Polyvore is really totally cool!

Thanks to a Crafty Mummy who pointed me towards this website. I had many happy hours playing with backgrounds and designer clothes. When else can a girl see if an Alexander McQueen gown would match with a pair of Chanel earrings?  I have been happy to sit beside my lovely husband while he watches football to play with clothes and bags etc.

Above:  I call this 'Spring by the Sea'. This outfit would be perfect to wear to stroll through beach side shops. I imagine tanned legs, icy drinks looking for a great place to have a luscious lunch with someone cruisy.




Above:  I call this 'Shopping Anyone?'  Stylish, comfortable and versatile. Who wouldn't want to stroll around in this stunning dress?



Above:  I call this 'Doing the School Pick-Up', it is easy to wear, simple, fun but the shapes are all very classic. As those of you who have been reading my blog, know that black, red and white are my favourite colours to wear.


Do some playing for yourself at www.polyvore.com

The Coolest Thing

I  had a really cool weekend recently.  We had to be in BrisVegas for a variety of reasons and the bonus was we got to spend some time with good friends who had recently moved away from our friendly clutches.

I could list the things we did like; markets, brunch, watching old movies, eating cake and just hanging out...  But that wasn't the coolest part of our weekend.  The coolest thing was, I finally worked out what the coolest thing in the world is..  It is friends.

Yup, that simply:  it is friends.  People who share the journey of life and voluntarily stand on the side lines and cheer you on.  Now family is cool too, but they HAVE to love you - warts and all - that is their function, but friends, they don't HAVE to do anything, but they do, I love that.

I have an amazing little snatch of friends.  I hold onto them dearly.  We were thrust together by a haphazard coffee morning and have been inseparable since.  We have shared so much life together, that I think we are now permanently linked together, threads in each others' tapestries of life.  I could not imagine my life without them.

I have been going through a tough couple of months, for a variety of reasons, which are not cool to go into here.  Basically, I am always wishing I was better, thinner, smarter, healthier, smilier etc etc, but these three women in my life (and you know who you are, you gorgeous things) just accept me and listen and love me, and I think that is cool. Through my friendship with these three gorgeous women I have become a much better mother, wife, cook, friend, teacher ... well person really. I am so grateful that they are in my life.

But it is not just my relationship with these three women that give my life its coolness. I have lots of friendships and they all have their degrees of coolness; Friend #435 and I meet once a month for 'prayer' - our husbands think we just talk (pfft what would they know!), Friend #653 and her gorgeous family, share Easter with us every year and we have many catch ups through the year, Friend #198 lives in London and although she is oceans away, text messages and emails keep us in touch, Friend #878 is quite new to my friend list and is so refreshing in her quirky and thoughtful ways it challenges the way that I think and Friend #651 has grown children but shares her life stories and experiences with me.

I love that I have discovered the coolest thing in the world.  I also love that it is free, environmentally friendly, decomposes, comes in pretty packaging, sustainable, non-poluting and energy efficient.  But more important than all of that it is renewable; it will just keep going on and on.

Crumbs

When I started this blog, there were some topics I just did not want to touch on.  Firstly, I did not want to comment on children, especially my children, as I really don’t think I should be giving any advice, stories, findings or evidence that may result in me having my children taken from me. I would miss their cute little faces. Secondly, I did not want to write about cleaning. How dull. Cleaning is something that empty nesters or real grown ups talk about. I also wanted avoid to eluding to the lunacy that is intertwined in my thinking regarding this topic.

But, here I am, about to do something I said I never would. I am about to discuss Crumbs. Sigh.

I hate crumbs. Crumbs wreck a perfectly clean floor. They wreck a clean tablecloth. They work their way into drawers, cupboards, corners and cloths. They require more work to get rid of than I have time to give to the task. They blow from tables to floor, they are indiscriminate in their origin and can be made from virtually anything. They are also created by another thing I was not going to discuss on my blog - children.

One of the nick names for my five year old is ‘Captain Crumbulator’. She has an amazing ability to make crumbs out of anything. We have a little joke that she can make crumbs when eating yoghurt. She is a shocker. Can you sense the conflict I live with?

Now, I do love having a clean house. I know that this probably puts me further down the cool thermometer, but that has to be a reality I live with. I like to know that my house is ready for people to drop in any time - not that this happens in this day and age anymore. My mother lives not ten minutes away, that is reason enough to keep my house in some form of order! I have a little mental list in my head of the bare minimum to be done each day, week, fortnight and month but I have to be careful not to get too thingy about this as it kind of stresses everyone out. However, I do love a clean house.

I have been quite remiss in my cleaning for the last couple of months and I have a good reason. I have been pregnant and I have been working part time. This has meant that for the past 6 months I have been either sick, tired, aching, bloated, swollen or generally stressed pretty much the whole time in varying combinations.

Now, lets meld all these pieces together. 

1. I like a clean house
2. I do not like crumbs
3. I have not been cleaning
4. I do not have much time 

Of course you have made the connection; my kitchen drawers have been a disaster. I had put off cleaning out the kitchen drawers for ages, knowing that this is one job that just could not be half done, once I started it, I wouldn’t be able to stop until every drawer had been completely gone through and cleaned.

So, the day came when I could not avoid it any longer - I had run out of excuses, the crumbs were out of control. We had gotten to the point where I thought by putting utensils back in the drawers would make them dirty again.  It didn’t actually take that long to do in the end, and I was able to get rid of things from my drawers that I hadn’t used for ever and my children got some new things for their pretend play stash.

Feeling rather sorry for myself for being so danged boring, I vented on Facebook. My status basically said that,  ‘I would rather be people watching sipping lattes in a trendy cafe, than cleaning crumbs from drawers.‘ I was hoping for a whole heaps of ‘Me too’s but this is not the response I got. I got a whole stream of people commenting how cool it was to have a clean cutlery drawer. Or how cool a clean house is. One of my Facebook friends has since said that there is nothing cooler than a clean house.  So.....  I guess I am cooler than I thought!

There is a cup Friend #458 has at her house that I like to use, it says, ‘A dusted house is the sign of a wasted life’. I think this is hilarious, and I chortle away while sipping tea from it, secretly trying to track how much of my life I have wasted dusting and polishing, cleaning up crumbs and arranging my house. Years I imagine. Drats.

Then and now.... A Review of 60s Advertising

I had a great chat with my mother-in-law (MIL) the other day about make-up, clothes and hair, it was fun to hear her stories and really interesting to hear her beauty routines, in fact, I may even do a blog about it soon.  I have always been intrigued by the era when my mum and MIL were young women, it seems as if they lived in a time with a different set of social rules and expectations.  I love to compare different times in history to guage how much things have changed - is this dorky? 

Make-up and appearance have always been important to my MIL, as a young woman she would read magazines and make lists of items she would like to add to her wardrobe and what colours of eyeshadow and lipstick she was going to wear for each season (she actually still does this).  My MIL said that when she began working she knew she had 'arrived' when she was able to purchase Lemon Delph Toner and Revlon Foundation.  I wondered what it was about these products that appealed to her, so I started researching - I do love a good topic I can research....  I found a marvellous vintage ad website called Vintage Ad Browser - it is very cool - some of the ads are hilarious!  


I don't think I realised the 1960s were quite so glamourous....








They even made home appliances glamourous.....





Although tvs were HUGE!








Food seemed space aged - with colours and flavourings being big selling features....








Clothes were fabulous...  How cute are these dresses!





Hair was a bit scary....





As for underwear - yipes!

Make up was sophisticated and beautiful....

There are also hundreds of ads for cigarettes and feminine hygiene products, clearly something that was needing glamourisation....  Thought it best not to add them to this photo gallery... 

This project has really changed the way I view two women in my life who have shared their stories, given advice and helped me to realise the importance of my role of wife, mother and woman.... I love that my mum and my mother -in-law have kept a lot of the values of the 1960s but have adapted, changed, learned how to be true to themselves in these modern times.... In a way, doing this project, I am not as scared of getting older. I wonder what my girls will think of this ad in 30 years time....

  

 

Is this cool?

Homesick for London - sigh.....

I am having one of those days.... My poor husband has had to go out running to get some distance from me, my sighing is driving him nuts.  I am homesick for a place I lived in for 18 months, nearly 7 years ago....amazing, exciting, ever changing London. These were my glory days, the days of cool, the days of opportunities.....

Our life was so fun back then.  We would slog it out at work for the week and start planning our weekends on Tuesdays.  If we were staying 'in town', we would aim to see a museum, a gallery, have a fabulous coffee and end up either walking along the Thames or braving the pick-pockets on Oxford Street for some great shopping.  Or we would poke around Covent Garden and have a pasty, or Harrod's for hot chocolate or Notting Hill Markets for Chilli - food seemed to be our focus back then!  We would arrive home exhausted and dusty from a day hopping on and off Tubes or walking around Hyde Park, in time to watch CSI Miami with take-away in hand.

If we were heading 'out of town', such as Paris, Brussels, Rotterdam or Stratford-Upon-Avon, we would get up early, have a 'Little Chef' or Tesco or airport breakfast and spend the day following our feet from coffee shops to fashions shops to museums to galleries to pubs and then start over again.  It was great.

When we went to a museum or art gallery, we had a set plan that was not deviated from.  Firstly, we would get a map from the information counter, then head straight to the coffee shop.  While scoffing cakes and coffee, we would decide which things we would like to see and cross reference these with the Lonely Planet guide, which took more time, so therefore more coffee would have to be purchased.  We then worked our way through the displays only seeing the things that really interested us.  This tradition became quite a sport, in fact, when we went to the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam we only had a small window of time to look around, so we decided to use the Museum's Guide of the Top 10 things to see.  This resulted in us sprinting through the galleries, much to the delight of large groups of children on school trips.  Night Watch by Rembrandt- Check, Famous Doll Houses - Check, Funny mummified things - Check.  It was a hoot!  I am determined to get back there one day to do the museum justice, it is magnificent and I am sure well worth a more measured approach to looking around.

I have to sometimes stop myself from thinking about these days too much because it makes me sad and a bit depressed really.  My life is so totally completely different that the juxtaposition of my two lives leaves my head spinning.  I spend most of my time now either preparing meals - sigh-, cleaning a house - sigh-, trying to entertain and discipline children - sigh- and trying in vane to keep up with the washing - sigh -, not to mention my pursuit of cool - double sigh-.

I then feel very uncool because I actually have a lovely life.  My husband is gorgeous, kind, funny and smart.  My children are divine, beautiful and so so charming.  I have beautiful, clever friends, loving, quirky family and a job made just for me.  My house is lovely and I have been able to see over lots of renovations, which has been so much fun.  I have been overseas in the last year and have been to Sydney and the beach and spent days eating fancy food with my aforementioned lovely, clever friends.  I should be exceedingly happy.

But on the days when the leaves are gone, the clouds are grey, the weather is bleak and temperature drops, it makes me homesick for my life in London.  I guess I will always feel this, and this makes me happy-sad.  Happy because I have those memories and have been so blessed to have had the opportunities I have had, and sad because life changes and eventually one has to realise that one has to grow up.

As I finish this post and ponder where this leaves my homesick heart, my five year old is pretty impressed that she can fit a whole Chicken Crimpy cracker in her mouth whole - I wonder if I can?  Yep, cool, I have impressed a five year old.  I guess there are new things to look forward to....

Cool Website: Urban Dictionary

 The Urban Dictionary is very cool.  I love the colloquial language it uses.  Just for interest sake - (hmmmm... not sure if reading a dictionary is technically 'cool') - I looked up 'cool'.  Here is what is says...

The best way to say something is neat-o, awesome, or swell. The phrase "cool" is very relaxed, never goes out of style, and people will never laugh at you for using it, very conveniant for people like me who don't care about what's "in." Homestar is cool. The Red Sox are cool. Twinkies are cool. A word to use when you don't know what else to say, or when you are not that interested in the conversation. Sometimes, it can be used when you do not have any knowledge of the subject, yet you want to act as if you know-it-all. Mary: "I saw a very cute kitten just now!"  An adjective referring to something that is very good, stylish, or otherwise positive. It is among the most common slang terms used in today's world. Your computer is very cool. Okay, so according to this, I have a ways to go to being cool.  Although, I can relate to the second definition - I really don't know a lot about things, so the word 'cool' is quite common in my vernacular. Some words from the Urban Dictionary that I am going to work at making cool are: Numpty Writering You wastin' my minutes  (This one is a wee bit naughty, but thought I could add it to my teacher repetoire of sayings - alongside, "Well, that is five minutes of my life I will never get back".) I just love words, if you find any other funny words in the Urban Dictionary - I would love to check them out....  Oooh, ooh, just found another word for you to check out.... 'a crapella'  tee hee heee......

Reader Question: What Makes Cons so cool?

Thanks to Friend #194 who asked a question that I thought I would attempt to answer in a blog post. In my post about "What is always cool", I mentioned Converse sneakers. Her question to me was whether it is just marketing that makes Cons cool - she asked what the difference between a K-mart remake and the real thing are in relation to their 'coolness'? I have been a-pondering.

I get what she is saying, sometimes wearing the right item can be enough. But, I have to say, that people care about brands, whether we like it or not. I had the privilege of heading off to school camp, (being pregnant in a sleeping bag is an interesting debacle...) I wore my silver Chucks and the kids noticed. Students who had never spoken to me before mentioned my shoes... Converse sneakers are cool right now. But here are my thoughts on Friend #194's questions...

Firstly, I have been reading quite a bit about style lately. I am sure it is uncool to go to the town library and seek out books on style, but that is where I found some great books filled with tidbits of advice on making a wardrobe timeless and functional. I also learnt a lot of hogwash about owning only certain items in certain shades, and how to store fox stoles - on fox, I say! But something rang out, you never regret buying quality, I have found this time and time again. I have been suckered by the sale rack at Target and bought zany fashion items for $3.44 because they were such a bargain, but these items were doomed to Lifeline from the time of impulsive purchase. On the other hand, there have been times when I have bitten the bullet and paid a wee bit more for a quality item, to then have something that lasts and lasts and stays in great condition for more than a season. I have had my Chucks for well over a year and they have been to Tonga and New Zealand, I wear them with shorts and jeans and they are still looking pretty new.

Secondly, I have also mentioned this before in older posts, cool things have a story. Converse began as an independent company, sometime around 1908, wanting to make a product that didn't follow the crowd but stayed true to its brand. During WWII they made shoes and apparel for American servicemen. They have redesigned their shoes many times and have been able to make basketball shoes a fashion accessory for basketball players, rock & roll stars, students, and of course, cool mums dropping kiddies off to school.

Thirdly, being individual is cool. Friend #286 has a pair of hand painted Pumas - cool because they are so unique (he is also cool by the way, not just his shoes). Friend #612 is cool because she loves op-shopping and wears a mini dress as a maternity skirt - she sees possibilities in things. Being an individual is something we all strive for and I can't help but wonder if buying imitations of things made by major corporations takes away some of the shoe's intended individualism. I think that there is a time and a place for quality, story and individualism. Some cool people out there wouldn't think Converse shoes fit this criteria. Does Converse tick all the cool boxes for you in this instance? Dunno, but for me, it does. I think they are cool.

"And there you have it - for now... The best stories are the ones that don't end - the ones you just keep adding to and adding to - all the while marveling at the creative, disruptive, optimistic, courageous ways things evolve from being what they were, to what they are, to what they will become." This is the final sentence from the 'Heritage' section on the Converse Website... Who wouldn't want to say this about their life? Cool, very cool.

Check out the Converse Website (its cool) at: Converse Aus/NZ