Then And Now #1 - Dream Whip

I decided I wanted to start a new little series of posts - Then And Now, where I show an old advertisement, and then either a newer or current advertisement for the same product, or a picture of the product itself as it looks today plucked from your grocer's shelf or your pantry. I'm starting with Dream Whip. Then (1959):
And now:
I must admit, I hadn't used this in years, but Mother used to buy it, and I do remember using it years ago. I bought it this time specifically to use in the recipe at the bottom of this post, which is a lighter, easier version of the unbelievably wonderful and rich Chocolate Cheese Pie pictured below in a page from Farm Journal's Complete Pie Cookbook (1965):
We had both of these pies growing up.
The short-cut version is less trouble, and less rich than the original. I kind of like the richness of the original! But they are both really good. Talk about a "Dream Pie"!!

Glam Circa 1934

The three images in this post were all found in a magazine "The California Pelican" Big Game Issue December 1934, published for UC Berkeley. Check out these fabulous gowns - the one on the left was "carioca red with a shimmering golden sequin collar". Wow.
And I am seriously loving these shoes! Especially the ones with the five little buckles and stacked heels.
Okay - so I'd rather she wasn't smoking, but gold lame' gloves to match her gown! And that beautiful rhinestone brooch! Gorgeous.
I LOVE the fashions found in these vintage magazines!

Salads For Summer

Salads sound so good on hot summer days. I have a great vintage wooden salad bowl that I like to use, and some pretty hand-painted wooden utensils for tossing and serving, too.
I love how they photographed the salads from above in this Mazola Salad Bowl Book. The only date I found inside is 1939. Mmmm...fresh watermelon, peaches,honeydew, cantaloupe, and strawberries served inside a melon half, surrounded with mint, and served on a yellow Fiesta plate. Looks good to me!
An interesting combo in this one - canned green beans, cooked potatoes, canned tuna or salmon, um, I'm not sure. Could use some tweaking..
This one sure looks pretty! Bananas, avocado, pineapple, watermelon, apple, cantaloupe, oranges and strawberries. (Click on the pictures to read the recipes, if you like.)
One of my favorite salads lately is a variation of the one my friend Kari in Vancouver served us when we were there for a visit in May of 2007:
Spinach and/or leafy greens
Gorgonzola or goat cheese
Fresh raspberries or sliced strawberries
Glazed or spiced walnuts or pecans
Girard's Raspberry or Champagne dressing
Toss it all together, adding fresh raspberries last due to their fragility. Kari used mixed leafy greens, Gorgonzola cheese, the Raspberry dressing, and homemade glazed walnuts. I don't even really like Gorgonzola, but it was fabulous. I like to use my favorite Montchevre Crumbled Goat Cheese, spinach, fabulous sugared/spiced nuts from our local farmer's market, strawberries (just because they hold up a little better) and the light version of Girard's Champagne dressing. Yum. Try it with whatever your favorites are!

Vitrock Rocks

It took me a lot of years of collecting to acquire all of these! Vitrock by Hocking Glass Company. Tea canisters and shakers, all with their original lids, some with original labels, some with replacement labels. (I had very bad luck with replacement lids - they did not screw on and off easily AT ALL):
I finally got a good deal on a Drippings jar with an original (albeit faded) label. And I love my deco ashtray (though I don't smoke, nor do we allow it in our home) - I even found a silver and black matchbook, so it would fit right in with the silver and black deco-look labels on the other pieces!
I use my juicer all the time- works great for lemons, then I just pour the juice through a little strainer to separate the seeds. The lid on the little covered dish is very similar to the Drippings jar lid.
And then, last but not least, the mixing bowls in three sizes:
I love the bright white of the glass, and I was naturally attracted to the labels on the shakers and canisters, with my love of silver and black art deco designs.
Just another of my favorite collections.

Vintage Cosmetics: Ads and Labels

Count these among the myriad of vintage things I love: Old cosmetic and perfume advertisements, labels, bottles, containers, etc. I have had this bottle, below, for many years. I like the size and shape of the bottle, and especially the label. I'm not even 100% certain that the label is authentic, but I don't mind because it's lovely. And I imagine the scent of the lotion must have been like that of the original Jergens - a scent I have always loved.

And I was lucky that this vintage advertisement for Colgate compacts, complete with monogram examples, fit perfectly into one of my nicest vintage frames. It was a bit too large for the scanner - but you can get the general idea.This large perfume label, below, wouldn't fit completely on my scanner bed, either. I haven't yet decided where would be the best place for it. Ideally I would affix it to the perfect thing - but what? If I had a cabinet door large enough, I'd consider having it in the "powder" room- but I don't.
My biggest problem with all my collecting is never having enough space to adequately display everything to my liking! ( A possible solution: Stop buying, and/or purge. Yeah, I'll have to try and work on that.)

My Favorite Framed Prints #10

A pair of framed prints with a different subject than most of the others I have shown.
Lovely tropical birds.
Such pretty plumage!

More Vintage Cards

Believe it or not, I found MORE vintage cards on Sunday. In boxes, up in a closet. This one is probably my favorite - I LOVE the gorgeous paper lining inside the envelope on old cards like this! This leather-look paper seems to have been meant to use as a bookmark. The little fan-like design above Hearty Greetings is cut out, so it could mark a page and the tassel would hang out at the top. It was mailed from Sydney Australia in Dec. of 1945. Fabulous.
Postcards - most were mailed between 1941 and 1945:
More postcards:
And cute vintage greeting cards from the same time period:

And baby congratulations cards:
Also, old letters from the late 30's. One of these days, I have to take the time to put all of these letters in chronological order and read them!
If I can just back away from the computer....

Let's All Sing Like The Birdies Sing

I love to sing along when they ask us to at The Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland! With the birds and the flowers. (Artwork below from the original 1968 LP from Disneyland Records) The Tiki Room celebrates it's 45th anniversary today!
And I like to sing along with these guys, too:
How sweet is this cute little robin and rhyme I found in a vintage Whitman book titled "If I Could Be" ?
And then, there's always the song in this sheet music below. That's another one I've known since I was little. I love that you can go to YouTube and, if you have a hankerin' to hear a song, you just might find it. I listened to 3 versions, including Burl Ives. And then I got to digging around here in the house, and I wound up finding that I HAVE the song on two different cassettes that belonged to my in-laws! So, I've got Patti Page's version, and also that of Les Paul and Mary Ford. (Yes, I do still listen to my cassettes sometimes - I have posted before about newfangled technology and such things!)
I love to sing - I believe I've mentioned that before.
Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, and tra la la, twittle dee dee dee.
(Oh, and, by the way - Happy Birthday to my little Carol June!)

Tiger Lily

We have just this one tiger lily plant in our yard- but we look forward to seeing it bloom every year. From the very first flower:
To around 10 days later, when there were multiple blooms! (This picture was taken about 3 weeks ago.)
And just because I am a Disney freak - I felt this post needed to include Princess Tiger Lily from Peter Pan. This was the only picture I could find of her - see her in the back of the little boat there? (Picture from the Big Golden Book published by Golden Press). Tiger Lily refused to tell Captain Hook and Smee where Peter Pan lived, so they threatened to tie her to Skull Rock where the tide would wash over her.
And look! Here is Skull Rock Cove with it's waterfalls at Disneyland, circa 1974.
I love Disneyland!

Cub Scouts And Brownies

My husband and his brother were Cub Scouts, and my sisters and I were in Brownies and Girl Scouts. Here's a photo from the 50's of hubby's Cub Scout troop:
Their original neckerchiefs, below, certainly saw their share of wear! They are complete with rips, stains and fading.

And this picture is from an advertisement in a 1958 McCalls magazine. She is some den mother, huh? Teaching the Scouts how to tie knots in order to earn a merit badge, no doubt.There don't seem to be any pictures at all of we three sisters wearing our uniforms. I do still have some of my pins someplace. I remember going to Brownie Day Camp in the summer. I think we made trivets out of popsicle sticks. And I remember we took loosely woven dish cloths (I don't think they still make them like that anymore?), sewed them together on three sides, added a drawstring to the top, and put our camp dishes and cutlery inside so they could be washed right in the bag and hung on a clothesline to dry! It's funny the things that stick with you, isn't it?

A Week Ago....

.....I was getting ready for the sale in Georgetown. I painted these little shelves and this tray, below, and added some of my favorite vintage decals:
My sister had lots of vintage linens for sale. I had a few, too, and some 70's vintage clothing.
And rather an eclectic assortment of other stuff - dishes, knickknacks, etc.
I found this great lovebirds doorstop (?); I'm using it as a bookend - we can always use something else to hold up books in this house!
Sorry it's not a very good picture. It's Art Nouveau style, and has a little acorn marking on the back, I think it's a reproduction of an Arts and Crafts period design. I liked it, and I didn't pay very much. The sale was kind of slow - we think people were busy doing other things on Father's Day. I'm not sure I want to do it next month - it will probably be a lot hotter by then!

Look What I Got Today!

I won Nikki's giveaway over at The Hunt For Vintage (click on it from my list over on the right side of this page to go to her great blog!). And so - look at what I pulled out of the box!
So pretty, it felt like my birthday or something!
It was not only the pretty little colored shells ( to use for crafting - what shall I do? Maybe glue some onto a picture frame??), but she tucked in other little goodies, too! A gorgeous vintage hanky with blue roses, pink needle book, sequins, some big shells, great vintage milk bottle caps, etc.- and she packaged them all in TWO lovely card boxes! I LOVE vintage card and stationery boxes! Thank you, Nikki- you really made my day! I feel very lucky, indeed. And speaking of old card boxes - I found this little cutie just last Sunday when we were at the Georgetown sale. How sweet is she playing her zither surrounded by her little critter friends? So much sweetness.

Thrifted Books

I stopped at a couple of thrift stores on my way home the other day. I found this lovely old book dated 1947.
The dust jacket has kept the book in perfect condition. It is filled with the loveliest poems! For example:
SOUVENIR
What have you taken from today
To put in your store of memories?
For today was a door to be opened wide,
And you held in your hand the golden keys.
(I have a feeling I will be sharing more of the poetry found within in future posts.)See the pristine cover of the book inside the DJ:
Old Rose and Silver is another book I found a while back at another thrift shop. Not in the best condition, but it's from 1910, and the cover was just too pretty to pass up. It starts out with a woman playing the piano, and on the second page, this passage "Outside, the purple dusk of Winter twilight lay soft upon the snow. Through an opening in the evergreens the far horizon, grey as mother-of-pearl, bent down to touch the plain in a misty line that was definite yet not clear.At the left were the mountains, cold and calm, veiled with distances dim with frost. There was a step upon the stair, but the strong, straight figure in white lace did not turn away from the window, even when the door opened. The stillness was broken only by the cheerful crackle of the fire until a sweet voice asked: "Are you dreaming, Rose?"
I couldn't resist.
And then these last two paperbacks are ones I remembered from my childhood. One or the other of my sisters had them. I found these at a sale that was held in the gymnasium of a Christian school. They had some neat stuff in there!

I don't think my husband nor I will ever quit buying books. That, despite the fact that we ran out of room for them LONG ago. I don't know what to say....

Got Carnation?

Sorry, but I have never thought instant dry nonfat milk was delicious for drinking. Cute ad, though - from Life Magazine 1959. I always have nonfat milk in my refrigerator, but no nonfat dry milk in my cupboard. I do have the two products below, however. I still use these!
This paper doll is cute. I'm not sure how old she is. Maybe a giveaway you could send for in the mail? I love those, don't you?
Here is a picture of the great old Carnation Ice Cream Parlor at Disneyland sometime in the 60's. This photo is from a book we purchased at Disneyland titled "Disneyland, Then, Now & Forever: Remember The Moments".
And here's a picture of a vintage menu from the restaurant. I loved to eat there, and I remember what it was like inside years ago. They used to serve Fantasia ice cream there. It was specially made just for Disneyland. I did finally try it once in 1996, and I'm glad I did because it was discontinued in 2004.
I'm really happy that I have this picture I took of the gorgeous, ornate back bar in the summer of 1974.
And here is a picture of Walt himself at the counter. (No I didn't take this one!)
It's all different now, of course. You can only sit and eat outside. Now called the Carnation Cafe; it's still nice, and we eat there every time we go. Here is a picture we snapped two months ago of Oscar, who has worked there since 1956. He keeps "threatening " to retire - but I don't think he would know what to do with himself! We love to see him when we visit, and try to get a picture. We will miss him when/if he does retire.
We will still enjoy a meal there, though- last time we ate breakfast there two days in a row!