Category Archives: Victoriana

How To Choose Your Wedding Ring Size

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When it comes to your upcoming wedding, you’ve already chosen the spouse that’s just right for you. However, there’s another important choice you’ll want to make… a wedding ring size that’s just right for you too!

Sizing your ring finger may not rank high on your to-do list right away, but it should be. Hastily measuring your finger at the last minute without taking the proper steps first could cause you to end up with a wedding ring too big or too small for you. Finding out you have an ill-fitting ring right before your big day is an unnecessary source of stress you just don’t need.

If you’re wondering, “How should I fit a ring?”, here are the steps you need to ensure you find the perfect size.

  1. Decide What Finger You Need to Size

Traditionally, the wedding ring has been worn on the ring finger (the finger adjacent to the pinky) of the left hand. The traditional explanation for the choice of the left hand is that it’s the closest hand to your heart. Although this is the finger that most people will want to size, make sure you’ve decided this before you continue.

2. Measure Your Finger at the Right Time

When it comes to finding the perfect wedding ring size, it’s not simply an issue of how, but it’s also an issue of when. The reason? Your ring size can vary during the day for a number of reasons, causing you to end up with a wedding ring too big or a wedding ring too small. Keep in mind,

Your fingers will typically shrink slightly in cold weather.

Your fingers will typically swell in warm, humid weather.

Your fingers can swell due to a strenuous workout.

Your fingers can swell due to an excess of sodium intake.

To get the perfect measurement, avoid eating salty foods for several hours. Make sure you’ve been indoors and have been in a room-temperature environment for several hours. This will help ensure that you have the most accurate fit possible.

3. Sizing With Another Ring

If you already own rings (such as your lab-grown diamond engagement ring) or have the ability to borrow some rings, the easiest way to find your ring size is to use them as guides. Slip each of them on and off of your finger until you find the ring that glides over your knuckle cleanly and sits on your finger without spinning. When you’ve found the ring that’s most comfortable, use our handy sizing chart to match the shape of the ring with its corresponding size. Presto! You’ve found your wedding ring size. It couldn’t be easier!

4. Take Your Own Measurements

Yet, how do you find the perfect fit if you don’t have another ring to serve as a reference? You can actually use a thin strip of paper as a reference. Wrap the paper around the desired finger below the knuckle, taking care not to wrap it tightly. Now, measure the paper in millimeters, and use the above chart to find your size. Although some people find measuring their finger with string is a bit simpler, we’ve found that it’s not as accurate, yielding a wedding ring that can be too big or a wedding ring that can be too small.

5. Visit Your Local Jewelry Repair Shop

Are you still nervous about sizing your own finger? We understand! You can always go to a local jewelry repair shop and ask if you can use their ring sizer. This process will take only a minute or two, and the trip may give you the peace of mind that you’ve chosen the correct wedding ring size.

Did you know that most jewelry stores only carry two ring sizes—7 for women and 10 for men? This means that most likely your ring will end up having to be resized, adding additional cost and extra effort to your purchase.

A Day Of Victorian Era Hobbies

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A Day of Victorian Era Hobbies

There’s no denying we’re living in a fast-paced, tech-forward world. While the 21st century has many advantages that the 1800s did not, there are still ways we can enjoy Victorian-era hobbies today.

Whether you’re a Victorian enthusiast, a history buff, or you’re just looking for a unique way to change up your activities and try something new, consider planning a day of Victorian-era hobbies.

From morning to evening, you can enjoy the simple-yet-sophisticated lifestyle of what someone might have done on a typical day in the Victorian era. It’s a great way to spend a day away from technology, do something different with friends and family, or even educate your kids with a bit of interactive history.

Let’s take a look at how you might plan your day filled with Victorian-era hobbies, and how you can enjoy each one.

Morning

In the early Victorian years, breakfast typically consisted of meats, cheeses, and beer. That might sound more like party food by today’s standard. However, over time the scope of breakfast changed to what most people recognize today as “full English,” consisting of things like:

  • Eggs and bacon
  • Bread
  • Fish
  • Porridge

While you might not want to have fish for breakfast, you can absolutely enjoy freshly-fried eggs and thick-cut bacon. If you want to be as authentic as possible, consider making your own bread.

While it’s baking, take a brisk walk around your neighborhood. People in the Victorian era tended to eat more calories than we do today, but they were far more active, walking nearly everywhere.

As you’re enjoying your breakfast, do some reading and relax while you ease into the day. Consider scanning through some classic pieces of Victorian poetry by Bronte or Browning, and plan out your day so you have a basic idea of what needs to be done. In the Victorian era, that may have included preparing any food that would need to be eaten later in the day, so it could start cooking and be finished by dinner time.

Midday

After a hearty breakfast and a morning of relaxation, consider filling your afternoon with as many fun hobbies as possible. You might be surprised to find that you really enjoy some of the “old-fashioned” activities, including Victorian-era arts and crafts.

Many practices are making a comeback nowadays, including things like letter writing with wax seals, embroidery, and flower pressing.

Victorian women, especially, were often extremely busy with “DIY” projects during the day, tackling everything from natural dyeing to shellwork and paper art. If you don’t want to get too crafty, consider sitting down and hand-writing a letter to a friend or family member. It’s a thoughtful gesture, and who wouldn’t want to receive a kind note in the mail in this age of email and texting?

If you’d rather be a bit more active with your midday activities, try something new like clay pigeon shooting. This is a fantastic outdoor activity to enjoy with friends, or even on your own if you’re looking for some solitude.

Clay shooting actually started in the Victorian era, beginning with glass balls filled with feathers. It quickly became a sport of its own and remains popular today. You don’t have to be a shooting expert to enjoy yourself and stay safe. Plus, there are many benefits to target practice, including improved balance and stronger hand-eye coordination. It also serves as a great way to alleviate stress.

Evening

There was no better way to end a long day in the Victorian era than by being surrounded by friends and family.

Some things never change.

You can end your day of Victorian hobbies by hosting a historical dinner party. Serve traditional food and drink, and consider hosting your party outdoors in the garden. 

Obviously, you don’t have to be completely authentic here. Your main goal should be making sure your guests are comfortable and happy. If you plan on hosting outside, keep the following outdoor dinner party do’s and don’ts in mind:

  • Choose a location with enough space
  • Check the weather
  • Embrace a mismatched aesthetic (or go with traditional decor)
  • Have adequate lighting
  • Store and serve your food safely

After the meal, continue the festivities by sharing poetry, art, or music with your guests. If you give people enough notice to plan something of their own to share, you can enjoy a whole evening of Victorian-era entertainment. It’s a unique and fun way to change up the traditional dinner party, and most people are happy to try something new and take a step back in time.

In many ways, our world today is vastly different from what it was in the 1800s. However, there are still so many things we do that are influenced by the Victorian era, and other things that are returning to popularity after hundreds of years. If you want to enjoy a day of Victorian-era hobbies and appreciate the simpler things that led us to where we are now, let these ideas serve as a loose schedule. Whether you spend the day on your own or with people you love, you’ll have fun stepping back into a simpler time in history.

A Brief Overview Of Victorian Schools For Children

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The Victorian era is packed with many histories and mysteries. One of the most historical topics that would spring up from that era was schooling.

What was schooling like for children in the Victorian era?

Believe it or not, Victorian schools are far different than schools today. In fact, let’s just say your own child wouldn’t like being in Victorian schools much. With no technology, no “fun” activities, and enforced punishments to students who defied the rules, Victorian schools differ greatly from the tech-drenched, “fun”-enforced, and lenient-punishment atmosphere of today’s schools.

This brief overview will cover the following, when it comes to Victorian schools:

  • Background
  • How rich students and poor students attended school
  • What the school “uniforms” looked like
  • What school is like, AND
  • How teachers handled punishments

A Little Background

“The Victorian era was when schools were taken seriously as institutions,” says Rose McKelvey, a history writer at State of writing and Essay Roo. “In fact, schools in the Victorian era were available to all children, regardless of one’s family’s financial situation. A law passed in 1870 required all children in Britain between the ages of 5 and 10 to attend school. However, this law was contested in 1893, when the leaving age was changed to 11 years old, since children of working parents were convinced to join the workforce instead of going to school.”

The Rich And The Poor

While very few children actually attended school, there were two different realities: the rich and the poor.

Children from rich families received homeschooling. In homeschooling, children would be taught by a governess, or a female teacher. The only notable thing here is that while boys at age 10 would go on to public schools, the girls would continue to be homeschooled.

As for the poor, children would sometimes attend church for school, despite these “schools” having limited educational resources. However, a law passed in 1880 had all children – rich or poor – attend school.

School Attire

School attire in the Victorian era left very little room for students to express themselves. The most common uniform colors were dark colors like black and brown, and dull colors like grey and white.

The girls would wear a dark knee-length wool dress, along with a white apron (tied at the back of the dress), thick black stockings, and black shoes (or boots). Boys, on the other hand, wore shirts, trousers (or shorts), and ankle boots (along with long socks), with the addition of a jacket with a waistcoat (or jumper) underneath.

What Was School Like?

In essence, schools in the Victorian era looked something like this:

  • Schools lasted until 5 PM.
  • Children sat silently in rows, as the teacher wrote lessons on the blackboard. As the teacher wrote, so did the students at their desks.
  • The main subjects taught were Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic (Math).
  • Distractions and looking out the window were discouraged.
  • Certain subjects like needlework were taught to girls. Meanwhile, other subjects like woodwork were taught to boys.
  • Students would use the following to study and learn:
    • A slate and chalk (along with a cloth to wipe their slate clean)
    • A quill pen (with an ink well) and parchment
  • Equipment in classrooms were often scarce. A classroom was often lucky to have a map of the world or an abacus for reference.

School Punishments

“Unlike today’s standards, where punishments these days are more lenient and less harsh, Victorian school punishments were more severe physically and mentally,” says Chelsea Niall, an education blogger at Boom Essays and Paper Fellows. “One of the most common forms of punishment was the use of a cane. A teacher’s cane was typically long and thin. They would use this stick to strike children on the hand for either misbehaving, being tardy to class, or for telling lies. There was also a leather strap used to beat children, or the infamous dunce’s hat which is worn by misbehaving students. Or, children were subject to writing lines, where students wrote the same sentence or phrase over and over however the teacher saw fit.”

Conclusion

As you can see, Victorian schools were worlds away from the schools that we see today. In this overview, it’s clear that Victorian schools had different values and methods, when it comes to teaching children, thus cementing themselves into a part of Victorian history.

Christina Lee is a writer and editor at Dissertation help and Write my paper. She is also a contributing writer for OX Essays. As an education blogger, she writes articles about tutoring, histories of various time periods in education, and teacher spotlights.

The Evolution Of Victorian Era Hair Care

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These days, it feels as though there’s always so much to do to keep your hair in top condition. You need to use the right shampoos and conditioners, the right protective treatments for heat styling, and more. That’s not even mentioning dying and cutting hair too.

Back in the Victorian era though, women were putting just as much effort into their hair, if not more. Over nearly 70 years of Victoria’s reign, there were a lot of changes to hair care and a lot of it is different to how you’d look after your hair today. Let’s take a look at what they did to stay fashionable.

The Longer, The Better

While styles did change over the years, it was seen that the longer your hair was, the better. You’ve probably seen photographs of women with long wavy hair, sometimes even touching the ground. There were even a group of sisters, named the Seven Sutherland Sisters, who were famed for their long hair. In fact, they has around 37 feet of hair between them.

They were a musical act in the 1880’s, wearing their hair down as they performed. They even sold their own range of hair care products, showing that celebrity endorsements were a thing even then. However, the bob came into style in the 1920’s, and they were considered very old fashioned then.

While the Sutherland Sisters wore their hair down on stage, it wasn’t the common thing to do. Little girls would wear their hair down, but women aged 16 and up were expected to put their hair up in up dos. ‘When women were photographed with their hair down, that was often to express intimacy within the photograph’ says journalist Lleyton Ware, from Brit Student and Write My X.

Caring For Victorian Hair

As women were growing their hair long, they of course had to take care of it. There were some modern solutions, such as giving hair trims in order to remove split ends. There were other methods though, that you’ll be glad were kept in the past.

For example, in the 1860’s it was common to boil bran in soft water, rub some white soap into the water, and then rub the mixture into the scalp with the corner of a towel. Women were often recommended to use egg yolk on their scalps too, to protect them.

Hair washing was recommended monthly, with ingredients such as borax, olive oil, and water. After you’d washed your hair, you needed to dry it out as water was thought to allow ‘disagreeable odors’ to arise from the hair. To dry it, you could brush powdered starch through it to remove that water.

With crimped and curled hair, it was important to set them so they wouldn’t come out on hot days. To do this, women would use a mixture of egg yolk and pomade to do so. It’s interesting to note that women’s bonnets were recommended to have oiled silk linings, to protect the bonnet from hair treatments.

Victorian Hair Styles Through The Decades

As the Victorian era was so long, hair styles evolved for women. Here’s a run down of what was popular at the time.

Usually, up dos were used as they were for ‘respectable’ women. The shape of the hair was important, as it would be taken into account with the rest of a woman’s silhouette. If a woman needed more volume, she would add false pieces made from human hair to create the look she needed.

‘Sometimes these hair pieces were known as “rats”, and were created from hair from the woman’s hairbrush’ says writer Samina Coffey, from 1 Day 2 Write and Origin Writings. ‘They would be packed into the hair, to add that volume.’

Hair was usually twisted into intricate styles, and the styles themselves changed over time. The sides of the hair were sometimes curled too. Over time barley curls, or ringlets, came into fashion. Up dos had padded sides, in order to match the width of the skirts that were fashionable.

As you can see, while a lot of Victorian hair care was very different to modern styles, there’s still some aspects that are relevant today. After all, who doesn’t love the idea of having long, wavy locks?

George J. Newton is a content writer, and business development manager for Academic Brits and Thesis writing service. He contributes to sites such as Buy coursework, too. His wife is his biggest supporter when it comes to his writing.

Victorian Hosting & Home Etiquette Still in Use Today

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When most people think of the Victorian era, proper etiquette and manners are some of the first things that come to mind. Many of the etiquette standards set in that era are still in use today and hold cultural relevance.

Of course, some things have changed. But, it’s interesting to see the influence the Victorian era had on the things we consider normal today, especially when it comes to hosting and basic etiquette.

So, what are some of the lessons that have stood the test of time? Everything from how you greet and treat your guests to how your home is decorated has a deeper background than you might realize.

With that in mind, let’s dive into this interesting section of history.

The Host With the Most

Entertaining guests and hosting dinner parties are standard practices today. Whether you’re getting your extended family together for a meal or inviting friends over for something more upscale, certain things make for a good host/hostess, including:

  • Making sure everyone is comfortable
  • Being prepared
  • Making your home visitor-friendly
  • Helping everyone find what they need and get around
  • Making everyone feel welcome
  • Taking care of everyone’s dishes and offering refills for individual glasses

Invitations are still the norm in many cases, too. That’s something that goes well beyond the Victorian era, but one thing that has changed is the casual nature of invites. In the Victorian age, invitations had to be formal, or they weren’t taken seriously. Today, it seems like creating an online event is enough to get more people to attend your event. Setting a date and time and explaining what to expect in your invitation is proper etiquette and can get more people to attend your event. But, it’s interesting to see how the formalities have changed.

If you’re a guest at a party, there are also things expected of you – many of which stem from the 1800s, including:

  • Letting your host know how long you’ll be staying
  • Bringing a gift
  • Conforming to “house rules”
  • Lending a hand
  • Being grateful

When it comes to how to be a good host or guest, many of your actions will reflect on proper etiquette. So, how has that changed since the Victorian age? What has stayed the same?

Mind Your Manners

It’s easy to assume people had better manners in the 1800s, but so many of the etiquette rules put in place during that era are still used today. Some of those rules, especially when it comes to attending events, include:

  • Not coming by unannounced
  • Dressing for the occasion
  • Being your best self in front of others
  • Striking up conversations

That said, some basic etiquette rules have changed dramatically over the years. It’s rare to see a gentleman “bowing” to a lady in the street these days. According to the 1875 publication the Manual of Social and Business Forms, this type of bowing was acceptable. But, it also might cause rumors and gossip to start.

Interestingly enough, that same manual takes a somewhat criticizing tone when it comes to small talk, suggesting that “no topic of absorbing interest may be admitted to polite conversation” for fear that it might cause discussion. Imagine if that rule still rang true today! No one would have to worry about heated political debates at their next dinner party. Perhaps it’s a rule that should come back around!

Hosting and Houseplants

When you’re hosting a get-together, you want your house to be clean, decluttered, and accessible for everyone. Most people also put a bit of extra effort into making it feel “homey” and decorated the way they like.

In recent years, there has been a boom in houseplant popularity when it comes to home decor. The COVID-19 pandemic caused another rise in plant-palooza as people were spending more time at home and got into new hobbies and endeavors. There are actually many benefits to bringing nature indoors. It helps to reduce stress, improve air quality, and boost your mood. Plants are also a great way to make people feel more comfortable and welcome in your home.

But, plant fever is nothing new. It was going strong in the Victorian era, with certain exotic plants seen as prized possessions – many only fit for royalty. If you live in a small home or apartment today and you have plenty of plants, know that once upon a time that would’ve been a prominent status symbol!

Whether it’s decorating, hosting, or simple etiquette and manner lessons, the changes and similarities between today and the Victorian era are interesting to look at. So much of what was done in the past is still relevant today. Even though some of those old rules have fallen away, they have undoubtedly influenced our culture, society, and the way we interact with each other.