Tamara Harrison

House clothes.…..I once had a mother-in-law that swore by them. Yes, she would get changed out of her house clothes, hang them on the back of the bed­room door and put on non-house clothes, to go down the shops, some­times sev­eral times a day if the errands demanded it.

Per­son­ally I don’t believe in them, I want to look fab­u­lous even at home, where no one sees me, except, of course, my 3 year old (who has no respect for my ‘no house clothes’ mantra for life as she smears veg­emite on me and pre­tends to give me a kiss while, what it’s actu­ally about, is wip­ing her mouth me).

How I think I look while at home, being cre­ative. Red Valentino Fall 2012. 

I mean, how do you actu­ally decide which arti­cle of cloth­ing is ‘house’ or ‘non-house’?
Is there a grad­ing sys­tem by fab­ric, price, qual­ity, colour, cut or form?
Do all clothes start off life as ‘non-house’ then, if they play up, get demoted?
’ You jumper, have seri­ously pilled, this is a major offence, no out­ings for you, ever again, I shall re-fashion you into a cush­ion cover or some other crafty item.‘

Cush­ions made from jumpers and old ‘offend­ing’ clothing!

But, in all seri­ous­ness, I do get more than a lit­tle annoyed when, after 2 wears and 1 wash ( I know, I know — I don’t wash after every wear– gross, shock­ing, six words for you.….….over.….….40…..with.….…3.…..year.…..old.…) the fab­ric pils, goes all bub­bly, and looks gen­er­ally tatty enough to make you fall out of love with it and go in search of new non-house clothes to cheer your­self up.

But then, what to do with the offend­ing arti­cle that  I loved once (and feel it still owes me as it’s not become value for money yet — how could it after only 2 wears?). It’s  not old, it has a cool sil­hou­ette, it my favourite colour (black if you’re won­der­ing), it’s com­fort­able and yet styl­ish and looks amaz­ing with heaps of jew­ells piled at the neck.

Do I take to it with a razor blade?
Or one of those spe­cial pil remover contraptions?

And then, as I am hang­ing it up in the wardrobe, the thought pops into my head.
‘Oh’, I think, ‘I can just wear it around the house’, and as quickly as the thought sprung up, I fur­rowed my brow with sadness,as it dawned on me what had begun.

I have begun the tran­si­tion from hip young thing to prac­ti­cal, sen­si­ble hip older thing.
How could it be? Can I trust my thoughts ever again?
How far will it spread? Will I start to look at shoes as sen­si­ble or non sen­si­ble now?
So, as I con­tem­plate my new life of wardrobe choices, I sign off to go and re-arrange my clothes and decide if I can be seen in pub­lic with fab­ric that’s pilled.

Sen­si­ble shoes?

Amaz­ing cool NY woman I want to emu­late as I age.

Tamara Har­ri­son today is a jew­ellery designer, mother, cof­fee drinker, sweets craver who is actu­ally think­ing ‘I should hang out the wash­ing instead of writ­ing this’.
She can be found at
www​.tama​ra​har​ri​son​.com​.au (but you know that),
www​.face​book​.com/tama­ra­har­rison­de­sign (and you prob­a­bly know that too)
www​.pin​ter​est​.com/tamarahdesign/ (you may not know this one)

 

 

 

 

Hello, remem­ber me? I used to talk to you a lit­tle, but now, not so much. I have had a rip­per (not in a good way) of a year — barely kept up with it. 

In a nut shell we have had hap­pen in our fam­ily, 1 x pros­trate can­cer, 1 x heart attack, 1 x mar­riage split, 1 x death of loved one, 1 x house for sale, 1 x mov­ing house, 20K x men­tal chal­lenges from it all.

 

But happy to say I am feel­ing the bal­ance restore and wanted to come back and chat to you all again (I’ve been on Face Book but that’s about it).

To start off I thought I’d share with you a lit­tle blog post I have writ­ten for The Mys­tery Case blog. It is my entry for Lady Perth.…yes.…I wanna be Ms Lady Perth! LOL

 

So here it is below or check it out on the blog link above

Tamara xxx

PS. Thanks for stick­ing around, you are all amazing.

 

Lady Perth Entry 

So, I’m sit­ting here won­der­ing how ever will this Lady Perth sur­vive. I have had the worst pos­si­ble thing hap­pen. I pick up my take away, fair trade, organic milk, way too expen­sive latte (well this is Perth you know) from my favourite drive through ven­dor and find my mind switches to get­ting safely back into the flow of traf­fic so I can have my first sip, you know that first sip? The one you have been think­ing about all morning? 

And that’s when it occurs, the worst pos­si­ble thing.….….a tiny lit­tle bump in the road that makes the pre­cious stuff drip onto my phone that is crazily sit­ting below the cup holder. No wor­ries, wipe it off, carry on, like all the other times (yes, you read right, other times). 

Well no, this is dif­fer­ent, the phone starts to do crazy things, like talk­ing to me when I’ve not asked it a ques­tion, touch screen being a lit­tle too touchy and mis­be­hav­ing in general.

‘Oh no probs’ I think, I can fix this with the all in, best solu­tion ever for any­thing even remotely tech­ni­cal but­ton ——– the on/off switch. I can hear you say­ing ‘NO, don’t do it’, well.….…..I did it, and now it doesn’t work. It taunts me by turn­ing back on, but it won’t accept my pin to activate. 

 

So I go into a gen­eral melt­down, heart pal­pi­ta­tions, anx­i­ety caus­ing, can I be accepted in soci­ety? kind of panic where I’m not sure if I can sur­vive if peo­ple can­not con­tact me the instant that they wish to. My life, busi­ness, health and friend­ships depend on it right? Well, actu­ally NO. 

I have been forced to be ‘phone less’ for a week now and, just qui­etly, I LOVE it. It’s nice not ‘hav­ing’ to inter­rupt time with my daugh­ter because the phone rings, or be dis­tracted by the inces­sant blips to remind me to check the mes­sage some­one left or the men­tal tor­ture I put on myself because I just HAVE to know who was try­ing to get hold of me. 

I won­der, does this epiphany now qual­ify my as a grown up? At 41 it may now be time. How/why/when did I let myself think that being avail­able was so important? 

It’s inter­est­ing that I can make a life les­son out of a bro­ken phone, but how eas­ily the peer pres­sure of tech­nol­ogy seeps into our lives with­out even notic­ing and what we think is impor­tant is actu­ally not.

I did have a lovely friend lend me her old phone while I await for my iPhone 5 to arrive and get sucked into the tech­nol­ogy vor­tex again. Oh and appar­ently I save my stuff to my phone, not my sim, but you know what? It’s all OK and has forced me to do a con­tacts de clut­ter and I like it! Besides that’s the excuse I’m using if I claim to not have your num­ber ok?