The Secret Angel Project

  I took this photo a year or two ago.   It's of a worn angel bust on my bottom step. I bought it many years ago from a plant nursery for just $5 because a corner of it's wing was missing.   As someone who was drawn to things reminiscent of a French life long before I even knew the word 'Francophile', I had to have it.   Well he/she has resided on my bottom front doorstep ever since, acquiring an aged patina that bloggers the world over attempt to mimic with glue, paint and effort. Don't they know that you can just put new things outside and they wear and age naturally??   I then enhanced the photograph a little and looked up the verse, to add to my blog here a while back.   I received so many emails about both the photograph and the sentiment of being kind to strangers that I've now turned it in to a postcard. That in itself is not special. But what I do with the postcards, is.   I have a few of these in my handbag at all times.   If I am somewhere in the course of my day, and I see a frazzled Mum, a lonely elderly person or a staff member in a café` or store who is run off their feet, I leave one of these for them. I then sit back and watch from a distance, what sort of reaction it generates.   Sometimes I don't get to see. Sometimes I just slip it into a Mums shopping trolley, or leave it in an empty one. I've left them on counters where I had no intention of shopping just because I thought it might brighten a persons day. I frequently leave them on tables in coffee shops for the staff to find if I think the service has been extra special. But then I'm gone.   Just sometimes though, I see their face. 99% of the time, the reaction is first one of irritation. They think it's advertising material. Then, as they realise it isn't, they turn it over in their hand, looking for some sort of identifying mark. When there isn't one, they often look bemused, amused, puzzled or utterly thrilled depending upon their nature, I guess. I'd love to know how it impacts on them, but I won't ask. That's not part of the fun.   It's something I'm doing not for what I get out of it, but for what others do.   Would you like some of my postcards to start your own Secret Angel Project?   If you leave me a sweet comment and somewhere to find you, I'll make it my business to send you a couple of mine to get you started.   From there, it's up to you!   ...Mimi...  

Real Dance Moms #3....

 

My darling girl made me so happy yesterday.

 

It was still only March, and she said 'I can't wait for concert'.

 

And she meant it.

 

She didn't just mean I can't wait to be on stage, or I can't wait to learn a new dance, or I can't wait to see my costume. Which has mostly been the extent of things when looking forward to Annual Concert. Annual Concert by the way, is seven months away :)

 

She meant she loves the whole process. The weekends of rehearsals and dress rehearsals and theatre rehearsals that seem to stretch out forever, the sausage sizzles and neon coloured ice creams in a cone, the lounging around with her friends between items in prickly costumes, and even the part where she helps with the little ones.

 

We've never loved the process of concert as much as we do at our current studio. Usually the weeks and months leading up to concert have been so fraught with stress and tension and financial burden that 'I can't wait' was usually a sentence that ended with 'for it to be over'.

 

Concert is held at the premiere venue in our city and is a really big deal, so don't think that it's not taken seriously. The costumes are all as gorgeous as anything else we've seen, so don't think that as much care and attention isn't given to how the dancers look. The choreography is as dreamy and technically perfect as you might expect from dancers in their teens at any other studio, so don't think we're suffering in expertise. And every dance style is represented, so don't think that the content is lacking.

 

It's just different.

 

It's fun.

 

People laugh at rehearsals and no-one gets ticked off because they forgot to stitch some random sequin on a costume. No-one gets hysterical if a dancer is ill and misses a rehearsal. No-one yells. No-one.

 

When did striving for perfection become a necessity at 4 or 14? When did a teachers desire to make a name for themselves, outweigh the fragile self esteem of a teenager on the brink of young adult life? When did dance for fun, become dance to exhaustion to get it perfect?

 

The plethora of dance schools in our city who now offer 'full time' is mind boggling. Where are these students going to earn their keep? It sure as heck isn't here. How many will be disappointed when their dream is not fulfilled? How many will earn a sub standard wage and live in sub standard conditions, just to be able to say 'I danced for a living'?

 

I don't get it.

 

I say let the kids dance for the love of it. Accept the reality of limited opportunities for careers in dance. Allow your child to embrace dance for the creativity, the passion, the physical fitness and the camaraderie that suddenly emerges when competition is taken out of the equation.

 

Let them look back in ten or fifteen years and be able to say..... 'I LOVED dance. I couldn't wait for concert each year.'

 

...Mimi...

 

 

 

French inspired corset for outerwear....under $20!

 

So this girl child of mine, who dances and has a love of frivolous fashion beyond the utilitarian fluoro tops and bottoms and galaxy leggings (shudder), has developed a love affair with a store here called Kitten D`Amour. They were once called 'Sex Kitten' and clearly felt that the French interpretation lent some respectability to their name!

 

They specialise in French inspired girly dresses, Rockabilly pretties, vintage style prints and silks and satins to die for in petticoats and underthings.

 

They also do these corsets. The whole underwear as outerwear idea has come full circle. Gosh be darned if I didn't go out dancing in a few Torsolettes in my time. Well, that's what we called them back then.

 

But alas, Mum and Dads bank account cannot possibly sustain multiple visits to Kitten D`Amour, so Mum has had to find a workable replacement.

 

Enter the embellished corset. This little morsel came in plain black with black lace and satin bows and was just $12. It took what felt like 3 years to get here, but in fact we had it in our hands in about 3 weeks.

 

 

Some slim wisps of white lace to inject a bit of innocence, some red satin and a smattering of sequins for contrast, with a sweet cameo as centrepiece. and we've turned our corset into something a little more ladylike. The final touch of white ribbon on the front panel to simulate stripes, and satin ribbon for a halter neck effect, turns this into something worthy of a night at the theatre or a concert or two, all of which are on the agenda within weeks or months. The Girl Child (alas she really is a child no more...*sob*) will pair this with a pencil skirt with cute kick pleats, a little sheer shrug, and high heeled Mary Janes, and be the apple of our eye until she catches the eye of some pimply youth, which is, I have to say, inevitable.

 

This effect was astoundingly simple and inexpensive to achieve and it just goes to show what you can do with a hot glue gun and some stuff from the haberdashery department.

 

Oh, I am so thrilled to have a girl child after three boys.

 

Can you tell?

 

...x...
 

Bookcase tidy up....from Billy Bland to Boxed up and Beautiful....

 

 

Some months ago, with great trepidation, I shared a photo of my office bookshelves. Well, they were called bookshelves when I bought them from IKEA. Actually they were called Billy Bookshelf and IKEA sell gazillions of the things every year. Judging by the number of times a Billy Bookshelf makeover gets pinned on Pinterest, everyone else is about as bored with theirs as I was with mine.

What started as a neat utilitarian area for files, soon turned into a dumping ground for report cards, hot off the press letters from Politicians arguing that they shouldn't have to do anything for our disabled son because no-one else had ever asked them to and thus bereft of an answer for us that made sense, 'no' seemed the best they could come up with, vaccination records for the kids, the cat and a series of dogs, Harry Potter books that didn't fit into The Diva Childs expectations of Boho décor for her room and other assorted bits of nonsense that frankly, should have gone where my now much mourned Mr Christian shoes from the early 80s went...into the charity bin.

Well I dithered about how to make this better because I'm actually a bit of a bower bird and hate to toss anything away. Blame my single parent upbringing in my sibling riddled family.

Eventually a chance viewing of the Peters of Kensington website yielded these cute and Frenchy looking box things, labelled storage boxes on the site, but notated as Hamper boxes on their delivery carton. At just $3.50 each I now have matching storage for my entire house. And don't bother looking....I bought every single one they had. Sorry!

Then The Musician Husband was despatched with tape measure and other bits of usefulness, to order many shelves from the local cabinetmaker, to make sized-to-fit spaces for my new Frenchy boxes. Don't get these from IKEA if you're thinking of embarking on a similar tidy up....they're $10-$20 there depending upon which part of the world you live in. The same shelves from the local kitchen bloke were just $3.50 each. Thankyou Mr Kitchen Bloke.

So stuff was tossed, crafty bits reorganised by project, colour, type, and stage of progression...clearly none of which was 'finished'...and other bits from around the house repurposed to mingle with my new stylish, neutral corner.

Look, it's not BHG or Vogue, alright?

But frankly it's a good old stab at an old fashioned cleanup and I'm quite proud.

  Add some dreamy ostrich plumes and some dangly tassels, below, and we're done, I think.   I left the distinctly British framed pen and ink of Victoria Embankment where we disembarked from the Thames Clipper daily on our last visit to London, where it was, because it's a for-real one, not a print, and cost us a bomb. It's earned it's spot, even if it's not a bit Frenchy looking. And it's a heck of a lot more classy than one of those snow globe things with the London Eye in it.  

 

Now which of those identical boxes has my blasted knitting in it? I haven't got around to my clever labelling with bits of balsa wood and olde worlde stamped letters yet so I'm a bit lost.

 

But like everything, it'll happen.

 

Amazing what you can do with a few fancy boxes, feathers and Frenchy Frou-Frou, isn't it?

 

...Mimi...