Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Oui oui!

What a delightful ad! Paris, pinkness of all kinds, patisseries, perfume and a pretty girl. Oooh la la.

Monday, December 14, 2009

If you've been very good all year ...

... may your fondest wishes come true!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS !!!!

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Love SJP, love this ad!

Doris Day: 1955



Doris Day really did have some of the best clothes going in the 50's! I dig Doris.























Dah-ling, I-vanka wedding like this!


Take note: this is how a bride with a bazillion dollars should look on her wedding day. Are you as tired as I am of comely young celebrities sporting fishtail gowns and big rocks (and multiple crucifixes -- ack!) on what ought to be the one day in their lives they should look well and properly dressed?

In Ivanka Trump's case, clearly her father's taste was not handed down ... just the money. This will look as perfect in 50 years as it does today. And she apparently has a very good head on her shoulders. All the better!

I know, who cares about my opinion? I just happen to think I have excellent taste. And that's my opinion too, but it's the internet and everybody gets their five cents.

LOL.





Pink on pink.


Bridesmaids in Pink Gowns and Headdresses at Luci Baines Johnson/Patrick Nugent Wedding.
photo: Bob Gomel

Red and white and roosters!




My new place is going to have a red and white kitchen, and that includes these Better Homes & Gardens rooster curtains, which I just purchased from walmart.com!
I ran the idea by my current roommate and let's just say she is SO not a rooster person. It's modern and earth tones for her (the antithesis of myself). She said "don't make the place so cute that people will run screaming from it".
Sage advice, perhaps. But the rooster curtains are staying.

Bluebirds of happiness.


Look at these lovelies! Shelley English china in Bluebird pattern.
Hard to find and pricey, but I'm just looking ... and look at how fabulous!

Postcard: 1904

Caption:
"There is no music like the voice of those we love."

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Pretty things, pretty things!

Some of my favorite things to look at: pretty shoes, pretty pastry.
From visual bookmarking service we heart it.
Yum.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

doG is God spelled backwards.

That Girl!

I saw Marlo Thomas on a TV talk show this week and she's still got that ingenue thing happening. Some people never seem to lose that youthful glow (though who can be sure how much of that is -- at the very least -- cosmecutical intervention?)




I have hazy memories of That Girl in (probably) syndication. She really stood out for me as a different kind of female character on TV. Even as a little girl, I knew that she was different, though I could not know then that she was quite modern for the times. A girl 'alone' in the city (though of course her boyfriend Ted was always there just in case). Looking back, I consider her the original Sex In The City girl (though you could argue that Doris Day had already locked that one in) ... in either case, there was definitely NO Sex happening in that city.



Although I have a terrible head for hats (too big), I am tickled by the whole hat and glove thing. Even in this era, to be well and properly dressed meant you had a hat and gloves. I like the crisp, simple elegance of that. Of course, you could also argue convincingly that she looked like a stewardess (in the days before they called them flight attendants), but what's so bad about looking like a stewardess? Nothing that I can see. It's sharp and on-the-ball. Gwyneth Paltrow demonstrated this quite ably in her all-too-ignored comedic flick "View From The Top", in which she goes from a spandex-clad, gum-chewing neophyte to a sophisticated professional in the course of less than two hours. And of course, in her final incarnation, she wore a hat.



Madame Alexander's version. Cute.



Do they even make paper dolls nowadays, or is it all just repros of old ones? Not that I don't love repro. I have a few Shirley Temple repro books and would love to have the Doris Day ones too. Did you ever notice that Bonnie Hunt has a Doris Day paper dolls book on her set?

That's so Bonnie. I adore Bonnie.







Love this!


I remember the distinctive plastic smell of a new Barbie case under the Christmas tree when I was young ... it was one of the most thrilling smells of the season.
This design would have been five to ten years before my time (I was a 70's kid) but I love the illustration, and I haven't seen too many cases in this blue color.
Check out that swinging babydoll dress! Psychedelic, kitty cat.
This post goes out to Twyla and Lindsey, my two favorite Barbie-crazy blogger gal pals.


More Ohio Art (more ebay window shopping).

I love silhouettes (and the little cameo silhouettes on the wall!)



Kittens ABC's



from a 1930's "Bo Peep" set




This would look great in my red and white kitchen.



art happy: John White Alexander


A Ray of Sunlight (The Cellist)



Woman Reclining in Black Dress



Althea Reading




Breathtaking!



Do you flickr?

I keep a flickr account under my name as well as my Daily Corgi "nom de plume".

Here is the one I have built first ... it's limited to a certain amount of photos before you have to buy a Pro account (I don't have one of those yet) but I have had fun putting stuff up there.

The first page or two is all Royal family with Corgis ... I really ought to put that over at the other account, but oh well.

Keep on paging through and you'll get to all of my fancy stuff.

Happy Saturday!

Friday, December 4, 2009

One last hurrah ...


... before I sign off of ebay (strictly window shopping) for the night ...


Ohio Art Toy Dishes

Blue Willow




Oh my, I have to pull myself away from ebay. Strictly window shopping, but I could do it for hours!





Beloved childhood toy -- found!




I must have been seven or eight when I got this set for Christmas. I KNEW my rooster fixation began somewhere early on! Forty bucks on ebay, plus $20 something for shipping.


If a hundred dollar bill happened to flutter in my direction ... $60 for this, $40 to charities to feed hungry people and pets.


God, are you listening? It's me, Margaret.


:-)




Isn't this just the sunniest little plaid you ever did see?


window shopping: ebay!



One of the most adorable Barbie cases I've ever seen. In fact, maybe the most adorable. I want it but at least if I post it here I can come back and look at it again and again ...
No shipping required!

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Pink, very pink.

Very pink.
Very feminine.
Very almost-over-the-top but not quite.

Yes, my bedroom will be styled like this. It's my version of the early-middle-age sportscar! (Cheaper and safer).

Yay!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Surprised kitten. Extreme cuteness warning!

Tulips and Corgis and pink (again).

I have a history of planning out rooms (down to the last detail) in my mind, even if I'm not going to live in them myself. I've "curated" the walls of a hundred rooms in my imagination, and this time it's mine to do in three dimensions!

Since it makes sense that I would want to look often at the things I love, I have selected a print of colortul tulips (an old seed packet, actually) and a delightful painting of a Pembroke Welsh Corgi. Not sure yet whether the first thing visitors will see on the wall across from the front door is the dog or the flowers, but either way it's OK. They are both expressions of who I am (or aspects of me, at any rate).


This awesome piece by Robert McClintock is apparently a hybrid between a digital photograph and a painting. No matter what it is, it works for me. I want a smiling Corgi in my house. I want the zest and attitude of that dog, even if I can't have one myself. Someday ...

Both of these are available at art.com. Don't you love art.com?

At this point, moving for me involves going through boxes of papers and magazines I set aside until "later", and later has arrived in earnest. I laid my hands on a wonderfully crisp copy of last August's (2008) Mary Engelbreit Home Companion, which by now seems like a totally new read to me. There is a lot of orange and peach in it. Reminds me of the orange-wedding post I did a short while back ... helped change my mind about orange. It's still girly but not as fey as pink can be.

Though I love pink and always will.

Do NOT try and separate me from my pink. My whole bedroom is going to be almost painfully pink. Tucked away at the far end of the apartment, it is going to be a true escape for me. Unapologetically, divinely pink. A shrine to pink, if you will.

I do worry that it will repel suitors, but I have a rare bottle of the coveted Love Potion Number 9 stashed away in a safe place, so not so much a worry.

Besides, in the dark who is looking at rosy curtains and a pink bookshelf?

Certainly not me.

Monday, November 30, 2009

file under: I Am Officially Old

Did you know there is a 13 year-old blogger who gets front row seats at runway shows because she writes an apparently fabulously influential fashion blog called Style Rookie?

Tava Gevinson looks like a ten year old boy in a blonde Beatle wig, dressed up a la The Olsen Twins-meets-Grandma's closet. Since when does a 13 year old claim authority as the voice of anything except being 13 years old? (Oh wait, I forgot what 13 year olds are like). When you are 13, the whole world seems composed of clueless idiots.

Thanks to the power of the internet (take note, this is a dubious distinction) now the leagues of clueless idiots can turn to a thirteen year old for fashion advice.

As IF!

What's next, a ten year old's ramblings on the geopolitics of the Middle East?

I am feeling cranky.

Hitting "publish post" ... 'til next time ...

Back in the doghouse.


Just when I'd complimented myself so handsomely (OK, boasted) about my newly spendthrift ways, I succumb to these on ebay. Vintage salt and pepper doghouses with decals on the front.
They have got to be worth far more than the few dollars I paid for them. They are the cutest things I have seen in forever.
And now they are MINE!

Apartment update.


The place is coming along.

There will eventually be a big moving-day push but for now I am bringing over a half-dozen or so boxes at a time. Am I reluctant to move? No, mostly I'm exhausted and overwhelmed. Excited, yes. Overwhelmed, too. I am thanking my own good sense (finally got some) in planning ahead for this financially speaking. All through my 20's and 30's I was a fool around money. Wow, saving money! Window shopping instead of impulse buying! There is a kind of Yankee pride in this thriftiness, I must admit. When you really stop and think "would I rather have this item in my home than $____ in my pocket?", it throws a different light on things. I retired my debit card and checks and use cash for everything nowadays, so I can see right away when those presidential flash cards start leaking out of my wallet.

I must say, I don't like the leaking of the green. Makes me irritable!

There is the occasional minor splurge, however, on an item that is so "me", so "must have" and so reasonably priced that I don't even try to resist. Case in point: the Queen's Red Rooster plate (above). I'm buying just the one, as it's going to hang on the wall of my red and white kitchen, with a few other plates. (Yes, I'm a plate hanging kind of person).

Love roosters. Love plates on the wall. Love a red and white kitchen.

Don't love moving.
Blurgh.

Colorful days, restless nights.

If you're a regular follower of Buttercup Bungalow (and there are a few of you, thanks!) you'll have noticed by now that I am doing some serious posting of images lately, and a lot of them aren't in the same vein at all.

Which explains a lot.

I am moving after a few years in the same place (and moving is stressful), the holidays are upon us (for me this tends to me stressful), and my 14 year-old cat is not enjoying the prospect of getting used to yet another home. She's game, though. I mean, this is an animal who flew all the way across the country in the pet section of the cargo hold. But she's 10 years older now and a wee bit more neurotic. Liker her Mom :-).

Anyway, I've noticed that when I feel particularly stretched and strained (mentally speaking), I am far more drawn to visuals than I ordinarily am (which is more than the average person, I think). I start ferreting through all of the sources I can think of, and looking for new ones, as a way to relax my brain. It works. I think my long period this summer of being away from the blog (this one, anyway) had as much to do with feeling relatively calm as it did with the laborious hours of setting up and maintaining my other blog (The Daily Corgi). With that one I'm looking at lots of pictures but they're all of Corgis. Never a bad thing, but a same-y diet. I won't say I got my fill of Corgis (NEVER), but the need to clap eyes on lots of something else's got very strong.

So here I am, back at Buttercup Bungalow. I run in fits and starts, I suppose. Blame it on the "artistic temperment".

Yeah, that's it.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

1928: Blumenfest

Blumenfest Zurich 1928
Author Unknown

Bright simplicity.


Chamomile Tea in Cup with Spoon
Photographer Unknown

art happy: Louise Cunningham

Toucan Love
by Louise Cunningham

Deer oh Deer
by Louise Cunningham

Retro Teapots
by Louise Cunningham




Love, love, love the juicy bright colors!
These (and more) available at http://allposters.com/






Pop! goes the puppy.


Atome as Puppy Pop Star I
by Guerin






Atome as Puppy Pop Star III
by Guerin



Saturday, November 28, 2009

God save the Queen.


Queen of England, Princess Elizabeth
On her Tenth Birthday
April 21, 1936