Today is the first day of September and The Baby Gardner’s THIRD Birthday! We’re so excited! We want to celebrate with all of you by offering FREE SHIPPING on any and all purchases made on our birthday!* Consider yourself cordially invited! It’s been an awesome three years and we owe it all to you!

* Enter code PARTY3 when checking out. Offer is valid on Sept. 1, 2010. Sorry, offer cannot be applied to international orders.

Hi gang! Want to win Baby Gardner merchandise? We’re hosting a fun giveaway on our Facebook page this month.

To enter, post a photo of your favorite little one on our Facebook wall. We’ll pick 5 random winners on August 31st!

The Baby Gardner was featured on Daytime Alabama today! Getting even the littlest ones ready for back-to-school…

I came across this seller on Etsy, Rosebud Cottage, who has a to-die-for collection of vintage hair pretties. I’ve tagged about a dozen vintage barrettes. They seem to sell quickly (I lost a few I should have jumped on.) and new ones pop up, so check in often and you’re sure to find a must-have.

I’m smitten on the idea of sharing these barrettes with my little girl. I totally admit I would wear these myself and I know she would love them too. Vintage chic at it’s best! Here’s some of my favorites I’ve tagged, but you can find the entire collection here.

Vintage lunch boxes are definitely on my list of favorite vintage things. I think it’s because they remind me so much of my own childhood. Unfortunately, the old ones aren’t very practical or even appropriate to hand down to our children. In fact, many of them probably violate a dozen child safety laws in today’s world (lead paint, sharp edges, rust, etc.). But, oh what a nostalgic collectible.

Now if I go back to my own childhood I can distinctly remember my first lunch box. (Exhibit A)

I actually think Raggedy Ann was a hand-me-down from my big sis because I know it wasn’t long before the tin was gone and I had plastic Smurfs. (Exhibit B)

Truth be told, the vintage lunch pails and tins I really adore go back several decades further — back when lunch boxes for children were just beginning to appear.

In 1935, Walt Disney introduced the first lunch box targeted specifically for children (big surprise, right?).  By adding the image of Mickey Mouse to the pail, the concept of character lunchboxes for children was born.

However, these Mickey originals were only sold from 1935-1936.  It wasn’t until TV programming for children came about in the 1950s that the demand for children’s lunch boxes rekindled.  Hopalong Cassidy was the first TV show to give away the right to produce lunchboxes featuring Hopalong — and the rest, they say, is history. Children began begging for colorful lunch tins featuring their favorite characters. This trend persisted for decades giving lunch boxes a firm spot in American culture.

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Congratulations to Sandra Johnsey McGuire! She’s the winner of our Free Vintage Friday Giveaway! Thanks to all for participating. We’ll sponsor another giveaway soon! (Sandra, please contact us with your address.)

Hey guys! The Baby Gardner is hosting another FREE Vintage Friday Giveaway! Woohoo! This time we’re giving away a fabulous bib and burp cloth set for your messy little eater. The winner gets to choose between our Butterfly Bouquet Set or our Robot Set:

Now, how do you enter? Well, here’s the thing. We want to be ‘liked’ — a lot. So we’re asking our loyal blog readers to recruit all your Facebook friends to ‘like’ our Facebook page! Every person that clicks the ‘Like’ button and leaves a comment ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE between now and June 12, 2010, will be entered in the giveaway. Recruit your friends to help you win! The winner will be announced here and on Facebook. Winner will be chosen at random.

I know. We’re shameless. But we hope you love us anyway. And the prize is well worth the effort, right? Sending lots of love and thanks to our bloggie readers! We wouldn’t be here without you! xoxo

Clownin’ Around:

It’s that time again. Wanted to share another vintage embroidery pattern with you. It’s yet another goody from my stash of vintage coloring books. Love those books! This one is my own personal homage to Irmi lamps. Read all about Irmi here.

Click on image for larger view. Enjoy!

Once upon a time there was a happy little color named “Pink” and it was loved and worn by all. But one day a crazy King Trendy grabbed the happy little color and told little boys they couldn’t wear “Pink” ever again. And little boys everywhere cried. They became very “Blue”…

True story – sort of.

It wasn’t until the 1950s that the stereotype “pink means girl and blue means boy” became the popular trend in Western Europe and North America. It’s never been common practice in other countries.

There seemed to have been a serious effort in the early 1900s to establish characteristic colors for girls and boys. But it took decades to develop a consensus on what those colors were. For years one camp claimed pink was the boys’ color and blue the girls’. A 1905 Times article said so, and Parents magazine was still saying it as late as 1939.

Why pink for boys? Some argued that pink was a close relative of red, which was seen as a fiery, manly color. Others traced the association of blue with girls to the frequent depiction of the Virgin Mary in blue.

An excerpt from Ladies Home Journal, June, 1918:

“There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”

It’s amazing what we learn from history. So where does that leave us today? Does it leave us mired in a stereotype where boys should never wear pink? What do you think? Let’s take a poll…

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