Recycling op shop crockery

I have a significant birthday tomorrow. It starts with four and ends with 'o'. I have decided to have a party. Cause I'm extroverted like that.

For my party all my guests have to come in something they have found at an op shop for under ten dollars. It has been pretty fun searching for an outfit - I have visited many of Brisbane's finest op shops and now know which ones are cheap and what the opening hours are for my local ones.

On my travels around the op shops I have been collecting crockery as well. It means that I have been searching through dusty piles of plates with patterns I remember from my childhood. I am going to serve my party food on crockery cake stands. My friend and I made them the other day - we stuck them together with royal icing so I can dissemble them after the party and return them to the op shop.




I am really happy with how they turned out. I'm pretty excited for my party!! Bring on tonight! I will try and remember to post some photos of the cake stands with food on them. And my spectacular op shop outfit.

our bookshelf in the wall

I thought I would write about a favourite part of our house.  My bookshelf.  I love books, and read QUITE a lot.  To support this habit I need fodder - books. To support the books we need shelving.  Since I was small I have dreamed of a floor to ceiling bookshelf.  Now I am grown up I can make it happen in my house.

About six years ago we decided to make a bookshelf along our corridor.  I measured (well, Chris did) and decided it would be too squashy to walk down the hall with a bookshelf running along it.  So Chris decided to take off the wall sheeting to see what our studs (up bits) and noggins (across bits) looked like.  Wonderfully, the person who had built our house made an excellent hardwood frame straight and true.  All we (Chris) had to do was sand back the wood and add some shelves, custom height made to my books.

The shelves are re-used timber from the stage at Festival Hall.  There's Beatle spit on that wood.   Chris also put white backing on the shelves so we weren't looking at the back of a plasterboard wall.  We put in some little lights to jazz it up.

Even these shelves don't hold all of our books, we have another five bookshelves lurking around the house.

I like how anything I chuck on these shelves becomes arty and like it is supposed to be there - can you spot the wool balloon craft from a child, an empty beer bottle, a gyroscope, Nan's crystal, and a tiny lego piano on this shelf?  Proof I took the photo just how the shelf is today - without tidying it up.

I like that my house is a collection of found things that have meaning.  Not stylish, but comfortable and interesting.

Like our bookshelf in the wall.

ladder in the kitchen

I found an old wooden ladder on council pickup on our street.  I dragged it home and said to Chris with eyes full of designer dreams - let's put it in the kitchen.  Lovely man that he is, he just sanded it, measured where to drill the holes for the screws, and mounted it.  He has also replaced the ancient wooden window with a new wooden window.  Yay. 

Now my (before unrealised) dream of having a ladder in the kitchen has come true.

Before ladder (old kitchen decorating - I had a theme of utensils everywhere)

After ladder mounting.  Fun times on a Thursday night.

I had to move my clock from one wall to the other.  My eyes keep going to where the clock used to be, only to be met with blank wall NOT telling the time.

Shiny saucepans all hanging in a row!

Not bad for a cheap way to spruce up the kitchen.
Ladder = free
Chains and hooks = $60
Saucepans = from my cupboard
Husband labour.....priceless....

from chaos comes...

In choir at the moment, in fact for the last six months, we are tackling Britten's War Requiem.  I am part of the Queensland Festival Chorus and we are singing this requiem in about three weeks.  I am still discovering bits in it we haven't sung yet.

When we first looked at it around Easter time it was a discordant mess.  Britten likes his clashy chords and funny rhythms.  I had my doubts it would ever sound any good.  I figured, well, it is all about war and the futility of it all, it is supposed to sound depressing and atonal.

Then over the last few weeks moments of beauty have emerged.  I will be sitting there listening to the tenors and basses rehearse, and glimpse what Britten had in his mind.  I hear the sopranos soar over us altos, meeting our notes then leaving them again.  The urgency of the Dies Irae making you feel unsettled and like guns are rumbling in the distance in a 7/8 rhythm.  The sadness of the Lacrimosa, weeping for the soldiers.  I feel like the choir plays the part of the ghosts of soldiers haunting the battlefield.  I use my spooky singing voice...

From the chaos is emerging tiny parts of beauty and order.

The poetry written by Wilfred Owen contrasts with the Latin Mass.  Some parts of the poetry are so sad:

Anthem for a Doomed Youth
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

and

The Next War
Out there, we walked, quite friendly up to Death,---
 Sat down and ate beside him, cool and bland,---
Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand.
We've sniffed the green thick odour of his breath,---
 Our eyes wept, but our courage didn't writhe.
He's spat at us with bullets, and he's coughed
 Shrapnel. We chorused if he sang aloft,
We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe


So my mind is resting on the requiem for many hours a week at the moment.  It makes me feel thankful for hope and eternal peace.