A very vintage Christmas.

I'll be diving in to full-blown family time in a few hours, but not before posting some more great Christmas images from the archive. Have a good, restful, and stress-free weekend, everyone!

Tinsel was kind of a big deal, back then. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Christmas Party Season.

For the first time ever, I won't be attending my work Christmas party this year. It is a shame because I like to get blackout-drunk with my co-workers (although typically everyone is too pissed to remember anyway - but the next day we know, we were in it together). We're missing it because today is my husband's 50th birthday! (Happy birthday, baby). We're going to his favourite restaurant tonight and I can't wait. It will be fantastic.

But for the rest of you, please drink excessively and be safe.

The man with a nice face.

What's Christmas without a little facial hair? Doesn't he look nice? What a dapper man. I wonder if he's the "Sailor" of the stocking hanging next to him. He looks nice in that suit but I'd like to see him in a sailor's uniform (I've got a thing for sailors). All that'd be left to do is muss up his hair and pin back those ears and...

At first I thought these two Pavelle Processed Ektachrome slides (no date, early '50s I'd guess) were taken within the same "moment", but lady who sits on the stairs has a wardrobe change so I guess that's just her favourite place to sit. The back of her clock sure looks nice. Happy days.

Christmas party, 1967.

Enough of that filth!
Remember when your family was still young and your parents had friends who, like your parents, also suddenly burst forth with three or four children and gatherings always seemed to have a ratio of four adults to roughly twenty rowdy, hopped-up kids? I remember those days (not fondly).

Looks like the formula for success (and by "success" I mean no fatal injuries) was the same in 1967 as in my day, and your day - our day. Scroll on...

First, identify the most needy child (might also be the youngest).

Locate one or two children who are unlikely to harm the needy one and designate them as responsible for the baby's entertainment (and guardians). Bribes of exclusive toys/costumes can help. Also mittens prevent eye loses.

Shortly after discovering Raggedy Ann and Andy playing with each other's raggedy privates and ignoring their ward, suspend baby from a doorway to prevent wandering and enable unsupervised safety.

Diner almost ready? Swat away filthy children touching adult food.

Move baby again, feed baby.

Segregate boys to a festive yet unfinished (and therefore less able to be damaged) area of the basement. Feed them microwaveable hamburgers (to show off the amazing new device called 'micro-wave oven').

Let them go ape-shit until someone starts crying.

Try to enjoy your meal, you have five minutes before you have to return to the screaming. An appropriate act of charity would be to allow the eldest girl to sit at the adults' table. This will serve you well in the future, by keeping her away from the mayhem downstairs, you will easily trick her into babysitting those animals later on. Consider it an investment.

More vintage Christmas to come. Stay sane, everyone.

Brumberger surprise.

Went wanderin' this morning and happened upon a pretty decent Brumberger stereo image viewer with some nice old slides in a nice metal box. Inside the viewer was this card; hide your kids, hide your wife. Wow!

Sorry for the very NSFW imagery here folks. And thank you Maytag et al for their fine advancements in residential dryers.

That time of the year again.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the depths of winter! I've been away torturing myself at my day job, longing all the while to spend some quality time with my favourite slides. Well today I finally was able to indulge, and now I'm a couple of hundred of images richer in mind and the better part of a bottle of wine poorer (happily consumed, naturally) and can share some of these glad tidings. I've got a plethora of Christmas images to fill your virtual stockings over the next few days, but let's start with some very attractive images of winter to get us in the right mood.

Love that last one, the film damage intensifies the cold! Just to offset the cool tones, let's hit the beach in the same series of delightful hand-tinted magic lantern slides:

Stay warm, everyone. Stay jolly.

Lovely Norwegians.

Here are some highlights from a delightful album I picked up in Montreal recently, it appealed to me because I have a fair bit of Norwegian in me (and no - I don't want any more). Here are a few pages and some highlights. You can see the album in all its glory here, at my flickr site.

Beautiful old lady.

Legless man vs. baby race (with unfair advantage given to the baby!).

The most wonderfully depressing family photo.

Hooray for drinking!

The 'X' girl.

This is the back of the 'x' girl photo - anyone read Norwegian?

A wonderfully ominous picture! I LOVE the dark suited boy at the top.

Girls who dress as men always smoke cigarettes. (It's a fact.)

Lots of great material here, plenty of enjoyable browsing. Jubelen til foto albumer!

To win first place, you gotta wear lots 'a dots.

A snowy Sunday is going to lead to photographing the entirety of a very charming album I picked up in Montreal, so hold on for that. In the meantime, here's a classic number from the late 40's (I'm guessing) of two women who are undoubtedly winners not only for their spectacular flower display, but also for their superior coordination of polka dots. Here's to the ladies!

Not sure of the process on this one, but others in the same pile were in leica slide frames. This one is unmarked, sandwiched between glass and has very attractive hues.

Saved from the cutting room floor?

Calling all silent film pros!

One of the limbs I climbed out on a while ago was purchasing a strange little home-made viewing device and several clippings of old silent film. They are one cell each on 35mm film. Yesterday I botched together a way to scan them and was really pleased with what came out! Take a look, and if anyone can recognise what films they are - please say so! I've nosed around but didn't sniff out any leads. The silent film world is totally foreign to me. The one intertitle is in Czech, and says "In the royal palace within the city."

There are more, the only thing that seems to unite them is the actual tint of the film. This last frame looks absolutely sinister. Anyone have the answers?