Liebster Award Nomination

I was nominated for a Liebster award by Joanna of Dividing Vintage Moments and Sean of The Fictionista.  Thank you ladies, I feel quite honored.

Here's the rundown on the Liebster Award:

It's a token of recognition that bloggers award to fellow bloggers who they think deserve more recognition. The terminology "Liebster" roughly translates to "Dearest" from German, and the guidelines of this award are as follows:


You must answer the 11 questions set by the blogger who nominated you.
You yourself then pick 11 blogs who in turn have under 200 followers.
You must then think of 11 questions for the blogs you have picked and also tell them.
You must link back to the blog that nominated you.


Here are the blogs that I nominate:

I apologize if your blog has previously been nominated.  If that is the case, you don't have to respond, unless you want to, just rejoice in the fact that we must really like your blog!  Same holds true if I have mistakenly chosen someone that has more than 200 followers.

Bunny - Bunny's Victory
Jennifer - Frocks and Frivolties
Kayla - Gracefully Vintage
Wendi - Haute Rockabilly Fashionista
Deborah - Hellcat Vintage
Mellem - The Universe of Miss M
Tim & Jesse - Like Johnny and June
CoriLynn - Poodles and Pincurls
Stephanie - Ruby's Musings
Deb - Seahorses & Pearls
Catherine - Vintage Frills



Here are the answers to my questions from Joanna:

1. What is your favorite era?  I would have to say the Old Hollywood glamour of the 1930s.  I adore the the glamorous, bias cut, figure hugging dresses.  I just don't have the figure to wear them. lol
   
2. What inspires you about vintage?  Why do you think you gravitate towards vintage?  I spent a lot of time at my Grandmother's growing up and she had a house full of antiques, things that she got when she first got married and never replaced them.  So I grew up with these things in my life.  For a time this made me seek out more modern things in my own life, but over time I began to long to have those old familiar items near me once more.  I've learned to appreciate the craftsmanship, detail and quality that you find in vintage.
   
3. What is the craziest thing you've done in your life? Nothing too crazy because I became a mother at a very young age, so I've been pretty settled down for most of my life.  However, having 6 children is a pretty crazy thing to do!
   
4. Do you have a vintage dream outfit that you've seen or would like?  Please describe, is it currently on the market?  I would love to have an Alfred Shaheen sarong dress or a 40s Lilli Ann suit.
   
5. If you were given $200 and told you had to spend it on vintage, what would you buy?  I have a wish list a mile long.  I would probably start with some swing trousers because I don't have any actual vintage pants in my wardrobe.  Or a pair of Re-mix or Miss L-Fire shoes.
   
6. What are some of your goals for the next year?  I want to rearrange and organize my house, paint and redecorate, as well as do some landscaping.  I would love to read more.  Travel to somewhere I've never been.  Sew a slipcover for my couch.  Learn how to resize a pattern.  Become healthier and get more sleep.
   
7. How would you describe your style?  Classic
   
8. What is your favorite outfit that you currently own?  I don't really have a favorite.  Is that sad?
   
9. Have you ever attended a large vintage event?  Did you wear vintage?  The Mister and I took some of the kids to a Renaissance Faire many years ago.  Of course that's probably a little further back in history than you were talking about :-) but it was a lot of fun.  We did not wear vintage to the event, but we did purchase a couple costumes at the Faire for our twin boys.  The Mister and I renewed our wedding vows that year with a Renaissance themed wedding and our boys wore those costumes.
   
10. Best (deal) vintage find?  I have a vintage 1950s wool coat with a mink collar that was given to me by my cousin.  She owned a thrift store and the coat was brought in.  When she saw it, she thought of me and gave it to me.
    
11. What is your favorite antique item you have bought?  (It doesn't have to be clothing)  I didn't buy these, I inherited them, but my Grandmother's Hoosier cabinet, her assorted pieces of pink depression glass, and her heirloom peonies.

And here are the answers to my questions from Sean:

1. Besides what you blog is dedicated to, what are some of your other interests?  My blog is a hodge podge  of my interests, so you get to see many of them already, but outside of those I am into genealogy, gardening, home decorating, photography, and party planning.  There are more, but I'll stop there.
   
2. If you won the lottery, what would you do with the money?  Take my parents on a long vacation, buy each of my kids a home, sell my house, buy a vintage travel trailer and hit the road!
   
3. What made you want to start a blog?  I wanted to meet other vintage lovers like myself and share my experiences with them.
   
4. What took you on the journey to embrace vintage?  It has been something I have been interested in for many years and started collecting household items and kitchenware long before I started collecting vintage clothing.  I guess it was just a natural progression.
   
5. Have you met any kindred spirits through the world of blogging?  So, so many wonderful vintage loving friends in the blogging community.  You guys are the best!
   
6. What does your SO/family think of your vintage lifestyle/blogging?  The Mister loves my vintage/retro look and he's a very good sport about letting me bounce post ideas off of him and playing photographer when we are out and about.
   
7. Do you have a favorite decade in fashion and/or history {or both}?  My favorite fashion decade would be the 1930s. (See question number 1 in the first set of questions above)  and my favorite time in history
   
8. Who is your biggest inspiration and why?  My Grandmother because she made do on very little in life and through out it all, she kept her faith and lived by her beliefs.
   
9. Dresses or separates?  I own more separates but I'm partial to dresses.
   
10. Your favorite item currently {does not have to be vintage}?  My fuzzy pink bunny bedroom slippers.
    
11. What is your favorite quote?  Philippians 4:13 - I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me

And finally, here are the questions for my nominees:

1. What have you learned from blogging?
2. How much time do you spend working on your blog?
3. What is your guilty pleasure?
4. Are you punctual or tardy?
5. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?
6. What's your favorite book, tv program, and film?
7. If you could throw a dinner party and invite anyone in the world, living or not, who would you invite and why?
8. Do you have a particular style icon or guru?
9. What do you draw inspiration from, magazines, films, blogs or something else?
10. If you had to live in any other time period besides now, which one would you pick?
11. What is proudest moment thus far? 

It's Jackie Kennedy Month

September 1953: Jacqueline, née Bouvier, photographed by Horst P. Horst,
on the announcement of her marriage to Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts  
Photo Source

This month holds the birthday of one of my favorite style icons, Jackie Kennedy, and in celebration we will be exploring her life and her classic style.  

I look forward to learning more about this amazing lady and sharing it with you.  So stay tuned.

On This Day: Gone With the Wind

On this day in 1936, Margaret Mitchell's novel, Gone with the Wind, was published. It went on to be one of the best selling novels of all time and the basis for the 1939 movie.

In 1926, after a series of physical injuries, Margaret was forced to quit her job as a reporter at the Atlanta Journal. She grew restless with so much time on her hands, and with the aid of her typewriter, a gift from her husband, she began telling the story of an Atlanta belle named Pansy O'Hara.

In telling the story of Pansy's life through the Civil War and beyond, Margaret drew on the tales she had heard from her parents and other relatives, as well as Confederate war veterans she had met as a young girl. She was very secretive about her work but she eventually gave the manuscript to an editor from MacMillan Publishing. He encouraged her to complete the novel, with one important change: the heroine's name. Margaret agreed, changed it to Scarlett, and now it's one of the most memorable names in the history of literature.

When it was published, Gone with the Wind caused a sensation in Atlanta and went on to sell millions of copies in the United States and throughout the world. It drew some criticism for its romanticized view of the Old South and its slaveholding elite, but its epic tale of war, passion and loss captivated readers far and wide. In 1937 Margaret won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and by this time a movie project was already in the works. The film was produced by Hollywood giant David O. Selznick, who paid Mitchell a record-high $50,000 for the film rights to her book.

Even though they were plagued with problems on set, Gone with the Wind nonetheless became one of the highest-grossing and most acclaimed movies of all time, breaking box office records and winning nine Academy Awards out of 13 nominations.

If you have never read Gone With The Wind, I highly recommend it. This is easily my most favorite novel of all time and is so much more in depth than the film. You really get a sense of who Scarlett truly is and why she does the things she does to survive.

Decades of Hair

If you didn't know this about me already, I like experimenting with my hair.  I get bored having the same hairstyle, day in and day out, so I will try different techniques as subtle as changes in roller placement, as well as drastic changes in length and color.

Here, let me insert that even though my hair has gone through lots of changes over the years, at one point I did have the same hairstyle for about 10 years - long and straight with the occasional curl.

Before that, I never really kept it the same for long, it was super short for a while, then I would grow it out, then it would be mid length, then short again, until I finally grew it out and just left it. I'm not sure why I left it like that for so long.  Maybe I became attached to it, like a security blanket.

Then about two years ago, after having it pretty much the same for all of those years, I decided that I was stuck in a rut and in danger of becoming one of those little old ladies with long grey hair, and I cut it all off.  Do you think maybe I was having a mid-life crisis?

Cutting my hair pretty much coincided with my decision to delve into the vintage world.   I had tried my hand at replicating hairstyles of the past on several occasions before, with some success, but still had no idea how to truly accomplish the looks I wanted. Then one day, shortly after cutting my hair and while recuperating from major shoulder surgery, I was lying in bed surfing through Youtube videos and ran across Ashley from Lisa Freemont Street.  I was mesmerized,  here was this gorgeous, young woman sporting a vintage hairstyle and showing me just how to achieve that look.  Needless to say, I was hooked.

Since that day, I have tried a plethora of hairstyles from different eras, trying to find what I like best, what suits my facial features best, and basically just having fun with lots of trial and error.

When I started writing this post, I looked back over some photographs of vintage hairstyles that I have tried to achieve and realized that they covered five decades of styles and I thought, how fun it would be to share those with you.  But, as I began writing, it also occurred to me that in another years time I will be turning 50 and will have truly sported five decades of hairstyles of my very own.  How cool is that? - Except for the turning 50 part which could really be depressing if I thought about it. - Let's skip that fact.

Deciding what I wanted to share with you, and just how far in the past to travel, I thought, why not share it all.  Nearly 100 years worth of hairstyles! Now, where to start?  I think we shall work from this decade back in time.

{2010s}

{2000s}

{1990s}

{1980s}

{1970s}

{1960s}

and present day
{1960s}

{1950s}

{1940s}

{1930s}

{1920s}

Out With Google Reader, In With Bloglovin

Hello my lovelies! Just a quick little reminder that as of Monday, Google Reader will be no more, so if you read all of the blogs you follow from there, like I did, try switching over to Bloglovin. It's very simple.

Image Source

First, follow the link to Bloglovin and create your account. It will then ask you if you want to import the blogs you read on Google Reader to your Bloglovin account. Click the button to import them and that's all there is to it.

If you prefer to read your favorite blogs on your phone or iPad, here is the Bloglovin’ app!

Thank you all for being such loyal readers. I feel so lucky! Now make sure and Follow my blog with Bloglovin!!  That way you won't miss out on anything =)

Or, if readers aren't your thing, of course you can opt for email updates instead! (See the box to the right.)

I'm not sure if Google Friend Connect is going to continue to work or not so for now I will be leaving it as an option for you as well.

Now, go, get your read on!