A Very Vintage Birthday Part 1: Vintage Spa, Burgers ‘n’ Fries, Grease the Musical, 40s Frock and pin curls

Last week it was my birthday. I took the day off on Friday and spent a fabulous long weekend in cute vintage outfits (a lot of my more special dresses and skirts that I don’t usually wear to work), doing fun, mostly vintage things!

Stephanie’s Vintage Day Spa
On Friday, my actual birthday, I dressed up in my Heartbreaker Beverly Classic Cherry dress and my new Chickabilly red fan headscarf and my sister and I trekked over to Cleveland to Stephanie’s Vintage Day Spa.

I’ve never been much for spas or beauty salons before, but it was immediately obvious from the moment we walked in, that the reason I’ve had no enthusiasm for them was because I’ve gone to the wrong types of salons. Stephanie’s Vintage Spa is in spread across two converted houses, the front being the shop front (and I assume the offices as well), the back being the actual spa. 

We were ushered into a plush, beautifully decorated waiting room that was more like a comfortable, but beautiful living room to fill out our client cards. We were given sweet rosewater tonics and I was taken into a stunning bathroom to change into my fluffy robe and comfy thongs in preparation for the full vintage bliss pedicure I was having. 

My sister and I started the morning with manicures. I’ve got super sensitive skin, and suffer from pretty bad dermatitis on my hands, so I was really happy when the beautician agreed to use my own moisturiser rather than their products for my hand massage. In other places I’ve been, asking to use my own moisturiser (which is always in my bag) has been met with sales pitches about natural ingredients safe for sensitive skin that has immediately bought me out in a rash.

The manicure was lovely; I loved the way my nails looked before and after they were polished! 

After the manicure, I moved into a comfy chair and had a lovely, relaxing, indulgent 90 minute full vintage bliss pedicure. My feet and legs were soaked, scrubbed, massaged, filed, sloughed and even paraffin waxed to perfection. I have never felt more relaxed and pampered. While I was being pampered, we both enjoyed beautiful trays of sorbet, tea, ginger biscuits and chocolates.  

The whole experience was wonderful, all the staff were welcoming, friendly and easy to talk to. I was a little disappointed that even after a relaxing day of not doing much at all (I did a crumb coat ganache on my birthday cake, watched a movie and changed my clothes) that my nail polish had already started to chip off, and even more disappointed that it was mostly gone by Saturday (which I think was more a fault of the polish than the beautician, who was fantastic). But a quick message to Stephanie’s and they booked me in for a complimentary manicure that I had this weekend — thank you, Stephanie’s! 

Grease
In the evening, I donned my blue cherry melodyskirt, fluffy red petticoat and polka dot shirt and headed off to the Lyric Theatre to see Grease. Grease is my favourite movie (obviously) and I have a tradition of re-watching it for my birthday each year. I also seem to have a knack of having a birthday around the time of year that special Grease-related events happen. For example, a few years ago when I was living in a tiny town in California, the local movie theatre had a retro movie sing-along night on my Birthday, and this year, well, Grease the musical is in town!  

I had a hankering for burgers, fries and black and white milkshakes all day (it was the retro theme of the day, I think) and while we searched all day for an appropriate diner, in the end we settled for lovely, quick, fresh Grill’d burgers (no milkshake, but that’s ok) before we headed to the show.

The show was fabulous! There were good bits and bad bits (namely the tuneless girl behind me who didn’t know the words but insisted on singing ALL the quiet songs), but overall I loved it. The show’s opening really got everyone in the audience into the spirit, and I think it was great that in the big (loud) numbers, audience participation was encouraged.

40s frock
On Saturday night I’d organised to have dinner with a group of friends at Sprout Café in Milton. I’d known all week long that it was going to be the first chance I had to wear this gorgeous 40s-style silk frock I bought on a trip to Sydney from Retrospec’d back in June, so I was pretty excited about it (but alas, I didn't manage to get a picture of me wearing it!). 

I spent all afternoon ganaching my birthday cake and one for my sister’s boyfriend, so I had limited primping time. Instead of putting a full pin curl in (which takes me hours, even with my now fairly short hair), I pin curled bigger pieces of hair only halfway up my head, with the exception of one side where my hair falls forward where I pin curled sections all the way up. I left this in while I did my makeup, got dressed, changed handbags and shoes 4 times and got my cake organised. I brushed it out lightly just before I left the house and was really happy with the result. It just gave me a bit of volume that my naturally straight hair is missing. 

We had a lovely funny, night, with good food and champagne. The waiter was confused that I’d bought my own cake, and when they bought it out from the kitchen and set it in front of me so my friends could sing happy birthday, all I could think was if the sparkler might melt my silk dress (no).

That’s it for this post (but not it for my vintage birthday! Part 2 coming soon)