Rock Around the Roller Rink

This summer I found some pretty fabulous bright, stripey cotton while browsing for lining material. Around the same time, my friends and I decided it would be a ton of fun to plan a 1950s outing, because everything is more fun in period-appropriate clothes!

I always try to hit JoAnn Fabrics during their dollar pattern sales to check out the reprinted retro patterns, so when we decided to do a 1950s day, I already had what I needed. I ended up using B5748 and that stripey fabric I'd found.

Butterick Retro B5748

Because our  my schedule has been insane this fall (I worked every weekend in September, thus the radio silence in adventure/blog-land), we weren't able to actually have our 1950s day until this past weekend. In the meantime, I had made my dress but never finished it because at the time it was too hot to iron. I had a whirlwind evening the night before, and the dress still isn't actually finished, but by the time I hit the roller rink on Saturday it was wearable. We had so much fun!

We started the day at Comet's Diner, a 50s-themed diner my mom and I go to whenever we can because they have real shredded hashbrowns, which we both love. I've wanted to go there in 50s clothes basically since the first time I walked in the door, and now I finally have. Yay!

strawberry frappe!

checking out the jukebox

coke glasses!

of course, the frappe had to get passed around for posing--it was so perfect with Quinn's dress!

this was not my brunch, but it looked delicious anyway

After brunch, it was too early to head to the roller rink (it's only open in the afternoon), so we ended up heading to Savers (our favorite charity store) to kill some time. On the way there was this really New England-y pile of logs among the fall foliage at the side of the road, so I got everyone to pull over and take some pictures. Art!

I was totally not kidding about the "Art" thing.

What we ended up with was basically the album cover shoot for a hipster/indie band. We named ourselves Queens of Rock.

seriousness break!

(as a side note, New England in the Fall is my favorite thing)

We finally headed to the roller rink, and even though I'm a speed demon (or at least, I used to be) on roller blades, we all rented roller skates to match our 50s dresses. It's a totally different experience, and I was a little shaky, but I was doing pretty well by then end. We all were--no major injuries and no death. WIN.

putting on skates under the blacklight

Quinn kept insisting this is how she skated...

but it was actually way more graceful!

It was a truly wonderful day, and by the end of it we were all pretty tired. It was a ton of fun to have an adventure, go some new places, and hang out in a different period for a while. We'll definitely have to do it again!