Athen Sdrpc

Celia is five years old, that enchanting age when a little girl still believes that dreams come true. She experiences every day that the glass slipper fits. She knows inherently what the psalmist must remind the adult: that she is wonderfully made. Celia shares a bedroom with a brother who is still a toddler. But in Celia’s mind, her bedroom is her own hobbit paradise. It is a place of gentle make-believe creatures and a treasure trove of cast-off costume jewelry and silky clothes. These ignite her favorite pastime: gypsy princess play. Celia’s pleasure in plushy fabrics and jewel-toned anything surfaces in the way she combines raw materials with imagination. She likes anything with ribbons, buttons, or baubles. She paints pictures of fairies, and in her reverie, they all have iridescent green wings. Her favorite music is produced by a drum she made from an oatmeal box. It is painted red with black polka dots.
Celia’s mother, a lithograph artist who teaches printmaking in the schools, feeds the adventure in this most charming of places, her children’s bedroom. She understands the cultural standards that make a girl prim and predictable by age seven, and, later, that make a boy numb his feelings trying to become a man. A child’s room, she believes, should be a place where a kid hangs on as long as possible to spontaneity. It is where a kid can engage in random acts of being real. Celia’s mom makes certain her children’s room contains a revolving variety of books about faraway places and all kinds of characters. Celia’s favorite places to adventure, however, are blank notebooks available to write her own scribbled “stories.” She writes before she reads, in imitation cursive with big fat loops and curly scrawls. Her younger brother draws crayon squiggle pictures in the margins.

A woman’s bed should be easy to make and should mesh with her personal style. Sophisticated? Glamorous? Bohemian? Urban glitz? Every woman’s expression of sensuality will be different. Do you prefer to snuggle into goose down or wrap up in superthin blankets? Do you like over sized pillows or standard pillows? White on crème bedding or jewel-toned velvets? Netted bed-drapes with silky fringed tassels or curtains drawn around a canopy structure? The details you choose should inspire you (and your spouse!) to hang out in your intimate cloister.
My own interpretation of “sensuous” leads me to seek the unexpected. Bias-cut white satin gowns (thrift-store finds) drape across a window on white satin hangers. The walls elicit a kicky espieglerie: a showplace for original objects where flaws and stray brushstrokes say, “Someone touched this.” The bohemian in me was vitalized when I “ragged on” a flesh-toned terra-cotta paint and coated that with flourishes of textured pearl glaze. Candle- light—and I—look great against the appeal of the Old World ambience. In such a boudoir, I become my own muse.