I just saw the above ad on TV and asked myself, “Is it weird that the chickens are singing a song by Human League?”
Sometimes, I think I’m asking the wrong questions.
Category Archives: music
Cherries, Eddie Clendening, and Gil Elvgren
This will be sort of a stream-of-consciousness post. Bear with me.
Cherries. The cherries are delicious this season, and they were on sale, so I bought a lot. And now I’m wondering what to do with them all! I’ve heard they freeze very well, and goodness, that would be a wonderful addition to all those smoothies I don’t make. But you know how I love to cook, and so I asked on the Tiddleywink Vintage Facebook page: what would you do with approximately 3 pounds of cherries? The most common reply thus far has been “pie,” which is fine and tasty but what kind of cherry pie? You do realize, of course, that I have cookbooks dedicated solely to pie recipes, and believe me, they have pages of recipes for cherry pies. One suggestion was to dry them, which certainly will keep them viable for far longer than my refrigerator, but I’m not a snack-on-dried-fruit person. I’d need to do something with them again, maybe a dried cherry sauce or reworking the dried-cherry-pie recipe that I did last winter and wasn’t thrilled with. And apparently didn’t post about, but you didn’t miss much. More suggestions included making a crisp, making sauce for pork (mmmm) and making them into liqueur for the winter holidays. These are all excellent suggestions, and I’m inspired. I think that what I may do is make a cherry pie with cream cheese crust, and with the rest: the tiniest batch of spiced cherries, put up for winter. Whatever I do, the recipes will follow later this week.
Related to above: someone posted a while back that she had just learned the trick of pitting cherries with a chopstick and a bottle, and I tucked that away in my brain matter. (I’ve tried the paperclip method, and it’s crap. I didn’t make a cherry pie for years after that, because the experience of pitting cherries that way had been so awful.) I’ve eyeballed a few different cherry pitter gadgets, but never felt that the expense of money and storage space was really worth it. But empty bottles and chopsticks? Those, I have on hand. And it works! Far easier than digging around with a difficult-to-grip paperclip, that’s for sure. It’s messy, and cherry juice will spray well beyond the boundaries of your apron (my readers wear an apron, of course, when tending to kitchen tasks). Wear black, and keep a sponge handy for cleanup. My ratio of pitting-to-eating was perhaps 20 to 1, of which I’m fairly proud. Anyway, now they’re ready to go, no matter what I decide to do with them.
Cherries!
Local-boy-done-good Eddie Clendening is back in town for a brief visit, and he and the Blue Ribbon Boys, as well as The Lucky Few and Bongo and the Pygmies, put on a slam-dunk swell 7-hour show down at Gary Lee’s. DJ Dogboy filled in the gaps, and fun was had by all. Eddie asked Woody up to the stage for a song, and I do ever so love Woody’s singing voice. I told Dina that if I’d known, I’d have brought a spare pair of panties with me to toss onto the stage!
Eddie Clendening and the Blue Ribbon Boys…and Woody. My apologies to Eddie and Mark for their unfortunate eye glare. LASER MUSICIANS!
I picked up a few things for Tiddleywink Vintage and Winkorama Vintage Sewing at some estate sales on Saturday. Not the trunkloads that I see other vendors showing off, but a few dresses, a pair of shoes, some cookbooks. It’s rare that I run into a motherlode of goodies, at prices that I can actually keep affordable for you guys. Anyway, each sale was filthier than the last, and I was so excited to get home and bathe that I didn’t get a chance to properly look through the stack of $10—Whole Box stuff until yesterday. 6 local newspapers from 1962, a 1958 LIFE magazine, a 1963 LOOK magazine, two 1959 issues of the National Police Gazette, and my favorite so far, a 1948 issue of Woman’s Home Companion. I plan to go back and read the articles, but, well, I could spend the rest of my life just scanning in all of the wonderful ads to share with you, from this and so many other vintage magazines in my collection. For now, let’s leave with a sweet Gil Elvgren painting which accompanies a bit of fiction titled A Lover and His Lass.
Gil Elvgren, 1948 “A Lover and His Lass”
Now, time for lunch, then to pack this weekend’s orders for shipping, and to get some new listings up for you! Happy Monday!
Viva Las Vegas 14 in pictures
I have gotten so bad at remembering to step out of the moment to take a picture! Click the image below for 130-ish photos taken over the course of the 4-day weekend, and a few very short video clips as well.
Blah Blah Blah
I still can’t seem to get myself back into the hang of Tweeting (should that be initial capped or not?) so I thought perhaps I’d, you know, write another blog post. Raise your hand if you remember when I used to do it five days a week!
So let’s see…
Okay, since I was working on The Catalog at 10:30 last night and again by 7:30 this morning, I’m taking a deserved, if guilty, break to write this. Which I mention only because the guilt, I feel it. But thbppppt. Also, I paused to make coffee. Cawwwwffeeeee. Slurp slurp slurp.
MAKE COFFEE* should be the permanent first item on the whiteboard I finally hung above my desk yesterday. Hey, how’s that for an accomplishment? I finally hung the whiteboard! And was able to erase HANG WHITEBOARD from it. Ta-da!
Aaaaaand I completed another project yesterday that had been in limbo for an even longer time: my very own vintage-plastic-storage-container pendant lamp! And let me tell you, it was a bigger pain than you would imagine. This tip is coming from someone with mad craft skillz, yo. If you love the concept, and you should because it’s nifty, buy one pre-made from the originators of the Tupperlight, Boots N Gus. That’s their spiffy work shown at the top of this here post. They have a better assortment of Tupperware and Tupperware-like products than I could find at my local thrift, and they have done the work for you. For a very reasonable price.
I would love to see if Gogobigred is available to hang today, but I’m stuck at home until FedEx arrives with my new stereo receiver. My trusty Aiwa bookshelf system died after 15 years of faithful service, and I had three requirements for a replacement: I have to be able to afford it, I need to plug in my AirPort and my turntable, and I require enough room to set my turntable on top. HOWEVAH, it seems that the fancy, newfangled bookshelf stereo systems these days are mostly vertically oriented. And they have unnecessary bells and whistles like iPod docks and, well, that’s actually the only new feature that my old system didn’t have. But I still don’t need it. With the AirPort plugged in (thankyouverymuchoverandover @Chartier and @PensAndPaws), I can access my entire iTunes library wirelessly. And a CD player? Ha! Again, no need. After discussing with my dad the current quality of various manufacturers, I came to the conclusion that anyone still manufacturing components is most likely going to take it seriously. They’ll have lower-end models, but a cheapo consumer-oriented company like the now-defunct Soundesign isn’t going to bother with components. And so I ordered one I could (in a normal world) afford and have had a very quiet house for a few days while I wait. Today is the day that music will once again sound throughout my home, and I perk up at the rumble of every truck that drives by. The power company is working outside today, however, so I’m frequently disappointed. But that just means the anticipation lasts longer!
Now my coffee is ready and so until next time, be well.
______________________
*My handwriting is all caps, with limited exceptions.
VLV13: Prepare to Launch
If you know me, you know that my year pretty much centers around the annual Viva Las Vegas rockabilly weekender in April. Well, it’s that time of year again, and so off I go. My flight leaves in about 12 hours, and I am mostly packed. Ish. My planned wardrobe includes four vintage dresses, one vintage swimsuit, and one pair of vintage capris (which still need a tiny bit of mending, it will be a busy day!). Also, one dress that I made with the aid of a vintage sewing pattern. None of my shoes are vintage, because my feet are not an era-appropriate size. I do my best with modern shoes inspired by vintage looks (but I can’t afford the Rocket Originals or ReMix shoes that get all the details right). So let’s see, what’s on the to-do list before I boogie out of here? In no particular order:
– polish nails
– rip Elvis movie to iPhone (in-flight entertainment)
– mend capris
– pack/ship two shop orders
– eat something
– finish packing
– make like a tree and vamoose!
If you’re also heading to VLV and want to find me, today’s travel outfit is (at the moment) cuffed jeans and a red-and-black t-shirt. I hope to be sipping whiskey in the Crawfish Bar by midnight!
Filed under fashion, music, vacation, vintage, Viva Las Vegas
shoes and pie 