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| Valentine’s Day holiday lends itself to vintage style |
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Not so very long ago, only kindergarten teachers and your grandmother decorated for Valentine’s Day. Oh, and hopeless romantics, too.
For the most part, this holiday’s celebrants were pretty much limited to using die-cut designs and paper doilies that stick together and tear when you try to separate them from each other. That was a start, but today, we can do even better: there are lots of ways to inject a bit of vintage cheer into the middle of the year’s shortest month, even though it feels like the longest one. Best of all, with a little imagination and some easily obtained old things, this shouldn’t cost a lot, leaving some extra money for the purchase of the all-important chocolates. By the way, has it only been five weeks since the Christmas tree was taken down and the ornaments were stashed away?
But on to the holiday at hand. Let’s start with paper things, because this seems to me to be a paper holiday. Old Valentines are beautiful and intricate and, unfortunately, a bit on the pricey side if you don’t already have a collection of them. A less expensive alternative is a small assortment of vintage Valentine’s Day-themed postcards. Placed about the house, they can lend a festive and interesting flare to mirrors and mantles. Find them for a few dollars apiece in antique shops and flea markets.
Also found in the same places are previously presented heart-shaped candy boxes. Fortunately, some misty-eyed folks kept these hearts for so long that it became impossible to part with them, until it was time to clean out their houses. Lucky for us. Today, they can be set out around the house, on a side table or on a dining room server. Fill these boxes once again with seasonal goodies, freshly made and non-vintage, of course.
Also in the ephemera department a propos to the season are sentimentally illustrated pieces of sheet music. Prop them up on a piano music rack, or maybe even on a music stand, placed in a prominent spot of the living room. If the sheet music is particularly collectible or especially lovely, frame and mount it and hang it on the wall. Not only will your walls benefit from the addition, but you’ll be preserving a little piece of yesterday at the same time.
And then there are crocheted lace doilies, the real thing, not the paper variety. Use them a little more liberally during this romantic season for added charm. Placed under vases and lamps, or as a liner for a tray full of tea-time confections, they look so nice that you might decide to leave them as part of your décor a little longer than planned. Similarly, decorated holiday handkerchiefs can used as decorative touches on the powder room towel rack, or under a vase of red roses.
This could be time to display stylish, albeit mass-produced, perfume bottles from the mid-century. Less expensive and more easily obtained than the fancier cut-glass version, these bottles were originally sold with perfumes in them, but they have a charm all their own. Ah, “Evening in Paris.”
Then there are those silky souvenir pillows with sugary verses emblazoned on them. I have two, claimed from my paternal grandmother’s cedar chest years ago, and both with poems addressed to a “Friend.” Not bad, but maybe you have one, or can find one, for “Sweetheart.” Now’s the time to give these pillows star billing in the living room, or maybe even on your bed. And while I’m on the topic of grandmothers, my maternal grandmother loved to embroider pillowcases, and I still have some stashed among my own linens. This could be the time to get them out of the cabinet and onto the bed top.
So all that’s missing is a little candlelight, some fresh flowers, and a sentimental tune played on the Victrola. Happy Hearts Day! |
| 2/6/2009 |
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