The winner of the Road to Avonlea giveaway, I wrote a guest post on the colour purple, and other fun going ons this week

 This week was one of those where you feel like that for every step you take forward, you take several back. Nothing (thank goodness!) bad happened per se, though my darling chap is feeling under the weather with the flu (and I'm hoping to high heaven that it doesn't jump ship to me), it's mostly that I've been trudging away at the backlog of things that built up (and require I reply to/do them) while we were away last month. No worries though, I'm making lots of progress there and hope to be at least 75% caught up by the time this weekend is over.

Last week we launched a fabulously lovely Road to Avonlea gift pack giveaway here, which not only brought in 114 comments, but also lead me to discover that there are many, many fellow fans of Lucy Maud Montgomery's writings, and Sullivan Entertainment's products, amongst my wonderful readers.

I sincerely appreciate all those who participated in this giveaway, both here and across the social media spectrum. It was a joy to read each of your entry comments as the came in. The Road to Avonlea giveaway has now wrapped up and I am delighted to announce that the lucky winner has been drawn using a random number generator.

Happiest congrats to comment number 31, which belongs to rachlovespenguins! Please contact me anytime via email with your full name and mailing address, so that I can pass it along to the fantastic folks at Sullivan Entertainment, who will be shipping your prize pack out to you, my dear. I truly hope that you adore all of the lovely RTA offerings that are coming your way.

Recently I was touched when my lovely online friend, Tasha (who I know is also a household name for many of you who adore her stellar blog, By Gum, By Golly), asked me if I'd be interested in writing a guest post for her blog devoted to the colour purple.

I don't write a lot of guest posts, as a general rule, because of the wildly unpredictable nature of my health and that fact that I would never want to be unable to deliver by a given deadline and risk messing up someone's blogging schedule. Thankfully there was zero risk of that happening in this case, as Tasha very sweetly gave me ample time to write the post and then (she is such a dear) held off on posting it until we were back from Calgary and I'd recouped a bit from the trip.

Colour has always been a fundamental part of my wardrobe, and there's scarcely a hue alive I won't wax poetically about, so when I was tapped to discuss purple and the role it's played in women's fashion from the Victorian era up to the present day, I was nothing short of thrilled about this fun assignment. Once the wheels started turning, they weren't in a hurry to slow down, and my post ended up being longer than I'd imagined, but I was really happy with its size in the end, because I felt like I got a chance to really delve into the history and popularity of this regal hue.

My guest post went live today over at Tasha's and you can read all about it here. We may still have 2.5 months of the year to go, but I'm already dubbing purple my colour for 2014, a choice that was spurred on even more by getting the exciting opportunity to write this enjoyable piece all bout that hue this summer.

Elsewhere on the great, ol' interwebs, Chronically Vintage hit 1,500+ likes on Facebook earlier this week. Thank you so much to everyone who made that number possible! I love getting a chance to connect with many of you there as well. Who knows, maybe we'll reach 2,000 likes by the time Chronically Vintage hits its one year anniversary of being on Facebook in mid-December.

Last weekend I shared 31 of the things without which Halloween just wouldn't be the same for me, and one my lovely readers, Jennifer, who is also a longstanding online friend, was so inspired by my post, that she wrote an awesome list of her own here. Her list is so festively fabulous and includes some more of my favourite seasonal things that weren't on mine, such as making sure I set aside time to read Poe's spookiest works this month.

I'm always touched when readers are spurred on to write posts based on things I share, so if you do the same (with any post), please be sure to let me know so that I can share it here in a future post.

As you may recall from this post last May, I'm a big fan of earrings (so long as they're 100% nickel-free!). This rings especially true if they're vintage or look the part, and I always enjoy seeing examples of earrings from the past.

Usually the comes in the form of photographs, ads or while out shopping, but this week Joanna (another endlessly dear friend) from Dividing Vintage Moments shared three terrific old school fashion video clips, amongst which was one from the 1950s in which a model tries on earrings in a costume jewelry store. I really though this short little clip was cool, and so am taking Joanna's lead and sharing it here as well with all of you today.

Hopping subjects once more before this quick Friday afternoon post wraps up, I am super happy about the fact that Tony and I both found our Halloween costumes last weekend. I'm a big fan of surprise reveals, so I'm keeping mine under wraps until the 31st, but I'll give you a couple of hints beforehand.

One, it's someone I've wanted to dress as for Halloween ever since I was a little girl, and two, this person has been mentioned on my before. That's all I'm saying in advance though - you'll just have to wait until All Hallows Eve rolls around to find out more! :)

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Have an beautiful mid-October weekend, my sweet dears - and may it be extra happy, bountiful, and very blessed Thanksgiving one to all my fellow Canucks.

Vintage 365: CV post inspires vintage blogger's beautiful 1940s looped braid hairstyle

✯ Day 20 of Vintage 365 ✯

 

The response to the Vintage 365 daily post here on CV has been tremendously positive so far, and I believe that as the year progresses things will continue to shine. Though the project is less than a month old at this point, I've already had a some people contact me to say that they blogged about one of the Vintage 365 posts that really caught their eye (thank you, sweet dears!).

One such person is the immensely lovely Tasha of By gum by golly! , a delightful vintage and craft centred blog, who wrote to say that the vintage magazine cover image I used for the January 13th Vintage 365 post Slide show celebrates 125 years of Ladies Home Journal magazine, inspired her to recreate the darling 1940s looped braid pigtails the the mother and daughter are sporting on that cover.

Not only did Tasha recreate this charming, seriously adorable hairstyle with immense success (see image above), she detailed the steps she took to do so on her blog, so that she could inspire her readers to try this playful style on their own locks.

For me one of the best elements of being a vintage blogger is the continual inspiration I gather from both yesteryear images and my fellow old school bloggers, and I was touched deeply to know that Tasha drew such stylish inspiration from one of my posts. Though my own hair is far to thin to pull off this immensely cute 1940s hairdo with any degree of success, I adore the how Tasha tied cheerful ruby hued ribbons around the tops of her pigtail braids, and I'm now inspired to dig into my craft stash and start wearing more ribbons in my hair (and should I have ever a daughter one day, you can bet your bottom dollar I'll be trying the looped pigtail look on her!).

Thank you very much, Tasha, for sharing how an edition of Vintage 365 inspired you; I absolutely loved seeing your wonderful hairstyle and am sure you'll inspire scores of vintage loving gals to copy this super fun look!