Dilemma.

Help! Friday night is the cocktail party at my daughter's school and I'm struggling with what to wear. As Polly says to Fanny in Love in A Cold Climate 'Do you think about dresses and hats all the time, even in church? I do too'. Me too......in those brief moments when I'm not thinking about who needs to pack what into their school bag, the precise timing of school pick ups and after school activities and of course the eternal what's for dinner.....etc etc etc. And maybe not in church.

So here are the choices.

1. The By Malene Birger ostrich feather skirt:

My immediate inclination is to dig this out of the wardrobe again for yet ANOTHER wear.....although so far this year it has already had outings to an 18th:

To the Glover Prize opening:

and to my friend's birthday:

Yet I'm still trying to convince myself that I could possibly get away with it just one more time as Friday night will be a totally different audience. And after all, two of the outings were in Launceston.....which is more than 200kms away in the north of the state. Hmm.

Then there's the predicament of what to wear with it? Maybe the transparent black Wheels and Dollbaby shirt and the fishnet tights might be a bit too much? Fine for a naughty 40th but on this occasion do I really want the headmistress to see my bra?  Although I could always wear a jacket.....

2. The By Malene Birger bronze strapless dress:

It too has recently been out and about in Hobart:

and was exposed in the local paper:

......yet you can't really  see the dress. The main problem is that I wore the exact same outfit to the mother's night.....at the same daughter's school. Again, it was accessorised with a black skivvy, black jeans and black jacket. So, I'm thinking that if the weather is warmer I could ditch the jeans and the skivvy which would make the dress unrecognisable. I'd have to keep the jacket....because it's not quite strapless weather down here just yet....honestly, it was snowing last weekend.

3. And then there's the sentimental choice. The Armand Ventilo beaded dress:

This was my birthday present the year that I turned 37.....in Paris. Sigh. It was hanging in the shop window just around the corner from our apartment. It was love at first sight. Most days we'd walk past and I'd draw my husband and children's attention to the fact that THIS was what I would like for my birthday. The problem was that in Paris they put the prices in the shop window and back then our exchange rate was dismal. One day Mimi and I ventured inside and tried the dress on. The shop assistant told us that I looked 'comme une princesse'....of course Mimi told her father who then had no choice other than to buy the dress. Here I am wearing it, on my birthday, in the Place Vendome:

After we had eaten this for breakfast, washed down with champagne:

And before we went to Le Grand Vefour for lunch. We had organised the babysitter months before....our regular babysitter, who lived just around the corner from us in Hobart, was conveniently going to be on her gap year and in Paris at the same time. Serendipity. Although in the days leading up to our reservation she wasn't answering her phone or emails. Panic.....even though we had literally bumped into her on the Rialto Bridge in Venice just weeks before and reminded her. Luckily she materialised and we swanned off to a sublime lunch:

I sat in the seat with the Josephine de Beauharnais plaque. She, of course, once had a dress made out of real rose petals. I don't. I have to make do with what's in the wardrobe, so do I go with the feathers, the sequins or the beads?

Rx

Out.

The night before last we got the babysitter in so that we could go out......yes, on a Wednesday night. We had an invitation to the Light the Night Launch. Sadly, Hobart isn't getting a walk this year, if you want to participate you have to host your own. I'm not quite sure how this would work.....with my husband and children out on the lawn in the backyard....the Leukaemia Foundation suggest that you can have a bbq. We are on the case though, Felix did a fundraising magic concert for the boys at his school on Wednesday and raised $36 to be shared between the Leukaemia Foundation and the MS Society. Well done Fe! His next performance is for the kinders.

It is like a well timed military manoeuvre getting ready to go out in this house......especially at 5.30pm. Needless to say, I am usually exhausted by the time I've fed and watered the troops, cleaned up for the babysitter and sorted out their bed attire and going out is the last thing I want to do......but then euphoria usually hits at the bottom of the driveway.

I cooked my stand by dinner that I save for such occasions......'Pasta with Bacon, Peas and Cheese'. A recipe which I bastardised from a Delicious magazine from about 10 years ago. The original also called for such ingredients as cream and a specific French cheese. My version bears little resemblance to the original as it has been pared back to as far as it can go. Mercifully, all of my children love it, even the baby. Here is the recipe in case you have plans over the weekend:

*Cook a packet of spiral pasta.

*6 minutes before it is ready, tip in almost a packet of organic peas and two chopped rashers of organic, free range bacon.

*When it the timer goes off, drain and stir through chopped parsley and grated cheese to taste.

*Serve.....and run upstairs to get dressed.

The essential ingredient in the recipe is the free range, organic bacon......because the factory farming of pigs is CRUEL. Last weekend a young animal rights protester spent 24 hours in a farrowing crate on the lawns outside Parliament House in Hobart to highlight the cruelty involved in the horror that is  factory farming pigs. Read about it here.

My delivery from The Outnet arrived in time for me to wear this:

The dress is strapless bronze sequins By Malene Birger....as if I could wear that out on a wintery night in Hobart....I had to accessorise it with a black skivvy, black Sass and Bide jeans and a black linen jacket from Asos as well as wrap a pashmina from somewhere in the Crawford Market in Mumbai around my neck....for extra warmth.

I spend most of my time disappointed that Hobart is so daggy. Yet there are places in town that can quite convincingly delude you that Hobart really is hip, cool and groovy....baby. After the launch we went for a drink at Sidecar:

This is one of those places, but seeing that it is an offshoot of Garagistes it shouldn't come as a surprise. And then we headed in the direction of Remi de Provence for dinner because coincidentally, Wednesday night is cassoulet night:

Can you tell that our foray into teetotalling vegetarianism is over?

PS I have tried to email JMAC, the winner of my Giveaway, through Google Friend Connect twice now.....to no avail. JMAC, if you are reading this, and I have every reason to believe that you will as you are a bona fide follower, please get in touch with me so that I can send you your prize. However, if I can't flush you out over the weekend, I might have to redraw. 

Rx

Preparation.

I have been on a roller coaster ride of 40th birthday parties lately. It makes me sad to think that everyone will turn 41 next year and the constant stream of invites will dry up. I don't know about you, but that's the only reason I check the mailbox....in the hope of discovering a party invitation.

I have an invitation for a 40th birthday party this weekend. The birthday girl has been texting me madly to remind me to get onto the Vitamin B in preparation for the aftermath of her party. I might add, this is the same friend who organised our trip to The Golden Door health retreat where we weren't allowed to drink alcohol or even caffeine.....for a whole week. We didn't, yet we did celebrate with bubbly on the plane on the way home.....I was cured of coffee, though. Today, I went into the health food shop in the village to stock up on Vitamin B:

Of course, you always have to offer an explanation and didn't I feel like a right royal idiot admitting that it was to ward of any excesses that may be incurred on Saturday night. I got the tablets and my husband and I took our first dose over lunch today. I wonder if it will work? Hope so. Will let you know.

Have been last minute workshopping what I'm going to wear. Am thinking I might go with my By Malene Birger ostrich feather skirt yet I don't think that the right top is in my wardrobe.....yet. So on a mission, I used the window of opportunity between picking up one boy and the next from school to whip into town. Being Hobart I got a park right out the front of the shop. I think I've mentioned before that I am determined, through on the job training, to make both of my boys able to do the whole ladies - change - room thing. Here's Tobes pulling back the curtain to expose me to the whole shop:

Obviously, he needs more work. I think I may have found the top though:

It's Wheels and Dollsbaby. This is how it looks on their website:



Utterly fabulous! Not the same as on me. Am pondering whether I should give it a go anyway.....maybe it would look better with a black bra rather than a black camisole?! Who am I kidding. Might go and try it on again tomorrow.....just in case.

R

Dressy.

So, this is what we came up with to wear to the 18th birthday party last night:

When you have four children who need to be fed and watered and pyjamed up before you can even think about getting ready in the five minutes that you have left, it pays to choose exactly what you are going to wear in advance.  Otherwise it would no doubt end up being the bathrobe and ugh boots. Not a good look.

When I say that I bought the jacket in Paris it is code and means that it has been in my wardrobe for a while, as I haven't been to Paris for eighteen long months. Sigh. This jacket came from a shop in a street somewhere between Au Printemps and Boulevarde des Capucines and is leather with 3/4 length sleeves and a black satin ribbon that ties in a bow under the collar.

The skirt is ostrich feather By Malene Birger that I bought online from Net - A - Porter earlier in the year to wear to the Glover Prize opening. This is what it looks like close up:

Needless to say it looks seductively tactile, you have to resist the urge to pat it. If you think this is the look you might want, then good news! This skirt has been drastically reduced and is now available online at The Outnet.

No sooner did we get to the party that I started coveting a dress being worn by someone else. It was a ravishing concoction of layers of white tulle, with black velvet bows on the shoulders. And it was being worn by an eighteen month old:

Isn't it utterly gorgeous? When I started raving my praise to whoever would listen, people thought I had designs on it for my own eighteen month old, yet I would like one just like it.....for me.

It was a fab party and I loved every minute of it. Look at the delicious food:

There were even two lads in the kitchen who did all the work:

Now prepare yourselves for the piece de la resistance.......the cake:

Wasn't it absolutely stunning? It was a real Marie Antoinette, let them eat cake, cake.

Thank you to everyone from whom I managed to elicit a comment! Happy days. It would appear that to attract followers I needed to add a link. Oops. Now that it's there (I think) don't hold back!

R