Twelve posts for twelve months

This past Sunday Chronically Vintage celebrated its first birthday, a merry occasion that couldn’t help but start my week off on a very upbeat note. Many of you left the sweetest of comments in regards to this anniversary, and I sincerely want to thank you all for your beautiful words – it was joy to commemorate such a fun day with each of you!

On Monday, in the midst of running errands and doing nine loads of laundry (which, with any luck, will finished getting folded and put away today – while in the meantime our cat, Stella, has fun playing Queen of the Hill atop a mound of freshly washed and dried linens and clothing!), I began to think about the many wonderful (if I may humbly say so) posts that have filled the past year of this blog’s life and continued to reflect upon about them throughout the week.

Some were short and sweet, other long and informative; no matter what, each of them included at least one image. To date (excluding this one) 261 posts have appeared within the pages of this site. Amongst them it’s hard to whittle down a list of just a few favourites, but I thought it would be blast to look back at twelve posts that stand out in my mind.

As some of you may have guessed, the title of today’s post is a spin on the name of a classic vintage movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but instead of seeking ladies to marry, our posts each pair up with one month in a calendar year (each post having been added to the site in that respective month).

To make this look back at the last year even more fun, I found a fantastically pretty (not to mention alluring!) vintage calendar from 1950 amongst the endlessly lovely offerings that Suzee Que has in her wonderful Flickr stream, and have coupled up each month’s post with a gorgeous pin-up girl.


♥ Looking back at the past year in vintage style ♥


~ January ~



This post launched Chronically Vintage’s popular weekly recipe segment with a homey, old school favourite: Wonderful Wednesday Recipes: Welsh Rarebit.


~ February ~



February was a month of contemplation and realization for me, and many of you helped me through it with you caring, wise advise. This post was my way of acknowledging the wonderful support I was blessed to receive from my readers: You have all helped me to see the forest for the trees, thank you!.


~ March ~



Chronically Vintage went as Irish as a shamrock in March with a round of well known historical figures who hailed from the Emerald Isles: Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with vintage photos of famous Irish people.


~ April ~



Thoughts of springtime renewal, growth and the rhythm of life gave way to a post about the beauty of gardening with an old fashioned twist: Cultivating a garden of vintage style.


~ May ~



There was no pussyfooting around the subject here; I’d prowled the web and hunted down a handful of cat items with more than a pawful’s worth of immense cuteness: Hello Vintage Kitty.


~ June ~


Spirits were light and in the mood to laugh come June, so I took at stab at a popular post that was floating around the blogsphere at the time in which one describes certain articles of clothing they love and others they loath: Five items I would always/never wear.


~ July ~



When my birthday rolled around last year I dove headfirst into the depths of Flickr and emerged with oodles of festively themed images to help celebrate the beginning of the first year of the second quarter of a century of my life: 25 wonderful vintage birthday photos.


~ August ~



With temperatures soaring faster than a rocket ship into space here last summer (and our apartment lacking AC), it was all I could do not to fill the bathtub with ice cream and jump right in. I resisted the urge however, and instead rounded up a slew of refreshingly cool vintage ads: I scream, you scream, we all scream for vintage ice cream!.


~ September ~



With the weather finally starting to chill out a little, my mind turned to memories of the annual shopping trip for school clothes. While I haven’t sat in a classroom for a while now, I still get the urge to spiff up my wardrobe with new threads when September rolls around and this post was jam packed with the perfect sort of dresses to buy and wear when Mother Nature is teetering between seasons: Twenty "summer into autumn" appropriate vintage dresses.


~ October ~



Goblins and ghosts and witches, oh my! Things around here were in a decidedly spooky mood as Halloween loomed near, so naturally I wanted to embrace the spirit of the season and put my own vintage twist on it: Come on everybody, let’s go trick-or-treating!.


~ November ~



By the time November blew into town my head was already dreaming of plum pudding, fragrant pine trees and the joy of giving holiday gifts, which called to mind the childhood pleasure that came from pouring over holiday season catalogues each year, dreaming and hoping in the way that only a child can: The Sears Wish Book catalogue: a time honoured tradition .


~ December ~



As the year drew to a close I wanted to put together a post that was positively bursting at the seams with many of the sublime vintage fashions I had encountered since beginning Chronically Vintage. This delightful post allowed me to just that: Seven stunning vintage holiday season outfits.

♥ ♥ ♥


I realize that this calendar is a little wonky. It starts with January (’10) and finishes with December (’09), but I wanted to include a post from every month of the year, and given the Chronically Vintage was born in April (’09), this was best way I could think of to do it.

Looking back through past posts I found myself rereading many of my entries and the comments they generated. It’s been a profound joy to write about such a diverse array of vintage topics and to learn so much more about the past in doing so.

Thank you again so very much, everyone, for being a part of Chronically Vintage’s world. I know that the next twelve months – and beyond – are going to be fabulous, too!