Not so fast...

There may be a dark, moldy cloud to our silver lining... we just hope that it's not stachybotrys, no matter how good a background it is to my latest fashion thirst: long, black vintage dresses.

Missmode 21 on Ebay.

Nothing to me combines elegance with disco-tastic glamour quite like a long, black, one-shouldered gown. A white version might be my ideal you-know-what dress.

Fringevintagepdx on Etsy.

A most elegant application of a Gary Numan video-looking 80's print.

Chic-lovershop on Ebay.

Simple, and just lovely for a summer evening... I think my rekindled interest in long, black dresses is spurred by fantasies of summer parties at the new place. However, they can serve as mourning garb (pun, haha) as well, if this new place turns out to be toxic.

LittleTown on Etsy.

Hellooo dolly! I'm in love with this dress. I want to buy it a drink and tell it I'm in med school. 'Til then, I'll stick with my own repertoire of black dresses:

Here I am, elegantly mean-mugging in a Coat: Macy's, Long black dress: thrifted. Long pearl necklace: thrifted, Silver Clogs of Delight: thrifted.

Sigh... wish me luck...!


.

Your picture of the day.

It's a lovely day--- about fifty degrees and slightly breezy. Guess I'll get a jump on that spring cleaning. This spirit of relief, beauty and industry are brought to you by this photo:

Ain't nothin' wrong with this picture! Awesome bikini, check. Cool Pocohontas hair accessory, check. Fawn for pet, check.

Find more beautiful, bizarre and gruesome vintage photos here.

.

Check it out......!

We got word today that the apartment we fell in love with is ours! As soon as the former owners get everything cleared out, the place is ours to have. We did ask for a pair of keys for today to take "measurements":


The apartment is on the second and third floors of a house. The house used to belong to an elderly art collector who passed away a few years ago, and in the meantime, her children have divided up the house into two apartments. Many of her belongings still remain, but they are one-by-one getting sold off. Definitely staying? These antique fireplace grills that she collected, hung over the stairway entrance to the apartment.


Just to the right of the entry, these crazy little mushroom statues! I love the floors in this house; it seems like they may have been painted burgundy at some point but have been pretty well distressed since then. The house was built in the 1870s.


So much light comes in the windows! Here is the living room and dining room. The giant stained glass window is not staying-- apparently they got $3000 for it. Hayyy!



A peep at the kitchen, and the patio that adjoins it.




... because this isn't 1950s TV ya'll! This is where I'll do some of my best thinking. And also some of my worst. And while I'm thinking, I'd like to express how freaking ridiculous it is that we found this place for such a good deal. I've never lived in a place this nice, childhood included. I'm feeling so very lucky right now, especially because this window is on the front of the house, which overlooks a large, city park. Sigh!



Bestill my heart! This is the master bedroom, with stained glass windows that also overlook the park. Bonus: the stained glass is on a little door with hinges, so you can choose to let in unfettered light if you wish. Here's a closeup of the glass:


Dionysian baby...



Mushroom-hatted, potion-making youth.

Because I might as well: Nautical stripey sweater: thrifted. Coat: Macy's. Wide-leg jeans: Express. Red lizardy pointy flats: thrifted.

The closets, oh! the closets! Huge-normous with extra giant storage things on top, and a separate shoe closet that holds no less than 84 pairs. I have about 79 (oh, the shame!). A match made in heaven? Yes, I think so.



A second room off the bedroom might be the reading room. I dunno, the bookcases kinda made our minds up for us. The staircase leads to the third floor loft. Check out what else is in this room:



Even though it's a little crumbling, I love this Chinese dynasty decoupage thing the former owner did with the working, wood fireplace!



Here is the loft. In the bottom right corner, you can see that you can peer down into the living room! Hope no one gets drunk and falls through there to their death, but you know, it's all for the look. Check out the skylights! And the drawers in the walls (they're on other walls behind this vantage point, too)! And, there's another full bathroom up here.


And the coup de gras, our backyard, complete with a lot of trees (blocked by the giant ivy-covered tree) and, in the middle of the picture, to the left of the fence, is a koi pond. The presence of koi remains to be seen with the thaw (I heard that they hibernate beneath the ice).

I can't wait to have parties and dinners and all the wonderful things you can do when your place is big enough! But... the thing that I love best about this apartment is that it'll go down in the books as the first place my (soon-to-be) husband and I spent our first couple of years together. Mist! Tear! All right, enough, back to fashion drooling soon enough. Thanks all for reading, hope you all have a little bit of magic in your weekends!

.

On Me Today

The Kaiser Chief's "Never Miss a Beat" pretty much sums up how I'm feeling today...




I learned nothing. I did nothing. I didn't go to school. I want crisps. Didn't flash a referee, but sure wanted to.

Thermal: Target. Sweater: VintageTea on Etsy. Denim Mini: thrifted. Tights: Target. Boots: Gift, thanks Wendy!

In other news... my sweetness and I have potentially found our brand new place! It is, in a word, a fantasy. We put in the application yesterday, so we're still waiting to hear back. Hopefully, I'll have some pictures to share soon! My fingers are locked in cross formation!

This means, all extraneous items must go! Everything in my Etsy store is $5, yes $5 plus shipping. So many other tasty things I haven't had the chance to list, but I'll be working on it. I'll letcha know.

.

The kind of fun in the sun that only a Folger's can full of coke and a diet of laxative tea can afford!

I always wonder why promotions for swimwear always emphasize the hot, tingling sex that is wearing a swimsuit around your community pool (snort).

"It's adult swim, baby, you can do laps in my lane (just try to avoid the floating band-aid, lover)."

Putting on a thong-kini is not going to make us into dangerous, poolside jaguars, forever lit by sunsets. I think most of us are buying a swimsuit principally because it enables one to join in water-oriented fun, unencumbered. I have seldom ever seen swimsuit advertising oriented towards the social aspect of wearing a swimsuit-- but wouldn't you want to buy a suit that had connotations of friends, sports and free-spiritedness?

image from Sarah Lee

Why not some athletic-types (all looking awesome in their swim-stuff) precipitously poised to dive memorably off a jetty? Now I want lime-green bottoms!

image from elee1147

Sure, they're hot and model-y but, they play volleyball (hey, I love volleyball!) and you need a swimsuit for that (oo-- I need a swimsuit!). I'm telling ya-- hanging out and having fun will sell more swimsuits than parted mouths and half-closed eyes! And for real-- when you have a friend who is too self-conscious to get (or wear) a swimsuit, you feel sad for them because they are disallowing themselves from having fun with you.

image from leightaylor

Love it. This lady is all about fun. And she looks pretty fantastic having fun as well. You know who doesn't look like she's having fun? The chick in this photo (which spurred me to write this blog entry in the first place):


Sorry if you just threw up in your mouth a little bit like I almost did. While idly perusing some swimsuits online, I was quite shocked when I saw this photo-- there are others, as well (gotta have those multiple product views)! How could this image ever make me want to buy a swimsuit? Why couldn't they rescue this poor girl from Auschwitz first before they made her pose in a bikini bottom? Nothing about this image makes me feel that the product they are offering promises fun, sports, sun, social engagement or even the grayest hint of sexual attraction. W, T, and then also the F.

I'm sorry to have abused your eyes like that. Here, let's all have a Marilyn chaser:

Curvy, smiling, and attracting the mens. Let's get us a swimsuit like that.

.

Weekend Travel.

This weekend, my sweetay and two of our friends loaded into a van and drove six, snowy hours to Chicago, mostly to see Les Savy Fav.

image via Brooklyn Vegan

Tim Harrington loves yellow, but has trouble keeping it on.

The show started at 10pm on Saturday night, so we had a whole day to fill-- at my sweetay's suggestion, we poked around some vintage stores, with the added surprise of tracking down a vintage gown he'd found online! Sometimes I wonder, "Where the hell did I get this dude from?" And then I say to myself, "Who cares? All I know is I'm not letting him go back!"

These two were clear winners-- le sigh! Spaghetti straps are too thin for my bustliness, and strapless gowns seem a bit dated to me. These are modestly pretty, and also my exact size. Unfortunately, they were already sold by the time we go to the shop. However, I did come away having learned two important things: a) If you see something you like, jump on it like it's a ball pit on a trampoline, and b) ladies who deal in vintage wedding gowns are bat sh*t crazy. Like, lipstick-on-the-teeth, spirals-for-pupils crazy. I say this with love.

So, while I didn't come away with a dress, the next place we hit up yielded the most perfect wedding style shoes:


These $12 beauts were found at Hollywood Mirror, your average graffiti-walled, vintage store-cum-costume outlet. With clear vamps and acrylic heels, gold soles, and gold bejeweled hotness at the toe, these pristine 1950's era slingbacks-- in a perfect size 8.5 no less, are too damn good to be true.

.