casati's sorcery paraphenalia...a black sheepskin rug had been nailed to one wall and others were adorned with quotations and proverbs handwritten in French with black paint." At the time, she was also attended by an African footservant whom she would paint in all gold, and who ate two live chickens a day. Again, totally normal behavior.

An interesting note on the Augustus John painting that had me interested in Casati in the first place: it's notable for its subject's LACK of extreme costume and make-up. An art critic in the book said something about John recognizing that even stripped of all the outre trappings, Casati's real power came from those striking eyes. And they do follow you from the paintings.

Giovanni Boldini portrait circa 1900. The ermine! The ostrich feathers! The hints of purple!

Casati's idiosyncratic behavior continued throughout the teens' and twenties'...however, the fun stopped in 1930 when her belongings were auctioned off to pay the twenty five million dollars in debt she'd amassed during a forty year spree of self-indulgence. That's $323,289,354.30 in modern money. FOR THE LOVE OF THE LORD. Make it my new life goal to run up that high of a debt through sheer force of personality.

Anyway, if you're interested in reading about the vamp to end all vamps, pick up Infinite Variety. And don't be surprised if you see me in ostrich feathers and false eyelashes, walking a leopard on a leash down Eastland! I've got a style crush!

Are you interested in art nouveau/art deco/art art from the 1910's and 20's? Who's been inspiring you, fashion wise, lately? Let a girl know!

I've got some weekend finds to show you guys tomorrow...and some of 'em are doozies. See you then!

Further reading:
Super in-depth website HERE
Great style blog post here
Wikipedia article on the John painting HERE

Mini Mart a la Carte (2005)

Good morning! Don't forget to enter the GIVEAWAY!

Having been a hardcore supporter of the convenience store lifestyle in college, the title of the book Mini Mart a la Carte appealed to me right off the bat! The word "mini mart" instantly sends me reminiscing upon days spent driving around Knox County with a cute blues-organ-and-harmonica player, his recently broken foot and crutch sticking out the window, trying to locate a Pilot gas station where he could stock up on American Spirits and I could refill my ever empty 99 cent Icee Big Gulp (the Icee Corporation lost so much money on me and that cup that summer). While the title sounds a lot like a gift book an aunt would give you for graduation, it's actually a pretty funny, tongue-firmly-in-cheek (I hope?) guide to haute cuisine a la the industrial Cuisinart sandwich toaster next to the rotating weenie display at your local 7-Eleven.

Anything! Is! Possible!

Gallatin Goodwill, 99 cents. I bought this and a ceramic, roaring bear's head. Good haul.

I remember in the Townes van Zandt documentary Be Here to Love Me, TvZ's son (of TvZ himself?) mentioned his family shopping exclusively at convenience stores throughout his childhood. While I was taken aback at first, the practicality of it slowly dawned on me.Think about, if you were really set your mind to it, how many things you can buy at a convenience store that would save you a trip to the anxiety-inducing mega-grocery-store closest your home. Eggs. Milk. Bread. American Singles.Frozen dinners. Besides the standard fare of slushees and Mars bars, there's a world of culinary opportunities awaiting you in those bite-sized aisles. Authors Christopher Rouser and Victoria Traug offer up wryly titled recipes ("New England Spam Chowder", "Tuna Sasserole", and my personal favorite, "Banana Nicole Smith") that use equipment and ingredients found solely within the confines of your local stop-and-go. Wanna see some pics? You know you're deadly curious by now.

"Congealed" is the word that comes to mind...

"Ramen Romanoff" (above) is a kind of beef stroganoff slash macaroni and cheese fashioned from ramen noodles, cottage cheese, sour cream, and cheddar cheese. Through most of these recipes I go "AAAAAaaaah! Sick! Sick!" and then think back on what a real recipe for, say, stroganoff, would entail, and realize the authors, however ironic they're being, are not far off the mark in terms of taste similarities. Sour cream seems sick anyway you use it; and yet, if you're going to create a cream sauce, you're gonna have to! Note the condensed-milk milkshake in the background.

I'm mellllllltiiiiiing.....

This little devil is called "The Trojan Horse", for which you need a can of SPAM, 2 ounces of Velveeta, and a toothpick. And a willing audience. "Basically," the text instructs, "You're going to carve up the hunk of SPAM into a horse-shape." I'm gonna what....!! The carving of food items to look like not-food items has appealed to me ever since I first laid eyes on Betty Crocker's fruit peacock (not  a euphemism! My friend Alyx made a gorgeous example of one of these for a past Fourth of July). Note the Olde English six pack pairing-- I love the beverage suggestions in these photos. It reminds me of the "pair blah blah blah kind of wine with blah blah blah meat dish" advice you see in fine dining manuals...hey! Spam and Olde English 88! A match made in heaven/hell itself!

Bluh!!!!

 The "Tooth Grinder" is a submarine sandwich made of one packet mayo, 1 packet mustard, 1 hot dog bun, assorted beef jerky sticks, American cheese, FUNYUNS (really? REALLY?), and optional Italian dressing. Again, I am reminded of wing ding foods made for me by other people's parents on playdates in the mid 90's...you know that mistrustful feeling you had as a child when a strange looking plate of (usually cheese laden) food was placed in front of you and you didn't want to be rude, but you also didn't want to ingest items not-prepared-by-your-own-mom? This would be, like, the KING of those kind of foods. "Try it! You'll like it!" ....Or will you! I think that also may be a Diet Rite in the background....the "cold drink" of choice of either of my diabetic maternal grandparents. "Go get me a cold drink in yonder!" translates to "Can you bring me a Diet Rite from the refrigerator?"

Turn a brighter....shade of pink....

 In the beverage section, besides wantonly suggesting one 1 part grain alcohol (Everclear) to 10 parts slushee to create "The Brain Drain" (and blithely ignoring the South's absolute lack of convenience stores or grocery stores for that matter that sell liquor, due to bible belt alcohol laws), we have, above, the "Pink of Health", a combination of Smirnoff Ice and Pepto Bismol. "Here is a breakthrough beverage that delivers both the cause of and the cure for a hangover." Is it good or bad that no one has thought of this before?

Circle K is actually more popular in these parts, but you get the picture. (source)

Besides recipes, the book also boasts fun facts about convenience stores. Did you know:

• In 2002, 7-Eleven sold thirty-three million gallons of fountain drinks-- enough to fill over seventy five Olympic sized pools?
• The first 24-hour mini mart was a 7-Eleven in Austin, TX which, in 1962, was so busy after a University of Texas football game they decided to stay open all night?
• Up until 1946, 7-Eleven stores were called "Tote'm" stores because customers would "tote" away their purchases?

This book is ridiculously cheap on Amazon...if you can brave some of the more nausea-inducing recipes, it's a cute little read for an afternoon of Slurpee fueled nostalgia. I loved it!

Are you a convenience store junkie? What are some of the weirdest things you've purchased/eaten from a 7-Eleven? Any way out, middle of the night, crazy stories from behind the beef jerky display? Share!

And if you haven't had a chance yet, please enter my DressBarn dresstravaganza giveaway! Details on Mondays blog. May the best commenter win!

Dressbarn Dresses (plus $25 gift card giveaway!)

Picture blatantly stolen from Eartha's blog. Thanks! :)

Hi guys! I had a really fun time Thursday night at the Dressbarn at Opry Mills. You heard that right! 

While it might not have been the first place to come to mind to stage a vintage bloggers meetup, the kind folks at "the Barn" invited me to bring some fellow writin' friends/fiends to sample the goods at the newly revamped retail location at the newly re-opened mall. I chose Eartha Kitsch from Ranch Dressing with Eartha Kitsch, Rae from Say It Ain't So, and Jamie from Owl Really to come and see if the email invitation for a night of VIP blogging was really a Nigerian mail scheme. Turns out, it wasn't!


My one previous memory of Dressbarn was from the pre-flood Opry Mills period, in which my friend Kelsey took me to the store, bragging of its plus size, dark denim wash jeans and cute shoes. She was right on both counts-- the items were solid, but the ambiance left something to be desired. The store at the time was pretty drab-- moms-shopping-atmosphere of too-white-ceiling tiles and grey industrial carpeting. Well! No more! Updated and redesigned, I was surprised at how modern the place looked compared to its former location across from the AppleBarn. Boasting sizes 4-24, Dressbarn stocks a ton of dresses that look like they've been swiped straight from Betty Draper's closet. Would I lie to you? Check it out:

one, two, three, four

We had fun trying on these outfits in the write-your-name-in-dry-erase-marker dressing rooms, complete with ivory divans (see Eartha's photo of Jamie and me above), beveled mirrors, and chandeliers. Oh la la! As I tried on a dress in a teeny size, I was doing a two-step in the mirror to try and decide if it was TOO too small before I realized I was in a retail setting, and could easily ask for another size. People, shopping at Goodwill and for vintage in general has dulled my retail shopping skills! It was confusing to me to see racks of dresses of similar design in different sizing. This would be a great place to pick up a party dress in those "I need something RIGHT THIS MINUTE" situations that seem to crop up before weddings, birthday blow outs, etc, etc. I think with the right styling and some tall hair you could turn one or two of the ones above into a really vintage looking outfit. Some of my best ensembles have been department store dresses (scooped up from Goodwill, natch) fitted with a belt and topped off with a beehive and lipstick for the whole early 60's look after which I pine so. And again, if the fit isn't right, you can size up or size down! The novelty has not yet worn off on me.

Stock photo. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to take any pictures...but trust me, it looks a lot like this, except cuter in real life.

In spite of some heavy crushing on some of the dresses I tried on, I ended up with these cute-itude, set-your-phasers-to-stun sunglasses, and what better to pair them with than a glam rock t-shirt? SWA.GGER.

Hiya, sailor!

 

Beehive? Check. Sunglasses? Check. Bowie? Check check!

Jealous? You should be, but guess what? Dressbarn has given me a $25 gift card to do with what I see fit. Which is to share the Dressbarn goodness with you kind people! You can grab a pair of these sunglasses or one of these retro-inspired dresses for your very own.

Here's how you can enter to win:

Mandatory Entry:
-Be a follower of this blog either via email or Google Friend Connect (stand up and be counted!). Then:
-Visit www.dressbarn.com and check out all the new-old vintagey dresses. Head back here to leave a comment on which is your must-have. Please leave your email address or blog address so that I can contact you if you win. If there is no way to contact you, your entry will not count.

Bonus Entries: (Leave a separate comment for each entry.)

1.) Like She Was a Bird on Facebook and post the link to this giveaway on your page. Please tag She Was a Bird in your link.
2.) Tweet about the giveaway! Please copy and paste this tweet: "Enter to win a $25 gift card from @dressbarn on @_shewasabird blog!"
3.) Follow @_shewasabird on Twitter
4.) Share this giveaway on your blog or tumblr. Please include the link to your post in the comments.

Let the commenting begin! Entries will close on Sunday, May 27, 2012 at 8:00 PM CST, and I'll choose a winner to be announced a week from today.


To hear more about our girl-bloggers' adventure, head over to Eartha's blog. Check out the cool swag they woo'd us with! I'm hoping to get together again soon with these  ladies to do some vintage crafting...will keep you posted on when and if this super event takes place!


See ya tomorrow!

Photo Friday: German Victorian Edition

Good morning, kids and kidoo's, what's the scoop? It's Friday! As usual, I have estate sales waiting for me at all corners of Davidson County, but I wanted to show you these weirdo strange-o photos I found in a box of keepsakes from high school while cleaning out the attic.

In the pre-estate sale days of my life (how quaint!), my dad and I did a lot of antique store roaming for weekend trips with my mom and sister, digging through back rooms with nary an item priced, horse saddles hanging from the ceiling, and treasures waiting to be unearthed from makeshift booths in former forties' car dealerships and groceries. The photos above and below were from an otherwise deeply disappointing store in the town square at Lebanon, full of teddy bears dressed up in Gibson girl hats, scented candles, etc, etc. In an apple barrel (those things are so popular for antique booth chic!), were dozens of photos sealed in mini-ziplock bags. I was a little interested in the older photos, and then, flipping them over, I was VERY interested when I saw that almost all of them were taken in Germany!

Plus, how gorgeous are the backs of these cabinet cards? "Gegrundet 1870" means "founded in 1870", from what I can tell, but the rest is a mystery...possibly a list of awards? And telephone number (this must have been a very early telephone! 1890's/1900's at the latest! Jeez louise!). As for the woman pictured, what geisha-like attention to hair shape...do you think the kind of ball-shapes to either side are combs? Also, I wish I had a pintucked, cut out shirtwaist of this kind. Talk about things you never, ever see in real life...I think I've only seen Victorian clothes for sale maybe two times at sales...and for museum prices. Which I guess is fair, but how I wish it was the fifties' where that stuff was everyWHERE.

 The other card:

I like the handwritten-ness! And the woman's child-sized body. The slight difference in clothing styles from what you would see in an American woman's portrait cabinet card is interesting...see the ruffles at the bodice's cuffs and bottom, and the skirt's slightly raised hemline...and how drastic this woman's coiffure is in comparison with the last! Do you see the face on the side of the pedestal? Eeek!

Just for fun, this slightly later photo was from the same buying excursion. 1910's? Slightly earlier? Check the proto-bouffant, the straightforward gaze of the subject, the bearskin rug and art nouveau chair arm. Did I mention there's a set of pockets or at least flaps at the very bottom of this woman's skirt? LOOK AT THEM. What are their purpose?

Do you have many truly O-L-D photos in your collection? What date range do you tend to look for, or are you just a magpie like me when it comes to scooping up whatever catches your eye?

Also: Guys! I got to meet some fellow retro bloggers in real life! And I may have a giveaway in the works! This will make an exciting set of posts next week, will it not? I gotta get gone, but have yourselves a merry little Saturday and Sunday, and I'll see you on the other side of the weekend! :)

"I Was Made to Love Her" Stevie Wonder (1968)

                                 
                                     CAN'T. STOP. LISTENING. TO. THIS. SONG. (the 1st one!)



"I Was Made to Love Her" was  recorded for the Tamla label in 1968 by Stevie Wonder, the same year he hit the top of the charts with "For Once in My Life". Though its been covered by such diverse personalities as Chaka Khan, Tom Jones, and the Jackson 5, I think Stevie's version is definitive, and danged if I didn't have the worst time trying to find an original version of the recording online to share with you guys! I finally came across this three-fer from a "best of" album, but that's after being frustrated by the four or five live, truncated versions of the song on youtube that are not the original recording! Which, as said, is out of CONTROL. Me, I just usually loop it on Spotify over and over. Lyrics like this keep me coming back for more:

You know my papa disapproved it,
My mama boohooed it,
But I told them time and time again,
"Don't you know I was made to love her,
Built a world all around her"
Yah! Hey, hey, hey.

Could you just die? And do you hear how he sings full force for the entire recording? And if he wants to put more emotional emphasis on the line, sings in falsetto? I'm so into this right now. The Stevie Wonder kick I've found myself on came out of nowhere. I was driving to work the other day listening to the new, unfortunately named Hippie Radio 94.5 when I heard this song:

                          
                                       Also killer, also by Stevie Wonder. Coincidence?
 
"If You Really Love Me" , from 1971, is just as killer of a song, and just as unknown to me. I was mesmerized by the phrasing in the slowed-down-lyrics portions of the song in between choruses. It sounds! Exactly! Like! Amy Winehouse! I know that's a weird connection to make, but I'd always thought of her influences being more female Motown queens than kings, and here it was staring me right dead in the face. This part:

Then you say I'm untrue
What am I supposed to do
Be a fool who sits alone waiting for you 

especially reminds me of some of the pacing in "Tears Dry on Their Own". A cross between the Marvelettes and Stevie Wonder in one gorgeous, soul package. Part of that is probably producer Mark Ronson (who continually disappoints me only by not being related to Mick Ronson, David Bowie's Ziggy-era guitarist), but a good deal is probably also the late, great AW.

Hidden connections! 
Also, Amy...you hair. And your talent. Do you know that I miss you?

I'm going to have to give some early to middle period recordings by Stevie Wonder a second chance and dig deeper into those recordings. I think he's one of those naturally great artists like Aretha Franklin that I end up taking for granted because I've heard them, and I've heard them, and then I heard them one more time, and I got sick of them. Oldies 96.3, my childhood oldies station that is now sadly defunct, would play some Motown records until you thought your ears were going to bleed if you listened to them again, and it really desensitized me to some of the amazing work being done. My ear wasn't critical enough as a little kid to do anything but like it and then get tired of it....it's time for some early 60's music collecting re-evaluating at my house.

Do you have any artists you knew about but didn't really think much of, only to have a "morning drive" epiphany like mine as to their importance in your life? Can you think of any other then-to-now soul artists' comparison/influences? Share, share!

I hope you like the tunes-- see you tomorrow for Photo Friday. :)

What Would Jackie Do? (2005)

Good morning!

I picked up this book at McKays a while ago in a fit of desperation as to how to spend my trade credit on something I could take home with me that day. That particularly used book dealer doesn't hold credit on account, but instead issues e're so delicate slips of yellow paper that are bound to be thrown out/go through the wash/fall out of pocket. Mindful of this, I always try to spend whatever amount I have on the same day to avoid missing out on the fun altogether. This process defeats some of my good-intentioned clutter busting, but it IS kind of neat to have "funny money" you have to spend on the spot, no matter what, indulge yourself. Right? Right.

Per.FECT.

At any rate, I was loathe to pick up this title at first because as much as I love Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (JBKO as it is commonly abbreviated in the book, or just "Jackie" in most instances), she's one of those "too famous" retro icons. Do you know what I mean? Like Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn, people who have no interest in retrophilia profess an admiration for her as a kind of short hand for "See, I have classic taste". Not to say that everyone who's interested in any of that triptych of mid-century womanhood is fake...those girls are the chocolate ice cream of style. There's no arguing their beauty and  OF COURSE you're going to like Marilyn and Audrey and Jackie...have you seen them? I'm just saying I've seen any, either, or all of their faces splattered across mugs, t-shirts,   and dorm walls that have about as much to do with elevated style as a Styrofoam peanut. Speaking of the trinity, I'd recently tried to read How to be Hepburn in a Hilton World and found that the intended audience were Girls Gone Wild sorority sisters the author was trying to save from a life of spring break, tabletop-dancing, drunken debauchery by pointing out the fragile gamine movie star as a possible role model. Needless to say, I was disappointed. Those girls need saving, but I don't know if this was the book to do it, besides which, I am not one of those girls what about girls that just need pointers not a complete overhaul thankyouverymuch.

So, the constantly-stoked fires of dark hatred that keep this two sizes too small heart of mine beating made me pick up this book out of the etiquette section and go, "Ugh...well...it's worth a shot."

I can't tell who's riding with Jackie in this limo, but dig that vinyl rain coat with the bangle-y, kicky zipper pull! Color me impressed.

Ladies and gentlemen! I couldn't have been more wrong! THIS was the book I was hoping to read when I picked up the Hepburn book. A cross between a biography and a sage etiquette manual, What Would Jackie Do takes you through the do's and don't's that contributed towards the je ne sais quoi that makes JBKO a style icon to this day. Authors Shelly Branch and Sue Callaway apply anecdotes and blurbs from Jackie's real life to situations you would encounter in your day to day life, lending a guiding hand towards what would be the most "Jackie" thing to do in each case. Questions from the back jacket (sprinkled through the text, complete with answers) take the title literally and ask:

Would Jackie...

• Emulate celebrity fashion?
• Help herself to a few office supplies?
• Get a hair weave?
• Pick up the tab on a date?
• Give cash or cash equivalents as a gift?

In giving point-by-point back up straight from JBKO's life, you not only get better acquainted with the woman-behind-the-icon, but also gain inspiration as to how to handle yourself in similar situations. While you might never receive yoga instruction from Indian Prime Minister Nehru (as Jackie did) or have to drop Andy Warhol from your social calendar for bringing journalist Bob Colacello to an intimate holiday gathering (as Jackie also did...poor Bob Colacello! Poor Andy Warhol!), the social implications of the choices JBKO made are applicable to even the most pedestrian of lifestyles (like mine). The grace and elegance which has come to define her reign as queen of the "Camelot" era White House is not something that you're "just born" doing. Though Jackie's social register pedigree certainly didn't hurt, she was still a shy, tomboyish girl who described herself in a high school essay thus: "I am....5'7''...with brown hair and eyes so unfortunately far apart it takes three weeks to have a pair of glasses made." This, from one of the most universally well-known beauty icons of the twentieth century! Everyone works with what they have...emphasis on work.

"You better WORK."

Something that always burns-my-biscuits about modern day etiquette shirkers is the idea that people who go out of their way to do things "right" are just inherently more stylish or more capable or more elegant by the grace of God. I've wanted to shake a person before for saying "Oh, I could never do that [throw a party, wear a fancy dress, have a bouffant hairstyle]." Even in the form of a compliment, it makes me want to stand up on a chair and say "YES YOU CAN!". Even more so than I want to say "Do you have any idea how much thought/effort/work goes into all this?" (which is something the Jackie-aspirer must always keep a secret). The only person who tells you you can't have everything like you want it is YOU (how many "you"s can I fit in one paragraph?). You learn to do better, and then you do better. Reading etiquette books only reinforces my strong belief in the self-made person. Over years of applying herself to situations that were initially scary and out-of-water-ish for our wide-eyed heroine, Jackie eventually became the soignee creature she'd hoped she would be, by sheer force of personality and determination. Now that's something worth reading a book for!

Enough with the pep talk though. You really should read What Would Jackie Do if you're at all interested in Jackie Kennedy or how to become a graceful, Jackie Kennedy like creature in today's wanton world (who isn't and who isn't?!).

Are you a big Jackie fan already? Do you have any celebrities you've always particularly hoped to emulate? What self-help/etiquette/advice books do you swear by?

As a coda, I'd like to share with you my naked hope that my future female progeny look like their father. Because, believe it or not, he has the SAME DEEPLY SET, FAR SPACED EYES as the most famous first lady of them all:

Amiright?

See ya tomorrow!