aunt annie

Yesterday Aunt Annie passed away at the age of 102. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you're probably familiar with my spunky, adorable Aunt. If not you can see an interview I did with her here, or read some stories about her on my Aunt Annie tag here.

Aunt Annie was, without a doubt, the coolest person I've ever met. She had SO many amazing stories from her 102 jam-packed years of life -- like the one time she found a gun in a pair of pants while working at a laundry, or the time she rode on the back of a motorcyle in Havana, Cuba, with a man she had just met! I loved hearing her tell stories about her life, and I'm so glad me and my brother started taping our conversations over the last several years. My mom said yesterday that Aunt Annie had the fullest life of anyone she's ever known.

Into her hundreds (!!) she was still ridiculously feisty. At one Thanksgiving she was joking that she wished she had a flask strapped to her thigh and for a while she had a note taped to her door at the nursing home that said "Stay the hell out of my room. And I mean it! -Ann" I love that she signed the note.

She's one of the only people I've ever met who genuinely asked how your life was every time she saw you -- not just "how are you?" but detailed questions about work, school, family. She was legitimately interested in how everyone was doing. And she loved giving gifts (and re-gifting anything anyone ever gave her that was black. She hated the color black!) and usually showed up with a giant plaid plastic bag filled with various grocery items and knick knacks whenever she came to visit.

When she was little she used to drink vinegar, and her whole life she ate practically nothing but junk food. She got married later in life to a man 10 years her junior and then divorced him because he didn't let her go dancing often enough. Up until the last time I saw her, she continued to say that looking back on her life, she wouldn't change a thing.

She was hilarious, kind, spunky, mischievous, ornery, and beautiful inside and out. I'm so lucky to have had her in my life, and I'm going to miss her so much.

happy (super belated) valentine's day

I'm a week overdue, but here is what I wore for Valentine's Day last week! My family and I went to see Aunt Annie (my 101 year old aunt!!) and brought her lots of chocolates and donuts. I swear her whole life she has lived off of junk food (and she actually used to drink vinegar, if you can believe it!) It makes me think twice about my own diet that consists mostly of fruits and veggies...

After seeing Aunt Annie, we went out for dinner near the beach. Earlier this month we went down the shore for the first time since Hurricane Sandy and it's just so incredibly sad to see all of our favorite places so ravaged. Ocean Grove (my favorite beach town in NJ) seems to have weathered the storm better than most places, but it's still heartbreaking to see the boardwalk ripped up and the setting of so many fond family memories completely destroyed.

dress - h&m | sweater - c/o romwe | shoes - asos | brooch - vintage

one hundred and one

Yesterday my Aunt Annie turned 101! One hundred and one. A HUNDRED AND ONE! It's seriously unbelievable. She's such an amazing woman, and I am SO lucky to know her.  She's so spunky, I have no doubt we'll be celebrating her 102nd a year from now!

This is what I wore to her party. Her favorite color is blue so I donned this pretty gold lace dress with a blue lining and a vintage blue floral brooch. I have to say, I'm pretty much obsessed with this dress. It's so breathtakingly gorgeous in person, and the cut is so flattering! I never want to take if off, but I'm reserving it for special occasions, like yesterday :)

ps. Me and my brother decided that 101 is your dalmatian birthday. I made him promise that if I make it to 101, and he's still around too, he has to throw me a 101 Dalmatians themed party. He's 8 years younger than me so I doubt I'd make it to his 101st, but I'll definitely return the favor if I do ;D

dress- c/o modcloth | sweater - f21 | tights - old navy | shoes - asos

posh frock friday

dress - swap with Amber
cardigan - c/o modcloth
belt - old navy
shoes - urbanog

I wore this last Friday to go visit my Aunt Annie in the nursing home. I still can't get over how feisty she is for being 100 years old! She started telling us how many people had died since she moved in there and how she even saw one lady die right in front of her. It seemed so sad, and then she smiled, said "ah, well.. less people!" and starting laughing! She has her blue moments, but I love that (for the most part) she has such a flippant attitude and a light way of dealing with dark things.

I'm starting to keep a little journal of some of the things she's said or done lately. Until recently she had a sign on her door that said "Stay the hell out of my room. And I mean it! -Ann" I think the fact that she signed her name on the note was my favorite part. She was also telling us that she needs some new girdles and bras. 100 years old and wheelchair-bound, but she needs a new girdle. How can you not love that?!?

100 hearts

dress - asos

cardigan - h&m

shoes - modcloth

tights - marshalls

This is what I wore for Aunt Annie's 100th birthday party on Saturday! I had bought a light blue vintage dress on etsy for the occasion, but sometime between the purchase & the party, Aunt Annie's health declined a little (don't worry, she's ok!) and we had to change the party from dinner at a local restaurant to lunch at her nursing home and my pretty 60's frock was too dressy. It'll definitely make an appearance on posh frock friday sometime soon though :)

100 years!

I made this design for the party invitations for Aunt Annie's 100th birthday party! The drawing was from a photo of her when she was a bridesmaid in her sister's wedding when she was only 16 years old, back in 1927! 84 years ago!

Like I said in my post yesterday, Aunt Annie didn't pay much attention to world events. But nevertheless, plenty of them have occurred since she was born. During her lifetime the Titanic sunk, World War I began, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize and Mata Hari was executed. She was 15 years old when Rudolph Valentino died, 30 when Pearl Harbor was attacked and 58 when man first walked on the moon. And it is so amazing how far technology has come since she was born. She was 5 before the first light switch was invented, and now she's living in an age where I can search for and read the entire history of electricity on a portable computer that fits in my pocket.

Me and my mom made a little website for guests who couldn't make it to the party, if you'd like to take a look! It has lots of photos, a guest book and facts that my mom compiled from every year since Aunt Annie's birth! It's really awe-inspiring to look through the list and see everything she's lived through. There's also this video, which is an extended version of the one I posted last year. I found my original raw footage a couple weeks ago, which included about 8 extra minutes of amazing stories that I hadn't included in the documentary I made for my school project! She did seem a little frail this past Thanksgiving, but the cough she had has subsided and she seems just as spunky now, at 99 and 51 weeks, as she did in 2009 when I shot this!

ps. The flowers in the card design are from Just Something I Made :)

posh frock friday

dress - modcloth

cardigan - forever21

tights - we love colors

shoes - modcloth (similar)

hair bow - honeybean

Grey and yellow is one of my all time favorite color combinations! I was a little lost on how to make this dress work for winter, but I think pairing it with all-grey accessories really helps!

Tomorrow is my Aunt Annie's 100th birthday party (although her real birthday is the 23rd, we just weren't sure how many people would have been able to attend a party two days before Christmas). I'll have a post up tomorrow with some pictures of her, and an extended version of the interview I did with her in 2009. She is such a spunky lady... in the video she tells stories about how she used to sneak out to go dancing, about the time she went riding on a motorcycle on a trip in Cuba, how she found a gun in a pocket once while she was working in a laundromat and almost killed her boss! She doesn't remember a darn thing about world events (not even World War II, if you can believe it) but she can remember exactly what she wore to the dances, who she went with and what street they lived on. She's a remarkable woman, and I'm so lucky to have her in my life!

pumpkin spice

dress & sweater - h&m

shoes - MIA

tights - target

belt - old navy

I wore this for Thanksgiving last week. I wanted to be warm and cozy, but I also wanted a belt on to serve as a little reminder for when I'd eaten too much ;) And it worked.. as soon as I felt like the belt might have to come off, I stopped eating, haha!

My Thanksgiving was pretty lovely, but also really bittersweet. My Aunt Annie, who is turning 100 next month, came over for dinner and she was so much less exuberant and spunky than she used to be. When she visited in July she was a ball of energy, laughing and telling stories. I never expected her to have become so frail in only a few short months. It was just so heartbreaking. We tried to discuss details about her birthday party to cheer her up, tell her about relatives she hadn't seen in years that would be attending, all the food and presents, but she would just weakly smile and then stare off into the distance. I kept trying to enjoy her company, but in the back of my mind I kept thinking it's probably the last Thanksgiving we'll get to spend with her. I have been so lucky to have her in my life, I wish she could live to 200.

I don't know what everybody's doing but I want to do it too

sheer dress - vintage

black dress - forever 21

belt - old navy

shoes - blowfish

I hope everyone had a really nice Mother's Day! Mine was pretty terrific. We were all in goofy moods, so there was plenty of laughter to go around. At one point my dad asked my brother and I to distract our mom while he started the grill (a gopher had chewed through the gas line last year, and as far as my mom knew it was still out of commission) so I started humming really loud, and Kyle started dancing (I use the term lightly) to the humming. My mom just watched with a look of combined horror and amazement.. It was hilarious.

Later we had my Aunt Annie and Grandmom over for dinner. My Aunt Annie is 99 years old and *very* hard of hearing. She usually doesn't understand what we say, even if we are speaking deliberately, and as loud as possible. So when I made a really good joke and my family started fist-bumping me.. Aunt Annie did too! She was like "I don't know what everybody's doing but I want to do it too!" It was so funny! She's such a good sport considering she usually has no idea what's going on!

ps. There are going to be some little changes on Scathingly Brilliant this week.. nothing gigantic, just some additional posts and moving some regular features around :)

where's my corsage? where's my chapeau?

dress - modcloth

cardigan - old navy

tights - we love colors

Not the best fitting dress in the world, but I love the print & neck detail so I'm in love with it regardless ;-) This is also my first attempt at a French twist. How the heck do people do this using less than 100 bobby pins?! My head was tiled in metal by the time I was finished, and even then it still didn't really look like a twist .. more like a lump. Ah well, I'll keep trying!

Thank you for all the kind comments on the post about my Aunt! Her birthday party was so much fun! Honestly, she's a riot! At one point during dinner she said she had a flask of alcohol tucked in her girdle! LOL! My mom whispered to me "I wouldn't be surprised if she's actually telling the truth!" She also mentioned that her favorite drink is grapefruit juice, so I think this bodes well for my longevity ;-D

happy birthday, aunt annie!

My great-aunt is turning 99 years old today! It's so amazing to think she was already an adult during the Great Depression, or when talking pictures started! Although, she doesn't actually remember either of those things .. not because she's lost her memory but because she just wasn't paying attention. She didn't care to go to the movies, and if you mention the Great Depression she says "I wonder if that's why I lost my job!" lol!

I made a video interview with her last year for my Documentary film class -- if you have a few minutes, it's really fun to see what a spunky lady she is! The person asking the questions is my mom, so you're not getting to hear my voice just yet ;-D


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