Congrats to Mystique for winning Sabraelle’s Garden’s ‘Princess of…’ Contest! Sabraelle’s Garden is a pretty little pixel art site run by the lovely Dalliann. Over the past month she has run a contest for other pixel artists to participate in and the theme was ‘The Princess of..’ so the artists created imaginary Princesses of everything from Pandas to Tea parties. The winning graphic shows the beautiful Princess of Winter.

I love pixel art and I thought it was such a cute idea for a contest that I offered to post the winner here! Please have a look at the rest of the winning entries they’re all beautiful!

Thank you to everyone who made suggestions for the International Princess Day! May seems to be the most popular month, and Louisa suggested May 5th which is Eugénie de Montijo’s birthday, she is one of the Princesses featured on this site so I think that’s a great choice!

Lets all celebrate it this year together! Maybe you would like to have a special day out to treat your royal self, go to the theatre or the cinema, eat at your favourite cafe, get a manicure or go shopping. Whatever makes you feel happy and spoils your inner Princess. Perhaps you might like to use this occaision to focus on something you consider particularly worthwhile, donate to a charity, have tea with your Grandmother, bake cookies for all your friends. You could even have a Princess party and invite other Princesses to celebrate with you! Wear your favourite dress (and a tiara of course) have a princess cake and play party games. Even if your idea of a real treat is a relaxing day spent reading and daydreaming followed by a nice bubble bath, celebrate your inner princess-ness however you see fit!

I would love to hear about your Princess days after May 5th, so please send me photos and descriptions! I think this is going to be really special, knowing I am sharing this Princess day with all of you

I would like to clarify my last entry a little, as I have recieved some criticism on the subject which may have been based on misunderstanding and poor expression on my part. I would like to first of all thank those who sent me their feedback on the issue, I have tried to email you individually in response to your concerns. I always appreciate feedback, even if it is negative, but I do not appreciate inflammatory comments and arguments on this site so they have been removed.

The purpose of the Princess Lesson - Dealing with Ogres, was about self defence against bullying. Unfortunately, bullying does exist and whether you call the people that behave this way Bullies, Rude People or Ogres it does not change the fact that they have a negative effect on others and that their behaviour is both uncalled for and offensive.

Using the term ‘Ogre’ was not a personal attack on any specific group of people, but a general reference to the behaviour of some individuals on certain occaisions. It was also, as many of the fairy tale references I make on this site, not meant to be taken literally. I apologise if it was seen as an offensive term to use by others, it was not intended thus but was purely in reference to the behaviour described. As an example, the word ‘Troll’ is often used to describe people who are behaving badly online, I am using Ogre in much the same way, but for real life examples.

I do believe that in this world we are defined by the choices and actions we make, and not everyone who makes a mistake or behaves rudely is a bad person, but that doesn’t mean that others will not be offended by that behaviour and I merey intended to make some suggestions on how to respond to such attitudes.

Thank you again for your feedback, I hope that I have managed to clarify some points that may have been misunderstood. I know that this is not going to please everyone, but I have tried my best to explain my choice of words. I apologise for any unintended offense I may have caused.

It’s snuck up on me but today it has been exactly one year since I made the first post on Princess Portal, 365 days, 174 posts and 757 comments later and here we are!

I want to say a big warm thank you to everyone that reads the site, whether you comment everyday or just stop by once in a while. I really appreciate you taking the time to read my little musings and contribute your own fascinating thoughts. I have recieved so many wonderful emails and ‘Ask the Princess’ questions, it has been a pleasure getting to know you and making some new friends!

The Princess Portal was started at a time in my life when things weren’t going so well, I wanted a chance to focus on the positive things that happen day to day and to record all my joys and treasured moments. I have had a fantastic year and I hope to keep writing and sharing in 2008, hopefully it will be even more fun

Much love,

Princess Skye

I have two new things to share today. The first is a new idea. Princess Days are days I take every now and then, days devoted to enjoying yourself and having a little bit of luxury and pampering, just for a day, to treat your inner Princess with some royal attention.

So I was thinking, really we all deserve to have a day like this once in a while, but sometimes we forget or we are too busy worrying about other events to set aside time for such indulgence. Maybe what we need is an official Princess Day! One day a year where Princesses all over the world can celebrate their royal nature.

If you like this idea, please help me pick a day! I think it would be good to have it not too close to christmas or any other big holiday so we really have time to enjoy it.

The second thing is a poem from Princess Desi, inspired by the Princess Code. I really enjoyed reading this, its so sweet and true, please click the link below to read Desi’s poem.

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I have just come back from a week in Albany, a small coastal town where I attended the funeral of the dear lady I mentioned earlier It was a beautiful ceremony and many people came to pay their respects. On the long jouney home I had plenty of time to think and decided apon a few changes I plan to make to the Princess Portal. I hope you will be pleased with them.

The first, and perhaps the least exciting change is that I will be placing some ads on the site. I shall try to make them as unobtrusive as possible, with no images and only relevant links. They will probably be in the side bar where they will not get in the way of your reading. I think it is only fair to prepare you for this and explain my reasons for it. As the princess portal gets higher traffic (and it has risen a lot of late) I have to pay more for my hosting, thus to support this I am going to try and raise a little through ads. Whenever you click on these ads you are helping me to keep the Princess Portal up and running!

Now, the other changes are far more delicious and I hope they will make up for the former! I have always used PP as a diary of sorts, to record my daily activities and thoughts, and while I plan to continue doing this I have been thinking for a little while of adding something more Over the next few weeks I will be reorganizing the portal and tagging all my old entries, as well as creating a few new categories for different sorts of entries other than my daily princess life. These shall hopefully include:

Princess Style posts with photos of my daily outfits and coordinates including information on all the items I am wearing. These probably won’t be everyday, but I’d like to do a couple a week.

Princess Profile I would like to share with you a little information on a favourite princess of mine, be she historical, fictional or modern. I hope you will enjoy learning a bit about these amazing ladies!

My Kitchen I don’t cook a lot (don’t expect these very often) though I do enjoy baking so I thought it might be fun to share some recipes and photos of the end result!

Inspirations I was meaning to make a new page for this, however I think it may be more fun as a new type of entry. These will be reviews of certain media that I find inspirational, movies, books, songs and poems.

Princess lessons A little different from the Princess Articles in my writings section, I would like to share a few practical tips on living as a princess, these could be anything from etiquette to how to choose the right shoes for a ball (glass is so impractical.) I hope they will be useful to you as well as a bit of fun.

Please look forward to seeing these new posts soon I can’t wait to get started!

You may have noticed that the “Wishlist” section of the site has gone, I have removed it because I found myself forgetting to update it and wished to make room for the new page I am working on.

I have recieved some lovely suggestions for the Princess Code lately, thank you! There are three new ones added that you can read here I hope you will like them. I would also like to start a link list of those who have adopted the code on their own site or journal, if you would like to comment with your name and the url of your site (where the princess code banner is displayed) I will link to you! You can also email me these details if you like. I would love to see your websites too

Visitors to my blog may have noticed recently that the site is loading very slowly and there are delays and possible timeouts for your browser. I am aware of the issue, and my web host has informed me they are have having a problem with the server I am hosted on but are working to solve as soon as possible. They have refunded my hosting fees for this month and have been very informative about the situation. If you have any other problems loading the site, for example error messages or downtime, please contact me so that I may pass the infomation on to my webhost. You can email me at skye(at)princessportal.com

Thank you for your patience and understanding

Thanks to a kind and generous stranger who donated to the Princess Fund, I was able to purchase a pro flickr account! This means I can organise my gallery much better and upload more pictures! If you visit the gallery page and click “refresh photos” (the little grey button in the top right hand corner) you will see the changes I have made. I’ll also be uploading some artwork and bento pictures later today!

Please look out for more changes to the Princess Portal, coming soon! And thank you again to those who have donated

This is my little home on the web. It is a wordpress powered blog and the layout was made by me from scratch (it took a long time ^^;) The character at the top of the page is Hinaichigo from the anime “Rozen Maiden” its a gorgeous little show, I really reccommend it. Hina-chan is my favourite character, she’s cute and sweet and reminds me of Miss Charlotte.

Please have a look around, the site is still under construction so some pages are blank but I will be adding to it daily.