Announcing the $100 Amazon.com gift certificate winner

Entries poured in around the clock for Chronically Vintage’s recent giveaway, which was held in conjunction with my husband’s terrific new book notification website, Any New Books?, and today I’m pleased as punch to announce that we’ve drawn the lucky winner (via an online random number generator).

Maestro, a drum roll, if you please... The wining comment was number seven, which just happens to belong to one of the sweetest gals on the internet, Kathie from the blog Just a Happy Housewife.


{Our lucky winner hails from the wonderful site, Just a Happy Housewife, which if you aren’t familiar with, I urge you to check out; it’s a truly beautiful, happy little corner of the web that is worth visiting often.}


Warmest congratulations, Kathie! I’m delighted that you won and hope that you’ll let me know what sorts of delightful new goodies you pick up with your $100.00 amazon.com gift certificate.

Huge thanks go out to each and every one of you who took part in this contest (and who signed up for Any New Books?). I really enjoyed letting you know about Any New Books?, and truly appreciate your support of it (as we try spread the good word about it to fellow book fans near and far).

Congratulations again, Kathie, I hope you have scores of fun on your Amazon shopping spree! And thanks again as well to all those who helped make this giveaway such a wonderful success! Fear not if you didn’t win this time around, I’ve got several other (vintage themed) contests in the works for the remainder of 2010 and well into next year, so there’s always another chance for you to win! :)

We’re giving away a $100.00 Amazon gift certificate!

“Books”, said American author William Feather, “open your mind, broaden your mind, and strengthen you as nothing else can.” These sentiments are ones that have always rung true in my own life, and upon meeting my husband, I discovered echoed in his as well.

Both of us have held a deeply rooted love of books and reading from the earliest of days, so it hardly came as a surprise to me a few months ago when my husband (Tony) came up with a splendid idea for an online book notification service that would, each week, alert members about new titles that had been released in the past week in their favourite categories.

Called anynewbooks.com, the straightforward website that my husband and I proceeded to produce works like this: you visit the site, select one or more categories from a list of (currently) 42 different genres of books (there truly is something for everyone!), enter your email address, and presto, once a week we’ll send you an email newsletter with a selection of newly released books in the categories of your choice (one email per category).

I know that many of us are massive fans of old (antique and/or vintage) books, but by the same token, I think it’s safe to say a substantial percentage of us love reading modern day books that cover vintage related topics. From fiction set during WW2 to biographies on our favourite vintage stars, books covering the endlessly interesting world of vintage fashion to tomes of photography ripe with vintage images, there are newly released books about some of our most beloved subjects all the time, and through Any New Books?, you can select categories that are likely to include such topics (I have a hand in the weekly book selections, so if I spy a new title about something vintage related, you bet your bookmark that it will be included in its respective category’s list of fresh releases that week!).


{Clearly this wildly chic 1950s woman shares our love of finding great reads via anynewbooks.com :D Vintage photo of an immensely elegant booklover via My Vintage Vogue on Flickr.}


Any New Books? Is an entirely free email notification service that’s here to ensure that you never miss a great new book (on the subjects that are nearest to your heart) again. To celebrate its recent launch and to share this great site with my lovely blogging visitors and friends, Any New Books? And Chronically Vintage are joining forces to giveaway a $100.00 (US) Amazon.com gift certificate to one lucky reader!

This contest (which is open to visitors worldwide) will run between today and Monday October 4, 2010 (the giveaway will officially close at 11:59pm EST that night), with the lucky winner being selected (via a random number generator) – and announced here on Chronically Vintage – the next following day.


How to enter

In order to enter this giveaway, swing by anynewbooks.com and sign up. Once you’ve done so come back here and let me know you’ve joined.

If you’d like to increase your odds of winning the $100.00 Amazon.com gift certificate, there are three additional ways for you to do:

-Leave a comment here telling me about your favourite category of books (are you a sci-fi diva, history hound, teen lit fan, cookbook queen?) or about your favourite book of all time. I’d love to hear about the fiction and non-fiction genres and titles alike that interest my wonderful readers the most!

- Post about this giveaway, including a link back to this announcement post on Chronically Vintage and one to anynewbooks.com, on your own blog in which you inform your readers about this fun giveaway (please feel free to use the photo above in your own post, crediting its original Flickr poster). Once you’ve written about the contest, come back here and let me know you’ve done so by leaving a comment with a link to your post.

-Spread the good word about anynewbooks.com via Twitter or Facebook. Again, be sure to jot down a comment letting me know you’ve done so.


Please feel free to enter the contest however many of the four ways you’d like, just be sure that you let me know about each entry in a separate comment, to better enhance your chances of winning (four comments for example, would give you four entries into the contest, thus four potential chances to win!). Please remember to post a separate comment for each entry!


Fellow booklovers, my husband and I both want to wish thank you all in advance for your support of Any New Books?, it truly means a lot to us and will go a long way in helping us to spread the word about this super useful service. Happy reading and best of luck to everyone who participates in this great giveaway!

And the winner of the CollectibleSpectacle giveaway is...

...None other than the absolutely fabulous Traci from The Bakery. Congratulations, Traci dear, please email any time you wish so that I can forward your details onto CollectibleSpectacle and you can get down to the super fun task of picking out your favourite pair of gorgeous vintage eyeglasses.



{Yeeeeh, Traci! If you haven’t had a chance to swing by Traci’s blog, be sure to treat yourself and head over there right now for a hearty dose of vintage goodness.}

This stellar giveaway generated a fantastic response, resulting in a total of 75 comments. This morning using a random number generator (click here if you’d like to see a screen shot of the random number that was generated), entry #55 popped up as the wonderful winner of this giveaway.

I want to thank each and every one of you who took the time to enter, tweet, post about, or otherwise help spread the news about the CollectibleSpectacle giveaway. Through your posts, I discovered several brand-new-to-me blogs and also had the joy of hearing from long-time blogging friends.

Massive congrats again, Traci! For those who didn’t win, please fear not, I already have future giveaways in the works for other enchanting items, which I hope you’ll all love too!

Announcing the winner of the $100 LA Vintage online shopping spree

This month Chronically Vintage had the pleasure of teaming up with one of the hottest online retro and vintage sellers, LA Vintage, to bring you a wonderfully fun giveaway for a $100 online shopping spree on their site.

Scores of entry poured in over the two weeks that this contest, which wrapped up at 11:59pm EST last night, was going on, and today I have the absolute joy of announcing the lucky winner (whose comment number was drawn using an online random number generator).

Without further ado, the winner is comment number 5, which just happens to belong to none other than the phenomenally gorgeous and talented, Mary Van Notes.


{Mary’s impeccable vintage style, intelligent whit, adorable cartoon drawings, and entertaining blog entries are endlessly interesting and inspiring. If you don’t already count her amongst your friends, hop on over to Mary’s blog and check out the world of vintage wonder this fantastic gal has created!}


Huge congratulations, Mary, I’m so thrilled for you and hope you have an absolute blast picking up a new vintage treasure or two for yourself amongst the wonderful wears that LA Vintage offers. Please contact me via email whenever you like, sweet dear, with your name and the email address you’d like to receive your $100 coupon code from LA Vintage at.

Scores of thanks go out to each and every one of you who participated in this contest (you left a combined total of 84 comments!); I sincerely appreciate you doing so and loved reading each of your comments. Fear not, even if you didn’t win this time around, there will be plenty of other contests held on Chronically Vintage in the future (I already have another one in the works for later this spring).

You’re all the greatest, thanks again for entering this lovely giveaway. I really hope you each have a gorgeous Monday and week ahead, my darlings!

I won the most darling Lagelle hand-knit, vintage inspired hat!

This post is massively overdue, and I really must apologize about that. Last December I was selected as the lucky winner of a giveaway that the fantastically wonderful Lagelle held on her blog, Lagelle, the Art of accessorizing.

Her contest was the first (and to date, only) blog contest I’ve ever had the joy of winning. Given the time of the year lovely news that I’d won arrive during, it literally felt like I’d received an early Christmas present.

Lagelle has a passion for the vintage fashions of several decades, as evident by the continually delightful array of wardrobe filled posts (both of herself and those she finds inspirational), and which shares through the wonderfully chic, delightfully fun hand-knit, 1920s inspired hats she creates and sells on her site, Lagelle.com.

Sweet-as-a-cupcake Lagelle gave me the choice of a few different hat styles and colour combinations to pick from, and I settled on a timeless mix of burgundy and grey (complete with a darling little knit bow) for my new hand crafted chapeau.

I honestly did not have a single cold weather hat when this winter rolled around, so not only was winning Lagelle’s giveaway a beautiful boost to my wardrobe, it also proved to be immensely practical in the face of a typically chilly Canadian winter.

I wore my new hat nearly every day over the course of the colder months and received scores of compliments and "Where’d you get that adorable hat from?" queries (from bank tellers, strangers on the street, people in line at the grocery store, cute hispster girls at the mall – even a charming elderly woman on the bus one morning). I was only too happy to inform each and every one of them that my hat was a handmade creation from Lagelle.com.



{An entirely “of the moment” snapshot (in other words, we didn’t plan a photo shoot) that my husband nabbed of me wearing my gorgeous Lagelle hat one weekend afternoon last January. We’d just returned home from a day of running errands in the bitingly cold winter wind – during which time my head stayed wonderfully warm thanks to this darling knit chapeau.}


While I’m eager to welcome spring’s arrival with open arms, one of the very few things I’ll miss come the dog days of summer will be wearing my sweetly adorable hat out and about wherever I go. Until next winter though, my charming Lagelle creation sits atop the head of a dear pink teddy bear of mine (a beloved gift from my mother many years ago) on my bedroom nightstand, ready at a moment’s notice for an unseasonably cold day or the first hint of autumn's return.

Thank you so very much, Lagelle, for selecting me as the winner of your marvellous giveaway! Receiving your timelessly pretty, soft wool hat was one of the highlights of this past winter for me. Functional and stylish, your hat makes me smile every time I see it and is such a fantastic reminder of the shared passion for vintage fashion we both share.

Giving away a $100 online shopping spree from LA Vintage

As the plethora of photos and posts on many of the wonderful vintage blogs in our community attests to, as a collective group, we are an immensely stylish bunch. Our tastes veer not to the “it” trend of the moment, but to the alluring, sometimes elegant, sometimes wonderfully playful world of vintage clothing – and the fact that wearing such pieces immediately helps to elevate our look above the cookie cutter styles sported by so many these days.

I know that like myself, many of you are massive fans of fashion, too, and I have a sneaking suspicion that you’re rather keen on fantastic blog giveaways (really, who isn’t?). Put those two interests together and you have the recipe for Chronically Vintage’s brand new blog contest!

This week I’ve teamed up with a stellar US site by the name of LA Vintage, in order to offer you, my amazing readers, the chance to win a $100.00 online shopping spree from this sleek, vibrant shop.

For those who may not have had the joy of exploring LA Vintage’s site yet, let me tell you a tad about this lovely online vintage clothing shop. With an eclectic mix of pieces spanning the 1950s to the 80s, this easy-to-navigated site is filled with excellent photos (of real live models – so you can get a sense of how a garment will actually look on a real person) sporting the terrific range of constantly revolving items LA Vintage stocks.

One of the things that endears me to this great vintage clothing site is that they have a wide selection of pieces (think adorable dresses, versatile separates, mod boots, timelessly lovely accessories) in both average and plus sizes (I adamantly believe that everyone should have the chance to rock vintage fashions, no matter their size!), as well as an array of menswear items (an area that far too many online vintage sellers overlook).

LA Vintage stocks a diverse assortment of items, from flashy disco era dresses to adorable full skirts from the 80s that could very easily be worked into a beautiful 1950s inspired outfit. Amongst the slightly more modern pieces, one can sometimes find vintage items hailing from the 50s. Each item LA Vintage stocks is unique (in other words, each garment or accessory is vintage/retro and generally the only one of its kind being offered amongst the sites wares).



{A sampling of some of the pieces that really caught my eye on LA Vintage’s website, aren’t their photos wonderfully redolent of those from the pages of a glossy fashion magazine?}


LA Vintage recently celebrated their first anniversary of being online (with roots stretching back to the early 90s), and I must say, they’ve built up a really great site in the span of just one year. I was tickled pink when LA Vintage offered me the chance to extend a $100.00 shopping spree to one of my readers, and really want to thank them for doing so!

Now, when I say “shopping spree”, what I mean is that the lucky winner will receive a coupon code from LA Vintage which will enable them to save $100.00 upon checkout. You do not have to purchase anything else or be a pre-existing customer. This coupon code is the online equivalent of a $100.00 gift certificate that you’re free to spend on whatever item(s) you’d like from this stylish site.

Today marks the first day of the giveaway, which is going run until 11:59pm on Sunday March 21, 2010. LA Vintage ships internationally, so I’m positively delighted to say that this contest is open to all of my readers worldwide. On March 22nd, I’ll randomly draw one lucky winner and announce that person’s name in a post. From there whoever wins will need to zip an email my way with their name and email address, which I will pass along to the folks at LA Vintage who will provide you with your coupon code so you can get start shopping! :)

I want you all to have as many chances as possible to win this great prize from LA Vintage, so there are five ways for you to earn as many as five entries in this giveaway.


-Post a comment below telling me your favourite item from LA Vintage’s site, or what kind of item you’d like to find there if you’re the lucky winner.

-Post about this giveaway, including a link back to this announcement post on Chronically Vintage, on your own blog, telling your readers about this contest (if you'd like to use the photo collage I created above, just right click on it to save it to your desktop). Once you’ve written about the giveaway, come back here and let me know you’ve done so by leaving a comment with a link back to your post.

-Spread the good word about this contest via Twitter. Leave a comment here letting me know you’ve done so (this is also a great way for us to follow each other on Twitter, if we’re not already doing so!)

-Add Chronically Vintage to your blog roll (or other area of your site/blog where you list some of your favourite blogs) – or let me know if you’re already doing so. Stop by to let me know in the comment section that CV’s on your blog roll, and you’ll gain another entry for the contest.

-Become (or let me know if you already are) a Google Follower of Chronically Vintage (see the right hand side bar to join). Again, be sure to jot down a comment letting me know you’ve done so.


Everybody is welcome to enter in however many of the five ways they wish, just be sure that you let me know about each entry in a separate comment, to better enhance your chances of winning (four comments for example, would give you four entries into the contest, thus four potential chances to win!). Please remember to post a separate comment for each entry!

I wish everyone who participates the absolute best of luck and thank you all in advance for taking part in this marvellous, vintage fashion filled blog giveaway!