Bigass Weekend Wrap-Up: McQ Mini Goal Shopping; Dress Detective; Christmas Shelf and Frame Displays

Hello, my friends! I'm feeling so festive and merry this weekend - and am permitting myself to let go and enjoy the holiday season in a more chill way. Grab a cup of your beverage of preference, as we have the debut of my McQ (as in Alexander McQueen, baby!) miniskirt, a vintage dress score and ensuing detective work, AND more of my Christmas decorations!

Saturday was sunny and crisp - you wouldn't know it was December to look at my outfit! 

Ahoy, what is that glowing ball in the sky? 

• Jacket - Sarah Pacini, consignment; last seen here in July with some black and white
• Sweater - Wanko, thrifted; last worn here (2nd outfit) for Book Club in November, with all the layers
• Skirt - McQ by Alexander McQueen, 2013; purchased here for $38.00
• Boots - Matisse, consignment; last seen here in November with a fabulous jammy dress

'Tis the sun, and this is my magical liquid called coffee! Ah, coffee good...

I've been eyeing this skirt for the past week, wondering if it was getting close to fitting me, and when I tried it on Saturday morning, I was able to get the waistband button and both hooks, and the zipper done up. Woot! 

It's still a bit tight, but DON'T CARE. I'm wearing dark tights anyway.

These are my fleece-lined ones again. Although it was sunny, it got cold quickly once the sun started going down in the late afternoon. 

I'm very happy with the fit of the skirt, although it's not great for sitting!

Even though I knew I might be a bit chilly, I wore this unlined jacket over my wool sweater - the colour was so good! 

"You're leaving me home with all of your decorations? Snack time!"

Vizzini's been pretty good over the past couple of days. I found one gnawed metal icicle and he snagged a topiary shrubbery from the village and chased it down the hall.

Masked up. This is my pine cone one from Mom. 

"Just go ahead and leave. Everything will be totally safe..."

L and I went to Pluto's for lunch, then split up to do some Christmas shopping downtown - both of us shopping local! 

"Why don't you just go, then?"

I wished later that I'd worn a scarf - brrr! 

• Gloves - Parkhurst
• Purse - Roots, thrifted

The stuff: 

Good boots for standing and shopping - I finished up my gifts for Mom and my brother's four kids. I'm seeing Mom briefly on Thursday and I plan on handing over all their presents, wrapped and ready to go. 

Copper bling: 

Copper is such a warm and lovely metal. 

• Necklace - Renoir, vintage 60s, vintage fair
• Earrings - vintage fair

Vizzini generally made himself a pest while we were getting ready to head out, "helping" L with the laces on his Fluevog boots. 

"The Man could certainly use my help with those delicious shoelaces."

We've gotten better at consistently and gently discouraging him from eating our laces, but we still have to be ever-vigilant. 

"You're really no fun at all."

On my way home from town, I swung by Rich Rags and had a quick browse through, in case there was something really special that leapt out at me and lo and behold...!

Oh, my. It's a DRESS. It's black and silver!

It's definitely a 1970s vintage lurex/poly-blend dress. Look at that fabulous high cowl neck, with the stripes of silver lame (lah-MAY, darlings!). The body of it is all a-glitter too. 

The cuffs at the end of the slightly-full sleeves are also tipped in stripes of silver, and the skirt portion is long sections sewn in panels length-wise and off-set to create "stepped" stripes horizontally. There is no label on it, but by doing some detective work in my closet, I am attributing this to Ian Peters, same as my OTHER striped lurex dress. 

Here's what I see. The overall shapes of the dresses are very similar, with the waistband on each of them set at the natural waist. Below that, the knits of both dresses change in size, and both are puckered for fullness. 

The length of both dresses is identical. 

The zippers are very similar, both ending without a hook and eye. 

You can see that the black dress's knit is wider and becomes narrower at the waist here. That's a really nice detail. Both skirts are sewn to the top halves. They both would likely have had matching long ties for the waist, both of which have been lost.

The zipper on the black dress goes to the top of the cowl, giving it a bit of rigidity at the back of the neck. 

Both zippers go to the same spot at the natural waist. 

The zippers themselves are metal YKK zippers, but the teeth parts are plastic, with metal "stoppers" above the zip toggle. 

Identical on the Ian Peters dress, below. 

Sorry that's a bit blurry, but they are the same. Really! 

You know I love to turn my clothes inside out and see what I can find! More proof that the zippers are the same, but also looking for evidence of a label. 

The line shows the top of the back on both dresses, and how far below that the label is located. If there was an Ian Peters label on the black dress at one time, it might still have remains of thread, or a pull in those four circled potential areas. 

The designer label is sewn on loosely by hand with black thread. 

So I'd expect to see black thread on the new dress too. 

And what do we see on the black dress? 

In diagonal spots, right where we were hoping they'd be, there is a knot in the zipper edging, and a large piece of thread on the body of the dress (it's separate, not a pulled thread). 

Additionally, on the shoulder seam to the left of each zipper, I found traces of a tag.

This might have been a size tag, but either way, I think this all adds up to authentic Ian Peters. Do you concur? 

One thing I think we can all agree on, is that this is a fabulous dress! I might have to wear this for New Year's Eve - whatever we end up doing. I quickly threw on a stretchy elastic metal belt, and my silver boots to show it off (ignore my post-shopping hair). 

And I nearly forgot to tell you - it was $40.00 (Julia took $9 off the tag price for me, thank you!). I paid $28.00 for the striped one at a vintage fair in 2019. 

Christmas Decorations - Shelf and Frame Displays

Although we saw some of these decorations when I first unpacked them, I hadn't yet put them in their special spots. 

Here's my folksy elf display (the brand of all of them is House of Hatten), on top of one of L's CD shelves next to the smaller Christmas tree. 

We have this wonderful round mirror that I bought at a vintage fair many years ago (I think it was $40? because it was missing a bunch of the round knob doohickeys in the frame). 

We have it positioned to give a view of the hallway, living room and kitchen. I hung some more of my red and gold glass balls from the balls in the frame with ornament hooks. 

And hung the teddy bear from one as well. I like having some verticality - I'm giving this a thumbs up, see?

I added these flocked teddies to the display. I love the classic shape of them - they are heavy and solid in the hand.

I have a couple of smaller versions too. I think the big ones were $7.96 and the small ones were $3.95.

I added another one of the LED flickering tealights. 

And put a gold ball at the foot of the elf. Rock on, my friends!

This straw pinecone is one of my childhood decorations. My brother Dave and I used to get a Christmas ornament on top of our presents from my grandparents every year. I think we both got pinecones for whatever year this was (sometime in the 1970s or 80s), but we often got similar ornaments in different shapes or colours. I still have all my childhood ornaments and we will eventually get to those (I have never displayed them as an adult!).

The small bear here is a dark chocolate, compared to the lighter caramel colour of the other one. 

I also have a flocked velvet rocking horse on wooden runners. I think he was $5.95.

You can also see a length of star garland wound around the ornaments here - with the glass balls, it makes the display less static. 

I found a bag full of ribbons and pieces of garland, and I used this pouffy wired ribbon bow to jazz up my painting and other frames in the living room/dining room. 

I hung the large "Punch & Judy" style elf off the other side of the painting. 

When he unpacked this piece, L discovered that the reindeer's antlers were broken - oh no! 

Unfortunately, that does happen, but we keep a bottle of Zap-A-Gap handy for this. I used it when I worked in the Christmas store - many things came loose or broke, and my job was mending them if possible. 

I may have glued my fingers together a few times! 

But now my wooden Sidecar Santa decoration is ready to display. 

I needed whatever went on top of the speaker to be non-tempting, as that's right beside Vizzini's small scratching post. He's ignored it so far, although he's whacked at the curtain lights a few times. 

Over in the dining room/cuddle bench area, I put two of the music boxes I'd unpacked a couple of weeks ago, along with two large musical ornaments, which are too heavy to hang on the tree.

This ornament uses batteries to play "The Phantom of the Opera"'s main song, and reveal the Phantom in the mirror. This is from Mom - we saw the touring production together in Vancouver many years ago, probably around 2000, which is the date on this Carlton Cards ornament (this lists for up to $50 on eBay). 

These are all sitting on top of a revolving CD shelf beside the bookshelf, so I arranged all the pieces so that no matter which way you turned it, you'd see something. 

The "we've had too much coffee" music box. 

And I have the 2002 "The Sound of Music" ornament, also from Mom. 

Maria spins and you hear her singing "The Sound of Music" as the words behind her are lit up.

I put the rock & roll Santa and elf on the speaker on the other side of the TV, near the KISS ornaments. 

Seemed appropriate. 

And on top of the CD shelf near the TV, I arranged two of Jacqueline's porcelain Santas with my wooden gold candlesticks (made in India, I've had them since the 90s). 

I added a gold wire star tree, and another piece of star garland. Sparkly! 

In addition to the gold wired bow, I added some wired star garland to a few pictures. 

That's a photo taken by my dear friend Elaine (now in Hamilton, Ontario), during a rare snow day in Victoria a few years ago - doesn't it go well with the Pooh ornaments? 

I put some more star garland on another photo of hers, on the right. 

And added some red and green Mylar holly garland to my Grade 12 art class drawing from 1985.

This is one of Karen's photos, to which I added a swag of pearly ribbon. 

Below that, on the side table, I arranged this patchwork Santa that we saw earlier, as well as the hippo. 

There's a beaded red satin heart box behind the hippo, and a green wrapped box. The little book is Dylan Thomas' "A Child's Christmas in Wales" (it sold for $7.95). 

I have a Victorian gentleman Santa paper doll. 

I've dressed him in his most dapper outfit. 

He comes in his red long underwear. 

What a wonderfully kind face he has. 

More of the holly garland around Mom's painting. 

I got that garland as part of the wrapping on a present decades ago, and it was so pretty that I kept it. 

Wired garland on this gold-on-black rubbing that Mom did in England for L for a birthday present years ago. 

That is accompanied by a framed print called, "Lochaber No More" that L and I got as a wedding present from some of our friends. 

To the left of that is another one of Karen's photos, of Eilean Donan Castle in Scotland. 

I discovered this rope at the bottom of a bag. It's by Louis Nichole, which was a company that carried very high-end Victoriana home design (about him here, link 'cause I love). We carried a small line of his ornaments, including some very fancy doll-style decorations. 

We had a few of these ropes which never sold, as they were atrociously overpriced at $42.95 (in the late 80s!) each. We used them on a giant carousel horse on a store display for years, until the gold ends started unraveling (there is also a glue spot, which you can see near the bottom), and my boss said, "You want it? It's yours."

I used it to trim around our family photo gallery. I also put a sprig of holly on the spooky picture of my brother-in-law (not a noted Christmas fan - he would be horrified by my displays, ha ha!). 

I left the limited edition Santa on that end table, and put the polar bear figurine with him. 

I added a few decorations to our built-in bookshelf (aka. the Secret Door). 

The triangle banner says, "Be Merry" and was handmade by my coworker Emily for me, if memory serves. 

She handmade it, including stamping the letters. I love it. 

I put this little Victorian porcelain girl on her sled (metal runners) on the shelf with the dragon candlestick. 

She's also a counterpoint to the Vampire Coach racing through the woods there on the right. 

A Victorian Santa stands amongst some of my vintage glassware, including a blue and gold-leaf glass that belonged to my Grandma J, a set of green sherry glasses from Elaine, and a silver mug frame (the blue glass insert broke) from a vintage fair. The amber glasses are part of my Indiana Glass Company collection. 

Behind Santa is my WW award, and my office nameplate from my former job. 

Lastly is this elf who clings to this winged cat bookend (a wedding gift - we have a pair). 

The elf was also my Grandma J's, and I remember it clinging to the edge of a glass bowl (probably full of Hawkins Cheezies!) at Christmas time at her and my Grandpa's apartment in the 1970s. He is likely a knock-off from Japan of the ceramic Josef Originals version - this guy is rubber - and is likely from the 1950s or 1960s.

I still have another display area, our village, and two trees full of decorations to photograph - yes, there's more still to come! I hope you enjoyed these displays - do you have a favourite piece so far? 

As always, thank you so much for dropping by - I so appreciate each and every one of you. Stay safe, be calm, and be kind, my friends.