Taking into consideration that today is November 25, exactly one month till Christmas, it seemed only appropriate to do a Christmas inspired post today. One of my favorite things to receive in the mail aside from Christmas cards are Christmas catalogs. Whenever I think of Christmas catalogs I always think of the older J. Crew holiday covers. So for your enjoyment here are a few of my favorite vintage J. Crew catalog covers! Remember to keep an eye for Christmas gift guides, playlists, and book recommendations soon to come on A Touch of Southern Grace!
All the things I Love! Vintage...Shabby Chic..and PINK!!! Cats & Pretty things too.....
Yes! It's almost spring, and today we had beautiful sunny weather and mild spring like temps. It was the perfect opportunity to take my photography outdoors. Im having fun making these altered "boudoir girls" as I like to call them....
This has been on my heart for the past month, but I have struggled to put it into words. Please bear with me while I try to communicate...
nameplate on grill of old bus in Rome, GA. The owner said this bus was used during segregation. See "old bus" photo for frontal shot.
It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true. —Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray I spent a recent Sunday morning at the baby shower of a friend made in adulthood. The other attendees all went back to Catholic school, […]
Lately it seems that many Christian leaders and their failures have been in the limelight recently and many have fallen due to unfortunate sin in their lives. We need to remember that when this happens that it not only hurts those around them but it also hurts the church in general--the church that God said He would build, filled with people who want to give Him glory and see His name and gospel proclaimed throughout the world, so we need to pray for all those involved. I wanted to share this article on giving grace to Christian leaders who fail, to help those who are struggling emotionally and how to handle their thoughts and actions biblically. "When a Christian leader you’d looked up to and learned from messes up royally (and unfortunately it’s not a matter of if but when you’ll experience this), I know what you’ll want to do. You’ll want to block them on Facebook and delete their pictures on your Instagram account and burn their books and reject every truth they ever taught you but apparently didn’t live themselves. A flood of emotions will bombard you from all sides—anger, disbelief, revulsion, guilt for not having seen through their hypocrisy. Your stomach will hurt, your head will ache, you’ll feel like throwing up. You won’t be able to understand how they could’ve preached against the very thing they were doing in secret." Read the rest HERE.
Discover the charm of Southern interior design with our tips and tricks.
The Peach Pudding Pie! Everyone loves pie...it's probably the most requested dessert at our house! This recipe is very old south! It's almost like Peach Cobbler within a pie! It was a specialty of our dear friend Annie Dean Grant.... one of the best cooks in the state of Mississippi! "Hey darlin'! Are your people comin' in for the holidays?" "Oh, indeed! Did you hear we have some Yankee's in the family now?" Now...onto the pie...... The Ingredients 1 stick of butter 1 cup of sugar 1 box of Cook and Serve Vanilla Pudding 1 (14 ounce) can sliced peaches, undrained 1 t. vanilla 2 pie crusts Combine first five ingredients in a medium sized sauce pan. Heat until mixture is thickened. Pour into an unbaked pie shell Cover with the second pie shell. Cut vents in the pie shell and brush with melted butter. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Bake at 400 degrees F. for 30 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream! It's a taste of Mississippi!
Ladies Home Journal - Sharon Disney July 1957 - photo by John Engstead
Julia Sugarbaker, television's beloved outspoken Southern woman, was known for her ruthless rants. Read on for her best quotes on 'Designing Women'.
I saw the above framed print at an antique shop recently and snapped a picture planning to share it on the blog. Then this morning, my friend shared the wonderful print project (below) from Garden & Gun and southern print shop The Old Try. I thought it fitting to post it today. You can order your own limited-edition hand-pressed Dixie print here. I think William Faulkner, whose 115th birthday would have been today, would like it.
Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire is the most poetic play ever written by an American author. Never before has disenchantment and disillusionment seemed as ethereal or lyrical as Williams's Blanche makes it out to be, to dazzling, heartbreaking effect. No other play in the last century or so had been dissected or exhumed as much; no scene left unanalyzed by critics and aficionados alike finding in these lines some extraordinary truths about the human condition. The crumbling terrain of memory, the harsh realities of lower class existence, the squalor and stigma attached to it, and the degradation of physical abuse—all figure prominently and reverberates throughout in the play. Williams, in his most compellingly Chekhovian poetic voice, assigns Stanley, Stella, (but most of all) Blanche with some of the most memorable and powerful lines ever uttered on stage and on screen, Blanche: "I don't want realism. I want magic! I don't tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth! And if that is sinful, let me be damned for it!" These lines have become for the heroine (and for its creator as well) an artistic credo, their own "Vissi d'arte" or "Mild und leise". When Blanche first enters in her déshabille peignoir à la Lucia sans blood, one can be sure that she has the unsuspecting audience completely in her thrall. She need not utter a single word for we know instantly who and what she is. Blanche is not only a slave to a sordid past, nor to Stanley's relentless manipulation and bullying, nor to Mitch's sly deception, but, to a certain extent, she is a slave of fashion. The role is a costume designer's dream. From her first entrance on stage to her polarizing final scenes, one can chart and judge the "states of mind" she's in through mere appearance alone, as we pay close attention not to what her outfits reveal about herself and the suffocating world that conspires to ruin her but to what they conceal underneath: the prim and ladylike Della Robbia-blue woolen suit she wears upon arriving on a dark New Orleans night in the very first scene (movie version); her "luggage" containing fur stoles and an assortment of sequined pieces fit for a cabaret or burlesque star; and one can immediately spot her fragility in the signature Renoir nightgown (made in soft pastel chiffon) she changes into upon arriving at Stella and Stanley's ramshackle of an apartment; the very nightgown she parades around in when, subconsciously, she permits her "brute" of a brother-in-law to peer into her psyche, as though she were giving a private performance in which Stanley participates as voyeur. From there on, as scene after scene of increasing despair and beauty unfurls onstage, we bear witness to the said nightgown's tragic demise: at first delicately disheveled, then turning seedier as the tension between Stanley and Blanche escalates, before we finally see it torn and tattered as madness begins to weave it mesmerizing spell on our defenseless heroine; this look is topped off with a sparkling tiara, as if to crown the nightgown's riveting performance, a triumphant—and "magical"—mad scene all its own. It is hard to think of Mlle. DuBois in anything else other than in her frilly nightgown, which conjures up all kinds of erotic thoughts in me, much too erotic in nature to enumerate each one of those thoughts on here without violating OC's PG-13 rating. _____________ One wonders: had André Previn created a more memorable opera and cast a more compelling soprano in the role, might Blanche, the operatic heroine, be deemed worthy to be spoken of in the same breath as Violetta, Butterfly, Manon, Isolde, Gioconda, and Salome? Would the immortal words of Tennessee Williams acquire more pathos had Previn concocted, say, a Puccini-style score? Just think of the beauty these lines would further acquire had they been set to great music: "Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable, and the one thing of which I have never, ever been guilty of. . . I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action. . . I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is 50% illusion. . . Straight? What's '"straight'"? A line can be straight, or a street. But the heart of a human being?"
One survey narrowed down the characteristics of Southern hospitality to six qualities, with politeness and delicious home cooking topping the list.
Discover the charm of Southern interior design with our tips and tricks.
We're not ready to see any of these classic Southern traditions fade away. Here are some practices and manners that should remain.
Clarence Hudson White, Miss Grace, 1898 by Gatochy on Flickr.
