My younger brother was a real comic as a teenager. Night after night, doing the dishes after supper, his song-and-dance routines used to get the rest of us just splitting our sides with laughing.

(Notice I’m not telling you my brother’s name? — that’s because I enjoy my life and limbs intact, and would prefer to keep it all that way, even if he finds out that I’m telling about his entertaining teenage years!)

As I recall, he did a great straight-faced parody of different tunes from our parents’ collection of funny old LPs — I can still almost hear him singing the Big Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace” in a basement-deep voice, doing a cool little jive step, making goo-goo eyes at his dish-towel dance partner.

And there was a sort of Russian-inspired squat-kicking dance routine he did sometimes, and an Al Jolson (“Swanee River” era) impression… but my all-time favourite After-Dinner Show was when my brother danced the Charleston.

See, he’s a tall man, my younger brother.

And he was one of those tall skinny impossibly-long-legged teenagers.

So you can just imagine how that whole Charleston loose-jointed, leg-sliding, knee-crossing fast Roaring Twenties jazz-baby style llooked when those long legs got flying!

Well, just have a look at the video (below) and you’ll see what I mean — the tall guy who’s 4th on the floor in this dance-off competition? I have no idea who that dancer is, but his Charleston style just reminds me of so much of my brother showing off his own moves, when we were kids.
Good times, good times!

Imagine — it’s 1927, and newsboys are shouting the word on the street: Charles Lindbergh has mastered the impossible. In that frail aircraft, the Spirit of St. Louis, he made the first non-stop solo trans-Atlantic flight…

Got a vintage 1920s home, lovingly restored to reflect that breathless era of glamour, adventure and invention?

The period home deserves more than a mod iPod dock on the side table to pump out your mood music, or even a discreet black box with speakers.

Posh Prezzies’ Spirit of St. Louis collection of home technology products is crafted to replicate the style of Lindbergh-era gadgets, all fascinating knobs and shiny dials and rich wood details.

Each CD player or clock radio in the collection is an evocation of the Golden Age of romance — when Old Hollywood reigned — when luxury ocean liners and velvet-cushioned ralway cars were the height of travel style — and when a human voice carried across the airwaves was still as miraculous as man’s ability to take flight across the Atlantic.

Technorati Tags: 1920s, retro, gadgets

Renovation adventures make for lively reading — it’s all the fun of a full-blown home makeover, only someone else does the work and pays the bills!

Somewhere out there in rural Indiana, USA, a 1920s foursquare house is getting a major makeover.

Although is is in very good shape structurally, the previous previous owners (PPOs) had very bad taste and strange ways of making improvements. The last owners started to straighten things out, but were forced to relocate before they got very far. My husband and I are working on finishing the job and restoring our home to as much of its original appearance as is possible and practical.

The homeowners are DIYers with ambition, fair skillls, and a good sense of personal style — but even with a clear idea of what you like, aesthetically, and what you want to achieve with your home… sometimes it just comes down to trial and error.

Case in point, redecorating the living room.

Here, the planned colour scheme is just lovely — rich and home-feeling and appropriate to the vintage and character of this old house. But when the gorgeous copper-red paint paint went on the walls, something just didn’t feel quite right about it.

Instead of feeling warm and cosy, the red room felt dark and a bit oppressive. Stripping layers of white paint off the trim and stairs to reveal the beautiful old woodwork was an attractive choice to bring out the character of the house, but it also added to the sense of dark enclosure.

Solution?

To stay with the same great paint colour scheme, but to change the proportions in which the colours are used.

(And we’ve talked about this before, how playing with the proportions you use can alter the look of a room so dramatically.)

A mid-range “Hubbard Squash” gold colour replaced the red paint on the walls — or it’s in the process of doing so. Even with just the one coat of the gold paint on, so far, it’s enough to see where this room is headed… and what a lovely room it is going to be!

Follow this real-world renovation at Life in the Prairie Box.

Technorati Tags: renovation, paint, colors