48 hours of diverse diversions.

I have some bloody clever friends.

One of the cleverest is a composer.

She creates music.  Beautiful music.  Clever, complex, just really nice.

Not just songs, music, like classical with loads of instruments for orchestras to play.

Today we went to watch her host a kids proms event, a 40th birthday celebration for the Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra.

She was phenomenal.

The kids were dancing, the grownups were getting down.  We played air violin and did a Mexican wave.  Because she told us to.

My kids were in heaven because she made them feel like special guests (without playing favourites).  She got Issy (her goddaughter) up at the end for a special dance.  I hope having them there helped her energy.  I know this sort of performance is not something she does without a fair bit of internal angst.

I am way proud to have such a friend.

In other news, today I assembled a light purchased from IKEA in my $463 frenzy last Tuesday.  I bought nothing over $20.  Quantity over quality.  I'm not particularly proud of this, but now I've had the chance to incorporate most of the stuff I bought into the house, I see I was not completely bonkers in most of my purchases.

In fact, I think I showed admirable restraint.

Because it's very easy to be seduced by the IKEA influence of cunningly styled roomlets demonstrating the perfect use of the Stokke (hangs in the wardrobe), or the Socker (two set of vases), or the Kusina (toy chest with lid).

One of the sillier purchases was a funky orange light for the younger kids's room.

Before it's assembled it's made up of about 12 of these little orange suckers.  My heart sank when I opened the box.  

But the handy wordless IKEA instructions, enhanced by the added excitement of the word CLICK! (yes complete with exclamation mark) showed me just how satisfying it was to make my 12 bits of orange plastic converge into the required spherical shape.   

And yes, as the plastic stuck together it did sort of make a clicking noise.  I was pretty happy with myself when it worked.  It's now giving Josh and Issy's room a sort of inappropriate bordello like feel.

Nice.

Who on earth makes the instructions?  Their ability to transcend language and culture rivals the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in my opinion.  

Off

And On!  Yep...bordello.  

As part of my latest organisational IKEA fuelled manifesto, I also tried to rearrange the playroom, and throw out a lot of stuff we should never have bought in the first place.

And what I really want to know is, why have we got three Barbie cars?   Why??????

There is no good answer for this.  None.  

And finally I took a photo of this.  Because it's 5 minutes from my house and it's fucking beautiful.

Lucky, happy, grateful, not ever taking it for granted.