.the princess portal.

I am in love with some of the spring fashions coming out this year, big soft florals, romantic shades of pink, cream and green, gorgeous flared skirts and lots of pretty accessories! Today was my day off, and I made the most of this perfect autumn weather by getting up early for a long walk by the river. Its still just cold enough in the morning for my breath to form little clouds and the mist to roll in over the river. It was a lovely change to my usual afternoon walks, I got to hear the dawn chorus and watch the ducklings feeding.

I had a few errands to run in the city today, all of the pleasurable variety! I had lunch with a friend at the lovely Secret Garden cafe, its tucked away in to a little alley courtyard surrounded by potted trees. The atmosphere is really nice and the food was delicious too! I’m looking forward to summer and eating a lot more fresh foods, salads and lots of fruit! I have been buying punnets of strawberries every week since they came in to season.

The rest of the afternoon was spent window shopping. I have a few events I need new dresses for, and I had some things in mind but didn’t find anything perfect for what I was after. Sometimes shopping is fun just for the sake of it though, and I tried on some cute floral dresses and pretty shoes. I also did a little gift shopping and bought myself a present too! This gorgeous headband with two big soft silk flowers. I knew it would match some of my vintage dresses so I couldn’t wait to get home and try it out! I made use of the last of the evening light and took some photos outside in our courtyard, the jasmine is starting to really bloom now and I can smell it through my open window at night.

For a bit of fun and a little experiment we decided to give my friend Sab a makeover on Sunday afternoon. Our inspiration was the beautiful Hime Gyaru style that has become popular recently, and as I have never had a chance to try these amazing bouffant hairstyles (my hair is not co-operative) I was excited to see what we could achieve!

Before we started we seperated her fringe (bangs) from the rest of her hair using a headband. This worked well to help us build up shape behind it while keeping the bangs straight.

The first step was to give Sab’s hair some more volume. Her current hair cut is actually pretty good for this style, being a little longer than shoulder-length with side-parted bangs and a lot of layering on top. We used a spray bottle to wet her hair and then put the top layers up in medium size curlers. Because we didn’t have much time we blow dried her hair with the curlers in, though they would probably have worked better if they had been air dried.

After removing the curlers we used a heated curling iron to add further shape to individual sections of the top layers. Taking a section about an inch wide at a time we curled back from the headband so all the curls fell away from her forehead. Then we teased each section using a comb, sprayed it with (a lot) of hair spray and repeated the process several times until we’d gotten as much volume and shape as possible.

Finally, we took the longer under layers at the back and curled these using the iron in to long ringlets. To accessorise we used a mini heart shaped tiara and later switched to a pearl headband with flower accent. I think both look cute! Princess Sabrina is wearing a BABY the stars shine bright fur trimmed capelet.

We went for a fairly subtle look with her makeup. I applied a rose pink blush to her cheeks, white eyeshadow with a touch of pink at the outer edges and black eyeliner and mascara on her upper eyelids, with white eyeliner on the inside third of the lower lid. I also powdered her eyes with my favourite rose pink mica dust from Natio, its really gorgeous in person! Lips were done in a simple clear gloss.

I’m really happy with the end result, Sab was a great model and very easy to work with (not to mention she has amazingly healthy hair and skin!) and thank you to Mirai for her assistance and expertise! It was a fun way to spend the afternoon, and I think Sab makes an adorable princess!

On Sunday, Sab, Mirai and I went to my favourite pâtisserie, Le Papillon! I haven’t been there in ages, because its a little out of the way but I love their cakes and pastries as my Mother always used to buy my birthday cakes from there (my favourite being a chocolate honeycomb gâteau!) and sometimes she would bring me the little tarts with their icing sugar butterflies as a special treat.

It was just as I remembered it, a little bit old but warmly decorated in blue and apricot provincial style. Sab snapped some quick photos of the place, to record our visit and we all spent ages looking at the cakes and tarts and sweet pastries and trying to decide what to order. In the end Mirai and Sab had chocolate and lime tarts and I ordered a croissant stuffed with apple and custard. We also had hot chocolate and chai and all tried a bite or two of each other’s desserts!

After our little afternoon tea we went to visit my Mother’s gallery and look at the new work she has in. There were some quirky sculptures and huge ceramic pieces, we also checked out the cafe next door and they had lots of delicious looking cakes too, so I think we’ll have to go back there some time! The rest of the afternoon we spent antiquing and giving Sab a Princess Makeover, you’ll hear all about that soon!

All of these gorgeous photos were taken by Sab of sabatomic.com, check out her blog!

Bon Appétit!

On Friday evening I completed my Princess Challenge for August by attending a Ballet Performance with the lovely ladies above, Sanyu, Lee and Paula. It was a production of La Fille mal gardée put on by our Ballet School is it was great to go along and watch students of all ages perform and support the school.

The Ballet itself is a comic ballet, it tells the story of a young girl, Lise, and her beloved Colas. Lise’s mother, Simone, wants her to marry another man, Alain, but she is unsuccessful in bringing the two together. Although the story is quite simple, it works well for the many amusing little scenes. It is set in pastoral France and the beautiful costumes all suited this, with little bonnets and aprons and even a group of young dancers dressed as adorable chickens! I also liked the way ribbons were used in the dances.

La Fille mal gardée is a very old ballet and was first performed in 1789. It was great to have a chance to see this classic performance, and it was my first time seeing a comic ballet which is so very different! Its interesting watching the ballet now that I have started taking lessons, it gives you so much more appreciation for the skill and discipline involved and I found myself watching the dancers feet more than anything else.

It was lovely to go along with some friends, dress up and make a night of it. Thank you to Lee, Paula and Sanyu for joining me and to Mirai who very graciously gave me a lift home! I hope we can all go again soon!

Something I have been feeling lately, and I know all princesses go through from time to time, is a lack of inspiration. When our daily lives become so busy and we have many issues crowding for room in our minds, sometimes it can be hard to feel inspired, to seek out the beautiful side of life and connect with our inner princess. The problem is, that this becomes a bit of a vicious circle and often the times when we are stressed and tired are the very times when we need to feel inspired and believe in ourselves the most.

Here are a few simple tips for bringing a little inspiration in to your day, feel free to suggest your own!

• Get outside! It doesn’t matter what the weather is, sun, hail or shine (all right, maybe not in a blizzard) going outside is a great way to refresh and ground yourself, bring your thoughts back to the now and get in touch with the big, beautiful world. Whenever I am feeling drained or lost I go for a nice long walk, by the river, through a park. I don’t let my thoughts wander off too much but instead pay attention to the world all around me, the changing seasons, birds calling, people moving. I think humans need a certain connection to the natural world to stay grounded and sometimes being indoors all the time cuts us off from this.

• Immerse yourself in a story. It can be a good book or a movie or simply a fantasy from your own imagination. Let your mind explore another world, another life and bring a little bit of that magic back to this one. I have several favourite books and films that I use for this technique, expect a list of them soon!

• Do something productive. The worst thing for inspiration is doing nothing I find. Staring at a blank screen or piece of paper until your eyes hurt will get you nowhere. Sometimes we have to get up and do something else. Try and find a task that is productive and rewarding. Clean a room, organize a drawer, bake a cake, tidy the garden, anything that will leave you with a small sense of achievement afterwards. Sometimes this can give you that little bit of confidence and ‘I can do it!’ feeling that you need.

• Do something creative. The trick is to pick a different medium from the one you’re working in. Stuck writing a story? Pick up a pencil and start drawing. Having trouble focusing on an essay? Sew something or work on a craft. Sometimes you can find the inspiration you lack in one area, in another, quite unexpectedly!

• Make yourself a playlist or CD. Music has a wonderful power of inspiraton. The trick is to pick the right sort of music to get your creative juices flowing. It might be something up-beat and cheerful to lift you out a slump, something slow and dreamy or full of energy. Go through your music and pick songs that seem to jump out at you, your mind is pretty good at making connections and finding what it needs.

• Find a Muse or Mentor. Talk to someone who inspires you, ask them what they do to find inspiration. Listen to their stories and you’ll probably be surprised to find that you’re not alone, and even those people we look up to have their rough patches!

• Have an adventure

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action. Frank Tibolt

Hello Princess Skye!
I’m a 16 year old, princess wanna-be.
Because I’ve been changing alot in the past two years I’ve decided it’s time for me to take initiative and get myself on a path of life that is lovely and beautiful not self-destructive in any way. Living as a princess and following the princess code is exactly what I’ve been looking for. I’m just wondering if you can give me tips on feeling like a princess even when I’m doing my chores (taking out the trash-laundry-icky stuff) or while I’m at school.
Also, Because I have taken on alot of different personas while trying to “find myself” I’m afraid that my friends will think I’m odd if I suddenly act refined and elegant.
Is it wrong to worry about this?

- Claudia

I chose this question to answer, because reading it tugged a little chord in me somewhere that reminded me of myself at your age, Claudia. Whether we like it or not, we go through a lot of changes in these years, and I’m not talking about hormones and drinking and boys or any of the surface issues that teenagers are expected to deal with. The real change is much deeper than that, its about identity and finding out who you really are and what you want to be and identify with and believe in.. and its hard!

There are a few different ways people go about trying to ‘find themselves.’ Some look to others for guidance, they try and fit in and follow what everyone else is doing. Some go after a dream or goal, something big that defines them simply by reaching for it. Some try and learn about everything, read, ask questions and try and make sense of the world and where they fit in to it using all their wit and knowledge. A few tackle these questions head on, with an intense introspection that can sometimes be frightening, and the last sort tend to have the toughest time because they know they’re changing, know they’re searching, but haven’t quite found what they’re looking for yet.

Being a Princess, as I discuss it on this blog, is about finding something within yourself that feels right. That feels beautiful and true and amazingly real. Its not about what you wear or how you talk or style your hair. Thats just the fun stuff, the things that connect us to our ideal and make us feel like a Princess. Actually being a Princess requires none of this. All it requires is that you believe in yourself, and have the confidence to show the world just how beautiful you are.

Whatever you choose to be or identify with, it has to feel right to you. If you just put on a ‘persona’ it won’t last, it won’t make you happy and eventually it will fall apart. Take little steps, it all comes from within. Make sure you’re making the changes for you, not for anyone else. If your friends care about you then they should support whatever it is that makes you happy, but not everyone grows up at the same speed so be understanding if they find it hard to comprehend.

I think you’re well on the path to finding your ‘inner princess’ and I hope you enjoy the journey! Someday you’ll be able to look back on these years and see how far you’ve come, and thats an amazing feeling, let me tell you!

Extra reading

• Your True Self
• Royal Duties (for princessly chores!)
• Self Confidence

Today is the perfect Sunday. I’ve always thought that Sundays ought to be… well, you know, sunny and this one certainly is! In fact its blissfully warm out there, only a little cool in the shade. My washing is drying on the line, glowing white and cabbage butterflies are dancing over the first jasmine blossoms speckling our courtyard trellis.

I went for a little walk today and picked up some first seasons strawberries from the markets! They’ve just come in, and they’re still a bit tart but delicious and refreshing on a day like today. I want to buy some more later and make a custard tart with strawberries on top!

I also noticed the first Freesia are coming out now! Freesias are little bulbs that grow here, they only put up leaves and flowers in Spring and they smell absoloutely heavenly! Where I used to live, in the forest, there were meadows and fields that would completely fill up with a sea of freesias every spring, around the time of my birthday. So a lot of my best memories are walking through these flowers, or having picnics surrounded by the scent. Freesias are Spring to me, so you can imagine how happy I was to see these! I picked just a couple to place by my bedside. I hardly ever buy flowers in spring, I like to just fill my room up with freesias.

I love the feeling at the very end of winter, when the days are starting to get longer and the skies clearer and just around every corner you can find some little flower budding in to life. This is the time when the cherry blossoms flower, clouds of fairy-floss pink on naked branches. The freesias with their heady scent pop up between the pavement like little golden trumpets heralding in the spring. Its on such days that I want to sit under a tree by the rivers edge and read poetry, or watch the mother ducks herding their little fleet, simply soaking up the beautiful newness of the world.

I’ve been doing some spring cleaning around the Portal aswell! You may have noticed the larger images I’ve started using, as they fit so nicely in to the new layout. I hope that they also fit well in to your RSS reader and you are enjoying the new look.

I mentioned before that I will still be doing ‘Ask the Princess’ questions, but in a different format. The reason for this is that I have started recieving a LOT of questions lately, and as much as I love replying to them it takes up a good deal of my time that I would like to spend updating the Portal with new content. I’ve also been feeling guilty about not being able to respond to your questions as quickly as possible, and sometimes a few weeks go by before I can catch up! I’m so sorry if you’ve missed out because of this.

Therefore, I’ve decided to do an ‘Ask the Princess’ feature every friday. I will answer one question recieved that week or previously with a full entry, and much more detailed answer. I hope that this way, even if I can’t get to all your questions I can give better answers that may hopefully be helpful to other readers aswell. For the moment you are welcome to email me your questions and later I will set up a form page for the new feature.

Thank you all for your understanding and patience, I hope you will like the new changes!

This last week we have been blessed with the most beautiful weather. Winter in Perth is never really that bad, we have some cold days and rainy weeks but there is still a lot of sunshine, and today was one such perfect day. Being my day off I took full advantage of it and went out! I also decided to make use of my new phone and take some photos (though I’m still getting used to the focus settings) here you can see the deep blue australian sky above the town hall.

In the morning I had my hair cut, just a fringe trim but enough to neaten it up again so that it wasn’t falling in my eyes. I’m very loyal to my hairdresser, her name is Amanda and she always seems to know what I want with very little description on my part. We get along well and chat about all sorts of things. I get my hair trimmed every few weeks and its something I enjoy, a little bit of pampering (the head massages while you have your hair shampooed are fantastic!) and it feels like getting to catch up with a friend aswell. I’m thinking of dying my hair soon though.

For lunch I headed in to the city to meet some friends, we enjoyed the beautiful warm sunshine and sat in a park to eat our food. I grabbed some bubble tea on the way and had my favourite curry bread! It was nice to sit on the grass and chat and feed the pigeons.

I also got to pick up some DVDs I bought off the lovely Emily, they are the japanese language, english subtitled version of Card Captor Sakura, which is probably my second favourite Anime following closely after Rose of Versailles. I have been looking for this version for ages, as the english dub is heavily changed, and I’m so happy to finally have it in my hands! I’ve seen it so many times but it is my ‘comfort show’ that I like to watch when I’m sick or feeling down. Hopefully I can have some friends over to rewatch it with me soon.

In the afternoon I ran some ‘top secret’ errands, and did a little bit of shopping. I got to see a lot of the spring and summer fashions that are just coming in, some beautiful floral prints, bright colours and lovely feminine silhouettes. I noticed quite a few flared skirts with petticoats and flower corsages so i think lolitas should have a fun time shopping this spring! There was a gorgeous double silk flower head band that I’m definitely going to purchase later to wear with some of my vintage princess dresses.

Hope you’ve had an equally beautiful day!

Meet my new phone! Its a Sony Ericsson W580i, and its pink! I have to admit, I’m terrible when it comes to buying phones and computers and other technology because I tend to value the aesthetics over functionality. My previous phone was adorable, and a lot of fun to decorate but not so useful, as the features were fairly basic.

This time I opted for a bit of a balance. I’m not all that keen on sliding phones, preferring the clamshell/flip style myself but the W580i is really quite a cute little phone and I was happy to find it came in a muted shade of pink rather than the hot pink that seems popular lately.

The features are what won me over though, a 2mp camera means I can take photos of a high enough quality to post here! I look forward to taking some pretty shots to share with you. The music player is also nice, and it has the option of taking a memory card to store extra pictures and songs. I’m still adjusting to the new operating system, but its fairly intuitive and I’ve already figured out how to skin it with a cute Princess Tutu theme!

As you can see, it’s not my only pink gadget! The colour actually matches my laptop fairly well, with its cherry blossom theme. I think its great that in the last few years companies have been looking in to making products that are both beautiful and functional, they still have a long way to go but its nice to have this option. I’ve always agreed with the Arts and Crafts movements ideal of design that is a source of pleasure to both the creator and the user. I’m certainly enjoying using my new phone!