Category Archives: Real Life : Alix

Real Life Time Machine :: 1970s Christmas

Holiday Kiddo, Real Life : Alix

Since I love to share vintage photos, I thought it would be fun to share some of my own “retro” holiday pics. It’s kind of a random collection—most of the albums back home in Michigan at my parents’ house—but here are a handful of my memories!

We start in San Diego, California. That’s where I was born. We lived there til I was in the second grade and then we moved to Michigan. Aww, look it’s meee and my pretty mama.

I’m wearing an awesome pink dress that was hand knit by my godmother Tante Judy, who was super crafty. I believe we are at my grandma’s house here. On the left is my Uncle John and my cousin Lisa.

I’m pretty sure this next one is the same year, but at our own apartment at Married Student Housing, at the University of California, San Diego. That tinsel is very German—although I noticed it on the tree at my grandma’s house (in the first photo), so maybe it was popular in general in the 70s. Do you remember tinsel on your tree back in the day?? I rarely see it….in fact, don’t know if they even sell it anymore. Hmmm.


In the background you can see my Top Favorite Christmas Album of All Time—The Jackson 5 Christmas Album. We still have it and I listen to it every year! Michael Jackson singing “Up On the Housetop” is my all-time favorite.


Christmas morning, my first little desk! I loved that awesome dolly carriage in the background too. Let’s get a closer look:


See? Told ya I was smitten with my carriage! This is later in the day, and I’m all dolled up. Check out the cool Playskool giraffe in the background. I sooo wanted one of those for Wolfie when he was little, but they were going for a bundle on eBay

I got the shutterbug early! Here I am with my little Fisher-Price Camera.

I love this next photo. My mom looks like a modern day hipster here, with her groovy fur hat and cool coat. I’m holding Pinkie, my little pink elephant. My godmother (she of the craft hand-knit pink dress) made him for me and he had these amazing psychedelic fabric ears. We’re at Balboa Park in San Diego.

My mom has great style and I have always loved the little outfits she dressed me in—check out these red velveteen overalls with the heart bib! I even had red hearts on my lil blue suede shoes.

I have to confess though, I was such a girlie girl I hated to wear pants. I was allll about the dresses. In fact, my mom reminded me, “It was SO hard to get you into that little outfit!” I do seem to remember that I was pleased by the red velvet trim on my ruffly shirt. Hmmm. OK, here we are at my Tante Anneliese’s house (my mom’s sister).

The year was 1973, and I got a little red headed Blythe doll AND the Barbie townhouse. Twas an excellent year of presents for wee Alexandra! Those are my three cousins in the back Danny, Rudi and Jimmy. Danny and Rudi were rockin’ the long California Boy hair.

After we went to Tante Anneliese’s house we would scoot over to my grandma’s house (my dad’s mom). Here we are. And oooh look what I just noticed is in my hand:


EMERALD THE WITCH! Remember, from my Creepy Cool Dollies post?? I was fairly certain I had an Emerald doll, but honestly thought it might just be wishful thinking. Proof positive I had her!

OK, now we travel across the country to Flint, Michigan. This is Christmas Eve, which we always celebrated with a night of music/singing and some tasty little finger foods. We also got to open up presents that were sent to us from relatives (packages from Germany and California).


Look how adorable my mom is in her plaid, maxi dress—there are strawberries appliques on the collar. Cuteness! That chair on the left was from a little kinder set my folks picked up in German (it had a matching table that  believe we are using as a small buffet!). The table and chairs were covered in a cool vinyl/plastic that had hot pink, red and orange flowers on them. The best part was (Dottie, are you listening??) I HAD MATCHING CLOGS! Oh yeah…..


These pictures totally make me smile. Check out how fun my parents are cuttin’ a rug Christmas eve! I look at our little house and there’s hardly any furniture. My dad was a young college professor and it’s not like he made a bundle, but as kids we were never aware that times might have been tight here and there. My parents are awesome.

And finally, this is my mom with our dog Flockie (loosely translated it means “little snowflake” in German). I always loved this photo of her. She is wearing a velveteen gaucho suit, with a velveteen vest. I remember thinking she looked so glamorous with her Charlie’s Angels hair! I was always very pleased and proud that I had a “pretty mama”. Growing up in Michigan in the 70s, most of the mom’s wore polyester stretch pants and had androgynous short hair cuts. Not my mom. My mama had style!

So that’s my little trip down memory lane. I’ll have to try and get some more photos when I go back home over the holidays!

Oh, and if you liked this here bloggy, won’t you please clicky below to vote for Modern Kiddo on the Top Mommy blogs? It takes two seconds (just click the brown banner below to register a vote for Modern Kiddo! Easy peasy!).

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And finally…..did you download my Retro Holiday Music Mix?? What did you think? (YES i’m totally fishing for compliments, haha…..) I’m plotting this weeks mix, so you’ll have another round of tasty vintage tunes to play while you are puttering around the house!

15 Characters That Inspired Me. How About You?

Best of Modern Kiddo, Real Life : Alix

The other day my friend Lynn sent me a Facebook message entitled, “15 Characters.” I usually never get around to Memes and Quizzes but I really liked this one. Here’s the deal, you pick the fifteen fictional characters (television, films, plays, books) who’ve influenced you the most—you know, the ones that will always stick with you. Don’t take too long to think about it! Just write ’em down. It’s pretty cool to see what characters your friends love and were influenced by. I especially loved seeing the difference between what my guy friends and girl friends listed. SOOOoooo let’s play a little game shall we? I’ll tell you my 15 and you tell me yours! Here are mine. I have to warn you, my picks are not very high-brow….but they’re all very “me”. Let’s go!

1. Nancy Drew, Mystery of the Secret Clock.

When I was in second grade I discovered Nancy Drew, girl detective. I would go to our public library and walk away with stacks of her books. I’ve always loved mysteries and Nancy really started it all.


2. Claudia Kincaid, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

Another book from my childhood and one I adore. The heroine, young Claudia, decides to run away from home because she doesn’t think her parents appreciate her. She and her younger brother Jamie sneak into the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City where they “live”  for several weeks. How cool is that?? It’s also a mystery story and I loooooved Claudia’s spunk and tenaciousness.

3. Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz.

I don’t think I even need to go into detail here. The braids. The sparkling shoes. The dog. One of my all time favorite movies. Ever.

4. Scarlett O’Hara, Gone With the Wind.

Did you know that Gone With the Wind was released the same year as The Wizard of Oz? WHAT a year for movies. I looooooved the book. And I loooooved the movie.  I was obsessed with Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara. She was brilliant—so gorgeously perfect. Scarlett as a character was amazing: feisty, fabulous and most definitely a fighter. AND she did it all in a hoop skirt.

5. Lynda Carter, Wonder Woman.

When I was a little girl in the 1970s almost all the fabulous famous ladies were blondes. But not Wonder Woman. She had magic powers. She drove an invisible plane. But most importantly, she was a brunette! What’s not to love?? And I can’t lie, she wore a hot satin little leotard and I thought she was THE COOLEST.

6. Princess Leia, Star Wars.

Oh Leia, Leia, Leia. Sorry Cinderella and Jasmine….THIS is the Princess for me. I loved her wit. I loved her sass. And she could tote a laser with the best of ’em. “Will someone get this big walking carpet out of my way?” Sorry Chewie….When I saw Star Wars back in the day as a little kiddo I was blown away. And Leia rocked my world. She was the first bas ass princess I’d ever seen and I was hooked.

7. Helen Keller, The Miracle Worker.

I know she’s a real life person….but in fourth grade I read a biography on Helen was very affected by it. Later on in high school I was part of a really amazing production of The Miracle Worker (as Annie Sullivan) and again I was profoundly affected by the power of Helen’s positive spirit.


8. Samantha Baker, Sixteen Candles.

I love all the John Hughes films and it was a toss up between Sixteen Candles and the Breakfast Club for me to add to this list. But as far as characters go, I loved Samantha Baker. She was such a great “every teen” … funny, snarky, quirky. AND she gets the guy. To this day I think Jake Ryan is quite possibly one of the hottest guy characters in any teen movie.

9. Sandy, Grease. 

OK. I have to admit. I was kind of a Little Mary Sunshine in high school. Not in a cloying, goody-goody way. But I def wasn’t a rebel….so it should come as no surprise that I thought Sandy was adorable. I totally loved her transformation to slightly-slutty sex pot at the end (hey, even goody goody’s like to vamp it up some time too, right??).

10. Maria, The Sound of Music.

Optimistic! Silly! Kind! Nobody has a joie de vivre like Maria von Trapp. Just think if SHE had a blog (“The other day the kids and I set did a marionette show! It was fantastic. Tomorrow I’ll be sharing my tutorial on How To Make Play Clothes Out of Curtains!”). Nobody solves a problem like Maria and nobody sings with more joy. I so love this movie….my mother loves it too and we always watched it together. This movie will always hold a special place in my heart!

11. Indiana Jones, Raider’s of the Lost Ark.

OK, I totally had a crush on this swash bucklin’ hero BUT I also loved his spirit….he was brave but he wasn’t super human. (“Snakes….why did it have to be snakes??”) Indy was handsome but smart and had a great sense of humor…..I swear he’s why I decided to become an Anthropology major.

12. Ripley, Aliens.

Strong. Bad ass. With a mama gorilla mother-instinct. Yup. I love Ripley. I’d like to point out this is another of my mom’s favorite movies. My mom rules.

13. Miette, City of Lost Children.

This lush dark French movie is fantastic….I really love spacey futuristic stories and this one is like a twisted fairytale. At the center of it is a young orphan girl named Miette who leads a gang of street children. She is like an iron doe….wide-eyed and sweet yet totally a fighter. I used to wear stripey shirts and jumper dresses….I have brown curly hair and a beauty mark on the left side of my chin. I saw this movie and thought, “It’s me!!!!” (Well, if I was reeeeeeeeeallly pretty, an orphan and lived in a futuristic land taken over by an evil guy who is trying to rob children of their dreaam…..so, you know, kinda close.) Rent it. It’s amazing.

14. Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City.

This seems a tad frivolous and possibly expected, but you know what? I can’t lie. I loved Miss Carrie. I’ve always loved fashion but I was never the “sexy” one. Or the “put together” one. I was the bright/crazy/colorful/somewhat impractical one. And Carrie spoke to me.  I loved seeing Carrie week after week….with her girls, looking fabulous, living it up. She was witty, smart, stylish. She was a writer and career girl. It sounds cliche, but she really made it cool to be single and fabulous and in yer 30s. AND she made it cool to have CURLY HAIR! Whoo hoo!

15. Amélie, Amélie.

I have always been a “glass half full” kinda gal. When life hands me lemons, I make strawberry lemonade. Or add vodka and make a cocktail. Ahem. So it should come as no surprise that my last inspiration is Amélie Poulain. This is another movie that left me dancing out of the movie theater. Amélie is a pixie of a girl who decides to change the lives of those around her for the better. The movie is a celebration of life, with optimistic Amélie reminding us of the small wonders that fill the world around us — if we’d only slow down to take them all in.

So there you have it. It was actually really hard to pick only 15. I kept thinking of more (Mary Poppins! Hermione & Harry Potter! Eliza Dolittle!) but these are my 15 and I’m stickin’ with ’em. OK, your turn! What are your 15 Favorite Characters?? They can be recent, from childhood. Whatever! Just list ’em in the comments below. And if you’re feeling more ambitious, post it on your blog with pix and then link in the comments below!

Real Life :: San Francisco Halloween 2010!

Real Life, Real Life : Alix, , ,

Hey everyone! So was Halloween as spooktacular as you had hoped?? I hope you got a look at Dottie’s super adorable little Peach….she was insanely cute in her little gnome outfit! Our halloween was super fun….we had some last minute costume switcheroos and the threat of a little rain but it was still loads of fun! Even with huge rain clouds looming, the City by the Bay managed to look lovely….in a nice ghoulish way!


We began the day at the Bay Area Discovery Museum where Greg’s band, The Time Outs performed their annual Monster Stomp gig. Despite the rain, the place was packed with lots of little kiddos, all in costume hoppin’ and boppin’. It’s crazy cute. One little dude got so into it, he took his shirt off and was jumping up and down—after madly searching for a stage to dive off of.


Wolfie and one of his best buds Cole totally have the jaded rock star attitude down. “Yeah….I saw the Wiggles back in 06. When they still had the original Yellow Shirt Greg. Wicked.”


After the show, the rain stopped so we let the boys hit the play area. If you are ever in San Francisco, you must head across the Golden Gate bride to the Bay Area Discovery Museum….especially on a pretty day. They have tons of outdoor play spaces (like a full size boat for kids to climb around on) and they always have cool hands-on exhibits.

Here are the boys doing their best “Angry Bird” impersonations in the little nests that are sprinkled throughout the grounds:


Sooooooo we had a bit of a mishap that day. The ride to Marin is twisty and turny and poor Cole got pretty car sick, and well…..he kinda thew up all over the back seat. Argh. He really is the sweetest kid around, but it was a little bit of a mess. We ended up putting him in Wolfie’s Ben 10 halloween costume so he didn’t have to wear his vommy pants. Cole is a lot taller than Wolfie (and let’s face it, the dang costume was SUPER cheaply made) so it started to pull and rip at the seams. It was a blessing in disguise because frankly I wasn’t a big fan of the thing to begin with, but now we needed to come up with a new idea—STAT! Wolfie wanted to be Harry Potter, but that’s kind of a tricky one to pull together in 4 hours. We toyed with an Evel Knievel theme…..but the wobbly helmet was a little heavy and got veto-ed by me.

A quick trip to Target (to scoop up Febreeze for the car, ahem….) yielded this magical goodness. Listen, I’m not a huge fan of those pre-fab, built-in muscles costumes….they kind of creep me out., but I have to say this was kind of cute! More importantly, someone felt MIGHTY proud struttin’ around in it. And thus, Captain America was ready to throw his mighty shield this fine Halloween:

Oddly, we didn’t see any other Captain America’s all night, mostly Iron Man and Spiderman. Wolfie got lots of thumbs up and “Hey! It’s Captain America!” shout outs. And YES! He wore that little hood/mask thing THE ENTIRE NIGHT!

Please pause for a moment and marvel at my PIKACHU pumpkin!!! It ain’t easy people…

I, alas, was a costume fail. I usually love dressing up but I was sort of racing around like a mad woman. I was trying to do some dramatic eye makeup thing, and it ended up smudging all over my cheeks and in a fit of annoyance, I just made myself a lame zombie doll.

Now Greg, on the other hand, he did it up. I’m not sure if you are familiar with the show WIPE OUT (it’s totally ridiculous, but we love it….it’s like Super Mario but with real people, all racing through a crazy obstacle course!), but Greg went as the Big Red Ball from the show. He made this insane huge paper machine ball. He was paranoid that it would collapse when he cut the holes for his head….but he did it successfully. Whoo hoo! It was so great….until we got to our friends house (where we trick-or-treat every year) and realized we forgot to cut ARM HOLES!!!

It still ruled. Although in the dark we got a lot of, “Hey! It’s a meatball! Awesome!!” A few people thought he was a giant tomato too. It’s really the costume that keeps on giving…

Our friend Tom went as the Disco Gorilla. Equally spectacular.

Oh yeah, so every year we go over to our friends Chris and Jim’s house. They live in this super cool area where all the homes are Eichlers….all very mid-century and super groovy. They are a super fun family and we love hanging out with them. You HAVE to see my favorite house. Look closely at the front door….see that happy family standing there?

Only….it’s not a happy family. IT’S A FREAKIN’ PAINTING OF THE FAMILY THAT WAS DONE IN THE 70s OF THE FAMILY STANDING IN FRONT OF THEIR DOOR, WELCOMING YOU TO THEIR HOME!!!!!! AMAZING!

You might need to look twice…this is a painting on their front door, made to look like the door is open. So brilliant. It freaks me out every time.

Their whole neighborhood really gets into the halloween spirit and I love all the decor and cool pumpkins. One of the houses was showing old black and white monster movies (like Frankenstein and Nosferatu) on the side of their wall. Super cool.

PS

Of course Wolfie couldn’t resist trying on the Big Ball at the end of the night…heehee.

Real Life :: Feeling Halloweenie

Real Life, Real Life : Alix

Oooooh the Halloween count down is on! It’s such a fun time of year but boy have we been crazy busy. Here’s a little bit of what we’ve up to!

We started the weekend off on Saturday morning, when Wolfie’s elementary school had a big Harvest festival. It’s a fun carnival with games, pumpkin decorating, costumes, sugar skull painting (for Day of the Dead), tasty BBQ and bake sales and all kinds of silliness. I couldn’t get it together to wear a costume (I had to work late the night before) but I thought this made for a festive, spooky ensemble:

The rib-cage skeleton dress was from Target’s Rodarte collaboration and it’s covered in sequins. The funniest thing was that one of the moms came up to me and said, “Hey! Great halloween outfit!” then she paused and said a little apologetically, “Or um….you know….regular outfit.” hahaha. It’s kind of funny being known as the mama who is a tad eccentric in her wardrobe.

Each classroom sponsored a game booth and our class took on the illustrious Water Balloon sling shot! Lemme tell ya, filling up 100s of water balloons is no easy task. Thankfully we had some fantastic helpers.

Here’s Wolfie taking on the sling shot….he’s wearing his Ben 10 outfit which is TOTALLY too small and seriously makes him look like Captain Wedgie…some modifications are gonna have to made by Sunday. You’ll notice that the ground is all wet…this was partially from the water balloons and partially from the MASSIVE RAIN we had!!! But the rain didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits. A fine time was still had by all! And the sun even managed to peek out for a bit.

Then on Sunday we hit Tricycle Fest, an awesome free gig put on by the San Francisco Public Library. My girls The Devil-Ettes danced (adorable as ever), amazing (and super adorable) indie folk singer Francis England performed and of course Greg’s rockin’ kid band, The Time Outs, played an action packed set too! Even though it rained cats and dogs and had to be moved indoors we had an incredible turn out. [pardon me whilst I slip on a little Hipstamatic photo action….]




And FINALLY…..I saw some super amazing costumes that I thought you guys would love to see. FINALLY no rain on this day. We begin with the Scooby Doo family. Um, how cute is this Mystery Machine wagon??

I thought this jelly belly costume was so simple-but-clever! Yep, those are little balloons in the bags.

This Sushi Girl was adorable….her red bag was made to look like soy sauce—the “rice” was made of packing peanuts!

Looooved this adorable brother and sister combo:

hahaha, the recycling kiddo is so California huh! Amazing. Yes, that’s a milk jug on her head. Love it.

And finally, my personal fave….. the CLUE family! Pure genius!

Only four more days til Halloween friends. I can’t wait to see what costumes you guys cook up. We’ll see what happens to little Captain Wedgie. As for me, I’m just crossing my fingers it doesn’t rain on Sunday!


And for the record I believe it was Colonel Mustard, with the lead pipe, in the library.

Real Life :: Chasing Fall into the Apple Orchard

Real Life, Real Life : Alix

Every year we go to our favorite pumpkin patch at the Western Railway Museum. You take a little vintage train out to the patch and they have bales of hay, games, music and yummy treats. It’s really awesome. But as charming as it is, it’s not reeeeeally a pumpkin patch. They schlep the pumpkins in from somewhere else and you get to cruise around and pick your faves. Don’t get me wrong. I love it. But this year we decided to mix it up and try something a little different.

It all started with me craving a little bit of Autumn. When I left Prague, the weather was like this:

It was full-on fall. Crisp and lovely. My favorite time of year. When I got back to San Francisco, I was thrust back into summer. Our weather is decidedly fickle in September and October. We had a HUGE heat wave with temperature in the steamy 90s. Lemme tell ya, I was not feelin’ it. Who wants to be sweatin’ their butt off in October?? As a result, I have been craving AUTUMN. To help me out, Greg had a great idea. We decided to head towards Tahoe….to an area called APPLE HILL. Apple Hill is a winding scenic road with FIFTY different apple orchards, ranches and pumpkin patches. I was in apple-lovin’ heaven. We decided to pick 3 or 4 to go to. The first spot we hit was one of the most charming: Willow Pond Organic Farm. Super sweet!

Yep. There really was a Willow Pond.

This little farm was an honest to goodness pumpkin patch, with punkins on da vine! I loved it.

Wolfie specializes in picking extra huge punkins.

Of course the other big sell was the sweet  little apple orchard. I love picking apples and drinking cider. My favorite apples are Honeycrisp—which you can only get during a small window in October. They are a little sweet, a little tart and you guessed it…..crisp. Mmmm.

With two pumpkins in hand, we kept on driving. It was a really pretty drive. And while these are redwoods, we DID see lots of trees with changing leaves…and the air was perfectly crisp.

The next place we went to had an awesome corn maze…..and of course more pumpkins. We got two more at this place.

Each apple orchard was different and unique. Some were a little bit of a circus—overcrowded and had more of a cheap carnival vibe. I wasn’t that into those. Neither was Wolfie.

Of course he *was* thrilled to have a little Sno Cone action. I was on the prowl for a caramel apple. Caramel is one of my favorite things and caramel apples? Fuggitaboutit. As a side note, I don’t recommend getting a caramel apple when you go to the movies. I did that one time and it was a mess. I kept trying to eat it quietly and it was all crunchy and juicy….I had to wait for the loud action scenes to take a bite and then it got all dribbly and messy. Yeah. Definitely leave the caramel apple at home.

We finally got back on track and hit the orchards that were more off the beaten path.

You may notice a shirt change on Wolfie. We had a little exploding sno cone action and his tee was a sno-cone mess. Miraculously I found a spare shirt in the back of the van. Yes. I said VAN. I drive a Jetta and Greg rolls the Honda Odyssey. Woot woot!

The last apple farm we went to had a HIGH-larious name. Something like “Ken’s Apples and Laurie’s Dolls”.  We weren’t going to go (the name kind of scared me….I was expecting lots of soft bunny dolls and “kooky” ragdolls) but then we saw these gorgeous flowers and had to pull over.

The dolls were as bad as I expected (L-A-M-E…..sorry Laurie), but the place was really pretty and manicured and Ken turned it out with the apples.

They gave away free apples that were peeled into a curly cue. This was a big hit….

We definitely had a super awesome day…..the guys listened to the GIANTS game on the way home. (GO GIANTS!)

Now to carve the FOUR pumpkins we walked away with…..and make some apple crisp. And come to think of it, I never DID get that caramel apple. Hmmm.

Please swing by later today as we will have a couple of fun (and easy!) crafty posts for ya!