Monthly Archives: February 2014

Love Is All You Need

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This is an excerpt from Amy’s written musings on the first year of parenthood. Hazel Louise is now 3 years old and will very soon be joined by a brother or sister.

Exactly one year ago, I took this photo.* I was huge. And I’m not kidding, I was H-U-G-E. Plus, I don’t know if you remember what Melbourne was like this time last year, but I do; it was freakin’ hot. Huge and hot are two things I never want to be simultaneously ever again.

I was almost a week overdue so John and I set out that afternoon and drove around the bumpy back streets of Fitzroy in the hope that our little unborn bub, running ever-so-fashionably late, would wake up and get a wriggle on. This piece of graffiti near the corner of Gertrude and George Streets has since become a bit of a local icon but I noticed it that day for the first time. I told John to stop the car and feeling like a fat dork in front of a crowd of coffee-swilling, beard-sporting Northside hipsters, I waddled out, took this photo and got right back into the car.

Hours later, at the dinner table, my waters broke.

Looking back through your iPhone photos is like watching a retrospective of your life. This photo marks, for me, the end of one life and the start of another. The photos before this one are varied anecdotal snapshots of daily life – work, play, friends, family, travel, pets, hats, shoes… The photo that follows it is this:

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You hear many things about childbirth, new motherhood and parenting. You are told, ad nauseum, all the things you need. You need an SUV-sized pram that looks as though it’s capable of space travel. You need to eat a diet of unpalatable organic muck while breastfeeding. You need to worry about {insert a scaremongering topic here} but somehow, simultaneously, you need to stop worrying about everything. Becoming a parent sometimes feels like the collective population of planet earth is telling you what you need to do and how you need to feel. But it’s these immortal words of John Lennon that bring it all back home for me:

All you need is love. Love is all you need.

Happy first birthday, Hazel Louise.

* Editors note: to say I took this photo exactly one year ago is actually untrue. I took it one year ago on Tuesday. And let me say that after almost two days in labour, John and the entire maternity ward of the Royal Women’s Hospital were pretty bloody sick of the Beatles.

How Soft Can Your Launch Be?

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When discussing the methods of launching ones new venture or website, there are generally two that are utilised; a “soft launch” or a  “hard launch”.  One method is subtle while the other is brazen. Now, we’ve certainly never shied from being classified as brazen, however our approach to the launch of the Daughters of Eccentricity blog was somewhat beyond subtle. We preferred to go with the “faff for quite a while until the day before its mentioned in a nationally-recognised publication and tell literally no one in advance” method.

We knew what we wanted to say, and we knew aesthetically how we wanted to say it, but pulling it all together did happen somewhat at the last minute. But don’t all good things tend to happen this way? We needed that kick up the backside to get the ball rolling.

Insanely lucky to secure the talents of the always amazing (and quirktastic) Letitia Green, our DoE logo and branding was in safe hands as she really set the mark for what we wanted to achieve. And she totally got what we were doing. Which is awesome. A new mum herself (to the positively edible Tippi), It wasn’t the first time we’d been lucky enough to work with Letitia; while she worked her magic on the logo, Amy got down to business creating some truly beautiful birth announcement cards (check them out!) that came straight out of Amy’s brain and into letterpressed beauty. And by golly we’re tickled pink with the outcome!

So what are we about? What are we here to say that hasn’t been said, or isn’t going over old ground? Well, we gots quirks you see. And plenty of them. And we think we’re not alone. There are so many parents out there, dealing with their everyday eccentric lives that somehow include family, work AND being a creative. Or sometimes just rotating two of those in and out, at different times.

We had/have quirky parents. Yah, we really did. We’ll get to that, and perhaps along the way create some unintended new heroes of the Australian parenting landscape. Or they could just make you groan. We shall see.

Unsurprisingly, we have become quirk-tastic parents ourselves. We take a positive, progressive and, dare-we-say it, feminist approach to modern parenting. So we think there is a space for the daily musings on being such a parent in 2014: the decade of the Supermum, Helicopter Parents, Yummy Mummies and all other kinds of competitive parenting practices. And just a heads up – we like a little bit of cussing and a bangin’ anagram or two.

Importantly though, we love learning. From others, from each other, from unexpected places. This is one of the most important aspects of what we hope to achieve. An exchange of thoughts and positive growth that helps not only us as parents, but our kids as people. In general.

We can’t – bloody – wait.