Henrietta's 7 year old jazz dance.

This was Henrietta's first ever jazz dance.  She  started performing this dance when she was 5 and retired it when she was 7.  She performed it many many competitions.  This was one of it's final performances.

Here are some stage shots from the same jazz.

Dance solos

http://youtu.be/rBjtNHhi-38

How to do a ballet bun revisted

For new visitors, here is a revisit of how to do a ballet bun.

I am often asked how to do a ballet bun. So that is what we are going to do today! This is us getting ready for ballet this morning. The twists are totally optional - I just like them and thought I'd throw them in there as they are cool just to wear with a pony too.So you start with the T- part, down the centre and across the head. Then you take the back bit of the hair and put it in a nice tight pony. Then take one of the front parts brush it back nice and smooth and then start twisting in towards the centre of the head - once you get to the pony you secure it in with a second elastic.
You repeat with the other side so that by the end you have a pony with three elastics. This is a great do just on its own.

Then we start with the bun. if you are a little light on in the hair department, it is a good idea to tease the hair a bit to give you some more volume. Start by twisting the hair around loosely - how tight your twist is will depend on how much hair you have and your personal preference. I just do a very light twist to keep everything in place. Wind the pony around the elastic, keeping it nice and loose for as many times as you need to and when you get to the end, pin the bun in place with a hair pin.

Now you will need a hair net - bun nets work best as opposed to full hair nets when you are starting out. Place the bun net over the hair and then start pinning.

These open hair pins as opposed to bobby pins are the only pin worth using in a bun. These above are the kind of hair pins you need but they they are a bit squished together, you can see the one in my hand below it is much wider apart. I'll try and take a better picture. The trick is to lean the pin in towards the bun, so that you sort of have it making a V-shape with the head. The bottom of the V would be where the two prongs of the pin sit at the edge of the bun. Stick it in and then pull it so that it is back parallel to the head and push it into the bun. This is how you really get security for your bun. Use as many pins as you feel you need to make it secure.And then look at that, you are all finished!.

Add some bows, flowers or if you never know whento stop like me..both! and your ballerina is all ready!

First day at high school

The original plan was to homeschool Loughie this year but things most certainly don't always go to plan do they!? Last year he auditioned for the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School. VCASS provides an internationally recognised specialist program for the training of talented young dancers and musicians. Students at VCA Secondary School spend approximately half of their day in their academic studies and half of their day in their specialist area. This means that the workload is heavy and the very significant scholarship gained by students who achieve entry to the school means that they have a high level of obligation towards excellence in all areas. On any given day Loughie does either dance in the morning and academic in the afternoon or vice versa. As well as the dance and music students, specialist gymnasts, divers and Australian Ballet School students also attend the VCA for their academic schooling. You can imagine how proud we were when he was one of just 4 boys accepted into the dance program for year 7. Here is is on his first day.

Fun in the pool

Pool time fun!

Techie versus old school

Just goes to show doesn't it! Here we are with all our ipads, and iphones and technie gadgets and what to we end up doing...drawing with sidewalk chalk!

A very bookish Christmas

Ahh what would we do without the Book Depository. One of Henrietta's requests for this Christmas was for information books about birds in general, flamingos, chickens and giraffes. So off I went to the book depository and made my order - then all through December the books arrived, sometimes one at a time, sometimes two, some days we'd get three or four - made for a very exciting build up!