Life in Hollywood

This is a fabulous book that I've had for years. It's called Life in Hollywood, 1936 - 1952 Peter Stackpole.

Peter Stackpole was one of the four original 'Life' photographers. I don't know much about him but I think this statement alone kind of says it all!

This book pretty much does what it says on the tin, it is in fact Hollywood from 1936 - 1952 in pictures. It's absolutely fantastic, gorgeous pictures, unusual sometimes, intimate, ordinary, just as 'Life' was. Unfortuately the pictures have come out a little grainy, I scanned them but perhaps not at a good enough resolution, but they are still worth a look.

So if you get the opportunity to buy it, do you'll love it. I found it here on Amazon when I looked so I'm sure you'll find it in other places.

This is the gorgeous picture on the cover, it is Tennis Star Eleanor Cushingham using Raymond Loewy's Palms Springs solarium in 1947, I need to live this life and look like this!

I'm trying to think of other words apart from gorgeous, mmm, ok this is a beautiful shot of Starlets kicking their legs to stretch their backs at the Fox Drama School in 1937.

This lovely lady is a bored extra on the Paramount Set, I can relate to this as I did a lot of extra work when I was younger though I don't ever remember looking as glamorous as this whilst doing so!

This is really one of my favourites shots,well of the ones I've scanned now, there are so many favourites in this book. I love this dressing gown, her hair, the setting *sigh* it is Carole Landis by the way.

I love James Stewart and really think this picture of him after he returned from World War II on a visit to his hometown strolling down the street with his sister Mary, you've got to love James Stewart!

Then last but not least, for some reason I'm really drawn to this photo, it just labelled An Unknown Starlet, how intriguing!

I hope you enjoyed this little look at this book I'm going to have a look through my books and share some in the next few months, particularly ones I never really see mentioned anywhere else.

And finally and a totally unrelated plea! Word verification has just got waaaay more complicated, I removed mine ages ago and have had no problems with dodgy comments at all, it's certainly worth considering removing it if you have word verification on your blog as it's a right pain now. If you're reluctant just give it a go for a week and see if that works, honestly I've had no problems, but commenting on blogs yesterday just took forever. Thank you for listening to my plea ;o)

How time flies....

We have been in our house for 6 years today and boy has time flown! I look around and think oh there is still so much to do but then I look at the pictures of what it DID look like and think, ok, not bad on a limited income and the fact that the first 2 years we had to do stuff like boilers, bathrooms and major plumbing cos of the state of the place.

It's times like this that I realise being a perfectionist and always striving for the next thing  is not always great, sometimes you should appreciate where you have got to and just say, I did a great job! I'm very bad at this but this is a post almost to myself to say, you did a great job, ok it's not complete buy boy it's a darned sight better than it was.

My living room went from this - photo taken at viewing by the way, not our furniture! To this!

Our bathroom went from this, and yes that is carpet on the side of the bath! To this :o)

And our bedroom went from this hideousness to this, although I've done a bit more since, but the lighting is so bad at the moment that I can't take pics! Not great pictures but you can see the difference!

I'm a terrible one for seeing what I haven't done than looking at what I've achieved and at 45 I'm trying to change that, so this is a little pat on the back to me type of post!!

oooh and this week I finally got myself a camera tripod so I might finally be able to do some outfit type posts in the near future whoo hoo!

Mid Week Love

OK I suppose I have to acknowledge it's Valentine's Day but that's not what my post is about! We don't really do it in our house, although there's a lot of love here, neither of us are much into Valentine's Day, so we might have a nicer meal than normal and a cheeky mid week bottle of wine but that's it. If you are celebrating though I hope you have a lovely evening

ANYWAY the real reason for posting. I have a couple of shout outs for blog posts I've seen recently that I'd like to share in case you don't follow them.

First up is a blog post that in fact just went up today, but my oh my. It's Charlotte at Tuppence Ha'penny and she has created the most fabulous dress for Valentine's day! It's a dress originally worn by Ginger Rogers on film and you know I saw this film last year and the dress made me gasp, I'm not really a 40s chick but I'd wear this in a heartbeat. Charlotte has recreated it and what a fine job she has made of it! (Sorry Charlotte I stole your photo...)

My second one is Casey Elegant Musing's which is a lovely stylish blog full of gorgeousness and then this week she put up a post that really helped me about blogging of all things Usually she deals with lovely pretty things but this was a really practical post about scheduling blogging and the timing could not have been better for me. I love blogging, I love what it feeds back to me, I love the people I've met through it, I love the inspiration it gives to me, yet I have fallen out of the habit, for a few reasons, however Casey has helped me, I've printed out her blog schedule and have started to fill it in THANK YOU!

Here's a picture of Casey from her blog, putting up the blog schedule would have not been quite so pretty!

And you may have noticed some changes on my blog, I'm having a play about at the moment with the design I will get a pretty header back but I ran into some problems so it's plain for the time being, come back for more changes soon!

Oh and for those who wished me luck re my appointment with the consultant, it was cancelled, I wasn't amused I'm trying to do something about it, I'll let you know how I get on.

Shoe Glorious Shoes!

As some of you already know, I do some freelance work for Miss L Fire and I've been dying to share their Spring/Summer collection for ages now! However now they've officially put pictures on their FB page I feel I can finally share my love!!

The hardest thing about working with such a great company is seeing all the gorgeous shoes and wanting every last one of them. So I'll show you some of my real top favourites. They won't be on the website until the end of this month but that gives you time to choose and set up a savings plan ha ha!

Betsey

Capri

Miranda

Songbird

Dottie

And those are just my absolute favourites, there are more I love

I'm kind of a lucky gal really as not only do I work for Miss L Fire but I also work for Shona at Heyday. I spent Tuesday with Shona discussing the future moving forward and of course looking for inspirations for new designs, of course that was our favourite part of the day, I honestly think we could spend a whole week doing that. If you want to see one of the new designs on it's way have a look at In The Heyday blog it shows a gorgeous new coat that is going to be in the Heyday range. In fact here's a picture from the blog, sorry for stealing Shona, but you look fab!

What a gorgeous coat and photo isn't it?

Lastly I just want to apologise about my lack of posting, I'm having continued problems with my knee - ongoing since October -  I finally see the consultant on Monday but I'm in quite a bit of pain and it's leading to lack of sleep and extreme grumpiness, which as you know is not my general mood so it's been hard to feel motivated to blog, but I do miss it so I'm going to try to make myself more often. Oh it also means I've been to grumpy to sew too, although I did start on a pair of trousers last weekend so I might have them finished this weekend and will show you!

Bah!

I was hoping to post lots of sewing adventures this weekend but yesterday morning I woke up with a stinking head cold, so instead I've spent yesterday and so far today in PJs, feeling slightly sorry for myself.

So instead I will post about a couple of true musical greats that passed away this week.

Sorry both of these aren't videos as such as both tracks were looong before video - or shorties as they were known then - were popular but they are great great music!

First up Johnny Otis, if you don't know about this guy, read up about him, what a guy, he worked with a lot of greats, was a real innovator in music and did some amazing things in his life. He's a real musical hero of mine and my husbands, he just touched so much music that we loved.




Next up and probably better know generally is Etta James. What a gal and what a voice.

I love this song, I actually sang it with my band many years ago, but could never recreate that wild Etta James feel!



I'll be back fighting fit soon, I would have carried on with sewing this weekend but I have so much work on at the moment, I need the energy for that!!

Sorting, Cooking and Sewing!

I love January, I find it a real sorting month. It's a month where nothing much happens so you have a little more time than normal to get things sorted, I also like to get things organised in January as it gives me a good start to the year!

This year has been no different, but I'm making some bigger steps in sorting that I hope will be permanent solutions. I bought some little clear bags from ebay, super cheap, and they have revolutionised my sorting!! I bought them to sort my earrings originally. I had them stored horribly and altogether, stones were forever falling out of earrings and getting lost and I knew I had to do something, so now they are all sorted. This is how it all started eeek

Everything now clearly in little bags, and the advantage of this is, if a stone does come lose it does so inside the bag and doesn't get lost YAY!

Back in storage containers but now not all messed up!!

Then I thought hang on this would be great for my buttons too! I do have them in lovely storage jars which look cute but to be honest everytime I look for buttons I have to tip the whole jar out and search for a matching set, so I went through those too! Yes I know they don't look as pretty in the jar now but much easier to find!

I bought these lovely ones the other week, can't bear to remove them from the card yet, well until I use them.

I'd forgotten about these, love them!

Another tip, if you wear vintage clothes, when they drop to bits and are beyond repair, always remove the buttons before disposing of them. These came from a pair of very cute peddle pushers (capris) that would have fallen apart on wear!

If you're looking for novelty type buttons there are some great modern ones around, I bought these intending to make a tropical blouse with Carmen Miranda influence!!

Something else new I'm trying at the moment are some recipes from this book. As you know I'm vegetarian, but I'm not vegan, I don't really have any desire to be vegan but I've heard great things about this book so wanted to give it a try. I'm sharing just in case anyone out there is veggie/vegan and is looking for inspiration.

I highly recommend this, I've made a couple of recipes from this so far and OMG they were both delicious, not to mention healthy and low in fat, in my book that's a winner! Here's one attempt, Black eye peas and greens, with mashed sweet potato, YUM!!!!

And last but certainly not least, I have been saving hard to buy myself an overlocker (serger to my US friends!!) I was so excited when it arrived yesterday, except I didn't have time to set it up or try it until last night. It took me forever to thread it, boy that is complicated and I gave it a test. I'm so excited that my sewing projects will now have a much more professional finish, can't wait to get going. I'm going to play about with it a bit today, I'm brand new to overlocking so I need to learn how to use it properly before I launch into making something, but I'm super excited about it all!!

Right I'm off to play with my overlocker now......

BTW please excuse all my dark pictures, it's so hard to get good pictures in the depths of winter when it's constantly dark!

Weekly Roundup!

Hi all, how's 2012 working out for you so far? It's working how just fine for me, I feel immensely optimistic about this year!

Well as I'm self employed early Jan is inevitably taken up with doing my accounts which should have been done long before now at end of Jan is the deadline, but hey that's how I roll, so that's essentially what I'm up to but I've still got news for you and pictures to share.

First up my resolutions, yes I like resolutions I don't think of them as resolutions I think of them as goals for the year, I also never start the tougher ones on the 1st of Jan, you are so doomed for failure if you do that, well I am I've learnt from experience!!

Now I'm starting to get my dining room back we are going to eat at the table as much as possible, this is something we don't do, mostly as we haven't had the dining room for years as it was the stock room. Here is the table set for New Years Day dinner, we've pretty much eaten all breakfast there and we're having fondue tonight as we have all the ingredients left from over Christmas!

As you can see though it's pretty cramped that's cos this is what the rest of the room still looks like

So not quite a dining room yet but soon. I'm going to be moving all this stuff at some point this month and then stripping of wall paper, re-wallpapering and then painting has to be done. The floor is good. We also found some fab curtains just before Christmas on ebay, we were lucky enough to have a small win on the lottery, well £72 so we bought curtains for the dining room! Here they are I think they look fab with the dinette chair.

We're thinking we might paint the walls grey but we're not sure. We'll see!

One of my other resolutions is to get out and about a bit more and do small things I enjoy, not necessarily things that cost. We had a tough year, personally and financially last year and so this year, although finances are still tight we want to try to just get out of the house sometimes, even if it's just to look around somewhere.

So this weekend we did one of our favourites things. We went rummaging at an Antique market and large antique shop. We didn't find anything in fact the regular antique/craft type fair we go to in Farnham was pretty quiet, I don't blame the traders for not so many being there, after all you're not going to make much in January so it was a little disappointing as we usually find something. Then the church fair that is around the corner where I scored loads of vintage buckles, buttons and material last time wasn't even on! So we decided to visit Bourne Mill Antique centre in Farnham. It's a huge old mill I assume,  a really old building packed full of stuff but it is really hard to get around if you're not good on your feet, so Paul went to the cafe for coffee and cake whilst I rummaged. Here are some pics.

It's several floors of real rummaging, I didn't find anything this time, to be honest it's been going downhill a bit lately but in the past we've found some real treasures! It's definitely worth a visit though if you're in the area.

I love the 50s kitchen cabinet and I am in the market for one but I'm not going to pay £265!

I do have other resolutions that I won't share but one that I will is sewing more. I have saved enough to buy myself an overlocker I am busting with joy about this, however as I'm grounded til I get my accounts done I'm not going to buy it til I'm done otherwise it will be shouting at me when I need to be doing my accounts! I'm hoping to get it in time for next weekend as I figure I might finish my accounts tomorrow whoo hoo! The first thing I'm going to sew is not for me. I've gained weight and I need to shed it, I find out about my knee op on Tuesday so fingers crossed that happens quick so I can get back to exercising too. In the meantime I've been promising Paul a number of items so I'm going to get going on those. These are more casual 50s trousers that I'm going to give a go. I also have some great material for a shirt for him. I'll let you see them when I'm done, promise!

Anyway that's what I've been up to. Hope you're all having a great 2012 so far. My accounts phase is not much fun but hey it's got to be done! Once it's done I'll be very happy and crack on with my to do list for 2012!