KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

I love crafty gifts. Actually, I love gifts of any kind. I even loved receiving a free sample of Kool'n'Soothe migraine relief in the mail even though I don't get migraines and have had maybe four heat-stroke or dehydration headaches in my lifetime. FYI, the sample went to a good friend who's suffered regular migraines since the age of 9 and said they worked a treat!

I got the best crafty gift over Xmas. My girlfriends made a photo album of all our fun times since meeting about 3 years ago. I call it The Book of J.E.M. (Jade, Elaine and Misty). Glad I changed my name from Ngoc to Jade otherwise we would have been The Book of M.E.N. and that could be misinterpreted. Here are a few of my favourite pages from the J.E.M.:

Let's face it. We all stink. Whether it's Mother Nature's natural oils and sweat or man-made chemicals, we all reek something awful. Every time I am on a crowded train I thank the Heavens for my poor sense of smell.

I've only recently paid attention to fragrances. I'm not entirely sure why I never wanted to smell unnatural before but I suspect it had something to do with getting nosebleeds every time I walked through the Myer beauty section during my highly hay feverish childhood. Or it could have been my teenage years getting nosebleeds from the crazy way my classmates abused Impulse and Lynx sprays (a little goes a long way people)! I didn’t get the subtlety of scents until my hay fever cleared up and I worked in a bigger office where people’s smells didn’t offend my central face holes.

I went on a fragrance hunt with my friend whose nose could smell things burning in the kitchen while my hay fever clogged snout left me with nearly no dinner. She also had encyclopedic knowledge of every current, past and upcoming perfume on the market. We went to Paint’n’Powder in Royal Arcade, Melbourne CBD where she and the store clerk pointed out a few warm, vanilla or flowery scents to me because my prerequisite was I wanted to smell like food or flowers.

I fell in love with the prettiest Flower By Kenzo. It would have been $50 cheaper to buy the scent from Strawberry Net but the customer service at Paint’n’Powder was so nice and old school I had to buy it from them for helping me find my new signature scent. Now between my cocoa butter moisturiser and Flower By Kenzo I smell like a chocolate garden!

It's amazing how perceptive kids can sometimes be. Especially when you've seen them in an Easter Egg hunt where they can't even find the bright yellow egg resting on a green lawn out in the open right by their feet. Look down! Look down! Right there! See? It's right in front of you. Look! LOOK THERE! Finally an older kid swoops in, takes the egg from under their nose and the pulsing stress vein in my neck subsides until I try to help find the next egg.

Mini-me (as I like to call my middling niece because she has a big face, is stubborn as a mule and says bizarre things like her Aunty Knock) was scrolling through my iPhone photos at my pyjama birthday party (pyjama themed because I spent my birthday on the couch with a bag of potato chips and my new best friend Ellen Degeneres, then mini-me rocked up in her pyjamas because it was her bedtime as soon as dinner and ice-cream cake was done, the rest of the Phamly wore real clothes because they have real lives) when she came across Mum Pham's plaque and said, 'That's Ba.' (Ba, being short for grandma in Vietnamese).

It was one of those freakish moments where kids know more than they should. We asked her to confirm, 'Where's Ba?' She turned in a confused full circle to look for grandma in the house. And snap - she was back to being the kid who kept missing the Easter egg basket and finding the same egg that she had just dropped over and over until her father finally stepped in to break the vicious cycle.

It's Mum Pham's birthday today. Coincidentally, the lady resting head-to-head with her shares the same birth date too. Happy Birthday, ladies. It was my birthday on Valentine's Day. Happy Birthday, me too. And the other four Pham girls had their birthdays in January. How many Aquarians can you fit into one Phamly? Very many.