Vintage Link Love: April 2014

Can it actually be that we're an entire third of the way through 2014? No, really, I mean, that seems almost impossible to believe, and yet...it's true. As we sit on the very first day of May, the fifth month of the year, we're waving good-bye to the first third and getting ready to usher in the warmest (or coldest, depending on which hemisphere you live) portion of the calendar.

The birds are chirping harmoniously, the bees are buzzing, the blossoms are blooming like mad, and everywhere you go, the world and those in it seem to have lighter hearts and more cheerful spirits. This is such a stellar portion of the year, mid-spring, and one that I'm so very glad we're experiencing again. I wasn't feeling winter this time around and the fact that it lingered later than usual almost felt like Mother Nature was adding insult to injury.

{Hip-hip-horray! Spring has sprung and the world is awash with it's striking beauty and wondrous rebirth once again. Image source.}

All that snow and ice and need for fifteen layers (okay, not quite, but almost!) is done with for a few glorious months and I'm not even going to give winter another thought for quite some time. Right now I'm focusing on the all the awesome things, big and small alike, that lay ahead for the coming months, on the blogging front and in life in general, and there are lot of them.

In fact, as quick as this year has been, and though it hasn't been without its share of stresses, unexpected expenses (two surgeries, one completely unplanned due to an emergency injury, this past month for our dog, Annie, for example), and worries, it has also been really great in a lot of ways. I've been diligently plugging away at the twelve things I hoped to do or get better at this year, and my life (and psyche) have been reaping the benefits of them immensely.

Between the good in my world right now, the sublime springtime sunshine, and my super exciting top secret vintage plans (which will be revealed next Tuesday), things are - knock wood - not too shabby in the slightest and that is really helping to give me the energy I've been needing lately to plough ahead, day in and day out, on those plans and still keep my blog going strong and other areas of my life afloat as well.

Though I haven't read quite as many blogs and news stories this month as I typically do for the reasons just discussed, I did still manage to stay more abreast on that front than I'd honestly expected when April kicked off and as such, I'm pleased as punch to present you with another round of engaging, interesting, eyebrow raising, and/or just plan fun vintage related posts and articles that have really captured my attention lately. I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I did!

♥ Top Five Tips for Buying a Dress Online that Fits and Flatters: By way of marvelous online vintage and reproduction clothing site, Blue Velvet Vintage, comes this handy guide to shopping for a frock that is very likely to fit you well once it lands on your doorstep. I was struck by how these points mirror many that I've talked about here as well over the years, including the importance of ignoring the size label, as vintage clothing sizes are not at all the same thing and their modern day counterparts.


♥ Are you too old for vintage?: Recently Kate (a passionate fellow dog mama and vintage fan alike) of Retro Rover asks a question I think many of us reflect on as we had notches to the belt of life, and concludes with a stance that is much in keeping with my own view on the subject (as well as several wonderful examples of ladies over the age of thirty who are rocking vintage fabulously!).


♥ Recreating the Roman Holiday Look: Jenny of Singing Bird Vintage has done a splendid job of gathering fashion ideas together in this post which will help you channel your inner Audrey as you recreate her iconic style from this classic 1950s film (a look, I should add, which suits the warm season that we're entering into now so delightfully well).




♥ 11 Delicious Facts You Never Knew About Girl Scout Cookies: As someone who sold case upon case upon case of Girl Guide cookies, the Canadian counterpart to US Girl Guide cookies, as a youngster, I couldn't help but smile over, and then share, this post I recently read that highlights some charmingly fun facts about everyone's favourite door-to-door desserts.


♥ Bangle Storage Idea: As many of you know, bangle bracelets are amongst my all-time favourite and most frequently worn vintage accessories, so I was extra touched when Julie from the blog Sum of Their Stories recently contacted me to say that she'd included a link to my post on storing bangles in her on the topic, which features her own lovely (and very budget-friendly) idea and a few from fellow bloggers as well.


♥ Great places to shop for plus size rockabilly clothing: One of my favourite rockabilly ladies, Deborah of Hellcat Vintage has put together a terrific two post list of places to source plus size rockabilly fashions from. Here's part one and part two, both are chocked full of online resources that curvaceous vintage loving ladies, too, will be thrilled to discover or reconnect with as well.




♥ Drive-In America: A Photographic Road Trip Kickstarter campaign: In April I shared with you about how fashion designer Gina was using the social funding site Kickstarter to raise an investment in order to launch her vintage inspired loungewear company, Maddy James (which still needs, at the time of writing, about $4,000 more to reach its goal, so if you haven't donated yet, I highly encourage you to do so - no amount is too small and every pledge is immensely appreciated), and today I'd love to let you know about another wonderful vintage related project that is also using this site to help get further off the ground.

As you may recall from this post back in 2011, I'm more than a little bit passionate about classic drive-in movie theaters, an important mid-century legacy that all too frequently, and very sadly, have gone the way of the dinosaur. I feel it's important to preserve, or at the very least document, those that are still with us while they are and to that end, Portland, Oregon resident Lindsey Rickert recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to help raise the funds she needs to travel around North America doing just that by way of photographing many of those drive-ins that still exist. She hopes after her exciting travels to turn the images she's captured into a coffee table book which will help today's generation, as well as those that follow, continue to enjoy the charming memories and sense of wonderful nostalgia that vintage drive-in movie theaters instantly impart. If you're a fan of these good, old-fashioned institutions, then by all means give Lindsey a helping hand by donating to her worthwhile Kickstarter campaign.


♥ Does this 19th century dress deserve a place in a museum?: In this thought provoking Two Nerdy History Girls post, the author raises the very valid question of if commonplace clothing deserves a spot in a museum as much as fancy, formal, or otherwise ornate sartorial pieces from the past do. I'm personally of the mind that the answer is a resounding "yes!", as these fashions, more so than the costly or ostentatious ones, were what the bulk of the population would have worn during a given time period and thus are a truly important element of history that needs to be preserved.


♥ Horror and Goth: There's always something about spring's return, odd as it may seem, that puts me in the mood for autumn and in turn my favourite holiday, Halloween. I think it's the fact that we're seeing the world in colour again, not just a muted, snow covered palette and also that, let's face it, I'm positively wild about fall and wait for it with immense eagerness every year. We've got a ways to go still there, so for now I've been busy enjoying this frighteningly fabulous selection of vintage goth lady related images that Johanna Ost put together on her blog a few weeks ago.




♥ Famous Words of Fashion's Greatest: Care of, entirely fittingly, Harper's Bazaar comes a memorable selection of 50 style related quotes from some of the most important sartorial voices of the 20th and 21st centuries. This piece is a must bookmark for the next time you're writing on a fashion related topic and need a instantly impactful quote to include in your post.


♥ Nine ways that bloggers are like drunk people: Brittany, of the wonderful blog Va Voom Vintage, posted this link recently in a Facebook group we're both a part of and I simply had to re-share it here, as I think just about anyone whose been blogging for any length of time will find themselves, as I did, smiling and nodding in vigorous agreement the whole way through this witty post.


♥ Women Homesteaders of the 1940s: Few of us, especially those who weren't raised on a farm or in the country, I'd venture to say, rarely associate the word "homesteading" with a decade as recent as the 1940s, instead correlating it with the earlier days of pioneer settlers. However, then as now, homesteading existed and in this captivating series of vintage Life magazine photos, we get to look at some very stylish, very hard working women who were diligently creating homes and farms the good, old-fashioned way that so many of their, and our, foremothers have done for centuries.

{All images throughout the list of links above come by way of the post that they are displayed directly beneath the write up of here. Please follow the links provided to learn more about these images.}

♥ ♥ ♥

As we get ready to kick off the second of the year’s thirds (May through August), I hope that you each have lots of things that are making you feel excited to wake up each morning, fueling your creative fires, and getting you more and more excited about the season with each passing day. I'd love to hear about them, if you do, so don't hesitate to share what's bringing you joy with me in the comments here today (or anytime).

Here's to an amazing, fabulously happy and exciting month of May, my dear friends!!!

Looking back at May 2013

The nineteenth century American poet and diplomat James Russell Lowell once said of the month we've just experienced that, "May is a pious fraud of the almanac". This strikes me as a bit harsh, but I can certainly appreciate the sentiment and see where Mr. Lowell was coming from.

May, that month in which we've been led to believe April's showers will give way to boundless fields of flowers and picturesque sunny days in not always the case. Or, conversely, sometimes it is - but in such abundance that you wonder if you overshot your alarm clock and woke up in August.

For the first half or so of the month, that was precisely the case here, as we slogged our way through numerous days of +31C temps and sunshine so brazenly bright you could all but get a tan just by thinking about.

The second half of the month proved more in keeping with the seasonal norm, and included a handful of much needed rainy days which helped welcome an abundance of greenery - as well as the beginning of tourist season - once more.

In many respects, it felt like a quick month as each day ticked by, yet as a whole it was a somewhat lengthy at times, too. Overall though, it was a pleasant enough month - certainly less stressful than the previous one and towards the end, I even felt well enough (following last month's surgery) to venture out a couple of times, one of which I blogged about here two days ago.

While I wouldn't say May was the most action packed month (phew!) on the home front, here in blog land things were buzzing up a storm (that reminds me of the immensely charming magazine cover from June 1954 pictured below), which was spurred on in no small part by the necessitated two week blogging hiatus after my surgery in April and my zeal to throw myself back into blogging big time!

{Image source}

Some of the highlights of this past month for me included the return (after more than two years) of the popular Vintage Fashionista Friday series, an exploration of the role that nostalgia has played on my life and wardrobe, a fresh edition of Vintage This and That, a peak at the history of Cutex nail polish, and the super easy (and dirt cheap) way in which I store my stud earrings.

On the wardrobe front, I reviewed the latest dress I received from eShakti (it fared much better, I'm happy to say, than the previous two), sported an outfit comprised of numerous vintage pieces (including my dress itself) that I've received from treasured online friends, and traversed a wildly dangerous and incredibly narrow road to enjoy the view from Skaha Bluffs in my beloved Freddies of Pinewood overalls (a snap from which post appears below).




May ushered in an extremely exciting new chapter in Chronically Vintage's life when, mid-month, I put out my first ever official call for blog sponsors.

The response to this post has been wholly positive and very encouraging, and I'm pleased as punch to announce that I'll be collaborating with some seriously stellar sponsors in June and beyond. I'm always looking for further and/or future sponsors, so if you've been considering blog sponsorship here, I would absolutely love to hear from you anytime.

As we embark on the very last morning of May, I'm not entirely sure what June - the final month of spring - will entail for my day-to-day life. I don't have too many big plans, especially as I'm still recouping (and am in the midst of a massive flare-up of my one of my conditions right now, too), but I sense that barbeques, yard sales, walks on the beach, sundresses, and capri pants will be on the agenda for sure.



{Beautiful as a vintage bride, sweet as a popsicle, and as invigorating as the first late springtime dip in lake or sea, June has the potential to be a glorious month from start to finish, and I really hope that such will be the case this year. Image source.}


Much as with May, I've got a bevy of fun post ideas just bursting to appear here in June. Throughout the coming month, we'll be getting to know some of my new blog sponsors, chatting about 1950s eye make-up, taking a gander at some classic menswear pieces (in celebration of Father's Day), talking about how to throw a great ice cream sundae party, and I'll debut my first ever garment from Jitterbuggin, amongst numerous other topics.
 
James R. Lowell was right about May in that it can often be hard to predict, the weather unreliable (just ask most of Europe, where temps have been well below the seasonal norm in many countries as of late), and it's appearance a bit more of an idyllic mirage of how spring is supposed to look than what reality often serves up, but it is - and was - also a gorgeous, pleasurable, lighthearted month that smells of honeysuckle, lilacs and freshly mowed grass.

It's bare toes, the first bonfire of the season, camping trip filled weekends, picnics on the beach, and the making of joyful plans and dreams for the coming summer, which we'll hit before next month comes to a close. It might not always be the most reliable of months weather wise, but I love May and the one that we just experienced was certainly no exception.

Here's to the hope that June is every bit as lovely - if not more - for all of us!

Looking back at April 2013 (and a huge thank you!)

Good morning, my sweet dears, before launching into a recap of some of the things that have transpired on the blogging front over the past month, I want to take a moment thank you from the bottom of my heart for the outpouring of incredibly caring, thoughtful, touching comments I received on last post about the surgery that I had a couple of weeks ago.

I truly cannot begin to express how very much they each meant to me, as did those I received on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, too. Your absolutely lovely well wishes helped to brighten my spirits and help make getting through a challenging time considerably easier to deal with. Again, thank you so much for making this gal feel so much better.

Though I've by no means recouped from my surgery completely (that will be a while still), I feel like I've reached a point in my recovery when I can ease my back into my usual routine of blogging again, and so without further ado...

{Image source}

Given that this is the first post in two weeks, April 2013 certainly wasn't as chocked full of entries as the previous three months of this year have been, but we still got in a number of posts before my short blogging hiatus came into effect and the following stand out as some of my favourites.

Early in the month I explored the power and importance that the sense of smell has in our lives and on our memories, in a post that detailed Ten of my all-time favourite scents. Also in the first week of April, I cordially invited you to Follow me on Instagram (I'm @chronicallyvintage there), in a post that talked about the seriously awesome gift of an iPhone 5 that I received from Tony this past Christmas.

Only one vintage outfit post popped up this month (due to my surgery), but I think you'll agree with me when I say that it was quite noteworthy - as it highlighted what I wore on my first ever day (day) trip to the States. Earlier this year, Tony and I spent a few hours in the charming town of Omak, Washington, and the red, white and blue ensemble (pictured below) that I sported that day was in honour of the fact that, after 28.5 years of life, I finally got a chance to step foot on US soil (I can't wait until the next time!).




On the 10th, I looked back on Four wonderful years of blogging, in celebration of Chronically Vintage's fourth birthday, which took place on April 17th. It has been an incredible four years of sharing my love of all things vintage with you, and I cannot wait to enjoy the next four years - and beyond - as we continue to explore and chat about the endlessly interesting world of mid-century history and fashion.

The very next day I delved into Discussing hats and medical hair loss with Kathleen (from the wonderful blog That's A Pretty Hat), in my first post here that really touched on this intimate subject since my wig unveiling at the start of this year. I love that Kathleen - who is not experiencing hair loss herself - wanted to post about this topic, which affects a great many women at some point (be it temporary of long term) throughout the course of their lives, and have to say thank you again to her for honouring me by asking for some of my thoughts and insight on this topic.

Mid-way through the month, shortly before all went (temporarily) silent on the blogging front here, I rounded up ten images relating to the passion for the colour green that I'm experiencing this year in April's edition of Flickr Favourites. I really am smitten with all things verdant at the moment, and just as this wasn't the first post to mention this topic (I touched on it here, for example), I highly doubt it will be the last before 2013 wraps up either.

Elsewhere in the great, wide interwebs, I was thrilled to recently hear from Sammy of Sammy Davis Vintage that she included Chronically Vintage in her new e-book that's devoted to the The 100 Best Vintage Shops Online, where she super sweetly listed me on page 46 amongst her top sources of vintage style inspiration.




Sammy is a gal with a massive passion for the past (who enjoys writing about and sporting looks from a wide range of twentieth century decades) and a substantial body of knowledge on the subject, stemming in no small part from the fact that she's been selling vintage and writing about the subject of old school fashion for many years now. As such, it was no small honour when she emailed to let me know that she'd included me in her lovely, informative e-book (which you can pick up for just $4.95 here).

As you know, I absolutely, completely adore vintage hats, and my involvement with Kathleen's aforementioned post wasn’t only time I got to discuss this awesome subject over the course of April. Early in the month Katy from the stellar UK blog Vintage Wife interviewed me and a few other (wildly stylish) vintage ladies about our hat collections and some of the reasons why we adore yesteryear chapeaus so very much. If you haven't had a chance to read this delightful post, entitled Top of the Vintage Toppers yet, run, don't walk over to the Vintage Wife, and find out more about how I store, and why I adore, collecting and wearing vintage hats so much.

I won't beat around the bush, April hasn't been the easiest month of all time for me, but the worst is behind us now and instead of focusing on the unpleasantness of serious surgery and how rough I've been feeling ever since, I'm much more interested in looking ahead to May and all that the fifth month of the year holds in store here on the blogging front.

{Image source}

As a general rule, May is a gorgeous month, sometimes offering up just about the loveliest weather you could ever possibly hope for and a return to spending as much time as possible outdoors, soaking it all up with the gusto of a hungry kitten going to town on a bowl of milk. It's too soon for me to say how much I'll be able to get out and enjoy the glorious sunshine, but at the very least I'll be keeping the blinds open and letting every precious ounce of it stream through the window and onto me as I set about writing May's posts.

In the coming weeks, we'll be reviving the Vintage Fashionista Friday series, reviewing the most recent dress that I've received from eShakti, taking a gander at the history of Cutex nail polish, enjoying a couple of terrific springtime recipes, and holding a giveaway for a newly released page-turner that's set in the 1920s, amongst numerous other posts that I have in the works.

Thank you again deeply, everyone, for your support and care over the past couple of weeks. It never ceases to touch me to my core that I am so blessed to be a part of such a sweet, understanding, wonderful online community. I have a ways to go before I've fully recovered from surgery still, but I'm really looking forward to blogging here again and in savouring each wonderful moment of May that lies ahead.

Have a beautiful last day of April, everyone, and a thoroughly stellar month ahead!