vintage shopping Archives

What a year this has been and how fast it has gone as well. I literally feel like I just started 2015 and now it’s coming to an end. Well the one thing I do know is that 2015 was a busy and fun year and I would love to share with you some of the adventures I got into with you. Here is my 2015 in review.

January: Every year I attend a big German Karneval (mardi gras) function called GAMGA in Las Vegas. It’s 2 days of costume parties, after parties and then a big Gala. It’s super fun and something I have been doing with my parents since I was a kid.

February: I was lucky to be able to attend the premier of the 1940s new Canadian TV show called ‘X Company‘. I have never been part of a premier and it was a cool experience and we even got to meet the host of the event and get our pictures taken with the cast and producers.

I attend a 1920s Speakeasy party at the famous and beautiful Palais Royale in Toronto.

AND I traveled to Seattle, Washington for a long weekend to visit a good friends parents and see uber cool Seattle. I did a blog post all about it HERE.

Seattle Washington first starbucks — In front of the first Starbucks

March: I did nothing really blog post worthy. WHAT?? lol

April: VIVA Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend! I did several posts on that big adventure which can be found HERE.

May: Vintage Spectacular Dance with the GTA Swing Band. This was a super night of dancing, dressing up and great Big Band Music. The image below is some of the lovely ladies of TVS and the lead singer of the Band (she is soooo good).

I was very lucky to be part of a cool experience in May with a favorite Rockabilly band in Toronto called “The Millwinders“. Myself and few friends were filmed dancing in front of a green screen for use for future videos. Here are a couple of pictures from that day.

1950s vintage style — Credit: Kahlil Heslop

Lastly Toronto Lindy Hop (that I’m part of) put on a full weekend of Lindy hop, classes, history lessons and live music dances all weekend long called ‘Toronto World Lindy Hop Day’. I played host and it was such a good weekend 🙂

The images below are with 2 living legends in the Lindy Hop World. Chazz Young the son of one of the founders of Lindy Hop-Frankie Manning (and a talent as well) AND Dawn Hampton the Queen of the Cabaret and a little firecracker (her image is on the shirts we are wearing).

Summer (June, July and August): I did a full blog post on all the events I attended (tiki party, UK Adventure, Horse race event plus much more), so check that out HERE.

September: Weekend visit to Havana, Cuba

This was not my first visit to Havana, but this was definitely the first time I visited areas outside of the Old part and it was fantastic. I still have to do a blog post on all the new things I saw but for now here is a collage of some of the highlights.

October: Halloween and a friend’s Wedding Reception Toga Party (yes a toga party). For Halloween the hubby and I went as Amazing Race Contestants. The outfits were big hits.

Toga Party!

November: ‘Swing Out To Victory’. Once again I helped my friend Dean with hosting duties as a third of the beautiful “Dominion Belles”.

Swing out to Victory-1940s vintage outfits — Credit: Kahlil Heslop

The throwing of the candies 🙂

Here I am with 2 friends from the Toronto Vintage Society. Both created their outfits from scratch and Joy on the left, won the best dressed because she recreated the “Swing Time” outfit from the movie with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Opening of Toronto’s first ‘Shameful Tiki Room‘ (literally around the corner from my apartment). Now one of my local hangouts.

The official Tiki mug for Shameful. Very Canadian with the Beaver 🙂

I dj’d my first Rock N Roll social dance night for my friends 50s dance studio ‘Soda Pop Hop‘. Such a fun night!

December: Toronto Vintage Society annual Kitschmas Party. I played host once again at the party and it was another huge success. Here are the winners of the title of Kitschmas King and Queen. Make sure you check out the blog called “Flipsville” because she made these outfits!

And that my friends is a general overview of my 2015 year. I hope you had a wonderful year and I wish all of you a Happy 2016! Thank you so much for reading my blog and commenting and just being wonderful readers, I love and appreciate each and everyone of you.

Liz 🙂

(Note: To view my other days at VIVA click on the days: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday)

Last day of VIVA, wow it went so fast how was that possible? I guess it’s possible when you are having the time of your life. All good things must eventually come to an end, right?

Happy Easter! Sunday for me is ALWAYS shopping at the vintage vendors day, since many of the vendors put their items on sale as they don’t want to take tons of stuff home. Every year I have gotten lucky and have found some wonderful items and this year was no different. However I did find that I purchased less this year due to the Canadian dollar being so poor so that the exchange rate made everything so much more expensive. Oh well more money left over for future trips.

First up I picked up a couple of great scarfs to add to my collection.

This souvenir San Francisco scarf is my favorite of the two.

I also purchased the cutest brooch, it’s a Heinz 57 Ketchup bottle!

Then just as I was about to walk out a happy camper with what I had, I saw out of the corner of my eye a vintage 1950s Shirtwaist dress from the vendor “Love Street Vintage” who I had the pleasure of purchasing past dresses from before. It fit like a glove and it was a good price so it CLEARLY came home with me.

After shopping we thought we would see if we could get into the Sunday Pool Party which normally in the past we have not been able to do, due to it being the popular day and there are normally long line ups. But this year ended up being really easy and I think it might have had to do with the high winds making people think it was cold at the pool (which it was not). Yay for us!

My friend had secured several lounge chairs for the gang which ended up being in good prime viewing of the women’s swimsuit contest and the bands on the stage. Thank you!

There was so many GORGEOUS swimsuits to be seen, as you can see from these 3 lovely women. The red head is actually a fellow Canadian who has a super blog called “Pinup Persuasion“, who I did not realize I had taken a photo of until I just looked at now and clearly missed saying hello. Opps. She did later on enter the vintage swimsuit contest, which I’m glad she did because her suit was stunning (as did the girl in the green suit).

VLV 18 Pool Party Sunday 2015 Vintage Swimsuits

The band that played earlier in the afternoon “The Cavaleros” were really good (and Canadian) and kept the party going with their cool surf sounds. My favorite part though was when they took “Sing Sing Sing” and made it into a Rockabilly/Surf Version. The video I took even had Lindy Hoppers (from San Francisco I found out later) dancing to it. LOVE IT!

Speaking of San Fran here is my new friend from San Fran who was also a Lindy Hopper and really cool to chat with.

Then my friend Bill stole my camera to take a picture with beautiful women.

Bill JUST missed his chance with these ladies, by seconds. His loss.

I guess the pool party is not amusing for everyone….

Unfortunately I have no great photos of the swimsuit contest as the sun was pretty bright and was making it hard to see what I was taking pictures of. So you just have to take my word on the fact that the suits were stunning (as you saw above). Here is one photo though that turned out okay.

After the contest, we packed up our stuff and headed in to get ready for the Sunday evening favorite of mine and many others..the Jive Contest! BUT first what is starting to become a tradition, getting as many Canadians together for a group photo.

Here is this years, we clean up nicely don’t we?

Okay back to the Jive Contest…Once again the dance floor was filled with lots of wonderful dancers and once again my favorite did not get picked (I always chose wrong) but it was still fun to watch. Here is a clip of the 2nd round of the contest. The couple in the front of the video in the matching pink outfits ended up winning the whole thing.

And here is another tradition! Taking a photo with the Orleans Sign.

Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend 18, 2015 — Me and the Sign

Now the evening is really winding down and now my body is telling me that it’s soon time to call it quits. We did however want to see the Doo Wop All Stars Show. This years show included: Herb Cox-The Cleftones; Eugene Pitt-The Jive Five and Bobby Lewis (“Tossin & Turning”) It was really great and super stylish as Doo Wop bands tend to be.