Way-Out Wednesday: The Pork Is Mightier Than The Sword.

Welcome to another (better late than never) Way-Out Wednesday!





Now that the holiday season is officially all up in our grill, it's time to start thinking about buying presents for our ingrate friends and family again! Ho ho ho, dammit. (Side note: for the record, it's impossible to feel anything remotely resembling "jolly" or "in the holiday spirit" when you're in an aisle at Walgreen's that simultaneously has 75% off Halloween crap that 4 people with shopping carts are wildly digging about, competing for squeeze tubes of fake blood and bags of Spongebob gummy eyeballs as if they're the last ones on earth while the other side of the aisle is lined with an army of stuffed chihuahuas singing "Feliz Navidad" and boxes of the sad little Christmas tree from Charlie Brown. Also: Longest. Run-on. Ever.)

Anyway.

This year I'm making an effort to get everyone extra special, extra weird Christmas presents. I have a few eccentric artiste friends who still rock it old school by, like, using a typewriter or getting all classy on my ass with calligraphy pens or even sending letters in the mail type of old school. So today's pick for Way-Out Wednesday ain't vintage (sorry) and it ain't clowns (you're welcome, Inky) but it is pretty way-out, as far as conventional and modern products go. Do you know any writers? Anyone with a gift for gab, a penchant for the pen, a way with words? (Bloggers don't count. I'm talking about real writers. Ha!) Writers who also like, well, meat? If so, they may just dig this, in 3 words:






Bacon. Flavored. Envelopes. Seriously. It's a must. I'm dying to know what manner of bacon of which it resembles- pork bacon tastes totally different than turkey bacon, which is in a whole other zip code from veggie bacon. Has anyone heard of the bacon envelopes or maybe even tried it? If so, please report in! (Everyone else, report back in when you're done retching, no rush. Swine-flavored paper products can do that to a person.)


Pack of 25 Bacon Flavored Envelopes are available on the website J&D's, whose motto is "Everything Should Taste Like Bacon". They sell Bacon Salt (good idea) and Baconnaise, some sort of spreadable bacon (maybe not such a good idea), if bacon flavored envelopes aren't quite weird enough for you.

Way-Out Wednesday: Boney Maroney

Welcome to Way-Out Wednesday!





Sorry for the lack of posts lately amigos, but I've been multitasking like a badass again, including spending about 3 days making dozens of these little hellions for Halloween parties:





Spider cupcakes, y'all. In pirate skull & crossbone printed liners! Fun? Totally. Pain in the ass? Oh yeah. Better idea in theory? Hell yes. All those spider legs were made by cutting off strips of black licorice Twizzlers, so 8 legs X 36 cupcakes = 1 very annoyed me. But worth it, since Halloween only comes once...ish. So a belated Happy Halloween to all! Now that it's November, bring on the turkey! I'm relatively ready. More or less. Probably more of the "less."


Maybe it's from being a Scorpio and naturally in tune with the creepy and macabre, but speaking of belated Halloween, I wish I found this earlier in the month, because it's terrifyingly awesome-- you know, if you dig creepy old photographs for every day use and not just for October 31st:





While it may look like some sort of cheesetastic Halloween party setup, it's actually a vintage photo from the 1930's of the corpses in the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Italy! Photo is currently available for sale from seller Diabolus, who, as the shop name suggests, also sells many other creepy-ass/flipping cool vintage photos for your devilish crafting needs.

Now if only I could find a vintage photo of a turkey skeleton...

Aqua Blue Heaven Friday: Where Were You In '72? (Or '59. Or '68. Or '77. Or...)

...Me, in 1972? I wasn't born yet. Not even close. (Give it another 4 more years, though, and the world would never be the same.) If you were on this planet then, do you remember where you were in 1972? No matter where you were, I bet you owned one of these:





The calendar dish towel. (This one is for sale on Etsy from seller Luna Park Foundry for $18. Yikes.) I know you grew up with one in your house. You know why you MUST have owned one of these? Because they're everywhere. They must multiply like Gremlins (or Duggars), since every thrift store or antique mall I've ever gone to has had some incantation of the dated dish towel for sale. And always with the standard rooster, kitchen utensil or ever-popular 1976 bicentennial theme. Makes me sad, really, seeing all these dish towels scattered to the 4 winds, unloved and irrelevant. Understandably, who wants to buy a towel from 1968 with a basket of eggs on it? I'd like to know who thought the current year was so important, it had to be commemorated and remembered on a novelty kitchen linen. (And who would donate one to a thrift store, thinking: "Surely someone is looking for this 1971 towel with a bushel of wheat and bald eagle soaring over a mountaintop on it. I'm such a good person for doing this."

So have you guys ever seen one for sale in your travels? Do you remember the year it was from or what picture was on it? I rather love them, if not for their kitsch factor, then for their pure randomness. I think I need to start a movement. A "Save the Dated Dish Towel" Project, where we buy as many of these suckers as possible, saving them from a useless life of fading away on a dusty Salvation Army shelf, right next to the opened package of adult diapers and "World's Best Boss" coffee mugs.

Way-Out Wednesday: Beach Blanket Bing-Oh No

It's your lucky day, my friends! Not only have I got another creepy-ass doll to show off on this glorious Way-Out Wednesday, but I also answered the age-old question: "What would happen if Carol Channing's wig, a bag of Cheetos, Annette Funicello's entire wardrobe from 1961-1967, Lisa Rinna's lip reduction, Yoko Ono, the string cheese that rolled under the radiator 2 months ago, Snooki's Bumpit and the roast duck in the last scene of A Christmas Story mated?" Why, you'd get this!...




WHA?! What kind of diseased mind would create such a hideous and excellent craft from hell?! Because I'd like to shake their hand. Well played, satan's doll maker. Well played.

Vintage Handmade Surfer Girl Doll is currently available on Etsy from seller Death Machine, who gets a gold star not only for offering this craftacular sensation, but also for having the most excellent Etsy shop name of all time.

Aqua Blue Heaven Friday: Swiss Congeniality

Welcome to another Aqua Blue Heaven Friday!



I *love* when a vintage glassware pattern matches the dinnerware, I really do. And I *especially* love when you discover glassware that matches a line of dinnerware and never knew such a thing existed! Make sense? Yeah. I figured not.

Behold!




This is just one of a Set of 4 Vintage 50's Swiss Alpine Glasses. It's such a happy little pattern, isn't it? The aqua flowers! The wee trees! All the cute could kill me where I stand.

Swiss Alpine is one of my favorite non-pink/non-atomic patterns. The pattern was an American line available from the company Marcrest, and here's one more little useless factoid to drop on you~ the Swiss Alpine pattern was discontinued in 1960. So dig that. Alex Trebek, you best watch your back, because now we're ready to drop some serious knowledge on yo' ass. Seriously though, I'm way excited that there's a line of matching glassware, as I figured there was just the standard dinner plate/teacup/gravy boat option. Not that I need any more glasses (like I need a kick in the pants), but still, it's nice knowing they're available!

Set of glasses now available on Etsy from seller Vintageer.

Way-Out Wednesday: Snootie Little Cuties.

Welcome to Way-Out Wednesday!






Vintage dolls are a favorite topic to blog about around here. Now, there are vintage dolls. There are creepy-ass vintage dolls (our favoritest of all kind, of course!), and then there are these...







I know what you're thinking: "Have you lost it, woman? What's the dealio, these aren't weird, ya nutbag." Well my friends, they're not *just* vintage doll heads with unnaturally-hued, Tina Turner-coiffed hair, mind you. No, no. That's not overly weird at all, you know, if a seller on Etsy sold *just* vintage doll heads. Doll heads could, in fact, be used in literally a plethora of crafty-ass projects. A never-ending myriad of crafty-ass projects, even! So that's not the weird part. The weird part is this:





...they're doll heads that are tissue holders. Ya heard. Hollowed-out doll heads with a square box of tissues shoved up in there. Ingenious or morbidly tacky? And that's exactly why I love them. Plus, I'm not 100% sure that I don't want my home to look like it was decorated by a mass murderer, so there's that.



Awesomely wrong Set of 3 Vintage 60's Doll Head Tissue Box Covers are currently available for 35 bucks on Etsy from seller Orbiting Debris.

Prints Charming Sunday: Leave It To Barbara

Welcome to Prints Charming Sunday!





I thought today's post should be done in honor of Barbara Billingsley, who I'm sure you all remember for her role as repressed housewife June Cleaver on the 1950's-'60s tv show Leave it to Beaver. R.I.P, Miss B. We'll miss you!

Barbara's fashion style on Leave it to Beaver was upper middle class, but not flashy or too "money" (she was "just" a housewife and mom, after all). She rocked smart, matching shirtdress and cardigan sets and the ubiquitous (and now cliche) pearls like nobody's business!





It wasn't an easy feat to find a classic shirtdress with a novelty print that wasn't *too* nutty or over the top for today's post, as her character never would've worn anything too bold, but I think I found just the thing (and how much it resembles her dress in the pic above is kinda cool), this Vintage 50's Butterfly and Pocket Watch Novelty Print Dress, available on Etsy from seller Our Tea Party, for a mere 40 bucks!:




I admit I never knew too much about Miss B and her acting career outside of Leave it to Beaver, though I recall her small but WAY sassy bit part on an episode of the tv show Roseanne in the '90s. But my favorite is, of course, her *ingenious* role as the jive talkin' old white broad on Airplane! ("Stewardess, I speak jive."). She was ahead of her time in those unexpected comedic roles, long before Betty White became, well, Betty White. And so I leave you with these final thoughts, immortalised by Miss Jive Talker herself: "Chump don' wan' no help, chump don' GET da help!"