Par-eee Jaytem

 

Hark here, a reposted, lovely, short film on Paris.  Everything about this little movie is ameezing.  When I was 18 I went to Paris to be an au pair for a 4 year old girl and a baby boy who was born two weeks after I arrived.  I walked into Charles De Gaulle airport a gym crazed, small town teenager and came back to South Africa looking like a COD playing 16 year old boy.  All lumpy with a terribly short hairstyle (always take a translator when getting a haircut in a foreign land).  But completely and utterly besotted with Paris and all of it’s gritty, ancient, sophisticated beauty.

And I got over crazy gyming and discovered french ice-cream and pain au chocolat (in english that sounds like ‘pain of chocolate’, which is what it feels like when your jeans won’t close after 3 weeks of Parisian life.)  Yet totally worth every straining button.  Mostly I began to feel a different heart beat pounding through my blood.  Of buildings that had seen centuries of stories and of women so chic they were postcards waiting to happen.  Paris, I love you.

Wednesday’s Shadow Dancers

The post where Joburg is personified as Helena Bonham Carter’s character in Fight Club

Joburg, you are one unfathomable lady.  You swan around in a kimono made of oxymorons, laughing coyly as you blow smoke rings in our faces.  You give us the bad so sugar-coated in the most delicious good.  And gee whiskers, do we have a sweet tooth.  You watch us sit in traffic hour upon hour, all the while distracting us with the most spectacular sunsets.  We are hypnotically seduced.  You get your way.  We become frustratingly, helplessly infatuated.  Until one day, we wake up and realise, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, this is love.

Three moments of one schizophrenic sunset.

Another Kind of Wonderland

Three Ameezing Things about Finishing Work before Dusk:

1.  Your house has a life of it’s own.  Little, blue cartoon birds could be making Sleeping Beauty’s latest nightie in the lounge whilst you’re at work.  Who knew that for a tiny but lovely  window of time (between 5:10pm and 5:25pm) a sequined cushion repaints my walls with magical, mirrored light?

2.  Sunset walks in the park.  Just as ridiculously good as they sound.

3.  Like that scrumptious, first coffee in the morning, the evening crickets bring, with their weird tin-ny chirping, a tsunami of possibility.  A whole night ahead.  Where anything from womb like slumber to life changing adventure can happen.

Ameezing.

Flat, Sweet, Flat

My brother, The Ameezing Joel, and I are moving into a new flat at the end of March.  A little but super sweet space in Killarney that is in excellent condition, allows small dogs (yessssss) and reminds us alot of the big, old Parkview house my Aunt and Uncle used to live in during our childhood. I think it’s the wooden floors, wooden doors and thick wooden skirting boards that do it.  So I have been thinking about all things house for the last couple of days.  I love, love creating spaces.  A world that is made up of a collection of things so completely unique to that person and moment in their lives. When moving house I find it an interesting exercise to see  that some things suddenly seem completely unneccessary and that others have become a part of your life story.  And without them your home would feel like a book with pages missing.

I don’t normally post pictures from the web (there are many bloggers who are much better at that than I am).  But after going through some old sourced pictures for home inspiration I have picked out five spaces to share with you.  All completely different from each other but all with a colour, a texture, a collection, a feeling, that is ameezing.  Unfortunately I have had these images for too long to remember where they came from.  If you know, please share.  Giving credit where credit is due is ameezing too.

 

Entrance Hall Love

Kitchen Love

Dining Room Love

Lounge Love (Go the Rodarte Sisters)

Bedroom Love

A Parcel of Deer, etc.

My friends James sent me a Whatsapp (what is the correct way to say that? Whatsapp-ed me?!) yesterday that said, ‘The collective noun for deer is a parcel.  A parcel of deer.  Thought you would like that’.  He was right.  So began a conversation about ameezing collective nouns.  A skulk of foxes, a murder of crows, a journey of giraffes, a crash of rhinos, an ambush of tigers, an armoury of aardvarks, a shrewdness of apes, a bellowing of bullfinches, a rabble of butterflies, a clutter of cats, a coalition of cheetahs, a business of ferrets, a kindle of kittens, an implausibility of platypuses, a drift of swans, an unkindness of ravens.  How delicious.  I wonder if there is a collective noun for an ameezing collection of collective nouns?

She wore braveness like a wig and pretended not to notice if someone said it wasn’t real.

Let’s talk about braveness.  Boldness.  Living without apology or excuse.  I read (okay snooped) someone’s open notebook the other day and there was a quote that said, ‘We are as responsible for that which we do as that which we do not do’.    Hhmm, so being afraid and doing nothing isn’t an explanation for inaction? Darn it.  I have learnt an unexpected lesson from an unexpected source over the last while.  Doing what makes you happiest and yet for some reason feels the most impossible, takes sacrifice.  A letting go.  Of the secret joy that this thing brings you.  And of the fear that others will not believe that you are able to weave the tapestry of the thing that makes your heart pound, your face smile and your soul feel weightless with euphoria.  So, I’m donning my wig of braveness and hitting the catwalk, come and model with me.  The view is fantastic and the people all clap and smile.

Reposting a picture for a pictureless post.  Taken by Ryan.

We Can Party If We Wanna…

The Ever Lovely Lindsay Jane is a clever lady.  For months every time I was looking for ribbon, balloons, polystyrene boxes, wigs, glass vases, tiny teddy bear eyes, huge ‘Happy 21st!’ signs, a variety of Halloween costumes and just about anything else party related you could think of, she would say, “You should go to Flowerspot, they have everything”.  And for months I didn’t listen.  Until one day, I packed some padkos, jumped in my car and drove to Woodmead.  Holy pandas toenails, was she right.  And everything, but everything is colour coded.  It’s a bit of a drive from the burbs, but totally worth it.  High five Ever Lovely Lindsay Jane and Flowerspot.  You cats are ameezing.

Flowerspot – (011) 804 5143.  Shop 6 Woodmead Value Mart, Waterval Cresent, Woodmead, Sandton.

 

Got Glasses?

Aadil got glasses.  Gee whiskers, they look dreamy on him.  For the Team Jacob fans of Ameezing (you know who you are), here are some pics.

 

 

The Good > The Bad

It is ameezing how 30 seconds of a completely ordinary, partly cloudy afternoon can make your whole day spectacular.  These little guys must have just been waiting to have their picture taken.  I drove past, slowed down, lifted my Blackberry, they all grinned, I took the photo, grinned back and drove away.