My Mom's Wedding Dress

My mom and dad got married on October 16, 1954. They had a HUGE wedding, about 450 people! 

To give a little background, my dad was an only child and my grandparents owned a very popular and busy bar in Detroit. This wedding was a big deal to them and they wanted to show off to all of their friends and bar patrons! In other words, they wanted to invite a lot of people so they paid for the whole thing! 

My mom's parents were not well off and my grandfather (her father) was very sick at the time of their wedding. 

I only have a few pictures right now of her wearing the dress. 

Check out that train! At the reception she carried it around with a hoop around her arm! 

Here she is with her father. He passed away a few months later. 

Anyway, after the wedding my mom packed her dress in a box wrapped in tissue paper. When I was about 10 years old she showed it to me and I got to try it on. I loved it and wanted to play dress-up with it but she wouldn't let me! 

We may have looked at it one or two more times after that but I'm not sure. A few years after she died I asked my dad for it and he gave it to me. 

Her writing on the box. I wonder if she wrote that right when she packed it up shortly after the wedding. I bet she was excited to write her new last name! 

Anyway, here is the dress now. It's a ball gown style satin with a lace over top. Although it definitely looks better than my dress, it has yellowed a bit and has a few areas where the lace has browned, especially over the buttons. 

The bottom has gathers with satin roses and tulle underneath. 

Here is the back of the dress and that long train! 

It was hard to get a picture of it all in!

There are 35 buttons on the back and 8 on each sleeve. I have a video of my parents wedding and you can see my grandmother buttoning up the dress. 

The sleeves are pointed at the top of the hand. While I was pushing my hand through the sleeve to take this picture the lace was ripping a little. It's pretty fragile. 

Anyway, the pictures make the dress look lighter than it actually is but by the time I realized that the dress was already packed away.

Still, not too bad for a dress that's at least 67 years old, eh?

Although I would love to see it displayed somewhere that's probably not going to happen. Shauna doesn't want it but my niece does so I'll probably give it to her eventually.  

That's it for now. I'll be back on February 1st to do my Photo A Day February where I post one picture a day for the whole month! I've got to start scrambling now to get 28 pictures together! 

Until then stay safe and well my friends! 

My Wedding Dress

Rich and I got married in 1977 when I was 20 years old and he was 21. I know that's pretty darn young and I definitely would not have wanted my daughter to marry that young. But those were different days and I was never encourage to pursue a career or go out and live on my own so when I fell in love with Rich marriage was encouraged and welcomed. If I'm being honest too, my mother was so afraid that I would get pregnant before being married that I swear I could hear a big sigh of relief coming from her when the priest pronounced us man and wife! 

In retrospect we could have saved ourselves a lot of grief by just maturing a few more years before we got married and had a family! 

That is all water under the bridge now. We've been married almost 44 years and have raised two wonderful children so it's all worked out well in the end.

This post is actually about my wedding dress. 

I first saw a picture of it in a bridal magazine. I ripped it out and took it to a local bridal shop and they ordered it for me. If I recall right it cost $150.00.

Yes, I still have the picture! It was off-white satin and lace with pearls. High neck and long sleeves! Talk about covering up! 

It was a beautiful dress. 

After the wedding we put the dress back into the garment bag it came in and there it stayed for almost 44 years! It went from a closet in my parents house, to closets in our various houses. I never did anything to preserve it or try to keep it nice. 

When Shauna and Brad got married I cut a piece out of it to make something for Shauna to put inside her dress. The dress was pretty yellowed by then! 

I threw the veil away when we moved from Canton to here a few years ago.

Here's what the dress looks like now. 

This picture makes it look  a lot lighter than it actually is. In my quest to simplify and get rid of unnecessary stuff I decided this dress had to go. Shauna doesn't want it and once I cut a piece out of it it wasn't donatable anymore. 

Before I throw it away though, I took all of the pearls and buttons off of it. 

Thankfully there was only 14 buttons; 6 on each sleeve and two in the back for the bustle. They were hard to get off! 

There was however hundreds of pearls and it took me a few hours with a seam ripper to remove them all. 

So right now the dress is laying on the floor in my office/craft room. Although I want to get rid of it, I hesitate to throw it in the garbage where it will sit in a landfill for many years! I may peruse Pinterest to see if there are any interesting ideas! 

I put the buttons in my button jar and I think I will string a necklace or something with the pearls.

Oh yes, remember Peignoir sets? I had one of them sitting in the same bag as the dress. 

My mom and grandmother bought it for me for my wedding shower. Like the dress, I only wore it once! I cut the embroidery and lace parts and the buttons off of it and that's going in the garbage too. 

I probably I should have taken better care of my dress and maybe it could have been restored or something but I don't think anything would have come of it. 

Next post I will tell you about my mom's wedding dress. I have it and it looks almost as beautiful as it did they day her and my dad got married! 

Until then stay safe and well my friends! 

Bill Knapps Chocolate Cake

 My only request for my birthday was for a Bill Knapp's Chocolate Celebration Cake. I can't remember how many years it had been since I had one. 

In case you never heard of it, Bill Knapp's was a family-style restaurant that used to be pretty popular in these parts. The food was really good and the prices were reasonable. It was especially popular with the older crowd. We used to call it "Wigs and Walkers" or "The Wrinkle Room" because of that reason. My mom loved it and we would meet her and my dad there for dinner often. 

One of the best things was if you dined there on your birthday or an anniversary they would give you this chocolate cake. 

I took this from Wikipedia:

Bill Knapp's was well known for its birthday and anniversary discounts. Diners visiting Bill Knapp's on their birthdays were entitled to a percentage off of their bill based on their age. Thus, a guest 62 years old would receive a 62% discount. Those celebrating a wedding anniversary were treated to a whole chocolate cake to take home, and in some restaurants, managers gave birthday patrons a cake to take home in addition to their discount. While the cake was being presented, Bing Crosby's recording of "Happy Birthday" and "The Anniversary Song" would be played over the restaurant's sound system for birthdays and anniversaries, respectively. It was widely said that anyone over 100 would actually be paid by the restaurant (such as a 101% discount on a 101st birthday), and a man who ate at the West Lansing location for his 101st birthday received a free meal, and a check for 1% of his bill--7 cents.^[

It's just a small 8 or 9 inch cake but it was enough for everyone at the table.  

Eventually as business started to slow down for them they stopped bringing a whole cake and would just bring a piece for the person celebrating the birthday. Then the restaurants closed for good in 2002. 

Luckily,  their very popular cake was made available to buy in grocery stores so that was my choice for my birthday cake. 

Oh my gosh, it tasted just as good as I remembered! Even better because it had been so long! By far one of the best chocolate cakes I've ever had, including the Bumpy Cake! I easily could have sat there with a fork and ate the whole thing! Between Rich and I we ate about half the cake and I brought the rest to Shauna to share with Brad and the boys. 

It was cute, Shauna sent me a video with them singing happy birthday to me with a piece of cake and a candle in each piece they could blow out after they finished singing! 

I miss that restaurant. Every time I drive by the building it used to be in I feel a little sad because we went there with my parents so many times. 

Until the next time stay safe and well my friends. 

Birthdays Galore

January is a month of birthdays in my family. Besides other family members it's also mine and Rich's and most importantly Maxwell's! 

He turned 4 years old on January 8th and his party was this past Saturday.

He got lots of presents and was so excited!

Levi was helping him open his gifts! 

We got him a Paw Patrol watch among other presents.

I didn't take any pictures of him with his cake. This is a screen shot of a movie I took while we were singing happy birthday. You can't see Levi in this picture, he's right off to the right, but he's singing his heart out to his brother and it was so cute! Shauna said he was practicing all week! 

There may be a budding professional singer in the family! 

Today is my 64th birthday and Shauna brought the boys over for a while. I got two cute homemade cards and a beautiful notebook with Nonnie on it. 

Plus a Bill Knapps cake for dessert tonight! 

I'll show you the next time. 

Until then stay safe and well my friends. 

Bumpy Cake

A few people commented that they did not know what Sanders Bumpy Cake was so I thought I would do a quick post about it.

Sanders is a Detroit-based Confectioner company and they are famous for their cakes, candy and ice cream. Bumpy cake has always been one of their most popular cakes. It is a devils food cake with buttercream bumps and chocolate fudge icing. It comes in chocolate and yellow cake but chocolate is the best! 

Here is a picture of the cake after it was cut.  

See those rows of buttercream on the top? They totally make the cake! Do you remember those Hostess cupcakes with the cream inside and the little swirl on the top? Bumpy cake kind of tastes like that but better! 

Careful! You can gain weight just looking at this picture for too long!!

For my birthday I've requested a Bill Knapp's chocolate cake. If you haven't heard of that one I will do a post after my birthday on the 12th. 

Until the next time stay safe and well my friends! 

A Sleepover and a Birthday

Happy New Year you guys. Here's hoping 2021 brings an end to this pandemic and a little more unity in this country! 

We did nothing for New Year's eve. Went to sleep before 11:00 with an alarm set at 11:55. Woke up, said Happy New Year to each other and promptly went back to sleep! Maybe next year we'll attend a huge party! (Probably not!)

Anyway, my son was not able to make it here from New Hampshire so we just had a small Christmas get together on the Monday following Christmas with Shauna and Brad and the kids. 

This past Saturday we had the boys sleep over to give Shauna and Brad a night to themselves. We were completely exhausted the next day but we had fun! 

We had fun playing with the selfie stick! 

We pretty much let them run themselves ragged the whole night until they finally sat down on the couch and crashed at about 10 o'clock! 

We pulled the mattress off of the bed in the spare room and put it on the floor in the family room. That way we didn't have to worry about them falling out of bed! I slept on the couch. 

They both woke up at about 1:47 am thinking it was morning! I managed to talk them into laying back down on the mattress with me and thankfully they both eventually fell back asleep! 

We had lots of fun but I took two naps on Sunday and fell asleep before 10 that night! 

Anyway today is Rich's 65th birthday (hello Medicare) and as always I asked what he wanted for his birthday dinner. This is what he requested.

 

A frozen Stouffers Lasagna and a Sanders Bumpy Cake. Both of which are delicious! Don't get me wrong, I am Italian and make a pretty mean lasagna, but he loves this one and it is his birthday! Besides, who am I to pass up a chance to have such a easy dinner! Plus you know..... bumpy cake! 

Had a appointment today at 11:00 to take my Equinox into the Chevy dealer because it's making a clunking noise at the rear drivers side tire. When I got there they told me that there were about 40 cars ahead of me and they couldn't guarantee they would be able to look at it today! When I told them I made an appointment two weeks ago their response was "yeah that's a problem with the computer because it's still first come first serve! " What??? Anyway, I didn't leave it and will just go back one morning first thing and leave it! So frustrating!

My allergies are awful right now! I am sneezing like crazy, my eyes are so itchy and I have a dry cough from sinus draining! It must be the damp snowy weather. It's wet but not cold enough to freeze everything. Mold is one of the things that bother me. 

Well that's it for now As always until the next time stay safe and well my friends!