Dream Dress

After dropping Clover off at pre-school this morning, I pulled up to one of my favorite thrift stores to find a dress on display in the front window that is nothing short of an absolute dream vintage wedding dress. One of the ladies working saw me taking pictures and came out to tell me about it.

Apparently, a woman in her 70’s brought it in. It was her mother’s wedding dress in 1930. She also brought in the golden yellow one on display with it, the dress she herself got married in, in Vegas in the 1950’s.

Inside was this dress, from 1960, which was worn by the woman’s daughter to her prom… three generations of dresses!

Oh, but it was this beauty that stole my heart. She let me have a better look at it once we were inside and it appeared to be in wonderful condition. So simple and elegant but with such sweet details…

The peek-a-boo shoulders were my favorite, lined with little flowers that are hard to see in the pics, and the ruffles, oh the ruffles… *sigh*.

I didn‘t try it on, but it looks like it just might be a perfect fit, which is kind of killing me, being that I’m already happily married, and can’t for the life of me imagine when I would ever have the opportunity to wear such a dress, obviously not to someone else’s wedding!

The price tag is $85, which seems like an amazing deal, but not really something I can justify for wearing around the house to play dress up. Any vintage sellers out there have an idea of what this dress might actually be worth?

I did find a few little goodies to take home though: a 70’s hippie top with quilted bib detailing, a vintage 70’s I. Magnin pale pink nightgown with crochet lace trim (which I plan to wear as a dress), $4 each, and a box of 50 vintage Audubon Western Birds of North America cards for $2, which helped, but I’m still kinda pining over that dress, ah well…

My Saturday

I wore my newly thrifted bow blouse ($3, Goodwill) out for the first time to a party/yard sale (why are there not more of these?). It's handmade 70's vintage and the print is really lovely. The skirt was a thrifty gift from my mother-in-law. The little leather belt ($1.50, Mission Thrift) I love because it works with everything and happens to match these boots, old thrifted favorites that they are, quite nicely.

This is our friend Joey… rad style, no? He and his team, collectively known as Whiskeydrunk Cycles, threw an awesome block party/fundraising event to drum up some cash for the building of their railcar entry for this year's Handcar Regatta in September.


There was live music, kegs of beer, wholesome foods such as doughnuts and hotdogs, and flea market-style vendor booths… what more do you need on a Saturday afternoon, right? The vendors were selling everything from old bikes to unicorns (you‘ll see).

Here's last year’s rail-rod, the Thennagin Bomber, made road-ready, and here it was in action during the races last year.

There’s a large hairclip and 8 bobby pins hiding in there, in case you were wondering ;)


Our friends Lucie of Luce Goods and Melissa of My Friend Melissa, selling their handmade wares. Cute gear for both babies and bikers! Check out a few of my fave items. Both take email orders, plug plug ;)

Sorry girls, I realize Matt and Heather are totally stealing your thunder in the picture I took. Lucie and Melissa would be the girls on the left and right respectively, whose faces are totally hidden, oops!

Last but certainly not least…






The Sebastopol vintage shop East of Eden had a booth. A good amount of time was spent perusing and as you can see from that third pic, I wasn’t the only one loving the vintage that day : )

Unfortunately, the prices were vintage shop prices, not flea market prices, though I did splurge on one dress, a little white eyelet number that was just too good to leave behind, and at $25 it was actually one of the better deals.

You can get a little sneak peek here.

And here’s a little snippet of Clover enjoying her find of the day, just look at that grin… a dollar well spent I’d say!

... and I do need the fern to unfurl in the Spring

I wasn’t kidding when I said I carry this bag all the time. Milla picked it up when she saw them play in Vancouver. Lucky girl. Just a quick thrifty outfit post for today, not much to report.

We did get our three kinds of melons and birdhouse gourd seeds planted today and Lucas and I have a dinner date planned for this evening, just the two of us. It’s been a while since we’ve had a night out, so lookin’ forward to that :D

Wishing you all a lovely weekend!

Here's a lovely song/video to kick it off right :)

Sun Days

This was yesterday morning, just about to walk downtown for storytime at the public library.

Like so many of my outfits, I have Milla to thank for this one. She thrifted the vintage cotton jersey dress with her mom back in Finland, and if I recall correctly, I actually have her mom to thank for suggesting she get this one for me. It's a polo shirt-style dress though between my hair covering the button up little white collar and my cardi covering the white trimmed sleeves you wouldn’t know it from the picture.

I love its stripes and carefree preppy vibe and the fact that it's super soft like a worn tee. I've gotta say, I’m also really lovin’ this no tights business.

The little black quilted mary janes I found last week at Goodwill for $4 and the tote, which I carry all the time and must get a good picture of one of these times, was a gift from Milla as well.

Behind me is one of two redbud trees in our front yard which burst into bloom over the weekend, such pretty trees they are, and to my right was this…

Of course I rushed to grab my camera off the tripod and get a shot of the little nasturtium fairy just before she tromped away. Those fairies are quick you know!



Speaking of grabbing my camera, earlier in the morning I noticed how pretty the light was coming in through our east facing windows. It lit up our little windowsill collection of dusty old bottles and solar pendulums and made the coolest shadows on the wall above Clover's new-to-us (and free!) vintage Holly Hobbie kitchen set.

What’s a solar pendulum, you say? Well, you wouldn’t be the first to ask!
I made a little video to show them in action:

Lucas came across them years ago while looking at solar panels on eBay. Someone was selling a lot of 20 and he was the only bidder and got them all for something like 5 bucks I think. They each have a coil and magnets and a little tiny solar panel that powers them.

As soon as the sun hits, they start swinging and keep on goin’ till the sun goes down. They are the coolest little gadgets and I love the tick-tock sound they make like old-fashioned clocks. People who come into our home are always completely fascinated by them.

We have no idea what their original purpose was, that is if there was one, other than just being super awesome little sun-loving creatures of course. We haven’t yet met anyone else who knows either. Any ideas?

They really are like little creatures though. If they get close enough to one other (the swinging does cause them to move around a bit) the magnets of their swingy parts can stick together in a way that sort of resembles mating insects.

We even had one that kept trying to commit suicide back when we lived at our old house. They were lined up along the windowsill above our sink, which got really intense sun in the afternoons, and this one would get going so fast that it would gradually “walk” itself to the edge of the windowsill and “jump” into the sink. Poor thing, it did eventually bust a wire and stop swinging. Perhaps it caught its true love mating with another one of the pendulums… who knows?

On Sunday, we went to an early Easter egg hunt put on by our friend Laura Jane. It involved about 20 dozen actual eggs which had been opened by just removing the top (I don’t know how she does this) then the hollowed out eggs were dyed, filled with confetti and a piece of candy or money or a prize ticket and then the hole on top was sealed over with rice paper and glue.

The kids went inside while the adults hid all the eggs. Then they were let loose to collect eggs and smash them open in an explosion of confetti often over someone’s head or wherever was fun or convenient to see what was inside. The whole yard was covered in confetti and eggshells by the end of it all.

It was a blast and Clover, who got lucky and found one of only two eggs with a five dollar bill in it, had a really great time. Thanks Laura Jane! Also, I was having a lazy picture taking day so thanks to our friend Nour who took a couple pictures of us on her phone and emailed them to me :)

Springspiration!

(image sources: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24)