Keep Calm and ...

Hi all!  Happy Tuesday to you, and I hope you're having a great week!  It's such a beautiful fall day outside that it just makes me giddy!  I love, love this time of the year.

I'm back from the Southern Bloggers Conference in Raleigh, NC, and it was just great!!  The organizers and speakers did a fantastic job; it was obvious that a lot of work had gone into this event.  I'll post more about that later in the week.  At the moment, our son is home from college on Fall Break, and he goes back this evening.  It's been a short visit.  I still can't believe he's a senior this year.  My grandmother was right; the older we get, the faster time flies.


I'm doing a somewhat random, quirky post today, because that's just what I felt like doing.  :)  One thing that was stressed to us at the conference this weekend was to be yourself on your blog, because it just doesn't work to try and emulate someone else.  No one else is as good at being you as you are.  I do believe that comes through in our posts.  All the bloggers I follow regularly have their own particular style and "voice," and that's what makes it all so interesting.

So this is what I'm writing about today.

On Saturday morning at the SBC, Barb of The Everyday Home gave everyone a little lesson in "Southern."  Good job, Barb!!  She talked about the different interpretations of "Ya'll" and "Bless Her Heart" (my personal favorite), as it reminds me of one of my family members.  :)  And then, Barb showed us a picture of this...

I'm so going to put this on my sidebar!  Anyway, this weekend, I Googled the above image, and you wouldn't believe (or maybe you would) how many variations there are on the original "Keep Calm and Carry On."  This, of course, appealed to my quirky side, and I couldn't resist sharing a few of these with you.

Before I go any further, I want to say that I'm not poking fun at the historical significance of the original poster.  It was part of a group of three posters published at a time when WWII was taking a large toll in Great Britain, and these posters were intended as a morale booster for its citizens.

These two posters were widely circulated during the war, but, oddly enough, "Keep Calm and Carry On" wasn't.

source

I admire the original sentiment; I think its popularity has made a comeback, and people always seem to enjoy creating their own versions.  So here are a few that caught my eye this weekend.

  

I think we can all relate to that one.

I love this for Harry Potter fans...

...and this for Wizard of Oz fans.

  This woman and her flying monkeys used to scare me silly when I was young, but I insisted on watching the movie every time it came on television.  :)

I love this one, for the Irish in all of us.

 This one came out around the time of William and Kate's wedding.

Brilliant!

When I was looking at these images online, I discovered an interesting story.  A woman in Scotland, Moragh Turnbull, was in possession of 15 original printings of the "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster from WWII.  Her father was a member of the Royal Observers Corp. in Edinburgh, and received these posters from the War Office, but he never got the green light to distribute them.  When the war was over, he rolled them up in a rubber band and saved them, later giving them to his daughter, Moragh.  She took them to the Antiques Roadshow in St. Andrews, Scotland, where they were authenticated and valued by an expert.  She learned that her posters are worth £1,000 (about $1,500) each.  This is a nice amount by itself, and multiplied by 15...well I wouldn't turn it down.

I hope you enjoyed the bit of history combined with some whimsy.  Thanks for continuing to visit House at Forest Manor; I really appreciate your interest!

Have a great day!

Denise