I did an interview with Sea Isle Times about the Strathmere website

I recently did an interview with Linda Dougherty about my Strathmere History website for that great little Summer magazine 'The Sea Isle Times'. It will be in the August issue, which is free at local stores.


The story starts on pages 40 to 43 directly here -
Or browse the whole issue online at their website for free - HERE

Jalopy Showdown 2012

My Dad took his 1932 Ford Ardun up to York Springs PA for their huge car show at the Latimore Valley Fairgrounds.
Here are some photos of his car, taken by his friend Brucie.

Here are a few of the other cars. You can see all of his show photos here -
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=700330&highlight=jalopy+showdown

Many, many Vintage Hats at Dandelion Vintage

I recently bought a collection of 100+ vintage hats and I've been adding them to the website over the past few weeks. The website now has 14 pages of vintage hats dating from the 1940s to the 1970s, over 170 hats to choose from, and reasonably price too.

Below is a sample of some of the hats.
You can check them all out here in the Hat Department  - (all 14 pages, with more to come)

The Nautical/Railroad Corner of my house

This is a small area at the end of my hallway at the front of the house which I decorated with some railroad and nautical things.
There are some things in the house that are here to stay because we have nowhere else to put them, so I have to work my stuff around those items. This little cast iron stove is one of those items (also it's way too heavy to move) Our house was the annex to a hotel, and it was built in 1902. The West Jersey Railroad came over the bay and the train station was right in front of the hotel and our house, which were known as 'The West Jersey Cottages'. Gus Wittkamp was the owner of the Cottages and he was also the railway station manager. Because of that, we've collected seashore railroad related items over the years.

In the photo above in the coal bucket is a 1940s Bates blanket with anchors in it, which was in the house when we bought it. We also found the old oar in the attic of the house. Since the hotel was right on the bay, they used to rent out boats for fishing. Below is a photo of Bertha Wittkamp - Gus' daughter and the person that we bought our house from - she's holding one of the old oars. Photo is from about 1917.

Below is a postcard from the Teens. At the far left is the train station building, next is the hotel with the flag on the top and after that is our house. In the 1940s the railway was closed, and the staion building torn down sometime after that. Around 1944-45 the hotel was moved up the road a few blocks and it is now a restaurant.





The cast iron stove came from the West Jersey railway and it would have been used in a train car. The lights on the left in the photo below were also used for signalling trains.

On the top of the stove are just little nautical knick-knacks and more old lamps.  My Dad recently bought me the old nautical American flags at a flea market in Ocean City.

The Dressing/Guest Room

I finished re-doing the room that will be my Dressing-Slash-Guest room. Painted the hideous bright blue walls a very pale green and replaced the pilled and stained/faded mauve rug with a neutral color. I made the curtains from some vintage fabric. All of the furniture is old, including the metal bed that originally came from my great-aunt's house, I think that it's from the 1930s. The Bessie Pease Gutmann prints are old too.

My make-up table.

One wall shows off some of my Summery vintage purses

There are only 2 closets on my floor so this old coat rack - which came from a vintage stock purchase in Glassboro - will hold the bulk of my own clothing and some more vintage purses. Vintage shoes underneath.

A closer peek at some of my clothing, kinda smooshed. All but one dress is vintage, all of the purses are vintage, because you know, vintage purses are my weakness.

There are many dressers on my floor which is actually different for me because I haven't had a dresser for my clothing in many years. I junk up my dresser mirrors with photos, scarves, hankies etc. I'm not a fan of mirrors.

My parent's got this dresser from the Deauville Inn in Strathmere when our friends bought it 30+ years ago. The Deauville was once a 20 room hotel and there were many of these antique dressers in amongst the ruins of the old rooms. My Mother refinished and sold several of the dressers and we still have 3 of them, all identical.

The other old dresser has a marble top, super heavy. I don't know where this dresser came from.

The Calla Lily lamp was bought at Cowtown flea market. It was originally classic 1980s shiny brass! I actually bought two of them and I painted the brass.



My next project will be the spare bedroom/dressing room

My next project will be the spare bedroom/dressing room. It's a corner room, nice and bright with a window on each side. The walls are a bright blue right now and there is a beat up mauve carpet in there. I chose a pale green to paint the walls. First it looked kind of yellow on the blue and it dried a little lighter than what I wanted, but I'll make it work. The carpet might be a problem until I get some extra money, I might have to work around it for a while.
There will be 2 mirrored dresses, a make-up table and a marble top table, all antique. The bed is a metal 1930s painted headboard that came from my grandmother.
Since there are only 2 small closets in the apartment, I'll be using this as my dressing room. I have an old coat rack with two shelves across the top and I'll hang my clothing on it, and on brackets on the back of the 2 doors. I'll have plenty of drawer space. I'll be hanging all of my vintage purses on the wall, I'm not sure yet how I'll set up my shoes.

These 3 photos are of the room right before I started painting - after photos to follow.

A slipcover project with some vintage fabric

I should have taken a before photo, right? It was originally a tweedy brown velour. Brown isn't my color so I decided to try to make a slipcover for it.
I bought the above 1950-60s fabric on ebay a few years ago, it was 12 yards for about $40. I had cut 4 panels from the piece to make curtains for the cottage which hung out there for about 2 years and I had a 3-4 yard piece left over.
The 3 panels were the exact width of the sides and back of the chair, so I stitched 3 of the panels together, folded them over the chair on the back and sides, and tucked them down inside. The 4th panel I stitched about 12 inches up the 2 front-sides and then just tucked the rest of the piece under the cushion. I didn't make a cut on the 4 panels so I could always take them apart to use for something else.

The yardage that I had left over originally was cut to cover the 2 big cushions. It still needs some tight tucking and some straightening of the patterns, but I'm so please with the way that it turned out.

Next I have these 2 rolls of vintage fabrics that I bought with a load of clothing recently. There's about 8 yards on each roll and I only paid $15 for the two rolls! They are both an ivory taffeta, one has stitched puckers and the other has raised stitched lines.
I'm thinking that I'll make some sort of window treatments for the livingroom with them. They'd be great boudoir pillows - but with my dogs the pillows would get wrecked.

One more shot of the chair, because I love it.

Harlow and Gus, enjoying Spring

The doggies are getting another early taste of Spring. Above is Harlow, she'll be 4 in june, she weighs 80 pounds! That's huge for a female bulldog.

Below is baby Gus, he is now 6 months old and up to 57 pounds. I'm thinking that he'll be big like Harlow and our sweet Boris, and end up at about 75 pounds. He's nice and solid, and such pretty markings. He's a very happy guy and so much fun to hav around. Super naughty though!

My vintage sweaters

I've mentioned before that I need to see all of my purses and shoes, otherwise I end up using/wearing  the same few shoes or purses all the time, while others are neglected in the back of the closet. To make sure that none are neglected, all of my purses hang on the wall and all of my shoes are out on the floor in a spare bedroom. 
I guess that  I'm the same with my sweaters, I grab the same usual comfortable sweater (usually black) and wear it all the time. The solution to add variety to my wardrobe was to get them all out for me to see like the bags and shoes. So I have them tiered from over-the-door hooks on the outside of the bathroom and bedroom doors.
Here is a peek at most of my own vintage sweaters, a few stranglers are hanging on a rack where I have some outfits pulled ahead of time to wear. These are all buttonfront sweaters, I only have a few pullover sweaters. I don't know, I just don't buy/wear them very much.
I still have my go-to favorites, but seeing all my sweaters out at once gets me to wear some that might get neglected otherwise.

I was so happy with how well my new stockings matched the stripe in my skirt . . .

 . . .  that I had to take some photos and blog about them! (dork) I bought the stockings randomly on Sock Dreams because I loved the design in the knit. Turns out that they are a perfect match for the green stripes in this 1960s skirt. The stockings fit great and they stay up well on their own.

The rest of the outfit included a heather brown short sleeved sweater from a 1940s sweater set, and a 1960s lacey knit cardigan. The shoes are 1990-2000s-ish I think.