retrogoddess

Happy Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T11:04:00.000+11:00

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Love should be appreciated and cherished everyday. Not just romantic love, but the love we have for our family and friends too.

There are so many beautiful vintage images online, even with their corny sayings.

Here are some of my favourites.

Tell someone you love them today!

Baby Clothes Needed

2012-02-12T23:14:00.000+11:00

I am a member of my local Freecycle Group and I came across a Wanted: Baby Clothes email.

As I read the email, I thought it was such a brilliant and thoughtful idea.

Thanks to all the generous freecyclers who have donated baby clothes in the past for new mums and bubs from poor villages in Papua New Guinea. We have just sent off 24 packages so are looking for some more donations. Please email me if you have any baby blankets, wraps, booties, socks, jumpsuits, pants, tops, singlets and hats. Drop off to Croydon Park, Botany or Epping or I can pick up from most inner west suburbs. Thanks!

That was the email message from Kirrilly.

I thought about when I had my son. He was swamped with gifts before and after he was born. He was very fortunate.

Many of his clothes were passed on or put into the charity clothing bins and they were hardly used.

There are babies being born whose parents cannot afford an outfit for their new bundle of joy.

I contacted Kirrilly to ask her if I could get some more information about donating clothes to the poor, rural newborns in Papua New Guinea.

Here is what she said:

My parents worked as teachers in Papua New Guinea and I was born there, so the country and its people have a special place in our lives. We have a really good friend Irene who lives in Mt Hagen in the highlands of PNG.

She is a lovely lady who does a lot in her community - often has new mums or homeless people living in her house. We try to support her as much as possible as she does not have a lot of money herself.

When she came to Australia to visit us a few years ago she was shocked with how many baby clothes and assorted things my sisters had! Just from my sisters alone they had so many baby clothes given and handed down to them and Irene was so keen to take them back to her town and give them to new mums.

So she has started visiting new mum's in the local hospital and giving them a gift pack. She especially gives them to women from rural areas and those with nothing to dress their baby in to take them home. So its not a formal organisation or anything, but worthwhile nonetheless.

At the moment we collect second hand baby clothes and put them together in bundles with a face washer and bar of soap, as well as a card for the new mum.

These are sent up in boxes just via regular post. The post is very expensive so we need to look into a more sustainable option. So, basically, its just my family supporting one lady in PNG as she supports many new mums! We have been doing this for the past two years.

Great idea, isn't it?

Donations are needed for the following items - in sizes 000-1:

hats
singlets
socks/booties
baby blankets
wraps
jumpsuits
cot sheets
pants
jackets
jumpers
tops
any other clothes

Donations of new face washers and bars of soap (non-fragranced) would also be appreciated.

The cost of postage to PNG is ridiculously high so we are seeking some people or businesses who might like to help in that way with money or anyone who has contacts in the shipping industry.

It would be so fantastic if a company could help out with delivering these donations to Papua New Guinea. Do you know of anyone that could assist?

If you have any baby clothes you would like to donate or if you know of someone that can help with the delivery of the donations to PNG, please contact kirrillydabinett@yahoo.com.au

Want. Want. Want.

2012-02-09T23:26:00.000+11:00

Loving some of the gorgeous furniture that is now available in Australia.

These Tretchikoff inspired bedside tables by Old School Industries are just beautiful.

A great statement piece. This Union Jack - Chairman of the Boardchair chair is available at livingExclusive

I need your help!

2012-02-09T10:59:00.000+11:00

I am writing a blog about International Women's Day (March 8).
I'd love to have your input. I am asking women of all ages - "What's the best thing about being a woman?' Just a paragraph would be lovely. I will include it in my blog (www.retrogoddess.blogspot.com). I will include your name (let me know if you don't want your full name included) and age.
Please send your response to racheljane73@gmail.com
Thank you so much.
Regards,
Rachel

Kewpies

2012-02-05T23:51:00.000+11:00

Whenever I see these gorgeous little dolls, it takes me back to being a little girl and going to the Sydney Royal Easter Show.

Remember when it was at the Sydney Showground?

You could get a kewpie doll with a little tulle skirt, on a stick.

These gorgeous girls will be returning to the Showground, well actually, the Horden Pavillion, for the Love Vintage Fair, March 23-25.

They are a modern take on the old kewpie's from carnivals. Beautifully decorated and available on a stick if you prefer.

My 50's Closet will be there, selling their kewpie's, along with other goodies.

If you can't make it to the Fair, My 50's Closet has a store at 40d Point St, Bulli, NSW.

Gidget

2012-01-22T16:06:00.000+11:00

As a child, I loved Sunday afternoons, especially when one of my favourite old movies was on at midday.

I loved, and still love, Gidget and Elvis movies.

Gidget films were over-the-top corny and so innocent.

The surfing scenes were so blantantly fake, but it didn't matter and the romance between Gidget and Moondoggie was so sweet.

What were your favourite old movies when you were a child?

The Wacky World Of Baby Names

2012-01-21T00:12:00.001+11:00

I asked my Facebook and Twitter friends of some of the weirdest babynames they had heard of and it was actually quite surprising some of thehideous names parents are inflicting on their offspring.

ABCD – pronounced ‘Abseedy’. The first four letters of the alphabet.It’s not cute and it isn’t clever.

Ca$h – that’s right, with a dollar sign. It’s understandable that peoplewho are fans of Johnny Cash may want to name their child after him. However,the dollar sign in the name is just reeks of materialism.

Metalli – As in the band ‘Metallica’. One of my Twitter friends, cameacross this name at a McDonalds. The father, clearly a fan of the group, hadhis daughters name tattooed on his arm, just like the Metallica logo.

Akuma – doesn’t sound like an awful name but in Japanese it means thedevil. This name caused a huge kerfuffle in Japan.

Ice – As in Ice T and Ice Cube and the drug.

Teapot – This was the name of a girl in my dancing class when I waslittle.

Lee_a – pronounced ‘Lee-dash-a’. However, it doesn’t have a dash, it hasan underscore, so it should really be Lee-underscore-a.

Siblings – Diamond, Emerald and Ruby. I also know of a family that namedtheir children Pepe, Salty, Rosemary and Herb. I also knew of twins called Mickey andMinnie.

Banned Names

In New Zealand the following names have been rejected and parents aresimply banned from calling their offspring the following names:

Lucifer

Messiah

Baron, Bishop, Duke, General, Judge, Justice, King, Knight and Mr, alldeemed too similar to titles.

Single letters: C, D, I and T, however Q and J were accepted.

Punctuation marks are out - . (Full stop), * (Asterisk) and / (Slash)

Benson and Hedges (twin boys named after the cigarette brand)

Violence (apparently this is a boy’s name) as is Number 16 Bus Shelter

Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii. She was so upset with her name thatshe had it legally changed when she was nine.

Fish and Chips

Yeah Detroit

Sex Fruit

Stallion

Twisty Poi (a staple food in Polynesian cuisine)

We can all look at this list and have a bit of a chuckle at what strangenames people call their children, but let’s just take a moment to think aboutthe burden of having one of these names would be.

Imagine roll call: Michael Brown, Isabel Jones, Fish and Chips Smith….

That would be just awful for any child.

What are some of the worst baby names you have heard?

Rockabilly Barbie

2012-01-11T21:53:00.001+11:00

I came across this FABULOUS Rockabilly Barbie image on Pinterest tonight.

I would love to get her and add her to my Barbie collection. She's perfect.

Buluuy Mirrii

2012-01-09T01:09:00.000+11:00

At the recent, Fashion For Passion, breast cancer research fundraiser, I met an amazing fashion designer that had me intrigued with her movitation and talent.

Colleen Tighe-Johnson is a Tamworth resident and has been a fashion designer for the past ten years.

One of Colleen's designs that starred in Fashion For Passion, was a gorgeous stretched satin dress that featured digitalised aboriginal art, and thousands of dollars of opals.

The opals were positioned around the neck, down the bodice, across the hips and over the straps on the back.

The beautiful opal dress

This dress was chosen as one of the six finalists in the Deadly Dress competition at Deadly Awards last year.

Another of Colleen's creations

Her fashion label is called Buluuy Mirrii meaning 'black star'.

Colleen's aim to open an Aboriginal modelling school in the Gomlori nation.

Colleen is also coordinating a pilot Certificate II programme in Hairdressing in Tamworth with TAFE and Joblink Plus.

Colleen's label 'Buluuy Mirrii'

The Language Of Flowers: a Miscellany

2012-01-05T14:58:00.003+11:00

The Language Of Flowers: a Miscellany

Mandy Kirkby

I remember my grandmother being really superstitious when it came to flowers. In the same way as she did not want anyone to open an umbrella in her home or place new shoes on the kitchen table. She wasn't willing to take the risk of bad luck.

The Language Of Flowers: a Miscellany, is an interesting book to refer to when you want to find out what certain flowers mean.

For example, hazel is for reconciliation, wisteria is for welcome and ivy is for fidelity.

This unique language was created by the romantic early Victorians who carefully planned every bouquet and posy so as to deliver a desired message.

I purchased a basil plant a few days before I read this book and was surprised to find out that it means hate, but it tastes pretty good in my pasta.

Old Sydney Milk Bars

2011-12-30T23:07:00.000+11:00

Fantastic article in today's Sydney Morning Herald, about the old milk bars of Sydney.

The Olympia Milk Bar on Parramatta Road, Stanmore, has always been fascinating to me.

It's dark and mysterious and makes me wonder if any of the rumours are true.

Sydney Morning Herald article - 30 December 2011

The shakes that caused a stir

It was 1962. On hot and sticky summer nights, chocolate milkshakes lined the tables of every booth of the Rio milk bar in Summer Hill. A jukebox belted out Elvis Presley and girls in bobby socks giggled at boys from the red leather seats.

When the pubs closed at 6pm, everyone would kick on to The Rio. They would be three-deep at the bar; customers such as Johnny O'Keefe and Lionel Long waited for milkshakes. ''It was like the Happy Days series and I was the Fonz,'' says Nik Poulos, whose 89-year-old father, George, opened The Rio in 1952 and has worked there ever since.

Big jars of lollies and metal cups of lime ice-cream soda glistened in the eyes of children who lined up at the counter. Businessmen would stop in on their way home for a quick shake. Milk had never been so cool.

But was the experience endemic to Sydney?

Debunking the common belief that milk bars were an American invention funnelled to other parts of the Western world after World War II in an avalanche of American food, music and film, two Macquarie University researchers claim Sydney was, in fact, their birthplace.

About 30 years before Nik Poulos was drinking strawberry milkshakes and scoffing lollies in his father's milk bar, another Greek migrant, Joachim Tavlaridis - who adopted the name Mick Adams - opened the Black & White 4d Milk Bar at 24 Martin Place in Sydney. Adams had travelled to America and observed the early-1930s drugstore ''soda parlours'' where stand-up and bar-stool trade in soda drinks was favoured over sit-down meals.

Taking elements of that concept, he is thought to be the first person in the world to open a venue focusing exclusively on milkshakes, bought from a bar and consumed standing up without food to accompany, historians Leonard Janiszewski and Effy Alexakis write in their paper Shakin' the World Over: The Greek-Australian Milk Bar.

It was a roaring success.

''It just seemed to click,'' Janiszewski says. ''It seemed to be this idea of something that was good for you and dirt cheap. It became a place where people would meet up to talk business or you'd take a date there. The pubs became angry because they were losing all their patrons.''

The American milkshake was becoming hugely popular around the world and the NSW Board of Health had begun to promote milk as a health food. Adams undercut other sellers with his bargain four-pence price tag and quickly achieved a rapid turnover of customers.

Highly entrepreneurial and perhaps influenced by the American style of overblown pomp and ceremony, openings and anniversaries were gargantuan affairs. As many as 27,000 people were reported to frequent the art deco milk bar each week, standing at the long, hotel-style bar with soda fountain pumps and state-of-the-art milkshake makers manufactured in America.

''He had this big mechanical cow in the window with oil coming out of it to look like milk and there'd be people two or three deep looking at it,'' says Adams's daughter, Lilian Keldoulis. ''The police had to keep coming to move them on.''

In the decades that followed, milk bars proliferated astonishingly. Within five years of opening the Black & White, about 4000 were operating in Australia.

They lined the outer suburbs and country towns from Stanmore and Strathfield to Broken Hill and Bondi. The concept spread to New Zealand, Great Britain, South Africa, Fiji and America. ''I was the coolest kid growing up, my friends were so jealous,'' says Arthur Stanton, whose father Norm, a Lebanese migrant, opened Norm's Milk Bar in Strathfield in 1957.

''I'd sneak into the movies [at the Strathfield Melba next door] at half-time. I ate all the junk food - Marella Jubes, Fantales, Jaffas. There were pinball machines and a jukebox and everyone would buy ice-creams and milkshakes to take to the movies.''

But with the spread of supermarkets, most milk bars either died or morphed into takeaway businesses.

The Olympia Milk Bar on Parramatta Road in Stanmore still stands. But only just.

Owned by a reclusive Greek man, the milk bar still has its original soda pumps and empty boxes of classic chocolate bars gathering dust. The dilapidated building rarely has its lights on but the door is open almost every day.

In a Facebook group dedicated to the mysterious time warp, people tell of intrepidly entering to buy a $2.70 milkshake or toasted sandwich.

''Did you go inside?'' one member asked.

''I'd love to, the dude freaks me out a bit,'' replied another.

''C'mon, mate, go inside, sit down and enjoy a milkshake … Don't be a CHICKEN!''

''Went for a milkshake yesterday with my teenage daughter,'' another added. ''He didn't spook us out, but the place was really dark and it was pouring rain outside at the time. A great bit of nostalgia, imagine if it could be brought back to its former glory with a few pinballs and a jukebox … I'd be there all the time.''

For milk bars such as the Olympia, the pressures of commercialisation have almost become too much, says Tim Downs, who bought Parry's Milkbar in Caringbah in 2004 and restored it to its 1950s glory.

Parry's was run by Greek brothers Peter and Bill Cassimatis for almost 40 years but when selling milkshakes became less profitable, they began to focus on cigarettes and convenience items. ''There are just too many impacts of commercialisation; it makes us very uncompetitive,'' Downs says.

''That nostalgic, home-made touch will eventually leave and you won't see any milk bars around any more. The only reason some have still lasted is just stubborn operators.''

But despite his stubbornness, Stanton, 54, who still flips burgers and makes chocolate milkshakes at Norm's Milk Bar, won't pass on the business to one of his five kids. ''It's too hard; I wouldn't put them through that,'' he says. ''It's just not like it used to be.''

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T00:40:00.002+11:00

May you all have a wonderful Christmas and a happy and healthy new year.

- Rachel xo

Fashion For Passion Success

2011-12-22T23:08:00.000+11:00

Fashion for Passion was held on Sunday, December 11.

This National Breast Cancer Foundation’s fundraiser, wasorganised by my 14 year old god daughter, Mikele.

She started the fundraiser three years ago as a ‘PinkBreakfast’ at her home.

Last year, she moved the fundraiser to Leichhardt Town Hall,but this year’s event was the biggest yet.

Model: Sheron

Featuring designs by White House fashion students andindigenous fashion designers, Fashion for Passion was a hugely successfulevent.

Matt Webb (above), a 16 year old from Tamworth, modelled his own design, for which he won the Deadly Dressed award at this year’s Deadly Awards.

Bad 80's Music Videos

2011-12-17T23:00:00.000+11:00

The 1980's was one of the best decades for music.

However, the same cannot be said for music videos - there were so many crappy ones.

I asked my Facebook friends for their best of the worst, 80's clips.

What are some of the worst you can remember?

Toto Coelo - I Eat Cannibals

I still love this song, but the dance moves are so bad. It reminds me of the dances we used to make up at school in Year 3.

Charlene - I've Never Been To Me

Ugh. Awful song. Awful music video. May cause you to vomit.

Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse Of The Heart

"Turn around bright eyes" - cue the laser beam eyes or whatever they are.

This music video just drags onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. 'Well be holding on forever' waiting for the video to finish.

Black Lace - Agadoo

The music video sees band members dressed as fruit, wearing sunglasses.

Also features the blonde streaked singers wearing black leather pants, Hawaiian shirts (unbuttoned) with skinny white belts.

Olivia Newton-John - Physical

It isn't Olivia that makes this music video crappy. Yes, she is wearing some daggy 80's exercise gear, but it's the not so attractive men posing like they are male supermodels that really makes this cringeworthy.

Starship - We Built This City

Boring. Lots of images of faces that could cure your insomnia.

Pat Travers - I La La La Love You

Thanks Yvette for recommending this terrible music video to the list. I have no words, just watch it for yourself. It's actually quite funny.

Bobby McFerrin - Don't Worry Be Happy

Robin Williams acting like an idiot. Not funny. Not clever.

It doesn't help that the song is beyond annoying.

Have you got any to add to the list?

Vintage Wrapping Paper

2011-12-17T22:43:00.002+11:00

This week I received a lovely surprise in the mail.

My dear friend Christine posted me this gorgeous bundle of vintage wrapping paper.

Looking forward to using them in some of my artwork.

Vintage Sydney, 1960's

2011-12-12T09:58:00.001+11:00

Fantastic footage of Sydney in the mid 1960's.

My, how much we have changed!

Make Hey While The Sun Shines

2011-12-09T22:34:00.001+11:00

I have been following Pip Lincolne's blog Meet Me At Mikes for a few years.

I want to be Pip Lincolne.

When it comes to craft, is there nothing she can't do?

She has released her third book, Make Hey While The Sun Shines.

It features 20 gorgeous projects including: a bike seat made of vintage fabric, crocheted baubles, hand-printed gift bags and pretty decals to customise plates or mugs.

Don't be concerned if you are only a beginner when it comes to craft (like me). All of the projects have step-by-step instructions and illustrations to guide you through, and with comprehensive sections on sewing, crochet and knitting basics.

Not only is this book filled with beautiful craft projects, it also comes with 5 pull-out recipes cards. These recipes are perfect for summer picnics or just for home.

Pip's craft projects appeal to people in so many age groups.

This book would be an amazing Christmas gift for craft lovers from beginner to advanced (hint hint).

Disney Channel Tween Programs

2011-12-09T15:24:00.001+11:00

I have watched a few of these programs with younger family members.

The characters are continually yelling and buzzing around like they are on speed.

I wonder why Disney want the characters to behave like that.

Only six days to go!!!

2011-12-07T23:10:00.001+11:00

The Tip Top Anne Gare Singing Bread Bin giveaway ends next Tuesday.

If you are in Australia, go to http://retrogoddess.blogspot.com/2011/11/tip-top-good-on-ya-mum-singing-bread.html to enter.

Jonah

2011-12-05T23:35:00.001+11:00

Today on my Facebook, I noticed that a few of my friends had posted a video of a 14 year old boy named Jonah.

Jonah posted this video is because he was sick of being bullied. YEARS of bullying.

In the YouTube comments, people are writing homosexual slurs and being quite vicious.

However, on his Twitter, he left this tweet that clearly showed he has maturity beyond his years.

"Oh my god lol! My haters are clearly... Not the smartest. They need to realize that I ACTUALLY AM GAY and callin me it wont do anything 0.0"

Bravo Jonah!

The hate needs to stop. Spread the word! NOH8!

Shanna Moakler