A Vintage Childhood

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I'm raising Miss Mia and Baby Li, well, sort of vintage. We don't have a television and they don't play anything on the computer. They have original vintage fairy tale drawings from the 40s on the wall in their play area and dig in the sandbox with these amazing sand forms from the 50s (got 11 of them for 1 Euro on ebay. Now that was a find!) I recently bought Mia a Jadite child's pitcher and an elephant figurine from a 1930s circus. For her third birthday, I've already bought her a 1950s Bakelite Viewmaster with 10 reels (another great ebay find) that looks a lot like this one here:


I'm not doing any of this out of some sort of nostalgic concept or as a revolt against modern life, although I do think it's better for kids this age not to watch much television (though I certainly can understand the need to put them in front of a video for that much needed 20 minute break...) I just like old things better than new things. Until they are old enough to tell me to knock it off, this is what they'll get....

I realized today that I had somewhat of a vintage-inspired childhood myself: although most of my childhood was in the 80s, both my sister and I were heavily influenced by musicals from the 1940s to the 1960s. Gigi, Funny Girl, My Fair Lady, we loved them all. This love started one afternoon when we went to a screening of Bye Bye Birdie at the Naninni Library in Tucson, Arizona. From that day forward an obsession was born. Today I watched some video clips from the musical on YouTube. OMG, Retro!!! Check out this clip:



Amazingly, I still know all the words to every single song even though I haven't heard them in almost 30 years....The modern retro me loved this version of Dick Van Dyck's Put On A Happy Face from the show, here sung by Vikki Carr.