It’s days like these that will make you happy. Spending time with friends. Popping in to see Matt and Clairie-O, meeting lovely people and playing board games. Catching the train  across the Bridge and seeing the myriad of people lining the foreshore. Sydney is made for big events on the harbour. A bright blue sky day. Warm. People of all ages, backgrounds, and walks of life are out on the street. The air is alive. I meet Len at Dawe’s Point. All the “VIP’s” feeling extra special because they have invites. Wrist-tagged and bag searched and inside to where the mood is festive, the music pumping. The view is spectacular. I don‘t recall seeing the fireworks from this side of the bridge before. The Opera House to my right. The sound of the giant bangs. Explosions of sparkle in the sky. 

 We walk around to Circular Quay. The kind concierge at the Marriott finds me a safety pin for my holey jumper. Walk up Pitt St and up to the State Library. On the steps of the palace
I meet Heath and Lyn and Ben. We walk down to join the queue for the Cahill Expressway. It is orderly and calm and moves quickly. Onto the Expressway and down to the western end. The view is utterly spectacular. The Bridge, the Opera House, the Quay beneath us. People are patiently waiting for midnight. We eat ice cream. Girls in colourful costumes walk past to entertain the crowd. 

On the hour, the half hour, and quarter of the hour before midnight single fireworks explode over the city and over the Opera House. People cheer. And suddenly it is ten seconds to midnight. And the pylons light up with giant numbers, helping the crowds around the foreshore count down. And then it is 2011! And the fireworks erupt. A lone bird flies confused over the bridge through the smoke and glitter. The bridge becomes so covered in smoke you can’t see it any more, and even some of the fireworks are obscured. A giant hand appears on the Bridge. 2011, Make Your Mark. With your hands go out into the  world and create. High five the people you meet. Offer your hand in love, in gratitude, in peace. Wave goodbye Sydney. 2011, I’m off to make my mark on the world!

Christmas has passed and it’s now the season for taking stock of the year. Some of this year has been awful. But you breathe into the pain, and you just keep breathing, and suddenly you find that you are surrounded by an absolute plethora of amazing food, music, family, friends, and theatre. And you come to the end of the year with the ability to say that much of it has been utterly wonderful. In no particular order, the beautiful, inspiring, exciting, and lovely things in my life this year have been...

• The Eveleigh Farmer’s Markets with my bestie Len

• Starting dance, singing, and flute lessons again 
• Starting Flusical with Flick
• Starting the Movie Musical Project
• Learning to cook pasta, ice cream, polvoron, bread, pastry, and cheese from scratch
• Quitting the security of a full-time job to pursue theatre and it being utterly wonderful 
• Getting paid to watch Jersey Boys several times a week
• Moving to Ashfield with beautiful housies 
• Developing my personal meditation practise, obtaining my Meditation Facilitator’s Certificate, running morning meditations in Glebe
• Performing in The Pajama Game and meeting all the beautiful wonderful people at Strathfield Musical Society
• Singing with the Bling Band
• Running my first City to Surf  
• Discovering MusicalTalk, Seth Rudetsky, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, and Superforest 
• Knowing that I am surrounded by the most beautiful, talented, wonderful, supportive friends
• Knowing that I have incredibly beautiful, talented, wonderful, supportive families 
• Working with amazing people 
• Seeing Shoshana Bean, Donna McKechnie, Stephen Schwartz, and Liz Callaway perform in Sydney and Brisbane 
• Being accepted into the London Central School of Speech and Drama Masters of Music Theatre program

My goodness what a weekend! There have been so many moments of inspiring, beautiful, and lovely in the past three days that I barely know where to begin. I performed in my first dance concert since I was 14, I visited the North Sydney Markets and Eveleigh Farmer’s Markets and wished all my wonderful vendors a Merry Christmas, thanking them all profusely for the past year of amazing locally and organically grown delights, I cooked up a storm with my housie/bestie Len, I met a ton of performers, musicians, and techies, I  partied, I watched the 8th Annual Cabaret Showcase, and I marveled at the way the weather can change from bright hot sunshine to cold and rain and even snow in Australia in December (?!?!?!?!?), all in the space of 48 hours. Crazy!! 

And now to the yum factor. Following the cancellation of other exciting Saturday night adventures Len and I decided to put a rare weekend night at home by baking up a storm. Len put his recently acquired Italian culinary skills to the test and whipped up the most incredible  roast pumpkin ravioli in a thyme butter sauce. Dear future girlfriends of Len, this man is a seriously amazing cook. No seriously. Freaking amazing. The promise of the addition of roast garlic to reprises of this dish is something I’m very much looking forward to. Dear Len. Please stop reading the blog and get baking. Many thanks... :) I had some left over plums and cherries which weren’t going to last much longer, so making a variation on a Cyndi O’Meara recipe for a lemon tart, I whipped together a cherry pie. It was ridiculously easy, and oh so very, very tasty. And I realised afterwards, with considerable joy, that I knew where every single ingredient came from, and just about all the farmers who had worked to bring me  these goodies. The eggs and plums came from Champion's Mountain Organics, the honey from Malfroy's Gold, the cold pressed macadamia oil from Hand n' Hoe Organics, the flour from Demeter Farm Mill, and the cherries from Yuri’s Sustainable Produce in Orange. 

Beautiful food, beautiful music, performing, and spending time with amazing people. Life really doesn’t get any better than this! 

Imagine you're running late. And you're a bit stressed. And you're forgetting to breathe. And you see the bus, but you miss it, and you silently scream because of course you missed the bus, you're running late!! ARG! The next bus arrives. You step inside and find yourself in a tinsel forest. The entire bus, every pole and seat is lined with tinsel. There is a Santa statue in front of the ticket machine. The luggage bays are filled with stuffed toys. There is even a Christmas tree. And you find your stress melts away a little bit, because you can't help but smile. And at every stop, more people get on, and they smile too. And it makes you feel nice, and you marvel at the fact that the bus can be a place of such wonder.

 And then imagine the girl sitting next to you has a basket full of handmade soft toys. And she looks like a lovely person so you talk to her. And she turns out to be as lovely as she seems. She makes soft toys and is training to be a Kindergarten teacher, and today she is bringing in her craft to share with her class. And you have a conversation all the way to town.

And when you hop off the bus, you feel better. It was worth being late. You got to ride inside a tinsel forest with a friendly fellow human being. If this is the Christmas season, bring it on. 

I have just watched the most wonderful film. Based upon it’s themes and story, none of it was what you would call uplifting or immediately identify as inspiring. The Great War. Alcoholism. Addiction. Abandonment. Failed parenting. Unrequited love. Affairs. Death. Loss. Grief. Music. La Vie En Rose is the tragic story of Edith Piaf, the French songstress who wooed the world with her hearty Parisian vocals and lived a most tortured and sad existence. It seems that for all the joy Edith Piaf brought into the world with her beautiful voice, she was destined to suffer endless tragedy and hardship in her own personal life. 

The film, starring Marion Cotillard as the “little sparrow,” is stunning. The way the film plays with time, jumping back and forth from the famous and established, yet quivering wreck of a grown up, Edith Piaf to her sylph of a childhood self, is gut wrenching. We want life to get better, and are continually devastated when it never does. It is the magical performance  of Marion Cotillard that inspires me in this film. Her performance is utterly stunning, and absolutely deserving of the seven different Best Actress awards she garnered for her performance. 

In the midst of the worst, there is always beauty. The sparkle behind the eyes. The living, the breathing. The working at your craft when you are tired, miserable, fed up, feeling like all in the world is lost to you. The gift of music, of living for your craft because there is nothing else to live for. That is powerful stuff, and the kind of stuff that grips you at your very heart and soul. Marion Cottilard, and all the myriad of people involved in the making of La Vie En Rose, thank you.