Receiving and passing along the Versatile Blogger award

When I first started this site three years ago, blog awards were somewhat more common then they are today. Perhaps there was a fad component to them, and while I know that not everyone was a major far, I've always felt sincerely touched when someone had deemed me and my blog worthy of receiving any kind of accolade.

Earlier this year, in the hectic midst of everything surrounding our move, I received a charming blogging award called the Versatile Blogger, from not one, but two, completely lovely ladies: Bunny Moreno from the fantastic blog The Musings and Adventures of a Pinup Mama, as well as from Tracey Steel whose blog, Breathing English Air, always teams with beautiful images of the UK and great posts to accompany them.

The rules attached to receiving this blog are very straightforward and easy to follow:

1. Add the award to your blog.

2. Thank the blogger who gave it to you.

3. Mention 7 random things about yourself.

4. List the rules.

5. Award to 5 or more bloggers.

6. Inform each of those 5 by leaving a comment on their blog. (I always feel like this point is optional, but you can certainly do it, if you'd like)

I always enjoy reading people's lists of various fun, interesting, or eyebrow raising (as the case may be!) facts about themselves, so without further ado, here are seven points about myself that you may not know.

 

♥ Seven facts about me ♥

1. Snugly, medium to heavy weight blankets and I are BFFs. For as long as I can recall, I've slept much, much better when I have soft, comfortable, fluffy blankets and and/or duvets on me (even in the summer). I fully believe this stems from a guest room at the house my paternal grandparents lived in when I was younger, which had the softest, most dreamily fantastic blankets I've ever encountered.

2. I'm taller then they'd said I be. When the doctor did an adult height project on me as a youngster, they said I'd not likely be any taller than 5 feet when I was fully grown (not that there's anything the matter with that height of course). I'm happy to report that I proved them wrong by a whole two inches! Though it means I'll never have supermodel gams that go on for miles, I really don't mind being petite one bit and am totally content with my adult height.

3. My childhood (school) nickname was "Jay": In elementary school my best was called Karen, which meant that her name started with a "K". As mine began with a "J", and these two letters are side-by-side in the alphabet, we came up with the idea of calling each other "Kay" and "Jay". After a while of doing so, other people began to notice and started using those names for us, too, even to the point where our teachers were doing it. Well into high school, even through mine and Kay's paths had diverged around middle school and we didn't hang out very often any more, people would still call me "Jay" sometimes.

4. I'm not superstitious at all, except for...: The act of throwing salt over your shoulder if you spill some. It's not that I actually believe anything negative will happen to me if I don't toss a pinch over my shoulder, I think it's just a learned habit I picked up as a child and never outgrew. As it's my one quasi-superstition, I keep doing it just for fun.

5. Generally speaking, I don't read modern fiction. It's not that I have anything against this literary genre, goodness no! It's just that I find my interests tend to lay more in nonfiction and classic lit. Though I read more modern fiction as a child (due, no doubt, in part to school book reports), I've always been this way and adore adding nonfiction and reference books to our home library.

6. I can touch anywhere on my own back. While I don't claim to be especially flexible (and am definitely not double jointed!), I am able to touch absolutely any spot on my back (while sitting, standing or laying down) - which makes zipping up my own dresses a breeze!

7. I never thought I was a hat person until...: Growing up in an era of baseball caps and floppy denim hats (remember those ones with the matching flowers on the front smack dab in the middle of brim?), I didn't feel like hat's worked well with my face shape at all. Imagine my delight then as a I got older and discovered that the issue wasn't hats in general, just most modern ones. Turns out many vintage hat styles (especially those from the 40s and 50s) suit me well, and as a result I quickly morphed into a die hard chapeau lover (and wearer).

{All images are from Flickr. To learn more about a specific image, please click on it to be taken to its respective Flickr page.}

♥ ♥ ♥ 

In turn I'd like to pass the Versatile Blogger award onto the following five wonderful blogs.

1. Ghosts and Garters Vintage

2. Love Letters from London

3. Miss Magpie's Musings

4. Old Haunts (a new vintage blog in town, be sure to stop by if you haven't discovered Kate's site yet)

5. VirginiaRetro

♥ ♥ ♥

If you've already received this award (and blogged about it) from someone else, please don't feel like you need to do it again. Either way, if you do  (or have already done) it, definitely let me know, as I'd love to read your random facts, too.

Many, many thanks to Bunny and Tracey again for thinking of me and sharing the joy of this delightful blogging award with me. I wholeheartedly appreciate it, sweet gals.  ♥

The nostalgia and joy of collecting vintage books

Old books have always fascinated me. Perhaps my interest in them was first sparked by my mother’s extensive collection of original Nancy Drew titles (which I read voraciously, often by moonlight when I was a wee little thing), perhaps it came from the fact that reading was encouraged and fostered in my home. Whatever first planted the bookworm bug in me, I have loved reading and vintage books for as long as I can recall.

As a child I had a rather odd (for someone my age at the time, I mean) assortment of medical books that ranged from 50 to 100+ years old. It wasn’t the largest collection, but at one point I must have had at least eight or nine heavy duty, hard cover medical text books (at that stage in my life I was interested in going into a career in medicine) of the very sort that would have once sat on a doctor’s shelf. Many of these books were lovingly given to me by elderly neighbours, one of whom had been a nurse for many years.

It wasn’t just medical tomes that caught my eye though. I’ve always scoured second hand book shops, garage sales, flea markets and library sales (when libraries sell of their old books) for literary treasures. Though sadly at one point in my life I had to sell off most of my book collection to help raise funds to move overseas, I still have the wonderful memories of the times I spent sifting through stacks upon stacks of books, some older, some newer, endless piles of inexpensive paperbacks and microwave cookery books (seriously, why is there such a glut of microwave cookbooks almost anywhere retro and vintage books are sold?), to find an early printing of a Steinbeck or Hemingway novel.

There is something almost transcendent about holding an older book in your hand, its paper often yellowed as if dipped in tea by the passing years, a slightly musty smell emanating from each page, its typesetting done up in a classy, concisely sized font. As you flip through the pages of any book that’s lived with someone else before, it’s hard not to catch yourself wondering what sort of memories that book would have to tell, if it were alive and able to speak. Did it cross over on an ocean liner, ride around in the back of an old roadster, sit beside someone on a Hawaiian vacation, provide a moment of respite for a weary WW2 factory worker? What thoughts did those who owned the book before you think as they absorbed its knowledge or tale, how did what they read shape or impact their lives – and what impression will it leave on your own?

There is indeed something marvelous and valuable about vintage and antique books; their worth lies not only in their age and content, but in the place in time when they were first released into the annals of history to which they will forever belong. It is this essence of time and distant place, that I feel weaves itself through so much of my love of vintage. When I don a 40s inspired outfit, a pair of 50s heels or a 30s hairstyle, I am reaching somewhere deep into my soul to connect with a world that I while I did not experience firsthand, I can sense I belong to.


{A stylishly well dressed literature fan from a 1941 Vogue spread. Photo found via myvintagevogue’s Flickr stream.}

If you’re a fellow bibliophile, what memories and thoughts do vintage books invoke in you?