Just Married: Another Woodbury Deb (1944)

Good morning!

I've got wedding on the brain! While my eventual nuptials (and the planning of such) are still on hold until I finish this, my last semester of grad school, this year and last year have been looney tunes for people in my immediate circle of friends getting married, and I couldn't be more happy for the lot of them. My very best friend from college, Caroline, is having her bachelorette party in Knoxville next weekend and tying the knot in late March-- I can remember when she sent out her save-the-dates and March 2013 seemed like a million years from then! Exciting times.

As I was flipping through 1944 issues of Life (like you do), I came across a regular-news-story-lookalike advertisement feature that spotlights pretty young debutantes and their beautiful, wedding-day complexions, sponsored by Woodbury Facial Soap. Wanna see some of the belles and their beaux? I know you do!

1) Patricia and Douglas

The set up of these ads are uniform in that they begin with "Another Woodbury Deb!" and include a photo of the happy couple either on or near their wedding day. What's more stupendous than a wedding announcement or a full page society ad in your local newspaper? How about a full page ad in Life magazine, read across the nation, with you and your handsome new hubby engaging in dramatic re-enactments of the wholesome events that led you to the altar? We. LOVE. It. Doug Miller is not only a USC quarterback and possessed of sleepy good looks under curly blonde hair...but is also a United States Marine! I hope they had a ton of fair-haired, curly headed babies when he got back from the war. It's funny how Patricia looks so natural, like a model, in these photos, and poor Doug looks like he's just asked the photographer, seconds before the picture was taken, "Now you want me to do what?" The swimsuit ping pong one is maybe my favorite.

2) Barbara and Wallace

"Petite, vivacious Barbara" had me at hello--  check out the pretty bridal crown and her perfect makeup. I'm not sure about Wally's ears, but it may just be his USCG regulation haircut, so I'm giving him a pass. Her going away outfit is 80% luscious fur coat and 20% corsage, which is the exact ratio of vintage outwear I like to adopt in cold weather, fancy dress situation. DO YOU SEE. HER HAIR. IN THE LAST PANEL. Do you see it? I am heartbroken that my own mane will only deign to be tamed in beehive style or braids, and resists curls at every turn, when I see gorgeous V-rolls and pomps combined in this gorgeous a fashion. Ugh! I want that hair! SO BAD!

I learned something from the caption of her aforementioned going away picture... Barbara is described as wearing "a blue wool suit, feather calot, and blonde fox fur jacket". A "calot", according to this Flickr photo and explanation,  is "a form-fitting hat which was popular in the 1950's and early 60's and would be worn to cocktail parties and supperclubs. This style hat is worn either forward to mimic bangs or back on the crown of the head to add *sparkle* to the dress ensemble and coiffure. The form fit and colorful feathers complimented the chic short hairstyles of the 50's and early 60's." Apparently, these were also popular in the forties'! I learn something new every day. I wonder what color Barbara's calot was, as it blends right into her hair!


3) Bert and Mary

 Even though I'm cuckoo over that fox fur jacket, I have to say Mary gets my "best dressed bride" award for the Scotch tam hat (left) and LEOPARD PRINT SWING COAT (like that Photo Friday gal two weeks ago!) with matching hat (right) in the photos below. Her husband looks kind of like Richard Kind from Spin City, but with a name like Bertram Stiff, Jr., I assume he is from good stock, and will be able to keep her in many fur-lined swing coats to come. He's described in the photo below as " 'Penn's plunging football powerhouse'...though obviously defenseless against Mary's blonde beauty". AWWWW. And a football hero to boot!

4) Mary Lee and Lewis

Last but not least, Mary Lee and Lewis are starting this romance out right. Let's look at the center photo: Afghan hound named "Ben"? Check. Fur coat, leather pumps, perfect makeup and hair? Check. Adoring new serviceman husband looking on with love? Check, check, check!

These two met in art school (see the hilarious, smocked photo below), and I could honestly not be more jealous of that square necked, black velvet dress and flower tiara our girl is wearing on her wedding day. Talk about good use of aesthetics! It's also cut that they were involved in the Art Student League's Costume Ball, where Lewis played an accordion and Mary Lee got over enthusiastic with the confetti and trimmings.

Click through on any of the couple's names for the original ad, as it appeared in the magazine. There's more to find out about these people (and lots more about Woodbury Facial Soap), if you're interested!

So what do you think? Which Woodbury Deb and her husband or husband to be is your favorite? Which wedding ensemble do you favor? Have you been buffeted by wedding and baby shower announcements lately, to your large scale delight or chagrin? Let's talk!

That's all for today, kids. See you back here tomorrow for Photo Friday!

One and Only: The Untold Story of "On the Road" (2011)

Good morning!

Monday night, I downloaded the audiobook version of One and Only: The Untold Story of On the Road, by Gerald Nicosia and Anne Marie Santos, just to fill out my mostly-read iPod audiobook playlist-- by yesterday afternoon, I had finished the recording, and what a fun ride. It's been years since I thought about my hip-deep, high school obsession with the Beat Generation, and picking up this book on a whim brought memories of daydreams I had almost ten years ago, all open highways and crowded Manhattan rent parties and typewriters clacking on into the night. Guys! If you like the beats, and if you like first-person memoirs of people's lives in the forties' and fifties', I am confident that you will like this book.

Luanne is "Mary Lou" to Jack Kerouac's "Sal Paradise" and Neal Cassady's immortal "Dean Moriarity", present for a great deal of the go, go, goings that make up most of On the Road, so isn't it just a TREASURE and a TREAT to listen to her recollections of those days for seven hours? I thought so. While nothing earth-shattering is revealed that I can remember, I just loved hearing more about what these icons of fifties' literature were like in actual, breathing, every day life. And how, even in 1978, a lot of mythology was already beginning to pop up around their life stories that may or may not line up with the reality.

Additionally, how ridiculously doll-like are these photos of Luanne and Neal? They're like movie stars:

One of the more appealing factors of One and Only is the Rashomon like perspective shift from what I've already read about two of the beat movements most famous members, Kerouac and Neal Cassady. Carolyn Cassady, ermine blonde second wife to Neal who also had a long-going affair with Jack, wrote a book about her life with both men called Heart Beat in 1976, which you'd better believe I gobbled up in the midst of my beat fervor back in the day. I think I must have read it five times in one summer, taking notes in a composition book about what other books and publications to cross reference later. If only I'd had this book then! In terms of comparison, One and Only is at a disadvantage, in that it is basically a (beautifully edited and annotated) transcript of several conversations Kerouac biographer Gerald Nicosia had with Luanne Henderson in 1978. However! Oh, to hear a romantic rival dismiss and re-contextualize some of the events from Carolyn Cassady's book, and affirm her own importance in the whole idea of the real life cast of On the Road. Luanne says more than twice that she feels she's been represented at best as a ditz and at worst as trailing after Neal Cassady long after he had lost interest in her, when that is, based on her own recollections and the facts of some of Cassady and Kerouac's movements, just not the case. I've got to read Heart Beat again, now, for the millionth time, to check back on some of the stuff in this book.

What I loved most about Luanne's book was just the going of it. From what I can remember, Carolyn's book had a lot about how she and Neal, and sometimes Kerouac, would set up housekeeping here, the men would all be drinking beer and smoking pot and hanging out and writing, and then Neal would do something nuts, like take all their savings, buy a new car, and headed West for a few weeks. Luanne would be one of the people he would pick up to take on these mad dash trips across America, so her perspective was actually from the passenger's seat of On the Road, rather than once they men had come home to roost. I love how she talks about the time period without that sense of importance or myth-making that lots of biographies and memoirs of beats and beat-hangers-on...they were just a bunch of crazy kids trying to have fun and live their lives. I think a lot of the feeling of being "on the road" is present in her book; while it seems to be happening elsewhere in other sources from the time. Does that make sense?

The Signet cover of On the Road and one of Kerouac's early sketches, circa 1952, for what he wanted the cover to look like (source)

Were you ever a huge "Beat" fan? Ever get super-really-into Burroughs, Ginsberg, or Kerouac? Have you taken a cross-country road trip of epic proportions, the likes of which someone should write about some day? Do tell!

Have you seen Jack Kerouac speak French before? You have now! French-Canadian, but still.

                                 


That's all for today! See you tomorrow.

Further reading:

• This 2012 interview with Carolyn Cassady, who is still alive and feeling cantankerous in England. There's a documentary done on her just recently, but it looks like the DVD's only available in PAL format :(
• I love this On the Road references cheat sheet from Wikipedia...doesn't it feel like a baseball program?

TV Center Showplace (Kroehler, 1954)

Good morning!

I was flipping through Google Books this morning and got my socks knocked RIGHT OFF by this September 1954 four page ad in Life magazine for...well, a myriad of products, all of which I wish were belonging to MEEEEEE:

Under the banner of "TV Center, the new 'show-place' of your home", Kroehler, Glidden Paint, Admiral Television, and Mohawk carpet all got together to promote their combined services in one, GORGEOUS living room set up. I really don't even know where to begin-- this is pretty much exactly what any vintage loving, mid-century mad, red-blooded American male or female would like their living room to look like on its best day. The furniture is obviously SPECTACULAR (I never met a mod couch I didn't like), but the details are also worth spotting! Do you see...

The arrangement of pictures of famous monuments flanked by atomic age sconce lamps? Not the two rectangle, two square format. Note the quickening of my pulse as my tiny heart tries to beat out of my body for these light fixtures.

The PAIR of pyramid shaped knickknack shelves? PAIR? The weird sculpture and head on the credenza? The credenza? Pinch pleat drapes?

Oh my goodness, oh my GOODNESS LOOK AT THE COFFEE TABLE. Circular? Brass tipped? Glass? Two tiered? Ladies and gents, please be on a lookout for this in the tri-state area for me...I think I'm in love for the first time, more than ever before! The floral arrangement, ashtray, and cigarette box aren't half bad either.

But wait! There's more!

On the facing page, you can see that the wall across from the sofa is MIRRORED, the tv is just as boxy and sharp in design as everything else, and there are porcelain, lute playing Japanese musician figurines atop it. Yes, sir! And YES! Admiral, Kroehler, Glidden, and Mohawk-- you are ok in my book.

I don't think these sofas come covered in plastic, but boy I wish they did. I wish I knew who would still be able to plasticize my chairs, in this, the year of our Lord 2013. Yes, I will take my Joan Crawford-isms from here to the end of the world-- think about how many years it would add to the life of my already far-older-than-me furniture pieces!

GOLD. PEOPLE. GOLD. This forest green is the same color I eventually want for the flooring of the den-- it's a finished garage with a concrete floor, so I think we may end up going with some kind of tile. Just like ye olde 1950's tile, but without the asbestos (and, in my secret hope of hopes, WITH the shuffleboard court design).

There's that head again! See it under the bookshelf on the right? Ceremonial tribal objects are probably not the first thing you want next to you as you sleep on your Kroehler Sleep-or-Lounge sofa...who knows what kind of angered ancient spirits might come out of it as you sleep? I'm not saying but I AM saying.

The powder blue and tweed, I love. Also, that paper lantern.

So THESE are the people who paint over wallpaper! Do you have any idea how difficult it is to remove painted-over wallpaper?! Fifties' Laura Dern and her twin fifties' Laura Dern sister need to cut it out!

PS: Did you know how to pronounce the word of the day, Kroehler? I'm embarrassed to say that I've spent a lot of my life avoiding saying this word around other people. Or substituting "Broyhill" even when I know better. Well, no more!

Which part of this fifties' living room is your favorite? Would you adopt/have you adopted any of the vintage color schemes like this in your own home? Do you know better than to paint over wallpaper, unlike Laura Dern? Let's talk!

That's all for today-- see you guys tomorrow!

Checking In

Good morning!

Well, people, it was pretty much the most awesome weekend ever. So awesome, I feel the need to chronicle it in my Monday morning post. I have a lot on my plate at work today, but let's hit the highlights! Items:

((teenybopper screaming ensues))

• Friday: Eartha and I did not die in the Great Freezing Rain Storm of 2013-- while the back roads of Ashland City were initially a little confusing to us ("Does this road just end? What is with this stop light?"), we did make it through and found some goofy little goods to take back to town. Among other things, I got a stack of early 80's Twilight Zone: the Magazine issues and more hankies than anyone should honestly own; Eartha guilted herself into buying a blue-eyeshadowed, human faced fifties' plush cat and some UH-DORABLE children's books. Run over and see her post on her finds here. It was fuuuuuuun!
• Saturday: I hit the flea market for day one with my pappy. Later that day, Matthew was called in to his secret side line gig as an Elvis impersonator (you thought he couldn't be cuter? You were wrong), and check this out for an event-- it was the Humane Society's annual fundraising dinner/dog fashion show, "Unleashed". The mayor was there. Nudie apprentice and suitmaker extraordinaire Manuel was there. I even saw Mike Wolfe in a weird, awesome, glitzed out Roy Acuff style cowboy jacket standing near the cordoned off media area. Not only were we at this swanky hotel on West End, not only were there freakin' dogs of every size and color everywhere, but Matthew actually got paid to attend! The life of a musician never ceases to amaze me. We ate crazy good pad Thai at the Smiling Elephant afterwards, and went home to watch old episodes of Project Runway. Roaring success of a Saturday.
• Sunday: Rae and her husband Travis called us up to hit the flea market for last-day discounts, and boy, they had no sooner to say "You guys free this morning?" than we were at the fairgrounds, rarin' to go! We had many laughs and seriously, those two must have had their regular eyes removed and replaced with hawk eyes, because they are GOOD at spotting the best stuff. We even ran into fellow Nashville bloggers Jenna and Elizabeth at one kitsch strewn table, which was crazy, because again, this weekend for me was like "here are all the bloggers you like, but in REAL LIFE." Though, I guess if you wanted to get a good shot of meeting up with Nashville's die-hard pickers, between estate sales and the flea market, you're going to spot one of us in our natural habitat, haha. I got a whole plastic sackful of dresses and a couple little knickknack guys. My love affair with the flea market continues.

Sadly, I was too busy having fun to take pictures! But I have made this representative collage of some of the things I found:

Now, these are all similar items from ebay or etsy instead of the actual thing in my home, but I think they're pretty similar to the finds, and will do in a pinch! Clockwise from top left: 1937 Homer Laughlin "Briar Rose" pattern dishes, $11 (16 pcs, four cups,  four saucers, four salad plates, four dinner plates...no crazing and only one cracked cup...must keep on the lookout for bowls!); a Himalayan Salt Lamp, $8 (I didn't know what it was when I bought it, and I'm still not 100% sure what it does, but it looks so cool!); 10 vintage hankies of similarly bright graphics, $8 (including one of the Empire State Building); and a 1953 "Eh! Cumpari" novelty charm bracelet, $5. The musical instruments on the chain are all different instruments mentioned in the song "Eh! Cumpari". You coulda knocked me over with a feather!

Today, I've got another lead on some Craigslist bounty-- will have to let you know later in the week if it pans out, but keep your little fingers crossed for me! I think it is the FINAL ITEM to be put in the den. You thought I'd forgotten, but I haven't! Here's a preview pic plus Matthew (like a quarter, I can use him to demonstrate scale):

Intrigued? You should be; I am SO. EXCITED. ABOUT. THIS ROOM. Now, if we could only get that DANG carpet up (patience is a virtue).

What all did you get into this weekend? Did you find anything good at the sales? Let's talk!

I gotta jet so I can get crackin' on the workload, but I will see you guys here tomorrow!

Photo Friday: See the Painted Desert Edition

Good morning! Eartha and I are about to brave the freezing rain to drive up to Ashland City for one of Family Tree's estate sales, so if you don't hear from us by Monday, expect that we are in some Oregon Trail type situation, except replace the Conestoga with a Honda, and replace fording the river with trying to figure out if the highway is covered in black ice or not. The things we do to hunt for vintage stuff!!!!

Anyway, before I hit the road, here's a quick post from a Flickr stream of color photos from 1947 (it's my new favorite year) of the user's parent's honeymoon. And aren't they just CAPITAL vacation snaps?

One, I love how the mom is dressed exactly as I would imagine Hepburn on vacation-- trim grey slacks, brown laceups, brown belt, white soft collared shirt, great color blocked sweater. And she's threatening to throw a snowball at us! That scamp!

This is the dad, somewhere in the Painted Desert. Their 1947 post-nuptials vacation seems to have mainly been in Arizona, but the first picture is from Colorado of that same year (even though the couple is from Minnesota). They got around the country that year! See the dad's gold wrist watch, high waisted pants, and great smile.

All the snaps from the canyon itself are amazing-- it's so interesting to see the timelessness of that backdrop even almost seventy years later. The mother's plaid skinny strapped day dress is ACTUALLY KILLING ME. It's funny, but I can't remember seeing a lot of so bare-at-the-top summer wear in actual candid, vernacular photographs-- on fashion models, yes, but here's a pretty newlywed in a spaghetti strapped dress out in public in the day time-- and think about how hot it must have been! I don't blame her. Do you see the cute little black leather handbag with its similarly thin straps?

The shoes! The embroidery on the shoes! The tiny, slight wedge!

In this picture, the sweater from the Hepburn picture joins the strappy dress at an elevation of twelve thousand feet! No wonder she needed additional warm garments. Doesn't the girl look like Ingrid Bergman in this picture (high praise in my book)?

SO. BEAUTIFUL. SO! BEAUTIFUL!

Hiking and for some reason carrying a wrapped present (?), our heroine dons a freakin' adorable cap, rolls up some perfect 1940's denim trousers, and exposes her light blue socks to the world. She makes it look easy to throw together an athletic outdoors outfit!

I really like the markings on this "Newspaper Rock" and am again struck by the timelessness...the same marking that were there in 1847 are there in 1947 and will be there again in 2047. Amazing. Do you see the weird mammal looking thing in the center near the sun? My favorite.

"Look westward, angel!"

Aaaah! I want to see the coffee AND the curios! I am curios curious! Cute snap and look at all the cars and the adobe like building.

Now this is just cruel-- what are the trees of mystery! I don't have time to look the up right now, but let me know if you know!

If you like these, be sure to check out the rest of the user's Flickr stream http://www.flickr.com/photos/krispics/sets/72057594101879581/with/365486744/ of their mom and dad...OMG THE WEDDING PICTURE. YOU NEED TO SEE THIS WEDDING PICTURE. I am in love with the hair, the veil, the dress, the corsage-- she looks like $1,000,000 cash!

That's all for this week...wish us luck at the sales and I will see you Monday!!

Catfish: The TV Show (2012)

Good morning!

source

Boy oh boy-- confession time. I am a HUGE fan of tv shows that have an extensive full episode web presence. I don't have a cable subscription, and am always on the hunt for something I can marathon up online and hearken back to olden days with my college roommate, eating a pizza, breaking down the events of the night before ("I did WHAT? He said WHAT? Do you have my phone?"), and wishing away a hangover with consecutive episodes of Law and Order: SVU or Project Runway (Caroline, I miss you!). Last night, to celebrate the first meeting of the last class I'm taking for my master's degree, Matthew and I did get a pizza (a Whole Foods, vegan pizza, so it was less guilty than the Papa Johns of yore) and queue'd up a several episode spree of Catfish: The TV Show for our viewing pleasure. Now, I haven't watched an MTV property since sometime just before The Hills became "a thing", so I wasn't expecting much-- but I have to admit, I am ABSOLUTELY into this semi-reality-documentary type serial television event. Have you heard of it? Seen it?

WE. LOVE. THIS.

Host Nev Schulman was the subject of an independent documentary a few years back, also called Catfish, which dissected his own failed online romance as it happened. The girl he'd been chatting with in a call-you-everyday, check your email every five minutes, as-real-as-an-internet-only-romance-can-get turned out to be less of the city dwelling, freespirited, twenty-ish Leslie Mann lookalike she presented herself as online, and more of a suburban, middle aged, mother of two who bore no resemblance whatsoever to the photos of the woman Nev thought he'd been dating. Riveting, right? "If you're not who you say you are, then who are you?" is a question that makes for GOOD. DRAMA. on the big reveal of who the person really is and WHY they pretended to be someone else.

The show takes that idea and follows a person in an online relationship (sometimes for years!) with someone who they've never met in real life, and attempts to get them together with the person...in real life.

OH. NO. SHE. DID. NOT. (This one did not go so well) (Spoiler alert, almost none of them go well)

Wondering what the title means? According to Urban Dictionary: "A catfish is someone who pretends to be someone they're not using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances." Now, not all the people on Catfish: The TV Show are actually 100% not-who-they-say-they-are-- but I will tell you, every single one of them has SOME kind of deception going on or information that should have been disclosed in the interest of continuing their relationship. My thing is, ok, everyone in my general age group with access to the internet has probably had at least one friend or acquaintance or something that they've never met with in real life, that they also would correspond with on a regular basis. Right? Do you remember someone daring you to IM this one guy's friend that they know from working at Blockbuster or three way call this other guy who went to summer school with so and so's boyfriend, and you'd end up talking to them, haha, and see where that went? You might send an email back and forth in those pre-text message days, but you'd never get around to actually hanging out in real life. I understand the lure of "meeting people" on the internet-- but my question for you guys: wouldn't you actually have to MEET them after a certain period to call it a real relationship? I've internet dated, and successfully, in the past, but I only ever used the internet as a means to set up a real life meeting, not the basis around which to construct the entire context of the relationship. Am I wrong? Isn't that how it should ideally work?

These  guys'  insistent taste in glasses' frames aside, I like them pretty well as the singular voices of reason in the show.

Between this show, "Nice Guys of OkCupid", and Dateline,  and that whole Manti Te'o's dead fictional girlfriend, you really wouldn't think there were any normal people out there on the internet or people just freakin' not misrepresenting themselves on the internet out there! But I can't stop watching it. No joke, we watched like five episodes back to back, shouting at the TV "YOU KNOW THAT IS NOT HIS REAL PICTURE. HE DOES NOT LOOK LIKE THAT IN REAL LIFE." as a pretty, perfectly nice, if vulnerable exotic dancer in one episode shyly showed the picture of the guy she'd been talking to for a year. The guy in the (obviously professional modeling shots) picture ended up being a real person-- just not the real person she was talking to. UGH! THE FRUSTRATION OF THIS SHOW! She could have got a guy like that in real life, is the thing-- just as handsome and caring as the one she thought she was in a relationship with. The girl was attractive enough, and nice enough-- but ignoring warning bells of "this is too good to be true", she wasted a year of her life in something that wasn't even real. And I put the blame more squarely on the deceiving one than the deceived ..but STILL.

It reminds me of nothing so much as the people who come up to the help desk (I'm talking more than five) for help on the public computers, claiming a laptop or a $500 Walmart certificate or some speciously suspicious thing they've "just won". "I just need you to help me claim it after I answer these surveys, it says something about a credit card," one told me. Shouldn't there be public service announcements about this kind of stuff? Maybe someone, sometime, in the history of the internet, has won a laptop for nothing-- but I guarantee you a lot more people have laptops that just saved up money and went to the store and bought it. Ditto to a relationship with some supermodel looking guy-- what is the ratio, in internet dating, of urbane, smart, but lonely professional models to obese, homely, socially awkward, lying single dudes out there? Hint: it is way more likely that you are talking to someone who bears more in common to Harry Knowles than Harry Connick, Jr. in this whole internet crapshoot thing.

Picture at left usually looks more like picture at right if picture at left is submitted as profile pic. That's just science.

Am I just too susceptible to these feelings? Too harsh? Do I love crazy reality shows too much? Is that a crime? Watch the craziest episode I've seen (below) or check out the website links below that for more info. It's addictive, right?

                 

Catfish: The TV Show - Full Episodes

Have you ever had a strictly online relationship (especially in the late nineties'/early 2000's)? Did you ever go on a date with someone you met online? Are there humans out there on the internet, or are our online romance options in 2013 limited to attractive seeming bots? Let's talk! I'm all fired about this one.

That's all for today-- see you guys tomorrow for Photo Friday!

Weekend Finds (Various and Sundry)

Good morning!

I realized yesterday in posting the moon that I had a backlog of things to show you guys from weekend finds. Didn't get a chance to take pictures of all my loot, but here are some pretty neat knickknacks I've picked up in the last month or so. Wanna see?

I have told you before and I will tell you again, Phoenix Flea Market in Old Hickory is a dark horse in terms of your Nashville, brick and mortar weekend picking options, but that is in your favor! It's right down the road from the Hermitage Goodwill, part of a sweep I try to do at least once a month that includes Southern Thrift in Donelson, and always features at least two or three little things I am excited to pick up. Yes, there are purses and baby clothes and all the other kind of stuff that comes with not being "specifically" an antique store, but there are also tons of antiques for really reasonable prices. Case in point: this Baret Ware "Desk Basket/ Cachepot" (I would have never guessed! Seriously, I think I might have called it a "letter bucket thing") featuring Raby Castle. According to the official website, Raby Castle is "one of England's finest mediaeval [sic] castles...Built by the mighty Nevill family in the 14th Century, Raby remained in the Nevill family until 1569 when after the failure of the Rising of the North, the Castle and its lands were forfeited to the Crown. In 1626, Sir Henry Vane the Elder purchased Raby and the Castle has remained in the Vane family ever since." Well! If I'm ever in Darlington, County Durham, I will have to pop over.

I think I was on a semi-Downton Abbey induced spree as I picked up this turn-of-the-century print on the same trip, also at Phoenix. I have placed an embargo on framed items in the house, as it's beginning to look a little like the National Portrait Gallery in some rooms, but this picture was so startlingly full-color that I walked by twice and finally decided to grab it. At $25, it was less expensive than an estate sale, but more expensive than a yard sale, and who cares, as usual, I have more money than sense:

I couldn't get a good enough picture of it, but the image almost looks three dimensional owing to the quality of the hand coloring. The scene just about leaps at the viewer as you stand in front of it. I bet that's the same quality that led some homemaker over a hundred years ago to choose it when it was originally for sale. Doesn't that blow your mind, sometimes? To think about the person who bought whatever vintage or antique thing you're considering buying, in a store however many years ago, going through the same decision making process you yourself are faced with in terms of buying the bauble? Crazy, right?

The details here are so neat-- the standing woman's pink voile wrap over a yellow and white striped gown. The blush rose red and deep blue of the mother and younger daughter's dresses. The far off backdrop of a river scene and the real palm fronds in the foreground! I love it all.

There was a bin of buttons in one of the booth that were about 80% nineties' airline promotional and political buttons, and then, for some reason, these four, which appealed to me for obvious reasons:

It's like they can see inside my MIND....ladies and gentlemen, Vinnie Barbarino, Liz Taylor, Judy Garland, and JCVD. Did I mention these are all about the size of your palm? 

Here's the dress I was telling you about yesterday from the same thrift store as the moon. Doesn't it look totally contemporary? I actually almost passed up trying it on because I thought it was a recent department store brand dress. 

Tag still attached! I just noticed.

Finally, the quality of the velvet detail (can you see the lines in the material?) and the eye-blinder of a rhinestone buckle sold me. As I was in the dressing room trying it on, I found this sixties' department store tag! Would you believe?

According to this news article from 2007, "Grover Cronin Dept. Store, Moody Street's legendary retail giant, was the local equivalent of Macy's in New York City. Folks flocked from afar to shop there - especially during the holidays." It operated from 1884-1989. I guess Grover Cronin was to Waltham, Massachusetts as Caster Knott's was to Nashville, Tennessee, a major local department store to rival Sears and Penney's. I ne-e-e-e-ever see these early sixties' kinds of dresses, or very rarely, at Goodwill, so I was pleased that I managed NOT to overlook it a third time, and managed to take it home with me.

Last but not least, I had convinced myself not to stop at the East Nashville Goodwill but then stopped by anyway, and the first thing I saw coming in the door was this freakin' amazing sixties' woven souvenir/tourist bag. I have one like this, except in brown straw and with the word "JAMAICA" spelled out in yarn on its lid (!!); this one features the same yarn-and-woven-straw flower detail, but the little southwestern style buckle and taupe and brown color scheme are k-i-i-i-i-i-i-illing me. $5.99. WIN.

How about you? Have you found any great baubles or trinkets in your treasure hunting lately? I really cannot WAIT to go to the flea market on Saturday.

That's all for today; see you kids back here tomorrow! :)