So, I was blog-hopping the yesterday and I discovered this really pretty blog via Blue Castle’s blogroll.

It reminded me of a magazine that I used to love when I was somewhere between 13 and 15 years old. I bet you are having no trouble guessing what that magazine was?  

Anyway, My Romantic Home is just as beautiful as the old Victoria Magazine that I would read over and over, inhaling it’s soft, sweet fragrance and dreaming of being a grown-up with a house filled with beautiful frilly things.

An odd thing for me to do really, since I was never a girlie-girl, I hated pink, and I never did girlie things such as imagining my future wedding. And just as I do with everything, I obsessed over the few issues that my mother bought, either for my birthday, or because I begged her to, and then I forgot about the magazine for awhile. I remembered it again in college and searched for it, but couldn’t find it. I had since learned that it was discontinued, but only just recently realized that it’s been resurrected.

In my Internet search to uncover the mystery of Victoria Magazine, I discovered this post on another new favorite blog of mine Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea. (The post is dated May 09, 2007, just 4 days after my wedding!) The author’s description of why she loves the magazine perfectly explains my fascination with it as a budding woman:

If you haven’t experienced this magazine, put it on your list.  It was sumptuous! It had the most beautiful photos of antiques, roses, beautiful gardens, silver and china and linens, homes, anything to do with romantic and gracious living.  The articles and features were good, of course, but I have to admit I was addicted to the eye-candy that could be found on almost every page.  I just hope this new Victoria lives up to the standards of the old one.

It was, as is the the blog mentioned above, first rate eye candy .

Furthermore, I’m by far not the only fan of this magazine as you can see by the amount of comments in response to her post.  I do wish that my old copies weren’t lost in the chaos of my childhood home (and the covers I chose to display in this post were chosen because I recognized most of them from that time period) but I suppose I my sadness can be assuaged by the knowledge that I could purchase them at any time from EBay, if I felt I needed them badly enough.

And to the author of Blue Castle, I’ll be posting a recipe of my creamy potato, pea, and fennel casserole soon so you can see how easy it is to make the onion cream sauce.