Vacation Fashions Report And Some Links

Dresses are very much in fashion this summer, including very long dresses. Shops in Germany were full of them, in fact, it was easier to find a nice dress than a skirt. In the village where we stayed for the most part, it looked like every woman, young and old, wore a dress.

Among the young, long dresses seemed to be a special hit. In Ascona I've seen young girls wear dresses so long that they basically trailed behind them on the ground. Ascona is a very nice place, but I didn't dare to enter a clothes store over there, not after I saw a dress for 1.500 franks:)

In Milan it was easy to distinguish the tourists coming from the various neighbourhood campings, by their shorts and t-shirts, while the local population tended to be rather well-dressed, both men and women. There were also fewer overweight people of both sexes, so they must be doing something right. Italian women are very feminine, and my husband noticed it, too:) They are elegant and stylish, and seem to be proud of being women, instead of resenting it.

Older women seemed more dignified than their Northern sisters, too, at least they were not competing with their husbands for the shortest haircut, and tended to adorn themselves with longer skirts  instead of shorts (hint: shorts were generally not meant to be worn by a lady of 65+ ; grandmas would do good to leave them for their grandaughters to wear)

Speaking about long hair, don't miss this article from Daily Mail, where the hairdresser to the Queen of England, no less, encourages older women to keep their hair long: "...the Queen’s hairdresser is adamant that most women in their mid-40s and beyond are making a big mistake by having their hair cut short in a bid to turn back the clock."

I'd also like to draw your attention to this post by Lady Lydia (in case you missed it) on homemaking for single women.

Heart For Homemaking blog has an article titled Ladylike Ways To Radical Health which has some interesting suggestions on keeping fit and losing extra weight.

Laura Thinking Housewife has  an interesting post about endurance.



Well, that was about all for today, have a nice Sunday!

Italy

My computer crashed yesterday so that I couldn't update, though I'm probably boring everyone to death with my photos anyway...But bear with me, those will be the last ones I'm planning to post:)

So here comes:

                                                                       Milan

                                                            The  Palace of Medici

                                                               The Cathedral

                                                                 The Shopping Mall

                                                          The Statue Of Garibaldi   

                                                               Lago Maggiore

                                                                      Cannobio

Well, that was about it! See you later...

Vacation Pictures. Switzerland

                                                          Gottard Pass

                                                          Devil's Bridge

                                                                            

                                                                         Ascona 

Tomorrow I'll post our Italian pictures.

Vacation Pictures

I have so many that I decided to divide them into groups and publish one by one, so here it comes:

                                                                     Germany 

Crafty Tuesday

After the heat wave of the last two weeks we've got some colder weather, the temperature dropped to about +21*C and it's raining again. Good weather to wear my tunic.

So here is the proof that I didn't spend the whole of my vacation lounging around:

I gave it the last finishing touches today and bought a dress to wear with it. It was on sale and only cost me 7.50! The dress looks cute on its own, too, and is exactly in the style I like, so it was a deal. I still haven't had time to sort the vacation pictures, and this evening we won't be at home, but I'll try to post them tomorrow.

Now my next objective is to finally sew this skirt I have been planning to make all summer:) Well, maybe tomorrow, inbetween shopping, cleaning the house and ironing I'll find some time for it...

My Vacation And Other Things

We had a very nice vacation, only the weather was a bit too hot for my taste, especially the last couple of days!

I'll try to post the pictures soon. Besides sightseeing, I have been reading a book about Mozart and finished my knitting project. I also bought some nice new magazines with great ideas for interior decoration and the garden. I'm going to write about it in more detail tomorrow. Today being Monday, I'm leaving you with this aria from "Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail"

I'm Back!

Just a short note: we came back yesterday, a day earlier than planned since it was so unbearably hot. During the whole vacation I had no access to internet so I couldn't update. Comment moderation is now back to normal. I'll post more later.

Summer Sewing And Other Things

I finally bought fabric for a new skirt. We have had such cold weather so far that I wasn't really in the mood for summer sewing. Now it's getting warmer and since it's already mid-July I really have to hurry up if I still want to wear it this season. The skirt is supposed to look like this:

I hoped to begin working at the skirt this week, but wasn't able to find time. I have been incredibly busy and tomorrow we are going on vacation.

I still have a lot to do at home so I'll keep it rather short. Comments will be temporarily set to moderation. I'll try to update if I have an internet access, so stay tuned!

We will be back in about 2.5 weeks. See you later!

The Advantages Of Being A Housewife

Retro Homemaker has linked to an article called 6 Advantages Of Being A Housewife.

It's amazing, but true: what looks like a mainstream women's magazine published a positive article about housewives! I never thought I'd live as long as to see this:) The times they are a-changing...The article does overall a great job summing up the benefits of the traditional feminine role. I'd like to add my thoughts as well.

The first thing the article mentions is having more time: You don’t have to hurry through life...there is also more time to do things around the house in a relaxed manner instead of being under the scare of a chiding boss.

One of the reasons that so many marriages fail is constant stress which both husband and wife experience daily which leads to all sorts of domestic troubles. It used to be that women had a more peaceful life once the children became old enough to go to school and they could provide their husbands with a place to relax after a day of hard work. Now both husband and wife come home tired and start fighting about whose turn it is to make dinner. The article mentions it as well stating that housewives experience less fatigue:

The fatigue of work stress, fulfilling deadlines, commuting to and fro and the guilt of giving work priority over family are factors that working woman have to bear, unlike their stay at home counterparts.

The author mentions working from home as getting the best of both worlds. This is one point with which I somewhat disagree. Of course, if the family needs money, working from home is much better that getting a job outside it, but if there is no need, let your husband earn the living. I am speaking from the personal experience as someone who used to work from home for a paycheck. There was little time for anything else but work.

The next point the article makes is having more freedom: When you are a housewife, you are your own boss. It is a simple truth, yet feminists keep telling us even now that spending time in the office is liberation, while the women who choose to stay home are slaves of their husbands chained to the kitchen sink. Three cheers for the common sense!

Housewives have also more time to learn new skills and pursue their hobbies, says the article.

It gets difficult and is next to impossible for women who are working as well as managing a family to remove time to acquire new skills or hone existing ones

This, again, is simple common sense. There are but so many hours in a day, and nobody can have it all. The idea of quality vs quantity time is a bogus. Most people come home from work exhausted, especially as they are getting older and the most they are capable of is watching TV, not learning how to make sourdough bread.

Finally, the article mentions being able to watch your children grow:
Housewives are always there with their children and manage to nurture them in a loving manner.
 
 Unlike many similar articles, this one doesn't make an accent on staying home for the sake of children, in fact, they are mentioned last. All the other 5 reasons can equally apply to all women, also those who are childless or whose children are grown.

It also says that being a housewife in a world where so many women have to work, is a privilege, something which women should enjoy, and I heartily agree. I hope that articles like this one will encourage more women to stay home and that this moronic housewife bashing will finally go the way of the dinosaur. After all, it's so 1970s...