You can't win them all

Or, as Herman Munster says 'Darn, darn darn!' (sorry, my Mom watches The Munsters and the Addams Family on TV Land everyday, so I have catch phrases from those shows on my mind)
In a previous post, I mentioned my recent luck in buying a few cute dresses for myself on ebay.

The 2 following dresses were two cuties that I missed out on, darn. Some lucky gal is going to love these dresses. I wanted to post about them in the blog because they show why I love 1940s dresses so much. Such a cute flirty fit though the tops with slightly puffed sleeves and sweet a-line skirts,
First on the left here, was a very cute 1940s Appliqued dress offered by variousvaluablevintage - I really like button front dresses, and on this one, I also liked the appliqued pockets.
Next was a super cute novelty print 1940s dress offered by ellarain625 - It had a black top and the print is of blackbirds spelling out letters of the alphabet. How fun is that, I love novelty prints. And again this dress also has the puffed sleeves and flirty a-line skirt. I sent the link to this dress to the Dress A Day Blog - http://www.dressaday.com/dressaday.html - because I know she is a fan of novelty prints too.

Happy Birthday Bette

Today would have been Bette's 99th birthday, so I decided to make a little post about her. When I was younger, and didn't realize how great old movies were, I remember seeing Bette on talk shows, I think Phil Donahue was one, and I wondered 'Who is that old lady, and what's with the big attitude?' It wasn't until I was older that I finally realized the awesome-ness of Bette, and many of the other Old Hollywood stars.



Bette Davis was cool, and awesome, and ballsy, and fought for good roles where she could show her talent, unlike actresses of today who are more worried about what designer gown they're going to wear to premieres and award shows. That's why she had 'attitude' - she was good and she knew it, and many people see that as vanity or conceit, but it's really just confidence. All women should be that confident. Her career had many ups and downs but she continued to work, and was nominated for 10 Oscars. She thought of acting as a professional career, not as a lifestyle.



I think many people think of Bette in her later days. But I wanted to show off some younger photos of her, and since this is supposed to be a vintage-clothing related blog, I tried to choose some photos that showed off not only her beauty, but a little classic clothing too.



Some fun Bette Quotes -
- "I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived"
- "Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why Miss Crawford always plays ladies."
- "I've no time for broads who want to rule the world alone. Without men, who'd do up the zipper on the back of your dress?"
- "I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my make-up box."
- "Old age is no place for sissies"
- "I was thought to be 'stuck up.' I wasn't. I was just sure of myself. This is and always has been an unforgivable quality to the unsure"
- “I'd luv to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair.”
- "When a man gives his opinion he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion she's a bitch.”
- "You know what I'm going to have on my gravestone? 'She did it the hard way.'"


Bette Davis info on Wikipedia
And while searching online for photos and quotes (I really should be doing some work this morning) I found this great blog post, which kind of sums up how I see Bette too - Bette With An E: Why I Should Be Best Friends With Bette Davis

Spring fix-up update

I mentioned in a previous post that we were working on fixing up several rooms in my family's Summer rental house. The 80 year old radiators and the old heating system was removed and the new heater is installed and working really well. We are much further ahead in our yearly work than we usually are this time of year (we always do all repairs, cleaning etc. starting in late Winter to early Spring before the Summer rental season starts) My dad put drop ceilings in the two downstairs bedrooms to cover the new heater's ductwork, and he also put in new carpeting, since the previous carpeting was almost 25 years old. I did the painting and room set-ups. Here are some before and after shots.

First was the downstairs front bedroom, which used to be painted this dark magenta color shown in the 1st picture. I don't know why I didn't change this color years ago, it was just so dark in there. But now it is a pretty light yellow with a new light colored rug.




The back bedroom downstairs was a dark blue as shown in the 1st photo below. Now it is a light and bright blue-green shade. This room got a little smaller, because we had to build a closet in the room to house the new heater. The difference is amazing and I'm really pleased with the way the room turned out.



This is the carpet that we put in the blue bedroom. My dad & I both liked it, because it had kind of a Victorian look, and our house is 105 years old and it's furnished with alot of old pieces of furniture. But after we bought the carpet, I was worried that it was going to be too dark because I was trying to brighten that room, and I was worried that it wouldn't match the paint color. But it looks really great in the room, expecially with the old furniture that's in there, and it does have a tiny bit of light blue in it. Actually, we liked the carpet so much, we went back and bought a 2nd piece for the bedroom upstairs too.



Next is the hallway. 'Oh, big deal, a hallway' - you might be thinking. But I can't get over how much better it looks. You can see in the first photo that it had brown paneling and dark green and red carpeting. There's no light down there so it was kind of dark. After mentioning that I wanted to paint the paneling either on this blog or in my weekly update, someone very nicely emailed me and told me to clean the paneling with a degreaser, coat it with Kilz, and then paint it. Their advice worked great, and with a new light colored carpet and some Kmart Special $12.99 rag rugs, the hallway looks great. The second photo is the hallway going up to the front bedroom, and the 3rd photo is the back end of the hallway at the backdoor. You could barely see our old server piece setting there before in the old dark hallway, now it really stands out against the white.




I'm hoping to paint the paneling in the downstairs bathroom next. We have some other odds-n-ends jobs around the house to do first though. This morning I steam cleaned the rug in the livingroom. It came up better than I thought, but the rug is still going to need to be replaced next year. We always do the work in the house ourselves. My Dad can fix or build just about anything. Why pay someone to do what you can do yourself (we did have someone put the new heaters in though) plus we like to do the work. It's satisfying to walk into the rooms and see how good they look after your work is done. My back is probably going to be aching tonight after cleaning that rug.