Annie Monroe

After a rather uninspired week, the weekend has been blissful, if busy. Clubs are back and all four kids had activities on Saturday. James and Alistair went back to football, Sam and Annie were volunteering with Scouts. I spent a good part of the day shopping and baking for a party with friends. I baked Zopf (a Swiss Sunday bread, recipe to follow soon), onion tart, a plum and almond cake and finally, a Victoria sandwich cake with cream and fresh apricot jam. The weather was good and we took advantage of it by having a BBQ. And just because we could we used the BBQ as in impromptu fire pit, burning old pieces of wood that has accumulated in the garage. But really, the BBQ is not what I wanted to write about (although it was great fun). It is Annie's transformation into a diva that I wanted to be the topic of this post.

Annie was invited to a Birthday party in the afternoon. It was themed "dead famous" and fancy dress was required. We looked at countless famous females, dead or alive, including Anne Frank, Marie Curie and Dorothy Hodgkin (both Nobel Laureates), Queen Elizabeth 1st and Florence Nightingale. In then end, Annie settled for Marilyn Monroe. It takes a diva to play a diva I thought to myself. We searched the internet for a suitable dress. We were hoping to dig up something akin Marilyn Monroe's the famous white dress but it is difficult to find something suitable for a young girl who has yet to develop a womanly figure. Eventually, after much soul-searching I relented and offered her one of my old dresses. It was a red dress that I wore to my brother's wedding a few years ago and I doubt that I will wear it again. I found it in a charity shop before the wedding and as such, it was no great (financial) loss. The dress was far too big for Annie but a few minor quick alterations (between baking cakes), it was a good fit.

Annie is naturally blonde and someone with a bit of talent , curlers and hairspray could probably have transformed her into a Monroe look alike but my hairstyling skills are infamous and there was no point for me to attempt the transformation. I found a cheap wig (£6) online and ordered this instead. It still needed some brushing and lots of hairspray but it was worth the money.

Hairstyling is not my thing and I am not a make-up artist either. It is bad enough to do my own on the few occasions that I bother but doing Annie's was incredibly difficult. A bit of huffing and puffing was necessary but in the end, she looked great. We couldn't find the right lipstick colour but I guess, Marilyn Monroe changed hers sometimes, too.

There were a number of divas at the party (Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Amy Winehouse) and the host dressed up as Freddy Mercury, complete with stick-on underarm hair. I think Annie had a great time at the party. I hope it is not the first in series of similar parties though.... I only had one week's notice to get Annie into character. And with that, I'll leave you to admire Annie Monroe. Have a lovely week. Cx