Sprinter and Sprummer ...

... some botanical boffin has called for some additional seasons, so Australia's quite different seasonal shifts may be more accurately described. I quite like the idea although the suggested names are a bit naff.
It may not technically be Spring round these parts, but it so is, if you know what I mean.
These weren't here last weekend. These were. So were these. I do love this time of the year.

I saw George Michael on the train today ...

... I swear it was him, George Michael in his Faith phase.
Sure, his leather jacket wasn’t as bedazzled and he wasn’t wearing artfully-ripped jeans. Still, if he’d been wearing pointy-toed, silver-capped cowboy boots* I may well have screamed and fainted like a 1980s school girl in florescent socks.




*Actually he was wearing dress shoes with no socks, uggg.

These boots were made for walking ...

... well, riding actually, (being based on the English Jodphur Boot) but since I don't do a great deal of that anymore, walking will have to do. RM Williams, Turnout Jodhpur boots, much, much nicer that what I used to wear to pony club, hand-made right here in Australia, and likely to last me the rest of my life!

I've always loved ...

... red shoes, from way back in the very beginning.
This is just before my mum & I left New York, the shots were taken at the airport.Apparently we negotiated a swap, the other little girl and I, her shoes for my dolly.
Parents intervened, bastards.

Those shoes ....

.... would be more appropriately named "taxi to table" shoes. I wore them last night, thinking it would be fine, I would only be standing around in them, not travelling great distances.
Nope - I had to slip into my (also red - I'm nothing if not coordinated) sensible walking home shoes halfway through the night*.
Thank goodness for sensible walking home shoes.


* Still, they looked amazing!

I think this is called retail therepy ...

... This morning I was feeling very frumpy and old, not entirely sure why, I just was. It happens sometimes.
Then, after finalising a paper requiring diplomacy and delicacy* I was ordered by the big boss to "go outside at lunchtime"** and directed to "buy a dress".
So I did, first shop, first try on bingo. A bright-red party frock*** with lovely satin trimming (I love red), perfect. (Well, acutally, not quite perfect. I've had to do a little discrete sewing around the neckline so my boobs won't be on display for the vulgar masses.)
And on the way back to work I discovered my favourite department store was offering a 30% discount on fancy scanties (aka knickers & bras) so I got some - all flowers & lace, squeeee.
And then getting out required passing the shoe section, where there's a sale and a pair of shoes that exactly matched the dress****. It was meant to be. I am reliably informed by several colleagues that these qualify as FM Shoes. But since I'm a nice middle-aged, married lady I think I'll call them saucy minxy shoes. I'd hate to create the wrong impression.
And you know, I felt much, much better.





* I know, I can't believe it either!
** Having not been outside all week.
*** But not TOO party, I'll get away with wearing it to work.
**** No, I'll not be walking ANY distance in them, in fact I may have to be carried!

My boss has just "nicknamed" me ...

... the Shoe Pixie.
I like it. It's been noted on the whiteboard.

2 things ...

... 1. My boots arrived last night – so I’m wearing them today of course, I am liking them quite a very much.
2. This morning, on the wee train, I heard faint music. At first I muttered to myself about how damaging it is to ears, if I can hear what you are listening to on your stupid ipod. BUT, it turned out a man was playing the ukulele, occasionally bursting into soft song. A dapper gent in a nice blue suit. A chap who, on disembarking, popped his instrument into his backpack and began the march up Pitt St. I hope we catch the same train again.

I've just ordered a ...

... pair of boots, over the intertubies. Wish me luck.

Nimbus ...

... these arrived this week. By Joanna Rutter, via etsy.com.
In other shopping news, on Thursday I finally found (via a good friend who "spots" for me*) the perfect pair of grey-suede, mary-jane heels. I've been looking for years, since I saw a pair on a woman at some train station and was too shy to go up and ask her where she got the fabulous shoes. Friday lunchtime I come back from a visit to the podiatrist with the news I've got Plantar fasciitis with massive scar tissue build up, and with my feet twice the normal size due to a shitload of elastic bandage strapping.
Fuck it.
*spotting is when you say to a friend, "I'm looking for ....." and she keeps an eye out for you and reports back if anything is found. It increases the number of eyes looking for something, and the number of shops visited. The shoes in question came from I shop I didn't know existed and wouldn't have looked in if I did.

Heels ...

… I used to be able to wear them. But yesterday I wore a pair for the first time in, probably, six months or so (*mumble*interview*mumble*) and oooooh the suffering footskies. I had to slip next door to the chinese torture chamber for some emergency reflexology. This is a girl who used to wade through flooded streets, dash through paddocks and clamber through fire destroyed shops and things in her shiny patent-leather stilettos. My feet are getting old.

The only photograph ...

... from the office end-of-year party that I liked.Can you guess which are mine?

New Shoes ...

... I bought myself a pair of Birkenstocks on Thursday - I thought they would be a good summertime walking-to-work shoe instead of sneakers (which tend to make my feet over hot when the weather warms up). Some nice simple plain black leather jobbies. It was quite a shock, seeing my nekid feet again, they are just so BARE looking after a winter spent in shoes. A quick home pedicure took place that very night.
Now, the lady in the shop said it took a while to adjust to your new Birkis because they may introduce new movements to the muscles in your feet and legs. That's one hell of an understatement, my poor leggies are feeling muscles I didn't even know I had - I hope this is good for them.

I was ...

... a bit of a fashionista at 5 or so. My mum indulged me (over indulged me says Mr Brown, but he's a boy) because she could sew. All the outfits below were made by my mum.

Pink, teamed with brown school shoes (ugh) but you can bet my knickers matched my socks.

Lovely orange with gold chain and white gogo boots people. And what about the Globite shcool bag?

Rosebud dress with puffy sleeves, a pink wool over-dress and white mary janes.

Navy blue with silver buttons and those brown school shoes.

Mustard with heart-shaped pockets and those bloody brown school shoes again, no wonder I went a little shoe wild when I grew up. That's my china kitten, I must have been between real ones.

Pink woollen blackberry-stitch jumper and Piggie. Piggie was found when my parents were packing up to move at the end of 2006, he was more than a little moth eaten and went to live on a farm (yes he did!).
Up until I was in my very late teens I refused to wear jumpers made out of anything other than bebe wool, so all woollens were pale and colour-range limited (but very soft).

She also made me trendy teen stuff growing up, we'd go to the shops, I'd point out what I liked, she'd draw it and whip it up at home. (There's no photies, I was a bit moody at the time and disinclined to pose for prosperity.)
She also made the Brown-Mouse nuptial frock, and for this occasion I went all traditional and allowed a snap or 2.

I helped sew all those buttons on!

She's also made every curtain & blind in both Brown-Mouse houses, made boat nighties for Mr Brown's sailing boats and soft covers for ugly couches - she's pretty nifty my ma!

Organising books ...

... This

(pic thanks to ...)

rather puts my effort firmly in its place.

oooh, my aching ...

... feets.
After 2 weeks of pretty much lolling about in lounging pajamas and bare feet, I'd quite forgotten what it was like to wear heels. Ooooh, ouch, cute as buttons Bruno Magli Mary Janes they may be, but I tripped several times, my tootsies hurtski and I seriously regret not working my way back to returning to work in more sensible shoes.

I Like ...

... the colour purple.
I used to dislike it rather violently but now, I'm inordinately fond of it. One of my favourite pairs of shoes is lilac suede. I wore them today.
Why did I dislike purple? I think it may have had something to do with my father's mother, it was her favourite, and my mother who hated it. But I couldn't honestly say exactly why.
What changed my mind? Growing up I guess, that and a totally fabulous pair of lilac suede boots I had at 16 or 17 - I wish I still had those!

SNOW ...

Well the closest thing we'll ever get in Sydney, hail.The most impressive thunder-bold & lightening storm swept across Sydney this afternoon, we all stopped work for a bit to look out the window and watch it sweep in. Then the hail came, it bucketed down.
At day's end, looking out the train window on the way home, Mr Brown & I saw the ovals at Wentworth Park completely white with a blanket of hail. And Jubilee Park was all white too, with impressive mist swirling off like somthing out of Dr Who (& isn't the new Dr Who a cutie, yummy yum yum).
When we got home the back yard was pretty much covered too.
We made a hail ball.
And walked about making foot prints, it was several cm deep in some spots.
We even took Ping out, she was pretty impressed and scrunched about making tiny holes, nary a paw shake until she got back inside.
And isn't it pretty?

Spot the Motif

Available at & image from ...

Available at & image from ...

Available at & image from ...

Actually, these are MINE, all mine!

I own ...

... 22 pairs of BLACK shoes (that's not counting the ones that are red, green, yellow, brown, purple, blue, tan ....) I'm not sure if this is a bad thing or not. I don't sniff them or rub them all over my nekid body, I'm not a shoe fetishist folks, but perhaps you can see why Mr Brown found it necessary to say "not another fucking pair of black shoes" when I walked in the door not so terribly long ago.

Ooops - On further investigation I found 2 pairs of black ankle boots, one pair of black knee boots and a pair of black slip-on sneaker things with red stripes, so that's 26.
And just so you can colour me completely superficial ... I want this red dress, this $5485 red dress (oh gawd, yes, I read Harper's Bazaar, blush).