Vintage Takes Manhattan, New York Part One

So I'm not in the best of blogging moods at the moment but thought I'd start the obligatory showing of vacation pictures. We had a fabulous time in New York where we found vintage stores, out of print books, Japanese dolls, a swing band in the park and the best Chinese food in the world (well, except for maybe in China itself). Toot shopped at the finest stores (not me, I didn't have the money), I treated myself to a pair of Barbie roller skates, we ate dinner with ninjas and discovered some priceless family heirlooms.

All of that will be explained in further detail later but for now, let's start with the heirlooms. As I've mentioned before, my mother-in-law is Australian. Her and Chris' dad are planning to retire there one day and as they still live in the Bronx apartment Chris' grandparents bought in the 1940's, a lot of his grandparents stuff is still there and they can't take it all to Australia with them.

Enter yours truly...

Once they found out how much I love anything vintage along with making sure family memories are archived and kept up, we left NY with a car load and could have left with three times as much if we had had the room. Here are some highlights:

Handwritten recipes from both Chris' Grandmother and Grandfather:



Both Grandmother's and Grandfather's high school rings, from 1926 and 1930 respectively:



Grandfather's collection of cuff links:



Including this pair which is my favorite:



And his tie tacks/pins:



Grandmother and Grandfather were avid readers and there were books floor to ceiling (literally) so I was able to leave with some:



Including this fabulous gem, a Vogue magazine etiquette book from the 1920's/1930's:





At one point, my mother-in-law came to me and said, "Hey, would you want this box?"



"Sure!" was my response until I realized I had no idea what was in the box. Hey, there could have been snakes in there! Luckily it was not a box full of snakes but a box full of these:



11 picture albums to be exact and 3 bags of misc pictures and cards. I believe they came from one of Chris' great aunts who has passed. Now typically, these types of albums will contain pictures from the 70's and 80's, which I was fine with as long as it was family pictures I could rescue out of these picture eating albums.

So I'm sure you can imagine my surprise when instead of being greeted by polyester and feathered hair, I found 100's of picture like these:





As far as I can tell (because I still haven't been able to fully investigate them yet), there are some pictures that date back to the 1920's. The unfortunate thing is that they are not marked and the details of who the majority of these people are has been lost. But I will still make sure to archive them all for future generations anyway.

So there it is, New York Part One! I will fill you in on the rest of our adventures as soon as I can get my pics off the camera!

Thank you for all of your sweet comments while I was away, I really appreciate it!