Insects Appeal Served up Spot: Spring Has (Sort of) Strung

 Fabulous Felt Foliage Barrettes

Elegant Arachnid Necklace

Dress: Xhilaration, Target

Tank: Worthington, JCPenney

Shoes: Delicious, Zulily

Bag: Xhilaration, Target

High Tea Helen Necklace

Top: Decree, JCPenney
Skirt: Modcloth
Shoes: BCBG, Macy's
Bag: Glamour Damaged, Etsy
Sunglasses: Party City
Barrette: The Tote Trove

Springtime means spiders.  (Sure, Halloween means spiders too, but this isn't about that, so stop back in October.)  Even if on this year the first day of spring found creepy crawlers crushed under a snowbank.  Luckily (Wait, luckily?  Am I really lamenting that spiders and their ilk will be fashionably late this season?  No.  What I'm really, ahem, ticked about is the delay in sunshine and warm weather, not the stalled appearance of eight-legged losers.  Because I find insects only one rung below ice on the season-related nuisance ladder.).  Luckily But (there we go) spring also means things that are ladylike.  Like flowers and bows and tea parties.  

So, I've got a rep from each camp here in Elegant Arachnid and High Tea Helen.  (There's Fabulous Felt Foliage, too -- but she's just an interloper.)  Despite my aforementioned disgust, there's something beautiful about the anatomical design of those we more often than not stomp with our Skechers.  That's why I was so taken with the silver- and gold-tone bee, spider, fly, and beetle in the brilliant bib of Elegant Arachnid.  (It's not braggy for me to say it's brilliant because I didn't carve these critters from metal my own self; that honor goes to whomever supplied them to Hobby Lobby.)  It was so detailed and gorgeous that I felt compelled to surround it with botanical blue-green beads, showcasing each insect as a magical mistress of her own enchanted forest.  You know, as opposed to bathroom floor roadkill.             

Then there's Helen.  I can see her now in her floral dress, white gloves, and beribboned hat, delicately sipping Earl Grey from bone china at her aunt's garden party.  Trying not to fall asleep as Mitzy McNeal yammers on yet again about her sciatica, she feels something whisper-soft on her arm.  She looks down, expecting to see an errant daisy petal or maybe even a runaway strand of her own auburn hair.  But instead there's a tiny spider, black and agile as it darts with precision across her pristine white skin.  She opens her mouth to squeal, but no sound comes out.  She looks at Mitzy, but her companion is oblivious to her plight, prattling on about how she can't even water her prize roses anymore, the pain is so agoniiiiizing.  Helen picks up her napkin, poised to cover the intrepid trespasser, and is about to go in for the kill when she pauses.  Because there's something appealing, regal even, about the arachnid.  Maybe she's read Charlotte's Web one time too many, but Helen is struck that this spider might be more than just another web-spinning sucker.  Maybe it has hopes and dreams, or little bitty baby spiders at home.  Gently, she sets the napkin back on the table.  Then she brushes the spider from her arm, watching as it falls past the wrought-iron tabletop down to the lush carpet of green grass below.  

Tea time, free time, no parlor for this fly.