Then And Now # 108: See's Decorated Eggs For Easter

Here's wishing all of you a lovely Easter Sunday, and if you are very lucky, perhaps the Easter Bunny may have left you a beautifully decorated egg from See's Candies.
This advertisement from 1974 shows you what they looked like back "Then":

Yellow roses:

And pink roses:

And here's an example of one decorated with pink roses "Now":

The lovely picture above was part of an insert that came in our newspaper, along with a coupon.
 I wasn't able to make it to a See's Candies shop in order to use the coupon, unfortunately!
Have a wonderful day, everyone, - whether it includes chocolate, or not!

Does She... Or Doesn't She?

The age-old question asked by Miss Clairol in their advertisements....

Does she or doesn't she?
Color her hair?
Oh, I'll bet she does.
Unless you are one of those women of a certain age who has decided to just leave her pretty gray hair alone - in which case, I applaud and admire (and am a bit envious of) you!
Otherwise, with even young girls coloring their hair sometimes nearly as often as they change clothes, I think you're probably among the millions of us who do, indeed color their hair.
Here's the way some boxes of Clairol Hair color look now:

I read a statistic somewhere quite a few years back and the number of women it said (as a percentage) who colored their hair, at that time, sounded ridiculously low to me.
I didn't believe for one minute that it could possibly be accurate, and I don't even remember what it was!
After I quit working, I was still paying someone else to color my hair, at a cost of about $52 every 6-8 weeks, including a simple haircut. (And by simple, I mean trim my bangs straight across, and even out the ends of my straight, long hair by trimming it along the bottom - I don't think it gets too much simpler than that.)
I'm not even really meaning to complain about the cost; that's just how much it WAS, but I no longer had an income, and could ill afford it at the time.
 And yet, I continued to do so.
 And I came up with the money, somehow - every time.
I finally decided to ask my friend Heidi - who had a bit of a background in cosmetology - to help me do it myself.
She did it for me the first couple of times, and then I think each of my sisters may have helped me too, at least once.
Then I realized that I COULD do it all by myself.
You see, the entire idea of it just scared me for a very long time - I was that afraid something would go terribly wrong.
And now, the thought of how many hundreds of dollars I spent over the years, needlessly, is almost painful!
Here's how my roots looked before.....

     .....and after one of my recent colorings:

And this is what I use, below:

L'Oreal Excellence Creme, in 8G.
(Sorry, Clairol - I'd probably try yours if I knew it would turn out exactly the same. It's just that when something works for me, I tend to stick with it - and this was the first one I tried!)
And I buy it on sale, with a coupon - sometimes saving as much $3.00 (total) off of the sale price when buying two.
 I never run out, I always have a box or two in the cabinet, and I do it whenever I feel like it.
Never costs me any more than about seven dollars.
Which is how much I pay to get my bangs trimmed - that is, unless I do THAT myself, which I have quite a few times.
I've decided the ends of my hair only need to be cut once or twice a year. And my friend Heidi did that for me for nothing the last time. Yay!
Long hair, don't care.
Because I do not want to spend my hard-earned (through selling vintage) money on my hair!
It's just a Heidi thing.
I'm about as low-maintenance as it gets.
Seriously. (You have no idea...)
And THAT, my friends, concludes the tale of MY hair care.
And if you even made it this far and have read this whole post, I thank you for being interested enough to finish it.
The End.

Then And Now #107: Bisquick

Today's post features that versatile mix known as Bisquick.
Bisquick has been around for a good, long time!
Here's an advertisement from 1937.
I love that they're using the gorgeous Franciscan dishes! I have a small collection of that set (sorry I haven't time to try and share a photo of it with you today!) - but isn't it lovely in the aqua color?

And another one, this time - we have Bisquick biscuits in a basket. (Say that real fast five times!) from 1952:

And here we have two more vintage ads; these are both from 1954.
Pineapple Upside Down Cake looks pretty good.
It was one of our Daddy's favorite cakes:

Ooohh, and here's an ad for both Bisquick and Reddi-Wip.
Yes, Strawberry Shortcake looks good, too.
I must be hungry or something.....

Next up, we have an ad from 1964.
I will take some of that rolled turkey roast AND some of those sage biscuits, please......
definitely need something to eat ..

I found this cookbook at a thrift store, and I was sure I didn't have it:

I love the artwork inside:

And the food photos aren't bad, either:

Yum:

This advertisement is from 1964, also:

To send away for the cookbook that I DID already have - this one:

 (The other edition I found just recently was published in 1967.)
I do not remember seeing the Whole Wheat Baking Mix, and I don't know what year this advertisement dates from:

But the package I have in my pantry right now touts that it is "Heart Smart",
so, I mean - that's perfect for February, right?

I also found this recipe tin at a thrift store:

(So I added to my stacks of other cute vintage recipe file boxes I've already been collecting over the years.)
I decided I needed to make a recipe out of one of those cookbooks.
So I ended up with Peach Cobbler:

Here's the recipe from the vintage Bisquick cookbooks:

And the Shortcake recipe:

It was good; we liked it!

(I added a little cinnamon to mine.)

Celebrating October With Brach's Candy Corn (Again)

I've already written a "Then And Now" post featuring Brach's Candy Corn, back in 2012 (click here to read it), so today I'm just doing a quick re-visit to celebrate the arrival of October.
I found another great old advertisement for Brach's Halloween candy in one of my old magazines, and I figured it was most definitely "share-worthy"!
I'm glad October is here, and it would be unusual for us to reach temperatures at or over 100 degrees this month around these parts - but not unheard of.
Me? I'm hoping for the best.
I want "HOT" to be over.
Here's a close-up of a corner of the ad:

 How cute were those little house-shaped cardboard "Paks"?
And I love the little pre-packaged cellophane bags, all ready to go for the Trick-Or-Treat set!
I'm so sorry I neglected to get the year on this ad; I tore it out of a magazine and forgot to write it down.
But I'll guarantee you that I'd have been happy to get one of those little packets when I was a little girl going door-to-door in my costume.
And here's a picture of the entire page, a colorful one featuring
"Brach's Halloween Candy For Trick Or Treat":

And then, just for fun - here's a photo of the way their candy corn package looks "Now":

In fact, I just purchased those at the grocery store this morning!
I also wrote about Brach's Candy Corn back in 2009.
Because I LIKE it - can you tell??
It's kind of fun to see how the package has changed over the years, and besides that, I showed another of the great vintage magazine advertisements in that post, so please do go back and read that post again, as well, won't you?
Happy October, everybody!
Here's hoping we all have a "Spooktacular" month!

What's Penny Wearing? #148 One Of The Cutest Vintage Aprons EVER!

I was so delighted when I found this vintage apron at a thrift store:

I love everything about it!

I love the colors, I love the patchwork-style print, I love the polka-dot waistband, pockets, ties, and trim:

I love the fact that the fabric is so nice and crisp and clean that it does not appear to have ever even been worn:

I love that it fits me!

I love the fact that if you wear it over a blouse, it can essentially be considered a jumper.
When I found it, I intended to sell it, but the fact that I could wear it myself has proven to be somewhat a deterrent, as far as THAT goes, let me tell you.

Green, blue, flowers, patchwork print, polka-dots - what more could this vintage-lovin' girl want, I ask you??

Well, this is actually pretty darned cool, too:

Just last week, I bought a vintage Better Homes And Gardens magazine (October 1974) at a vintage shop, and when I came home and looked through it, I found the advertisement shown above.
It appears to be just like mine, quite possibly in the "blue" patchwork version.
Made by Sofwear Designs in Houston, Texas.

(Oh, Houston - our hearts are aching for all of you down there in Texas!)

More Oatmeal Cookies - And More Quaker Oats Tins

I'm back today with another post about oatmeal cookies.
Yes, I know  - You may think that I've already written everything there is to say about this subject in my previous post 
but, you see - I beg to differ, LOL!
I baked these yummy little morsels recently....

  ....  because I wanted to try yet ANOTHER recipe!

I had found some file folders in storage that I hadn't laid eyes on in years, and one of them contained recipes.
I don't believe I had ever made the Oatmeal Cookies with the Jell-O Pudding in the batter before. I had tried the Chocolate Chip cookies (many years ago) and I liked them a lot.
I added some cinnamon to the recipe, and then I froze the dough in little balls:

Then I baked them a couple of days later, as early in the day as possible, because it's so hot this summer.

The recipe did, indeed, make five dozen; I ended up with 61 cookies, in fact!

I also came across some more Quaker Oats tins that I had forgotten about.
I found this one in storage with some other tins; it's from 1984:

And the next two were tucked way back in the corner of a cupboard, and I'd forgotten they were even there.
From 1983:

And this one is from 1990:

So, now I guess I'll have to decide which ones I'm willing to part with, because we live in an old house - and there's no way that I have the space to keep five Quaker Oats tins in my cupboards!

More From Calico Critters

I have actually been looking for a little lap desk for a while.
I wanted a vintage one, rather than new, I wanted it to be nice, and I was hoping to find one at a thrift store.
And of course I didn't really want to pay much for it, which is always the case!
I had seen two or three but I didn't like them, or they were dirty, or unattractive in some other way.
I finally got lucky, and came upon a very nice one.
It happens to be a "Lap-Eze"; you can see the original label in the photo below:

What I did NOT know when I found it was that it was made by Calico Critters.
I have written about Calico Critters before.
(Click here to go back and read just one of my previous posts about them, if you're interested.)
Here is an advertisement for the Lap-Eze portable desks.

When I found this one at a local thrift store, it was the green calico that caught my eye:

I didn't even read the label that tells me who made it, not until I got it home.
 Normally, I'd have wanted to remove this annoying label, but not this time.
 It's lasted on my little lap desk for more than 30 years, and it's going to stay.

Apparently, they also made a version that had compartments to hold your paper and/or stationery:

It has a handy little handle for carrying, too.
If the label had been removed by the previous owner, I'd never had known that it was made by the same company as my cute calico "Puss In Boots" vintage boot stuffers:

They're just so darned cute, and they do their job as intended:

I did sell one of them whose eyes I had replaced, but I still have this trio:

The original tag tells us that this cute calico cat cost $12.00 new at Lord & Taylor back in the early 1980's.

I also discovered that they even made notes cards (among other things)!
Here's an ad for those:

 And, as it happens, I had found one of those, too - at a thrift store - quite a while back.
I didn't know it was made by them, of course, but I remembered it, and so I had to go find it and take a picture so I could include it in this post.

 And that, my friends, concludes your "Calico Critters" history lesson for today, LOL!