My friend Herman

Last week, one of my lovely neighbours knocked on the door and presented me with a new friend - Herman, the German friendship cake. Not actually a cake, but a portion of sourdough cake starter.

I was so excited!  I'd heard murmurs of Herman's travels in the blogosphere, and I was thrilled that he was travelling through our little town and stopped at our place. 

For ten days, Herman sat on my kitchen bench beside my (still nameless) sourdough culture and my jar of fermenting carrots. I fed him a couple of times and watched him grow. He was a lovely visitor. 

Today was Herman's last day with us. He was divided into four portions and taken in the car to three of my friends' homes. He has lots more travelling to do still. He was welcomed with more excitement into their homes and has found comfortable lodging on their kitchen benches. (And I have three friends who were very pleased that I thought of them!). 

The fourth portion stayed with me to reach its destiny as cake. I opted to make my Herman spicy, adding to the basic recipe a good few spoonfuls of ginger, a spoonful each of cinnamon, cloves and mixed spice, a couple of tablespoons of golden syrup and a cup of sultanas.  (I failed to add bicarb soda though, so my cake turned out short, but still rose due to the natural yeasts, enough to make it light)

Herman was baked and is now being eaten. Such a delicious friend to have!

I opted to not keep a portion of Herman for future cakes - he's a travelling kind of guy and I didn't think it would work to have him boarding here full time. Instead we enjoyed him thoroughly for the time we had him and wish him well on his travels. If he stops past your place, please say hi from us!

For more info on Herman, visit his website www.hermanthegermanfriendshipcake.com. The site has recipes and info and even tells you how to make a starter from scratch, but I reckon it's more fun to wait for him to come knocking on your door. 

Lunching with ladies

Six ladies, three babies.

A table set with the good china and linen. 

A little vase of violets and scented candles burning. 

Delicious homemade rolls, wraps, savoury pastries, cheese, slices, cakes. 

Pots of tea and chai. 

Rain on the roof, steamy windows from chatting women. 

Recipes and parenting tips exchanged. 

New friendships formed, old ones strengthened. 

It was ladies lunch at my place. A beautiful way to spend the afternoon with some of my beautiful friends. 

Life here

It's occurred to me that I haven't posted anything in some time. It's not that I don't have anything to say, just finding the time is hard. So while my chai brews, the bread rises and the rain falls down, I'm taking time for an update.

Belly dance camp is finally nearly here. There has been a lot of work involved - room allocations, workshop allocations, last minute cancellations and bookings, tshirts to be printed, stalls to arrange, food to decide on and soon to be cooked, performances to organise and my own students readying themselves for performing. Not to mention preparing my family and home for a weekend without me. But I'm so excited and really looking forward to a weekend full of dancing, girly fun and all that goes with it. I'm feeling extremely proud of our little camp, which is not only great for me, but which is sold out and all of the other 49 women coming are also excited.

On the home front, the rains have finally come and I'm loving listening to water run into the tanks and watching my garden get a good drink. We started to put up the fence around what Stu calls 'Tracey's paddock' just before it really started, so I had a post to hang my rain gauge on. It's been fun to see it begin to fill up.

Mother's Day saw us back out there fencing. It's not a huge fence, but the idea is that it will keep stray critters (and passers by) out of my vegie garden/orchard and allow the ducks to free range in there without having them wondering out of our yard and onto my verandah where they get into the wheat and poop everwhere. Working out there on Mother's Day was wonderful. I was covered in mud and aching from the work, but my kids came out to help and prepared morning tea for us too. It was just the kind of Mother's Day I like.

Speaking of the kids, a couple of weeks ago, we decided we needed a family hobby. Something we could do together, all enjoy, that was a little bit healthy, not too expensive and that was away from home. We decided on bush walking. That first day we visited Tower Hill, a local state park. We walked for about 2 hours and loved it. This weekend, we visited Mt Eccles national park. We didn't walk as long or far as we had somewhere to be, but we all enjoyed exploring the forest and chatted happily about plans to go camping there sometime soon. We now have a list of places we want to visit and something we all get excited about for weekends.

At home again and our thoughts seem to be always drawn back to power. After much delay (and finally a very grumpy email sent to the power company by me) we are finally set up to be paid for the excess power our solar panels produce and put into the grid. We received a bill with our first (tiny as it had only been a week) credit for power produced! It's very exciting, even though its now winter and so we'll be using much more than we produce.

The other thing happening that makes us keep thinking of power is that our heater died. Our home came with ceiling ducted electric, reverse cycle heating. It's never been great, but this year it decided to simply blow out cold air. We could get it fixed, but since we're not happy with the system, it hardly seems worth it. So now we're trying to decide what heater/s to invest in, and in the meantime, using room heaters and only heating the room we're using. We're restricted to using only electric heaters, and don't have a lot of wall space, so the decision is challenging, and we don't want to rush in. Any advice? Other than use warm clothes and hot water bottles... We're already doing that!

We went out for a friends birthday on Saturday night. It was a fun night with beautiful food. It was the first time I'd seen her in a while, so we had a birthday present exchange. I gave her a necklace I'd made, and she gave me a terrific cookbook - one I'd borrowed from the library before and had thought would work well in my kitchen. I'm making the pea and ham soup recipe from it tonight and have used the handy book marks to mark some more recipes to try.

Well, my morning break is over and I have a list of jobs to do, so I'll apologise for this iPod written blog post (ie. no formatting) and get on with my day. Hope your day is a happy one.

Together

Having good people around makes so many things better. 

Not everything, we need time for just us, but many things are made better by the company of someone special.

A cuppa tastes better with a friend to chat to.

Digging holes is less like a chore when you do it together.

Laughing with a good friend is like therapy.

Watching a movie is nicer cuddled up with someone you love.

Sad times are made more bearable with a hand to hold.

An op shop bargain is better with someone to share it with.

We're social creatures, things are just meant to be done together.

I'm thinking about this because I'm planning a belly dance class for duets. Beginner duets that is - mums and daughters, sisters, friends etc who can come and learn belly dance together, because it is more fun that way.

I love dancing with my troupe mates.  All three of us is good, but dancing duets is special.  There is a link between the dancers that is almost physical.  A warm bubble around us that means that we dance together and feel the music together.  Most of my favourite belly dance moves are ones designed specifically for duets.

I started my belly dance journey with my mum.... something to do together.  It didn't last long, mum has a busy life and it wasn't perfect for her.  But it was fun while it lasted, and taking those first tentative steps into something new was so much easier for having someone to do it with.

Sometimes I think that's why I blog - it takes all of my little things and gives me someone to share them with.  Being able to share those simple things and knowing that my blog friends are going to enjoy reading about them makes them feel even better.

My boys are lucky.  They live with their best friend and do everything together.  They never have to go anywhere alone.

I feel very lucky too as I'm surrounded by wonderful people.  I have people that I can enjoy doing so many things with.  My hubby, my best friends, my mum, sisters, brothers, step mum, grandma and my dancing sisters.  They're all so different, and yet so perfect for doing all of the different things in my life with.  Love them all.

It's my birthday today....

"It's my birthday today
I'm older than yesterday
All my friends are coming over to play
And they'll all sing happy birthday..... To me"
Justine Clark, from my all time favourite kids album

Unlike in the song, there wasn't a jumping castle, or pass the parcel. But I've had a lovely birthday. I've been given birthday pressies from family over the last month as I've seen them - some gorgeous tea cups, books on using natural cleaners, a gorgeous soy candle set and some jewellery. Last night I celebrated with my intermediate belly dance students - cup cakes, dancing, chai and two of my best friends returning after a month away - perfect!

My three boys woke me up early this morning to present me with their gifts. A delicious homemade card (naw), a rain gauge (Stu promises he's done a rain dance to help out, but I still think 150mm is very ambitious!), some simple silver earrings and chocolate! Yay!

The sun shone all day and I went to have a cuppa with a lovely new friend who had made me a gorgeous nutmeg cake. Then I taught a belly dance class which both beautiful and relaxed and a great workout.

The workout was a good idea - I came home to another visit from a friend who brought me a homemade choccy cake, and then had time, amongst calls and messages from more friends to get ready for my family who arrived for my fondue party. When I turned 17, I had a fondue party with my schoolmates. It's 17 years since then, so I thought I'd have another. It's crazy to think that back then my mum was heavily pregnant with my brother and my sister hasn't been thought of. Stu and I hadn't met and I think I was going through a faze of not wanting kids. I was doing my final year of high school and I wanted to be a doctor, I'd never heard of belly dance! I felt so grown up and thought I knew where my life was going. Ha! I feel like a completely different person now, but still the same as well.

Anyway, I got spoilt with even more lovely gifts, including a fabulous bread knife, some homemade cookies in a custom decorated jar and an almond tree! Woohoo!

I had a beautiful night, spent cuddling my baby niece and my gorgeous boys, catching up with my siblings and even getting to Skype with my grandad in the UK with whom I share a birthday.

And now, I'm all birthday-ed out...... Happy birthday to me!

PS. Sorry for the terribly unformatted/typed on my iPod post - too tired to work if out properly on the computer ;)

So much Pizza dough! (and the recipe)

What could be better than sitting in your garden on a balmy Saturday evening with a big relaxed group of your friends and a cold drink in your hand?  All of that with pizza from the pizza oven of course :)

Having now mastered the skill of churning out yummy pizzas from our oven, we decided to invite friends around to share.  With a mixed bunch of friends around - workmates, belly dance students and local friends - we all got down to the business of making, cooking and eating pizzas, all while downing a few cold ones and enjoying the wonderful company.  The kids were up in the trees and the cubby house, chatting the the chooks and dogs and on the trampoline.  The occasional adult joined in the fun (back flips on the trampoline from one very energetic grown up!) and were delighted with the excellent behaviour of all the children. 

Before our guests arrived, our kids handed out important jobs to each of us.  I was on food preparation, Stu was on fire and cooking duties and they were the entertainment crew!  We all excelled at our jobs, if I do say so myself!  I prepared about three times as much dough as we needed, a stack of snacks and my share of pizza toppings, then, together with our guests who all brought along a contribution of pizza toppings, prepared amazing looking and tasting pizzas.  We handed these to Stu who, bright red and covered in sweat from the heat of his amazingly well prepared pizza oven, cooked them in a few minutes.  The first ones in the oven cooked so quickly that they burnt on one side before he could turn them!  But they all tasted good (and the chooks and dogs appreciated the odd crust that was a bit too charred).  The kids did a great job of entertaining the crowd - sharing and playing with all of the kids and occasionally chatting to the grown ups and giving shoulder massages later in the evening.

Of course, no one had time to take any photos of all of this fun, so I can't share any, but hopefully you get an idea of what a great night it was.

Sunday, we declared a day of rest and recuperation after a busy day and night preparing for and enjoying the party.  But my garden had other ideas.  With the fruit and veg ripening at a cracking rate now, I am having to pick, cook and preserve each day.  I peeled, chopped, minced, dried and bottled for most of the day.  It was hard, hot work, but Stu turned the split system air conditioner back on at the switch for the first time since October.  Air conditioning felt like such an indulgence, but with our solar panels producing more than three times the amount of power we usually use, and with us not yet being paid for any fed into the grid, we figured we deserved the indulgence.

Then, faced with huge quantities of leftover dough and pizza toppings (perhaps I did my job too well), we decided to get the oven going again.  This time, we made a huge quantity of mini pizzas that cooked beautifully!  They are perfect lunchbox size too, so after enjoying a couple for tea, I cooled the rest and put them in the freezer for easy lunches for all of us for the next week (and remembered to take a photo!).  Then, oven still hot, I cooked our first successful loaf of bread in the pizza oven (my secret being - cook it in the cast iron casserole pot to give even, moist heat), closely followed by my second successful loaf!  A dozen muffins and a huge nectarine crumble followed the bread. 

Mini pizzas!

With the store cupboard gaining another 14 jars of preserved food, the freezer full, lunches and desserts sorted for the week, I called it a day and took an early night ready for another day of heat and preserving.

I had a lot of requests for my pizza dough recipe on the weekend, so thought I would share it here.  It's from one of my favourite cook books - both for the recipes and the gorgeous presentation - The Thrifty Kitchen.

Pizza dough (serves 2)

(for our family, I make double which makes enough small pizzas for tea and leftovers)

2 1/4 cups plain flour
7g dry yeast (that's one sachet)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 cup olive oil
3/4 cup warm water

Mix all of the ingredients together until a dough forms. 
Knead for about 5 minutes. 
Cover and put in a warm place for an hour. 
( If I'm doing pizza for tea, I make this at lunchtime and put it in a big airtight container in the fridge for the afternoon.  It still rises beautifully.)
Take a handful or two of dough, knead slightly in your hands and then roll out to use for pizza.
(We roll ours out on wooden boards with a good handful of semolina below the dough.  The semolina stops the dough from sticking, allowing it to be transferred to the oven floor or a pizza stone)
Add a small number of toppings and cook on a pizza stone which has been heated in a very hot oven or BBQ for about 10 minutes.
(or on the floor of your stinking hot pizza oven for a few minutes!)
Enjoy!

Talking about making a difference

As we watch on the fire maps, a country is gripped in a heat wave and fires rage through. Mother Nature is thrashing and complaining again. She does that a lot these days. Like a toddler, she throws tantrum after tantrum.  Wherever you are in the world, you will have seen some of these disasters.  It's normal to have a tantrum sometimes, but when they are so frequent and so violent, something is wrong, something needs to be changed or the tantrums will only get worse.

Bushfires blazing about 200km from here, but close to some of my family.
Image from here

When we're given these natural disasters, our first instinct is to fight. Again, the toddler analogy works - as parents our first instinct with a naughty child is to yell at them and fight back. But all of you who have survived toddlers know that, in fact, the best option is to to be more gentle, to hunt for the triggers and to try to make life less stressful for your little one. And so with Mother Nature, her tantrums are telling us that life on earth is too stressful for her, she needs a break! And as the guardians of Earth, it's up to us to give her that break.

But how? The job feels too huge for our family or yours. But maybe it isn't. Every little thing we do to strive to help the Earth helps. If you turn off an appliance at the switch today, you've helped. If you buy less rubbish or reuse an item, you've helped. If you do a string of little things, you've helped quite a bit and if you can manage big things like going solar for your power or not driving your car, you've made an even bigger difference.

But the best way to make a difference is something I've learnt by accident over the last couple of months, and it struck home yesterday. You see I'd started to comment on the Grass Roots magazine Facebook page. Interesting conversations come up and I jump in to talk about things like cloth pads/menstrual cups, wee wipes, green Christmas ideas etc. And then I found out that all of my other Facebook friends can see these comments (oh the lack of privacy on Facebook is just scary!). I was pretty embarrassed. It is one thing to write on this blog or tell GR magazine about my use of these things, but I was mortified that all my work friends, school mates, belly dance colleagues, family and other friends now could know too! But then something amazing happened - a friend who had seen one of my comments asked to know more. We had a long and detailed (and not at all embarrassed) conversation about menstrual cups and now she is planning to get one for her and one for her daughter!  So now my changes to greener choices have not only reduced the amount of waste I produce, but have multiplied to much greater amounts than I alone could do. I've also noticed my family is starting to make a few changes after seeing our changes; people ask me about our solar hot water or our waterless toilet; people tell me that they think of me when they go to buy a disposable item, and you, my dear handful if readers, tell me that you are trying some of the things I talk about here.

So what is the best thing we can do to help our poor planet? We can talk about ways to help it!  We make little changes, then tell our friends and family about them and how easy they are and help them to make little changes too.  Then, maybe they'll tell someone, who will tell someone else,etc etc. A butterfly effect might just happen and together, our tiny efforts will become something huge.

So today, I'm not only encouraging you to talk to anyone who'll listen about little things we can do to ease the pressure we've collectively put on the earth, but I'm going to give you another little idea :-). It's just a tiny one, perhaps you already do it.

* if you cook bread, pastry, or roll out biscuits, chances are your recipe calls for you to cover your dough with plastic cling wrap. Don't! A damp cloth (a napkin or tea towel) will work just as well, that's what people did before they had rolls of plastic wrap! We don't use plastic wrap at all anymore, in fact. Items to be microwaved are covered with a lid or plate, items for the fridge are covered the same way and lunches use reusable boxes or bags. Maybe you could start eliminating plastic wrap too!

So that's my tip for today, perhaps it'll have a butterfly effect. If you're new to my blog, look around and you'll find more of the ideas that we do.

The blogs I read each day inspire me constantly - thank you to the bloggers who share the things they do to live greener, more sustainable lives. Here are a few great places to get inspired.

• Little Eco Footprints
• Slow Living Essentials
• The Witches Kitchen
• Urban Homestead South Africa
• Down To Earth
• Grass Roots on Facebook (or in fact, the magazine!)

(BTW, I read many more wonderful blogs, these are just the ones where I get the most "green tips")

Do you have a tip, just something small, that we can spread the word on? Comment below! Or, if you write a blog, pop a link below and link back here on your blog. If you know another blog that, like those listed above, is full of ideas, let me know that too so I can add if to this list (and my personal reading list). Lets talk folks, and work together to make a big difference.

Homemade Christmas gifts 2012

Ok, here it is, the long awaited list of gifts I made for family and friends this year. I've split it up so it is easier to refer to if you want to use any ideas, and where I used a tutorial or pattern from the net, I've linked to it for you. There are photos of some things, but not all. Wanna know how to make anything not linked? I'd be happy to help, just ask!

For Men

• Personalised photo coasters
• A mobile phone pouch (custom fitted)
• A crocheted beanie
• An iPod running arm band (from a sock)
• Fire lighter crackers (a wrapped toilet roll filled with a combination of coffee grinds, tea leaves and dried rosemary)
• Crocheted pass the piggies game

For women

• Crocheted bookmark with some secondhand books
• Crocheted bracelet/necklace/garland
• Crocheted beanie
• Crocheted slippers
• Homemade soap with a crocheted dish/wash cloth

For couples/families/unisex gifts

• A hamper with homemade coffee stencils and chocolate shaker, various pickles, Florentines, biscuits, vanilla extract and a crocheted ornament
• A homemade timber box filled with a variety of home brews (one with and one without a set if photo coasters), we dressed the brews as reindeer for fun!
• Homemade soap using herbs from the garden
• Crocheted Christmas ornaments
• Mini gingerbread houses
• Homemade PJs for the family (pants from re-purposed bed linen and the tops are made from sustainable bamboo and personalised with bleach paintings)

Kids- babies, girls and boys

• Crocheted hair clips
• Block bag and wooden blocks
• Crocheted baby head band
• Bibs
• Car caddy with street signs
• Angry birds game complete with sling shot and custom bag.
• Water bottle carrier from repurposed cargo pants and belt*
• Personalised calico sandwich wraps*
• Paratrooper softies*
• Crocheted cat and bat softies (bat was my own adaptation of the cat pattern)*
• Latch hooked rugs made from recycled tshirts (warning- this gift took 100s of hours of work. Make only for your nearest and dearest!)

*these gifts were used as stocking stuffers for our kids

So that's it! There were a few gifts on the to-do list that I ended up not doing, but will shuffle them onto next year's list. In the meantime, I've started hunting for new ideas to make in 2013. Did you make gifts? Would love you to share your ideas!

Slow living month - September

I know I'm 5 days late with this journal - its been hard to find the time and motivation to get here to blog this week.  We're on school holidays and the boys and I have been having a ball, and the weather has been great, so I've been in the garden a lot.  But I do love these journal type of entries, so here it is, Slow Living Month September.  Do pop over to Slow Living Essentials and see what others have been up to.... that's what I plan to do as soon as I'm done typing this :)

~Nourish~

We celebrated early spring one night by taking our dinner outside.  We cooked our tortillas on the BBQ plate and ate by candlelight.  We realised that early spring is really the only time you can eat outside by candlelight with kids - in summer it is too late by the time it is dark and in winter it is too cold.  It was a lovely, impromptu, weeknight dinner.  I love making our own tortillas, it is one of the few things that Stu and I cook cooperatively and I love it.  We are also now getting plenty of eggs, so there has been a resurgence of egg based meals and pancakes on weekends.

~Grow~

September in the garden has been all about preparing for summer crops.  I continued to plant and nurture seedlings in the cold frame and started planting out.  Unfortunately, snails and slugs are a huge problem here, so I've been fighting them at every step along the way.  I've continued to harvest greens from the garden and the snow peas are finally producing a few crisp pods that never seem to make it to the dinner table.  My son has decided that they are a snacking vegetable, not a dinner vegetable - I tend to agree.  I've loved joining in on the garden journal with Squiggly Rainbow too (and will be back on that when the holidays are over!).

~Prepare~

The coriander that has filled our curries with its colour and flavour through winter has sensed the spring and is bolting to seed, so I have picked huge amounts of it to make frozen coriander ice blocks using this recipe.  They're lovely and will hopefully keep the deliciousness going for us a bit longer.
We also continued to bottle beer and our first batch of alcoholic ginger beer.  The alcohol level is relatively low, but the taste is gooooooood!

 

~Reduce~

Lots of lovely op shop finds this month - clothes and books for the kids, crafty things, clothes and a couple of homewares for me and something special for Stu.  An espresso machine! It's not a super fancy one, but it works really well and Stu is enjoying his morning coffee from it.  He is not enjoying so much the regular requests for 'cinos (strawberry, vanilla, caramel and chai) from the rest of us ;) 
I've also continued to reuse and repurpose a lot of 'junk' through the garden for various jobs.

~Green~

Our challenge for last month was to do 'random acts of greening'.  We built (from recycled materials) a new compost bin; switched to bamboo compostable toothbrushes and discovered new ways to be just a little bit greener.  The kids also took it upon themselves to pick up litter when they go for their walks to check the mail or exercise the dogs - proud of my little greenies.  Our bamboo toothbrushes needed a bit of decoration.  They are all exactly the same, so we decorated the handles of them with nailpolish so we know whose is whose.

~Create~

I'm still working on my jumper that I had hoped to have finished by spring, but keep getting interrupted in its creation to make costumes for dancing, birthday presents etc.  And I have had to write a plan for the next few months of Christmas present making as the sheer quantity on the to do list was overwhelming me.  

Here are a couple of little birthday presents I made this month and was able to gift to the little girls they were for yesterday. They loved them!

A Tangled Happy Wand for a 5 year old friend

A little "spare pocket" handbag with crocheted decals.

We also started on the pizza oven, and are discovering creative masonry :) We built the arch to the base - so proud!  (photos soon)


~Discover~

The library loads have been huge this month and I was also given some vintage pattern books which are gorgeous.  On the reading pile are: Living the Good Life, A Katie Fforde novel, numerous books on building woodfired ovens, a couple of copies of G magazine and a book called A slice of Organic. 

~Enhance~

We had our Spring Hafla at Belly Dance.  I love gathering with the community that we've built with our little belly dance group.  We always have a great atmosphere and fabulous fun.  I was so proud of my own kids and all of the other Belly Kids and adult students who graced the stage with the crazy collection of dances I've been teaching them this year.  It is always such a pleasure to watch a student take to the stage for the first time and to watch the buzz they get from such an achievement.  I had numerous people congratulate me on the diversity and family friendliness of the group, I work hard to make sure that all women and kids, regardless of their abilities or body shape, size age etc are not only welcome, but truly included.  I'm really glad this shows.  I also love that I get to share this with my hubby and kids - special!

Some crazy Shaabi style fun with my intermediate students.  This style is representative of modern 'nightclub' style dancing, hence the casual jeans costume.  All just for fun really :)

~Enjoy~

I've enjoyed the first rays of Spring sunshine.  The first week of holidays with my kids.  Hanging out on screen free Saturday nights with Stu.  Having my stepmum visiting and taking her to meet Clover (and in doing so getting to spend time with my awesome bro and sis-in-law again).  A photoshoot with my little spunky guys before their school disco.  A family day at my mum's place where I felt closer to her and my little brother and sister than I have in a long time.  Dinner and dancing fun with my dancing sisters, including some time where we banned belly dance talk and just connected as friends.  And much more. A good month.

A visit to my home.....

I love it when people visit us. 

Sometimes its a friend who shows up unannounced.  These times they get to see my real home - the one that is a little shabby round the edges, with crumbs and pet hair; crochet projects, an empty wine glass and last nights earings on the coffee table; kids beds unmade and their toys and books strewn on the floor; and a basket of yet to be sorted washing or dishes on the kitchen bench.  I'm always a tad embarrased at first when this happens, but then I remember that if I was the unannounced guest, I wouldn't mind a mess in their home.  So I relax, wipe away the worst crumbs, put on the kettle and get out the biccie tin.  Work stops when a friend visits so we can chat and enjoy my home - warts and all.

Then there are the expected visitors.  These come with the bonus of prep time and anticipation.  They get a vacuumed floor; a tidy house; me in clean clothes with brushed hair; and food cooked just for them.  Everyone waits excitedly for them to arrive (my kids sit in the window watching for arrivals!).  Again, work stops, the kettle goes on (often more than once) and we chat and enjoy my home. 

We make a home for ourselves.  We put in it all the things we need for our immediate little family and decorate it the way we like it to be.  We cook the things we like to eat and live the way we like to live.  But when we get to share it, it makes it even more special.

If you've ever visited my home - thank you!  Know that your visit makes me feel special and that I loved having you here.  I hope you'll come again soon.

If you've never visited my home, but have stumbled across my blog some way or another - Welcome to my virtual home!  Thank you for visiting, it makes me really happy to share a bit of our life and home with you.  Please leave a little comment below so I know you popped by and by all means, help yourself to the virtual biccie tin! :)

One of the best things about ATS (AKA freaking out about dancing solo)

In the "spotlight"
(but the Alish right behind me)

I call myself a belly dancer.  I have studied and I teach a range of Middle Eastern Dance styles and think all of them are beautiful.  But if given the choice of what to dance, study or teach, tribal is my pick.  American Tribal Style dance (ATS) or Improvised Tribal Style (ITS) is a group improvised style of dance that incorporates a vocabulary of movements, each unique and (where needed) with its own cue.  A group of dancers has a leader who chooses the movements to perform based on the music she is dancing to, and the others follow.  It is a silent language and, when done well, the audience (unless educated) won't know that it is an improvised performance as the dance becomes seamless and stunningly beautiful.

At my dance school, Koroit Belly Dance, we call this style of dance MiTS (Meenkeel Improvised Tribal Style), and we study and incorporate movements from a range of teachers and troupes as well as adding some of my unique movements.  Most of the credit for our movements and education goes to Carolena of Fatchance Belly Dance and Devi of Ghawazi Caravan.

aaahhh.... reconnecting

Together with my troupe, the Meenkeel Gypsies, I perform MiTS more often than not.  It works fabulously in restaurants and parties as it fits into any space and, because it is improvised, we can work within the moment - include an audience member in the dance, move to a different space in the restaurant or (and this is the point I am coming to) duck out of the spotlight when we have a little moment of nerves or a mind blank.

Beauty in a small space

You see in all of these styles, there is a leader, but at any point in the dance, she can decide to change the lead, therefore allowing another dancer from the group to come forward and take over.  Leading the dance is the part of ITS that most beginner dancers hate - that moment of being in the spotlight and having to think of what to do, being responsible for the whole troupe!  But experienced dancers come to love the lead.  Being in the lead gives you a chance to play with the moves that you love the most, making the music work in the way that you think it should and therefore showcasing the dance how you believe it should be.  It also gives you a moment of "spotlight"!  Being up there in the lead, you can't really see the other dancers, so for a moment, you can imagine that you are dancing solo and being amazing doing so (OK, that sounds like showing off - but we're performers, we're meant to!).  So you're up there being awesome (at least you think so) and then you make eye contact with an audience member and suddenly your mind goes blank and you start to freak out...........  and here it is, the beauty of ITS .......  you turn that move around and there are your dance sisters, smiling at you, and it all feels OK again.  One of them takes the lead and you keep on dancing - seamless.

Dance sisters!  Love em!

I can dance solo.  I have done plenty of times, on stage and at restaurants and parties, and I've just signed myself up for another performance on my own.  I teach "solo" too - in all of my classes and workshops, I'm up the front of the room dancing and instructing on my own.  But I don't love it as much.  Without my sisters right there to help me out, the spotlight is a little brighter and scarier, my hands shake a little more and the butterflies in my tummy go crazy.  Solos are not my thing, but I'll keep doing them because there is a need for them, but also because they make me appreciate my dance sisters even more.