Making a Statement

Pants? Trina Turk Shoes? Guess, thrifted Bag? Thrifted (Italian made, pumped about this find...) 

Necklace? Vintage (check out this one) Glasses? Jimmy Choo c/o ClearlyContacts

I wore this to the shop last Saturday. I went to bed Friday night and told Matt I was excited for the next day because I loved the outfit I had planned. Excited about my pink slacks but mostly excited about this stunner of a necklace. I bought the necklace for the shop, at least that is what I told myself (and anyone who would listen to my justifications...) but it may take a little detour at my house first. I'm just such a sucker for the quality and uniqueness of these eye catching necklaces assembled from vintage Czech crystals. Statement necklaces are going to come and go in popularity; one month we'll be loving dainty little charms and the next month we'll want bibs made of wooden beads carved into a zoo of animals (that actually sounds awesome, someone make me that!) but if you have a unique quality piece, you'll be thrilled to wear it whether or not it is 'on trend'.
Seriously, when I talk about purchasing vintage pieces, I sound/read like a an infomercial. I want to apologize for that, but it would be both insincere and so very Canadian... #sorrynotsorry #ilovevintage #ibarelytoleratehashtags #especiallywhenpeopleusethemonfacebook

Ok, done.

Polka Dotted

Dress? Vintage (similar in a new style here or here) Crinolin? get it here Pumps? Ralph Lauren 

Belt? Vintage Clutch? Vintage (similar on Etsy here)

This is a happy dress. I put a crinolin underneath (this is like the one I have) and that made the dress even happier. 

I wore these polka dots first to do a morning show segment on Morning Live about how to incorporate a little vintage into your wedding (it's here... sidenote, I really actually love doing these live segments even though I can't sleep very well the night before. Ha. Watching it back I wish I could have pointed at the items more directly but the whole display was jerry-rigged into place with a level and a piece of anti-slip (thank-you Matt...) and I was scared to touch anything in case I knocked the whole thing over. Though... that could have been funny.).

I also wore the dress to visit my Dad for his birthday. He's not really noticing these kind of details any more but I know if he wasn't sick, he would have just thought this dress was top notch. Things are so different now  in that whole situation but sometimes you just pretend everything is normal and put on a polka dot dress and eat cake. 

This dress is also a perfect match for the polka dots I have going on in my shop window right now. I'm trying to write an honest and balanced post about this retail journey I started last November and true to form it's taking me forever (pretty sure it took me less time to open the shop than to write about the shop...) but I can probably sum up the post now by saying that retail is awesome and terrible and exciting and very, very humbling. But one of my very favourite things to do, and where I like to direct my energy into when I can feel myself getting negative, is the window displays. I'm pretty sure I spend too much money on all the stupid things I put in there but it's fun for me and fun for people who pass by. Even if I am having the crappiest week I still want to project energy and enthusiasm from the shop. It's hard not to smile at polka dot lanterns in a shop window and it's hard not to smile when you are wearing a crinoline. Those are the facts of life. 

Pogs and Free People

Dress? Free People (quite similar here) Boots? Steve Madden Necklace? Vintage Whiting and Davis (here, but without a chain) Bracelet with stones? Vintage sterling (have the exact one and its cousin in the shop) 

Pics? By Shelly Spithoff*

This blog post has nothing to do with these pictures. It happens sometimes... I usually try to find some kind of connection between the text and the photos but today I'm not even attempting it. Rebellious behaviour...

Ok, so you remember the Pog craze of the early 1990's? If you do, we can hang out. If not, you must be young and fabulous and still get ID'd when you go and buy yourself a nice bottle of vintage. Enjoy that.

But back to Pogs... They were those circular cardboard disks that you had to flip over in order to win them off your competitor (yeah, super complicated, thank goodness we have Farmville now... Kidding, I don't play Farmville and stop inviting me to play. Those invitations make me hate you.) Anyways, there were real licensed Pogs that were collectable, cool and trademarked and then there were the cheap knock-off Pogs without the Pog logo on the back. No one will be shocked to hear that my parents were not going to waste money buying me those name brand Pogs I so desperately wanted. And so, in probably one of my greatest moments of ingenuity, I cut out circular pieces of cardboard and glued cartoon characters on them from the weekly flyers we got in the mail. I even glued the Pog logo on the back to make them as legit as possible.

If you are impressed and wish you had Pinterest back then so I could have made a faux Pog tutorial and you could have pinned it as a rainy day activity, you need to hold your admiration and wait until what I tell you next. Because by the time Pogs went out of style I had an entire can and a few binder pages full of real, brand name Pogs that I had won, traded and/or begged off friends. I was like Drake, starting from the bottom, now we here...

I handmade less than 10 Pogs and somehow, I worked my way up to have a rather extensive collection of real Pogs. Basically, I was a Pog shark. I just thought I would write this post because I was talking to a friend about Pogs yesterday and I realized then that I was a pint-sized Pog shark back in the day and it is only fair to share that information. Again, please tell me you remember Pogs, else this entire post is a frighteningly random.... That is all. 

And just to try to refer back to the pictures in this post, might I just say that this fluffy dress was great fun to wear...

(And these lovely pics are by Shelly Spithoff, who just launched her fancy new website and is having a pretty good contest if you are in Southern Ontario and getting married this year... Just FYI...)

Suited Up

Suit? Vintage (similar here on Etsy, actually tons of cool 1960's ones on Etsy) Hat? Thrifted (very similar here though)

We went away for a little holiday last week. We got a cottage along the beach in the south... of France, or more like, Ontario but what does it matter? There was sand and no work and it was good. 

This was honestly the most I have ever looked forward to a holiday. I needed a break. I've been feeling a little burned out and a lot grumpy and I just wanted to escape. I could handle another few weeks off but that's not exactly how it works, does it? 

It's funny, I used to want to go all over the world when we went on vacation but lately I just want to go somewhere and do very little... I'm sure the wanderlust will return but right now I'm about reading a stack of crappy literature and figuring out new drink mixes. Maybe if I had my way (spoiler alert: I don't) we would not have had the rainy and cold days in the middle of a week at the beach but those cold days got us out and about to do some vintage hunting. 

While on the hunt, I found this 1960's suit... I tried it on and it actually fit and it was a little Cinderella moment but with a bathing suit instead of a pair of shoes... And true story, after I paid for the suit, the sun peaked through the clouds and we raced back to the beach to play bocce in order to determine who had to do dishes... Ahhhh, vacation....

Top? Marshall's Skirt? c/o Pippa Lynn (here) Shoes? DVF Earrings? Bebe 

 What you can't see (what I forgot to photograph...) is that this shirt has a cut out back too. Cut out shoulders, cut out back, fringe and a slight hi-low on the skirt; so many trends, so little time. This outfit didn't quite feel like 'me' but I really liked it!

Not that I have some defined vision of what a 'me' outfit is. I guess lately it's been my worn denim shorts and an orange Holland tee tucked into them. And then Holland lost the game in the semi finals yesterday so we took down all the flags off the cars and packed away the patriotic shirts for another two years until Euro Cup. Of all the sporting events, I probably get the most fanatic about soccer (and then Olympics). There's a big part of me that thinks sports' worship is so dumb and then next thing you know, I'm looking for face paint at Target. I'm tired of the heartbreak though so next time I may not join in on cheering the Dutch. Who am I kidding? I look good in orange...;)

Four Eyes

Glasses? Jimmy Choo c/o ClearlyContacts

I got my first pair of glasses in Grade 2. Initially I was pretty excited. I could finally see that trees had leaves and that homes had numbers. More importantly, I got to skip school a few times to go to the eye doctor and my teacher gave me a pretty embroidered glasses case to make me feel more excited about the whole thing.
I saw the models on the Hakim ads and thought things were going to be just fine if I ended up looking like those ladies. But we couldn't afford the wire frames in the ads, so I had to pick a pair of glasses from the 'free wall'. It came down to a pair of big plastic purpley-pink frames. My mom said they looked nice and that the colour was great with my complexion. I thought that they were trying to sabotage my social life. It was not enough to be in a new country with a difficult name and a bad bowl-cut but now I also had to wear giant pink glasses. Awesome.
I spent most of my elementary school years trying to see how many days I could 'forget' my glasses. I specifically remember going camping with my friend and her family and talking to some cute boys by the service station, feeling ever so grown-up. Except I don't really know if they actually were cute because I refused to put my glasses on.
The summer before high school, I decided that the only way I could ever be popular would be to get a pair of contacts.  My parents had just gotten me new glasses (wire frames... finally) and could not understand this obsession with contacts... or really the obsession with popularity. I told them the contacts were necessary for my athletic career. After all, how could I play basketball with glasses on*?
Too young for a part time job, I handed out fliers in the neighbourhood offering to do any odd jobs for cash. One month into Grade 9, I finally had enough money saved up to pay for my first pair of contacts. I loved those contacts. I have an astigmatism in my right eye and consequently my cheap contacts never sat quite right, but I was blissfully happy to be free of glasses, even if my one contact constantly bothered my eye.
Of course, those contacts never made me the most popular girl in school and never made me particularly athletic either. And one day I would realize that that was just fine.
I would also realize that glasses weren't that bad. When I landscaped full time, I could sleep in three extra minutes if I didn't put my contacts in that day. There even came a day a few years ago when I started to see glasses not as a necessity or a few extra minutes of sleep, but maybe even as a pretty chic accessory.

And here we are, I'm 30 and thanks to ClearlyContacts I got myself a purple plastic pair of glasses. This feels like familiar territory.
I'm pretty sure my mom will say that they look nice and that the colour goes great with my complexion. This time I might believe her. Probably because that bowl-cut has grown out...


*I was really, really terrible...