Chronically Vintage's spring 2012 readers poll

There's something about the newness and renewed sense of vitality that comes with spring that makes its particularly well suited to cleaning, organizing, or simply approaching various aspects of life in new and more interesting ways.

Moving across the country this year helped to quickly take care of my annual spring cleaning on the home front, but I'm still eager to shake out the cobwebs and spruce up various things that might need a little tweaking or simply more attention lavished on them.

Oftentimes I wonder what elements of my blog you, my wonderful readers, enjoy most. Your lovely comments and emails sometimes answer this query, but I'm still curious to know what more of you enjoy and/or would like to see more of here.

I tend to blog to my own eclectic beat, creating posts on a vast array of mid-twentieth century topics, and various musings and observations on life that spring to mind - plus (more recently) sharing snaps of my vintage outfits with you. This site is not, and will never be, a strictly "this or that" kind of blog. Life is too interesting to tie myself solely to one subject matter when dealing with a topic (history and my adoration of it) that is so profoundly near and dear to my heart.

That said, again, I'm always interested in knowing what you enjoy about Chronically Vintage and what sort of topics you'd like to see make their way into rotation throughout the rest of 2012 and beyond.

With that thought in mind, I whipped up a quick survey of questions (below) that I'd love for you to answer. By all means feel free to add anything else that wasn't covered here in the comment section of this post (or let me know by email).

 

 

I do not feel as though I'm in a blogging rut at the moment or like the wind has been drained from my sails. In fact, I've found 2012 (so far) to be amongst the most enjoyable, new idea fuelled years of online writing I've ever encountered, and as a result I think that now is the perfect time to read your responses.

On top of the many (so many!) topics I want, and plan, to write about in the coming months, I can try to bring you more of the types of posts that you love reading here, too.

Thank you sweetly to everyone who takes a few moments to fill out this poll. I'll be sure to share the results with you in a future post, and am so wonderfully excited to read your responses.

Welcoming spring's return with a delicious 1950s fruit salad pie

With yesterday's long awaited arrival of spring (at least on paper - we had grey skies and a few snowflakes here!), one cannot help but feel a natural sense of rebirth and renewed energy.

Aside perhaps from the rain (which in moderate doses, I rarely mind), there are few elements of this beautiful, gentle season that are not to adore. From the first brave new buds to the return of songbirds, Easter celebrations, sun-kissed picnics, and - to the delight of fashionistas everywhere - the chance to bring our vintage sundresses out of storage once more.

It's also a time for some of the absolute most delectable, bitingly fresh produce of the year and recipes which see a return to lighter fare. Come the tail end of March and into the start of spring I'm always in the mood to whip up airy, inviting recipes such as angel food cakes, sweet and savoury soufflés alike, generously sized garden salads, and cheese puff's with the year's first crop of green onions and chives.

In many spots of the world though, it's still a tad too early for most of the new produce that will soon hit the grocery store and farmer's market shelves though, so while we count down the days until then, it's wonderful to have a slew of spring worthy recipes on hand that can be made with store cupboard staples.

Case in point, this cheerful pale buttercup hued Jiffy Fruited Lemon Pie recipe from 1951. Calling for tinned fruit salad, gingersnap crumbs (you could just as easily use graham cracker or Nilla Wafers crumbs instead), condensed milk, and whipped cream, this is the kind of super easy dessert that one can whip up with a minimum of ingredients and which works for an absolute myriad of springtime engagements, from bridal showers to afternoon tea parties.

{There's just something about custard and pudding based pies - like this silky, delectable 1950s one - that makes them especially well suited to the sweet, beautiful days of spring. Image via Curly-Wurly on Flickr.}

As some of you have no doubt noticed by the fact that it's been over a week since my last post here, things continue to be exceedingly busy on this end. We're in our new house now (hard to believe we've been here for eight days already!), but there is still a great deal of organizing, decorating, and unpacking to do.

Between that and my health (which has taken a real beating from all of the strenuous, and at times stressful, activity this year), I know it will be a little while longer still before I return to a more frequent blog posting schedule.

In the coming weeks I'll be aiming for one post every few days or so, and suspect that a higher (posting) pace will fall into place fairly organically as the hustle and bustle of setting up our hew house subsides as time rolls on.

Here's to the prospect of all that spring - charming gem of an inspiringly lovely season that it is - holds in store for each of us, sweet friends!