I haven't been blogging much, for months on end. There's a really good reason why, and it's these people:
It's been a good year, and as I think you can see, my job is truly a labor of love. I love these kids. I love hearing them sing, watching them dance, making them work hard, laughing with them, and seeing them grow into people I am proud to call friends. I am really, really lucky in my choice of vocation.
It does have a side-effect of leaving me with no time or gumption to blog. It does, fortunately, leave me the time for the occasional thrift store run, the ability to go to estate sales over vacations, and plenty of time to start upgrading my wardrobe.
My original dress collection (which you can read about here) started in college and was really for costuming, playing dress-up, and just to have and think about how pretty they were. It was really never something I thought about doing out in the real world, as, well, clothes. As I started to turn my hobby into a business, and started following more fellow vintage-lovers on Instagram, it seemed like more and more of a normal idea. I started off easy, with this Spenser Jeremy silk sarong-style 80s dress that I wore during a weekend in the Thousand Islands:
I felt so summery and magical that it was obviously (see my blog/Instagram/Etsy shop name) a great experience. I decided to break out the big guns and wear this to my husband's cousin's wedding a few weeks later:
Ah, yes. Perfection. If you took a moment to read my original Dress Collection blog, you might recognize it. This was part of my Neponset-years thrifting!
As school began, I repeated the Spenser Jeremy dress. Then it was homecoming and we had a "retro" day. Most people took this as an opportunity to dress as a hippie or wear leg warmers and headbands (apparently that's what we wore all the time in the 80s), but I took it as an invitation to wear this:
Oh yes, that's a petticoat peeking out underneath. I wore the whole shebang to school and it was a hit. So I got even more adventurous, and on a day that wasn't a costume day at all, I wore this 60s number:
It even has pockets!! I felt so fabulous. Before it got too cold, I broke out this 60s dress in a very different style:
Over the winter, I mostly wore modern sweater dresses, but I found this gorgeous 50s dress while wearing a vintage plaid skirt (my new favorite skirts ever).
Sometimes I didn't wear entirely vintage outfits, but just blinged up a modern dress with a gorgeous vintage necklace:
And sometimes I added a vintage slip with the vintage jewelry:
I started discovering my love of 70s dresses (why had I never realized how great they are??) and wore this sheer floral print dress to a wine dinner at a local restaurant:
As spring approached, I started wearing more and more of the dresses I'd collected over the winter, and started realizing I needed to post these on my Instagram. Which meant trying to figure out how to take decent pictures without the use of my jewelry mirror....
Which I did with obviously varying levels of success. I think I'm getting better at it. I'm a musician, not a photographer. Obviously. Sometimes I gave up and just went right back to the mirror, though:
This one's one of my favorites. And not just because it has pockets. But mostly because it has pockets.
Learning to integrate vintage into my daily wardrobe was a challenge, but a worthwhile one, and I imagine it's only going to snowball from here. I have some great 70s sundresses just waiting to get worn this summer! If you're interested in seeing some of them, be sure to follow me at @magicsummervintage on Instagram!
My magic summer starts in exactly one week, so more blog posts will be sure to follow, including a special treat with my friend at The Snug Bungalow! Stay tuned!
And don't forget to check out my Etsy shop, which is 30% off with coupon code SUMMER17 until 6/23/17!
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