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Thanksgiving Festivities

I trust that everyone is in the spirit of gratitude and thanks and I hope you're enjoying the long weekend (well for those of you who have a long weekend) and eating tons of yummy food. My Thanksgiving was pretty simple but very fun and I couldn't have enjoyed myself more. I'll share a few photos in the next post but in the mean time, keep calm and carry on with the festivities! :)

~The Retro Natural

The Weekend - Chilly, Mellow Days

I'm normally missing in action over the weekend..resting it up and trying to have a bit of fun. But I thought I'd start a series on weekend snapshots to share. These will just be a little photo re-cap of various activities (or lack thereof like in this first series from the weekend before Thanksgiving weekend! Plus I forgot to bring the camera with me so no Thanksgiving shots just yet!)

 Ate a whole pomegranate in one sitting.  It was amazing!

 
Used my new tea crochet doily so I don't make anymore water stains on the wooden tables.



It rained for a little while so I kinda sat around, lazily I might add. Felt great!


Cozy, fuzzy socks and house slippers all day - don't judge me - we have tile flooring, it's freezing!


~The Retro Natural

Great Upcoming Sale at Ester Woo Vintage!

Oh my..my lovies :) hope you take advantage! I spy with my little eye many pretty things from Ester Woo Vintage.

Visit Ester Woo Vintage and have fun!

~The Retro Natural

My Winter Crochet Project

This is what I wanna make for Winter. Super cool right? Tutorial is here for anyone who wants to try it out with me.   Hopefully, I'll be able to get started on it within a week. I hate when I mark something cool to try and then never get to it!

Getting Crafty

So whilst on my vacay, I got my arts & crafts on and felt thoroughly accomplished after measuring and sewing and folding and gluing. These are the fun things I came up with when I wasn't sniffling like a sick puppy.

Bows galore! There are great tutorials out there for bow making. Wanna make the black dropped tail bow? click here!  Wanna make the double layer olive green bow? Watch this video and make one smaller to stack on the larger one.

Bows and compacts and my still unfinished bathroom door.

The red and black bow was a DIY project from left over ribbon.  I'm going to enjoy wearing these. Next project I'd like to get into will be 30s style crochet cloches..I've tried before and it didn't quite work out. With a bit of dedication, I'm sure I can make it - eventually.

I was inspired by a post from DC Metro Retro's blog (scroll down until you see her adorable bobby pin tin - I made one of those too!) and made a few Dorothy Dandridge revamped compact mirrors. All you need are photos printed on paper, glue and clear nail polish! It's pretty simple!

Have you been crafting lately? What have you made?

~The Retro Natural

The Vacay and Ponderings

So I'm back from a little vacation time, 5 days worth...though I'm hesitant to use the word vacation because it didn't truly feel like it..I got sick on Thursday evening (my first day off) and fought off the sniffles by Saturday. Way to go immune system! I did get to piddle paddle around with arts and crafts so that resulted in more bows for my hair and decorated compacts with my favorite vintage, Black American bombshells on them..hello Ms. Dandridge!  Sunday was pretty mellow and Monday was a day of getting a tired repaired, another one replaced, and various oil leaks fixed at the mechanics.

I was going to post this graphic to let you all know I'd be away but I didn't get quite get there.


(Didn't get to go hiking, nor make any hats or try new styles, hmph lol)


I officially started back at work Tuesday and now it's back to the same schedule. I'm noticing on other blogs that people take little hiatuses and some even shut down their blog due to losing the desire to write, being busy with work/school/life, and other things that take up more time. I've been thinking about this moreso in relation to my YouTube channel. (note: I haven't posted a video in months!) It was easier for me to shoot, edit and post videos when I only drove a total daily distance of 6 miles but now that my daily commute is 46 miles...I don't have time nor do I want to work on anything that has to do with a pc after being on one all day and then driving an hour to get home. I also don't have my home pc set up because I can't find a certain cord and the laptop isn't very reliable with its shutting down of software at any given moment.  I've tried to make time here and there but it's really not working and I'm okay with that. I'm sure the subscribers probably aren't but this here life is about me..so that trumps everything else but you knew that, right? ;) So I'm not going to stress about not focusing on my channel, I'll do videos sporadically and that will be that.

What am I really trying to say here? I'm tired but I enjoy posting blog entires/videos but I'm tired - make sense? I'm sure you've been there too.  I'm not sure exactly what the future holds as far as sustaining a channel, a blog, whatever other accounts I may have but I do know there are too many avenues that seem to grab at you on the internet. So many forums, social sites, blogs,  etc...I'd post more if I had more time but posting photos in a blog and a few lines is the easiest for me so I'm gonna stick to that until I get more time on my hands or I lose interest.  Re-reading this post...reminds me of burnout a bit..oh no, we can't have that. I think I initially try to do it all and I've decided I don't want to anymore and that's perfectly okay. A wise person once told me, "You don't have to be the best, you can simply be good enough." I think I'll put that on a coffee mug. Here's to squashing any burn our you may be suffering from. :)

~The Retro Natural

My Vampire Teeth

I didn't dress up, just hung out at a friends place but I thought these were fun :)


...can't eat with them but that's alright!

~The Retro Natural

40s Retro Updo!

I stumbled on this super darling tutorial by Angelique (ThePinupNoire-YouTubers, be sure to subscribe!) and had to share it. I never saw a hair rat with a metal rod in the center before (which helps keep your faux bang in place!) but I decided to take the metal rod out of one of the flexi rod rollers I have and put it in my homemade hair rat. It works quite well!

Enjoy the video and a warm thank you to Angelique for posting this, the more tutorials for the curly, retro lovers, the better!


This is one of the easiest retro styles to do and you don't have to set your hair. You can start with a twist out :)

~The Retro Natural

Featured on Stylish Thought!

Shame on be for being late in posting this but Fajr of Stylish Thought featured me on her lovely blog and I'm completely smitten and honored to have appeared on such a fab site! I did a little diddy (er, pictorial, I just wanted to use the word "diddy" - no reference to Mr. Sean Combs) :)

Check out my Coretta Scott King inspired hair 'do by clicking on Coretta below ;)


Thank you to Fajr for featuring me!  :)

p.s. Happy (belated) Halloween! Though I didn't do anything for Halloween, I did take a quick snack shot of my fangs, I'll show ya next post real soon! Promise! :D

~The Retro Natural