Vintage dresses - is there anything they can't do?

Hello once again.
Well, you will all no doubt be relieved to hear that a solution was found to the beanet conundrum. And for the sense of well-being that is now washing over you, you have vintage dresses to thank.
Aah vintage dresses, how fabulous you are. Your fabric is completely bereft of lycra, you are instead made of lace or lurex or polyester. Your colours, patterns, textures and prints are worlds away from the safety and sameness of 'noughties' fabric.You have a uniqueness that is beyond compare, you add a sense of class or drama or even humour to my nights out. When I head out wearing a floor-skimming maxi-dress, (preferably with some crazy sleeves, be they sheer and floaty, cute and puffy or, well, wizardy), I feel like the Queen of glam - who cares if others think I'm off to a fancy dess party?!)
I could continue my reverie for hours, but let's get specific, coz I know you're dying to know how my heroic dress saved the day.
As you know from my recent post, I love my new hat but upon trying it on with several outfits, it just didn't look quite right. But I thought I'd give it another try. A couple of weeks ago, I was heading down to Freo to see a friend's band on a Friday night. It was cold, and I knew it would be even more so in the 'mantle. Perfect weather for my new beanet. But what to wear it with? Looking through my wardrobe, an old fave caught my eye. A black 1970s dress with 3/4 sleeves that flares nicely to just below the knees. It has this awesome print on it, of a man and lady sitting under a tree, in hues of white and brown and tan and mustard yellow. "OOH, this looks promising!" I thought. "These colours will look tops with the brown hat!" And wouldn't you know it, my prediction was correct! YAY! I then added faded flared jeans and an off-white skivvy underneath for warmth. Beautiful brown closed-toe wedges, a skinny brown belt, a tan clutch and a pointlessly thin brown scarf completed the look. Sounds like too much doesn't it? Well I have always been opposed to Coco Chanel's (?) sentiment that a lady should remove one accessory before leaving the house. I say the more the merrier. And if all those layers made me look a tad bag-ladyesque, well, dammit, that night I was the most fabulously chic bag-lady in town! :)

Beanet success!

Hello again!
Well, I know you haven't had a wink of sleep since I announced my intention to buy a new hat. Good news! Your peaceful slumber can now be restored, safe in the knowledge that I did indeed buy said hat. (hehehehe sweet dreams, sweet woolly hatty dreams.)
Last Saturday, while shopping at the Galleria, I stumbled upon a chocolatey little number in Forever New. It is supercute, with a little jewelled bow on the side, and even better, it was on sale! Woohoo!
Now the only problem is what to wear it with. I tried it on with a few things on Saturday night and it wasn't quite right - I think with the casual unstructured nature of the hat, one needs a suitably carefree outfit..... plus my compulsion to match demands that I wear it with other earthy tones.....hmmmmm..... stay tuned people, I know you can't wait to read the thrilling conclusion to this sartorial adventure.
Ciao for now!

Party puppy

Greetings all!
So last week I waxed lyrical about the insane degree of ubercute that my puppy possesses. On the weekend we had a party for my hubby's b'day, and received yet more unsolicited testimonies. I had been a bit worried that she would be freaked out, or walk on broken glass, or drink spilt beer. But it was all A-OK, she was such a good little dog! And she won hearts all over the place!
Notably, two of our friends told me that they don't normally like animals, but she is the exception. (And I know they weren't just saying that coz they also couldn't resist the cuddles!)
Another one of our friends attested "I have a pretty high cuteness threshold, but damn puppies are adorable!"
Conclusion: EVERYONE loves a puppy! :) (specifically, my puppy!)

Shoppytime!

Going shopping tomorrow. You know what I like? Those slouchy loose beanie/beret type winter hats. Beanets, I shall call them. Not as frenchy cutsey as a normal beret, not as bogan dodgy as a normal beanie. Tops. I might get me one. IF I can find one I like. These ones at Sportsgirl
look OK https://www.sportsgirl.com.au/index.html,
but I reckon I can find better.

Happiness is a warm puppy.

This is my puppy, Rumble.

She is the cutest damn thing you ever did see. Yes, I am biased, but yes, it is also a fact. Friends and family who visit our home melt and refuse to leave, unless they can take the puppy with them. (They can not.) My parents of course are particularly smitten by her canine charms. My mother has become an instant proponent of "puppy therapy", as she claims that all one's problems fade away when cuddling a soft and trusting little puppy. I think she's onto something.

This photo was taken when we first got her, at Easter. She is 4 months now, and gets cuter by the day.

Gettin' wiki with it

Hello cool world.
Well wikis is our topic of discovery this week. We were instructed to suss out an interesting Wikipedia entry and look at the history and discussion. As mentioned in a previous post, I'm crazy about South American fauna, man they have some cool critters! See here for deets. Although I am exceedingly interested, I am by no means an expert, so I do not have anything to add to this entry. It seems to have been edited a fair bit, and the same names do crop up a few times. No controversy surrounds this topic, but the discussion page does mention that: "this article is within the scope of WikiProject Brazil, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Brazil and Brazil-related topics on Wikipedia."

Editing the Library Lingo webpage made me feel a bit weird to be honest; I am not a Librarian so I don't feel I have the authority! But I proceeded nevertheless. I just added a bit to the "Reciprocal" entry and then created my own stubby li'l entry for CMO. Feel free to edit/correct my work y'all!

Peace out!

Delish Thing!

Well hello there Thingers and the world at large!
This week I learned about tagging with Delicious and Library Thing. Which was great coz previously I knew nothing about tagging! I had seen tags on websites and never known how to add them or what they were for. To use Delicious most easily you really need Firefox and as we use Explorer at work, there were some initial issues but when they were resolved i added:

Deville's Pad
Explore Ancient Worlds (ABC Science)
Burlesque & Pin-up Clothing Burlesque Baby
Shop Til You Drop
Red Stripe Clothing
triple j

One thing I found a little annoying about the whole tagging thing is the fact that these two applications use different conventions; ie, Delicious uses spaces to delinete between tags, whereas Library Thing uses commas. I somehow overlooked this bit of info (although it was right there on-screen!!) when tagging my books on Library Thing. So I had to go back and add commas in between the words, which was slightly irritating. It was a fun excercise however, I am especially excited about Library Thing. The perfectionist in me is dying to catalogue each and every book I own, but that may take a while!

"That's way off the mark, sir!"

Well, if you were to admonish me with the above comment, you would be partially correct. But only partially, as I am certainly not a sir. But it has come to my attention that the purpose of this blog is to talk about my expreience of starting a blog, (ooh how postmodern) and the process of learning about other technologies too. So, I shall endeavour to at least make a mention of this sort of thing before trailing off on a flippant tangent....
So, this week I have learnt about RSS feeds. Now I recall hearing about these a while ago, but I never got around to setting it/them up. Turns out it's not TOO tricky, thanks to our friend good ole GoogleReader. One challenge I did encounter, however, was trying to find blogs I deemed worthy of RSS feeding. Upon attempting a search for fashion blogs, Technorati informed me: "Doh! The Technorati Monster escaped again." Hmmm, mildly amusing but much more annoying. No time for you Technorati. So I tried Google Blog Search, but was unsucessful in finding any good Australian vintage/retro fashion blogs. Ideally I would like to subscribe to one written by a Perth inhabitant, so that I have some chance of attending some cool local events/shops described therein. If anyone out there in internet land has some advice for me, I would be super grateful!
So, the feeds I ended up subscribing to were: http://www.makeupgeek.com/ and http://winifredandbance.com/. These were websites I already knew and loved though, the blog searches yeilded zilcho. I have already told y'all about the majesty of Winnie B, so I will tell you about makeupgeek.com. It is a super-fun makeup tutorial website that I stumbled upon some months ago. If you can get past the tutor's annoying sing-song voice, you will learn some excellent techniques. Always wanted to do the smoky eyes thing but been daunted by all that shadow? Got a 60s fancy dress party to go to but don't know how to do that Twiggy style makeup? Then makeupgeek.com will show you the way!
Well all this talk of feeds is making me yearn for my sandwich, so off to lunch I go! :)

another week, another wedding

Hello again!

Last weekend (Sunday the 3rd May) I went to yet another wedding - with a difference. This one took place at a farm! Now I know what you're thinking - don't think that. It was really very nice! The venue, called Chapel Farm, http://www.chapelfarm.com.au/ was not too far from the city, and not too rustic either. (Plus there was not a chapel to be seen - yay!) The bride wore an amazing sage green dress, which may seem rather non-weddingy, but as the style was very traditional (strapless, long, full skirt) it was still suitably bridal. My hubby and I sat next to his cousins, let's call them Andrew and Wanda, ( I'm new to this blogging thing, I don't know how anonymous I have to be...) who I had previously not known well at all. They're so cool though - turns out we have heaps in common! "Wanda" was wearing a delightful apricot coloured 1970's maxi-dress, made out of floaty printed fabric with three tiered overlays.... I complimented her on this glorous garment and she told me she got it from a shop in the Eastern States called "Grandma takes a Trip": http://www.grandmatakesatrip.com.au/first.html .... I'm off to the travel agent now! :)

Now lest I come across as a shallow one-trick pony (or peacock), concerned only with fashion, let me tell you about the other exciting part of the day.... there were animals at Chapel Farm! And not mundane cows and sheep either. There was a beautiful donkey, named Cinderella. I know, I used to think that a donkey was just a poor man's horse, but they are so beautiful! I think what made Cinderella so cute was her disproportionately large head and eyes....

And guess what other fauna Chapel Farm has? Two lovely teddy-bear-like alpacas! They are an awesome South American animal very simlilar to llamas - so similar in fact, that they can even get together and make little llama/alpaca babies called huarizo, which apparently are very sweet-natured and make great pets! Confirmed - South America has THE COOLEST animals ever. Stay tuned for more crummy rants...

(Donkey picture from Seven day old Donkey_0715 by hoyasmeg liscenced under creative commons)

The first week (retrospective)

Hi and welcome to 'the crumb diaries'; I hope you enjoy these tasty morsels from my life!
I went to a friend's wedding down south on the 25th April which FINALLY gave me an excuse to wear a dress that has been hanging all forlorn and fabulous in my wardrobe for months. Check it out here, it's super-awesome! I got it from a very cool shop called Burlesque Baby which I recommend you check out if you are a fan of the 1940s/50s pin-up style: http://www.burlesquebaby.com.au/.
Another sartorially splendid experience I had that weekend was a clothing swap party on Sunday arvo. These parties are run by the owner of a local vintage clothing store called Winifred and Bance: http://winifredandbance.com/. They take place every three months and are so much fun. Tix are only $15 which includes champers and cupcakes! I also like the egalitarian approach of Winnie B swap parties - each person may bring between one and ten items of clothing, which are all deemed to be of the same worth - one button each. Swapper beware though, bringing 10 buttons worth of clothing does not guarantee you 10 buttons worth of returns. But don't worry - any rejected garments at the end of the day go to charity. :)