36before50 doesn’t have quite the same ring to it

Last evening Don and I had a rare (what with trying to be frugal and all that) date night – out for dinner at One Penny Red. Surprisingly it is only a short and very pleasant 25 minute walk from ThePalace(OfLove). We were seated out on the terrace, the weather was lovely, the food and service excellent. Just what we needed (especially after the evil ex-spot scare).

Over dinner we were discussing my fallow 50before50 project and I came up with a few more things I’d like to do before I hit the big milestone. I noted them down on my phone and when I went back this morning to add another thing and … they were all gone (note to self – hit “done” before exiting).

I’ve managed to reconstruct (I think) what I had:

  1. Ride bike to and from work (on one day)
  2. Make a piece of jewellery
  3. Complete an edx or coursera course
  4. Cook something ridiculously complex
  5. Make a sourdough loaf
  6. Make a piece of furniture
  7. Solder something
  8. Go indoor climbing
  9. Make something from clay
  10. Read something long and challenging

Holy!Goodness! 14 items to get to 50.

Coming up with this list is quite a bit harder than you’d think. At this rate I’ll actually be 50 by the time I complete the list. At the very least I need to print the list out so I can get to work.

slippery slope

A couple of months ago, I was searching for a link to the artist who painted the work pictured above my shoulder in the last post which we bought in 2009.

I knew that she was no longer practising, but I was astonished to come across this gorgeous work on an auction site which sold for $200 in 2012! Her works of this size were going for at least 12x as much at the time we bought ours. We would have loved a much larger piece but had no space at all for one in the old flat.

So naturally I immediately signed up to the auction site to set up an alert for any further items that might pop up. Sadly this has not yet lead to a $200 miracle.

What did happen was that I was sent a voucher for $40 off my first purchase. And I was clearly helpless in the face of this.

There’s lots of art and lots of auctions on that site. I must have looked though hundreds of paintings, some quite terrible. I was very, very taken with one work. It reminded me of raindrops against our lounge-room window at night, which I think is really lovely and soothing (except for the leaking). But I dithered and it finished without a winner.

When it was relisted, there was nothing for it but to pull the trigger. $89 (less $40, plus 22% buyers premium, plus delivery) later and I was the proud owner of a new artwork. An artwork which I had absolutely no place for. But hey, hopefully I was supporting an indigenous artist.

I don’t know what prompted me to drag it out and tape it to the wall in the lounge, but it was a pretty genius strategy. It was the perfect place.

Eventually we took it to our favourite framer who was having a 20% off framing sale.

I am totally and utterly in love with it.

And because we were in the mood, it triggered a very small avalanche of other acquisitions, but more about those later.