This afternoon, my daughter Eve, asked if we could go rent the film Julie and Julia. She had seen the it back in late summer when it was released in theaters and ever since then she has been yearning to see it with me, knowing that I would love it for many reasons.
So, we went down to our local Blockbuster, made a little feast for dinner and the three of us sat down to eat dinner and watch the film. Eve was correct, I adored the story, the film...everything. Julie and Julia is inspired by the blog of writer Julie Powell. Here is the link to her original blog.
Lately, as I have been making the gourmand inspired solid perfumes that look like hot chocolate, I have been thinking a lot on the relationship of cooking to making fragrances. Even today, as I used my cheesecloth to squeeze the water out of the potatoes for hash browns, I thought of how I use the same material when straining my herbal infusions. Certainly this is no new concept, after all smell and taste are intrinsically intertwined and botanical perfume uses actual plant matter as it's materials. Heck, Tom Robbins wove the two together beautifully in the master piece Jitterbug Perfume.
Generally I am not a resolution type of gal...even goal setting I find annoying. Not the doing of it but the way life just comes in and throws major monkey wrenches into the gears of the resolutions and goals. I have often thought that perhaps living more in the circular, Goddess oriented spectrum is more my style, in line with Leonard Shlains book The Alphabet Vs The Goddess.
In any event today was one of those highly energized inspirational days that come every blue moon or so. Made even more auspicious by the actual blue moon event last night. (Hmmm?) Through out the day the buzz of the muse was palatable. The fact she came to visit on the first day of the new year felt very special...or so I decided to label it.
As the film Julie and Julia ended and we watched the special features, an idea percolated to the surface. What if I do something like Julie Powell did here at the Illuminated Journal? There is no Cordon Bleu School or book for botanical perfume. The schools in France teach using synthetic raw materials with an occasional class here and there on the naturals. There are some very old books filled with formulas that will be fun to delve into a bit.
So, on this first day of the new decade I begin another blogging event. This one will not be daily, as my husband has reminded me I am already too busy and not taking care of my self enough. Thus, once a week will be the contribution to the new project which is called Perfume Illuminated.
Images: Top is a painting titled Spirit of the Night by John Atkinson Grimshaw from Art Magick, others are old engravings I have found in books, cleaned up and put onto parchment paper using Photoshop.
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