Monday 31 August 2015

Mini Adventure :: of Seaweed and Sea Eggs


Oh man what a time, this post is photo heavy just so you know. I really wanted to go on an adventure...it was even on my summer to do list! Well...I some how found myself scaling he side of bit of a cliff the other day with a couple friends...
 
When you're making your way through razor grass higher than you are but you have guy friends who are like 'Man up!' lol Don't worry he helped later.

 Hair a mess but don't care.  In dah BUSH! The following pictures depict our descent...



Thread through razor grass taller than I am. Eased down the side of a cliff, stared at species of sea urchins (sea eggs) in their natural habitat up close. Learned so much about them simply by observation. Aren't they so beautiful?!  I think so. Well...not so much the black ones as the other haha. The black ones look so menacing with their longer spikes!! They look like sea cacti or natures balled pin cushion. When I was a child I had a toy one made of that stretchy rubber stuff...these reminded me of them except these are little lives chillin' by the sea side.

It was amazing, that stormy day, the city was practically empty due to rain but the ocean, oh the ocean was perfect. Slightly chilled, filled with sea weed that scared the life out of my voice in the dark healthy water but ah....I'd do it again!

Those are wild flowers you see just growing on old broken steps somewhere about on the rout to our destination. Can't life be just grand sometimes?



Peace. Love. No Regrets.
My giveaway is over! Winners to be announced soon!




Sunday 30 August 2015

Project 52 - AUGUST



It's been a crazy and cosy August. Crazy because summer school just went on forever cosy because I feel like I really tried to make the best of my holiday while I had it this year. It's a hard balance to achieve believe it or not and one runs the risk of sleeping it away (mmMMmm sleep!) but this year I think purposefully placing the goal of adventure on my to do list made a difference. Sounds strange but I legit had some this time! Just goes to show you can't beat a good plan hu? One more summer mini adventure to share with you coming soon so look out for that. One my computer co operates.

01.|| Beautiful souvenir shop in the city, I love to stare at it!

02.|| One of my favourite ABM happymail prints, it's really been keeping me motivated!

03.|| I scored a pencil with my favourite Disney princess Belle on it. Dunno why Cindy being all up in the shot but whatevz. Also our rose bush happened to be in bloom then thanks universe!

04.|| That morning walk though.


Check out more of my 2015 Project 52 experience :

= Project 52 =
+ January
+ February
+ March
+ April  
+ May
+ June
+ July

Friday 28 August 2015

Book Review :: 31 Prayers for the dreamer + the doer Book Review


This review is a little different. Reading 31 Prayers for the dreamer + the doer was quite the experience. The various authors use imagery, metaphor and personification all in the form of prayer to create a book that oozed with the tone of reference and intimacy.

After getting through the Women In The Word plan from #SheReadsTruth, feeling like I was submerged in the The Word everyday, on a long desert road running into biblical woman after woman who would stop and chat with me as we go over the events of their lives, their personal encounters with Christ and how it changed their life and mine I felt a unique fullness I doubt that I can explain.

This was different.

This was a devotional written in the added form of prayers. My religion warns against repetition of the same prayer over and over so I was a little sceptical but I soon realised that is not what it would be for me anyway and those fears subsided.

This was so much more intense that I anticipated it would be. There I was, reading prayer after prayer from woman after woman, feasting my eyes on their intimate conversation with their creator over the desires and pains of their heart.

Watching, marvelled as they spoke words I have thought in private.  Feeling an extraordinary kinship with these women I will never meet, who are spread far and wide across this earth who have  and are fighting the same if not a very similar fight as I am. Fights with self and with Him.

It was kind of amazing.

I knew that in the preface they said every chapter may not reach you as it did the woman who wrote it, it may not mean as much to you as it did not them and I am so glad they said that and so glad i read the preface cause that's something I usually hate doing haha.

For indeed, every single chapter did not mean as much to me as it seemed to to the woman that wrote it but you know what? I still treasure the experience, their experience that they were brave enough to share with me because I get it.



I get what it's like to be a creative, to think and feel like a creative and I get what it means to share that with someone. I also get that though theirs may be a battle I have already won or a battle I have yet to encounter it is a battle and there is much to be learned from war, like defence.

Some of the chapters that meant a lot to me were: prayer, the word, wellness, authenticity, dreams, comparison and goals just to name a few.

Definitely an regrettable buy and pretty to boot! Are you using any devotionals lately? Tell me about it in the comments I'd love to hear about it.




Peace. Love. Pray.

Tuesday 25 August 2015

Mini Adventure :: In the Cool of the Day


 (get it because it's a green banana tree?!) 

On Sunday morning before the sun came up my mother and I went for a walk. She's taken up walking again and in mother like way accomplishes it most days along with ten thousand other tasks before most of us have stirred in our beds.

She happened to invite me along one such walk out of the blue and personally I happen to believe the sleep one achieves in those wee hours of the morning just before dawn is the best sleep. The world is coated still in a thin layer of night that makes me smile in my sleep sometimes and appreciate my bed and my window, my sheets and my covers. Most importantly, my safety.

However after getting a mouth full in good gesture from one of my good friends that went a little something like 'Oh please you're still on holiday it's ONE MORNING you can sleep in THE REST OF THE WEEK. GOOOOO spend time with your mother!' I promptly shut up and did just that.

What a thrill in simplicity we can achieve we human beings. We set out while the street lights were still on but I knew that in the blink of an eye they wouldn't be soon. She showed me so many things, frivolous things I hope to always remember. 'Do you know where x lives?' she says 'Have you ever seen a y up close?' she says. 'Look at that, you can see the tail end of the city from here!' she says.

Usually nobody wants to hear their mother nag on, saying the same thing over and over but when she talks like this I think I can stand it ten thousand times.

It was only about an hour long our walk.

By the time we were returning we past the older Anglican ladies on their way to open the church for service. An old stone building, who knows how long it has stood in it's place? Usually I toss in sleep from my bed as I hear them ring the bell to let everyone know church is about to start and I silently praise their willingness to sacrifice this wonderful sleep time for Jesus. Today I pasted their door as they rung it. Oh how sweet to say good morning to ladies who still wear Sunday hats to service. Oh what an uncommon thing!

As we reached just about the top of the first hill I looked across and watched the light of day roll over the darkness and shed it's light upon the earth. It was spreading and coming towards me. I thought of that moment in the book of Genesis that speaks of God coming down to spend time with humanity in the cool of the day. As the clean air of morning hit my lungs, chilled like the sharp but welcomed shock of iced water on a summer day, I stood their a moment in time and marvelled at our world and the way she keeps bestowing beauty upon us. Reminded yet again that all we ever need do is look.


 What unsuspecting beauty has made you marvel lately?


 Peace. Love. Marvel.
You know for some reason my technology always seems to give out around this time. My phone wont let me get my photos off it these days. Sigh, lets see what this does for my little blogging schedule. bare with me?




Sunday 23 August 2015

Education is Sexy | Sunday Sunshine 3

 I haven't done one of these in a really long time so I figured why hold back?


// If you needed any more evidence that nobody knows what the heck they're doing here have some advice for all ages from all ages.

// Subway Love by Max Stossel has me wishing I wrote it myself!

// How to know your life purpose in five minutes by Adam Lelpzig for TED Talk legit tells it to you in just over five minutes sans introduction. I can't say that I disagree with him!

// The on screen boy who lived made my heart glad when he challenged this notion of boys as sex symbols?! wut!? Why...somebody stop the madness! Hide yo kids, hide yo wives! Clutch your pearls!

// This article on rape culture has me seriously reconsidering the music I let into my body and what the possible underlying suggestions of lyrics to a demographic that may not yet have developed critical thinking skills is. I admit at first I didn't quite understand but let me tell you, I've been to a party in the past and when I said no and they persisted anyway, this is not how it ended. So why are we encouraging our young men to think that this is the norm?



Happy Sunday!

Friday 21 August 2015

Book Review :: Go Set A Watchman


In Go Set A Watchman  Harper Lee uses flashbacks, extended metaphors, humour and symbolism to bring to light a realistic depiction of the cross combat injuries sustainable during a racial revolution.

Just as the times around them the characters in Lee's book are being shaped by the conflict of race and the fight for identity that it induces. Each character is now seeing the world around them from behind the blinders of not welcomed changed. Lee shows us this struggle well all through out the book as Jean Louise jerks through her stream of conciousness from adulthood to childhood and back again. Desperate for stability, she is livid when a Sunday school song is sung differently and keeps returning unconsciously to the shady patch that was her backyard, the author shows us that she just is not ready for what looms just before her on the horizon, in history and in the books plot.

The themes are clear and jumping of the page, race, identity, conflict, revolution and post slavery America in the time of the confederacy. There is the debate of colour blindness verses intentional ignorance in every conversation shared between a Negro and Caucasian character in the book making the weighty implications of such a statement as 'equal rights for all  special rights for none' glaringly evident in the time of the books setting and ever relevant even in modern day society.

Uncle Jack, serving a foil character to Atticus, walks us the reader through much of the twisted roads of resolution from his all knowing point of view. Since Jean Louis tells the majority of the story and has limited interaction with him however, this choice of points of view creates wonderful suspense in the novel; we know everything just as Jean Louise knows it and if not mere moments before.

As always Harper Lee's choice of diction is elegant, beautiful and metaphoric and laced with witty nods to classic literature that makes the lover of it either feel a sense of pride or embarrassment for their level of familiarity with her many references.

Most glaring is the realities of how this book, written so long ago continues to be relevant in modern day. In the 2000s we have seen a different kind of 'identity revolution' than that of Scott and her family, one characterised by the natural hair movements and such classifications of beauty as Lupita Nyong'o. We have also been privy to more brazen senseless murders underscored by the racial divide. Harper Lee's Go Set A Watchman is a blunt observation and warning that if we compare and contrast early post slavery America with that of it's present day counter part sorrowfully it would appear the more things change is the more they have stayed the same. She invites us to search ourselves and 'Go Set a Wactchman' ; a conscience and assess how we feel about our achievements of 'equality' thus far.

I give this book five stars. Now let me tell you my personal reasons why:

So many are shocked by what they perceive to be a revolutionary change in Attocis's character and I understand that for when a character is cast as a hero in one book then has the integrity built to support his heroism questioned in a next people become flustered, people say this is not the man I knew...

It is for this very reason I feel the author has so well succeed. Many are looking at this book as a prequel, I am not. I see it better as a sequel and it functions well as such. Especially if viewed in chronological order.

I do not feel like Harper Lee changed Atticus, she built the persona to be a human being and guess what: people too change, especially during a time when history is changing around them.

I have come to realise that people seem to be most comfortable with the notion of a person being one thing or the other as though one cannot be just and greedy, unfortunately this is entirely possible. Just as one can do a job well and still hate the people you are doing that job for.

Jean Louise and the many characters around went through a not so unique struggle in this book, one that speaks valumes about the human race. They were all made, not asked, to question where they stood in the hierarchy of colour that humanity has calculated up for ourselves and what they presumed to do about it.  Then, they made separate choice as to how to answer that question because the things we are taught and the people we associate with leave an impact on our lives and help choose the direction of our choices, maybe not immediately but eventually.

While our circumstance do not get to choose the direction of our choices but they do get to somewhat inform them. The choice is ours to make. Jean Louise and Atticus made choices flavoured by their past interactions and lessons. I appreciate that I had the chance to read about it and learn from it.

I'm feeling a little odd writing my thoughts on this book, I know that my view is not that of the majority. I think because I think too much like Jean Louise does in this book. So yay that this isn't a scholarly paper where they are always searching for the right answer, this blog post is me giving my opinion freely.


For more of my book reviews click here.

Monday 17 August 2015

What Does Inspiration Look Like?


I think there must be a very special little daemon dedicated to whispering into the ear of us writers (and maybe his reach extends to other creatives too?) that our inspiration is some kind of well or spring to be tapped into until it dries up...I think the truth is that inspiration looks a lot more like an ocean.

Those other images are far too small a comparison.

For inspiration continues to ride with us through life. It does not simply go away. You do not simply dip into it one day and it has stopped existing. I think that inspiration continues to be replenished as life goes on because life, because our experiences inform inspiration. They are her secret recipe ingredients.

Like the location of a hidden away beach the unpaved road to inspiration can become over grown with weeds and obstructions in need of clearing away but once we push through, even if it's through a wall of that razor grass, once we come upon her again the bottoms of our feet lay flat upon her familiarity. Our eyes fix with hers. The rhythm of her heartbeat, whether tumultuous or calm syncopate to the space in our heart or the speed of our fingers.

Sure, sometimes we have to chase her but like we chase wind in our wanderlust, it is a chase that stirs the dance up from our hearts, from the centre. Propelling us to reach out, grab a firm hold and enjoy.


Piece. Love. Dive In.
Don't forget to enter my giveaway!

Saturday 15 August 2015

GIVEAWAY : The Just Because I Love You End of Summer Giveaway! ((CLOSED))


I thought I'd set up a little end of summer giveaway for you all because I love you.  There will be two winners and I will choose the winner at random live in a video.  This give away is open until August 30th The winner will be announced and contacted on September 2nd. Good Luck and thank you for your support thus far!

Winner Number 1 - You could win:
  • 1 Custom miniature painting by male local artist
  • 1 Word art print from ABM Happy Mail
  • A selection of stationary that includes half these fun and funky cards from ABM Happy Mail.
  • 2 Cute grab and go mini notebooks. 
  • A fun 'One Love' tee Or tank (your choice)
  • 1 Notepad from ABM Happy Mail
  • 1 'forget me not' mini calendar booklet
  • 1 pen
  • 5 Blank Christmas cards for the coming season
  • A surprise item 
  • One bar of all natural dark chocolate (as long as the post office lets me send it.

Winner Number 2 - You Could Win:
  • 1 Art print from local artist Shellon Eleazer.
  • A selection of stationary that includes half these fun and funky cards.
  • 1 Cute grab and go mini notebooks. 
  • 1 notepad
  • 5 Blank Christmas cards for the coming season
  • A surprise item designed by Janetta Thornhill

How to enter:
  1. Follow Sandals and Sunnies on Bloglovin' (mandatory)
  2. Leave a comment telling me which of these items you would most like to win. (mandatory)
  3. This giveaway must have at least 35 entries so TELL A Friend! (mandatory)
  4. Follow me on twitter (optional)
  5. Tweet about this giveaway (optional)
  6. Follow me on instagram

a Rafflecopter giveaway
This contest is open to international entries.
Peace. Love. Free Swag!!

Friday 14 August 2015

Book Review: Very Good Lives the fringe benefits of failure and the importance of imagination


In Very Good Lives J.K Rowling uses imagery, humour and metaphors to emphasis the determination failure can expose and the change imagination allows.

If you've never read any of Rowling's work I'm so sorry for your loss you don't know how incredibly funny she is! In this book in particular she uses said humour to remind us that her warnings come from a place not just of experienced success but a place of failure too. As such, this gives her hands on, practical experience with and liberty to speak on both.

Her tone is comfortable and almost whimsical as she shares the importance of ones inner self made magic; the most important kind. Using these prominent themes of imagination and failure, together with well crafted imagery, Rowling makes her tale easily applicable to the lives of both the audience and the author.

She shares intimate details of the earlier part of her life, wording her sentences so that they vividly take you there to that long corridor where her views on life were further informed by the actions of unsung victims and hero alike. A corridor one cannot help but see as a representation of the middle ground between her past failures and her future successes.

A middle ground graduation day often is to so many of us.

Her choice of figurative devices succeed in stressing the existence of potential energy to enact change waiting just behind open eyes. The author goes on to suggest that if this state of active presences is placed beside a willingness to make a change, it will amount to an extraordinary life well worth living. Not to be overlooked is Rowlings call to the read to step up to a responsibility with which every person is charged, to encourages us to make education count for something much bigger than the individual that achieves it.

-----


I know that this is a speech she has given but I chose to read it anyway for the reading experience because I wanted to internalise it in that way. That sounded weird I know, I'm a weirdo, ah what to do, enjoy it yes?

I think that I have very good taste in books because this too is going up on my library once I buy it in hard copy, oh I can't resist it! I loved this book for so many reasons, I'm doing my undegrad. degree, I too am a writer, I have tasted to bitter slice failure deals one and I have danced amidst with an incredibly active imagination. Balance is key, how easily we forget. This was a beautiful reminder that though such a balance is not easily achieved, the journey of that has you tipping this side and the other is more often than not ultimately beautiful.


What have you been reading lately?

Peace. Love. Very Good Lives. 

Thursday 13 August 2015

Island Life :: That Time We Were on Volcanic Eruption Alert



When you live on an island in the Caribbean there are all sorts of unique experiences that come your way like exploring neighbouring deserted islands or traditional slave pens. Oh and maybe the threat that the underwater volcano that is just four miles off the coast of your nation will explode suddenly and cause a tsunami that will wipe out your entire island home and everything you know. We don't put that part on the Boucher though.

Ok, all joke aside because I know I run the risk of having some people read that and take it too seriously, every thing is as safe as can be, don't worry  this was just a random scare. We always take care of our visitors, even more so than ourselves actually haha You don't believe me? You should look up how many beautiful countries are living with dormant or active volcanoes as maintains at this very moment. Not to mention all those other types of disasters looming...

Were I live we have quite a number of volcanic craters, some active some not as much. The main one, active and continually monitored is 'Kick em Jenny!' She resides underwater just four miles of the coast as mentioned above. On Thursday July 23rd Kick Em Jenny Kicked up a small storm of sorts.

I woke up to no internet that day and no cell service on my main cellphone provider. I wasn't too bothered, my body was wrecked by a cold so that was the least of my worries. That is, till I got a call from a friend that went something like 'I hear they say we on tsunami watch?!' Oh 'they' always the bringer of bad news.

Now being in school has taught me the incredible importance of research, I hate it when someone just throws some random scary fact at me without any viable source. I acquaint it to someone throwing a wild animal at my face and saying 'here hold this!' then running away. So I responded with little panic and then 'Okay, well, I have no internet right now and the radio has been on all day and said nothing about that so when you verify it let me know.'

I went back to sleep. After all, if my island is about to be blown sky high girl gonna need her energy right? Or not...either way yay sleep.

About an hour later I heard the radio announcer quarrelling that our national disaster agency was in an emergency meeting and that they need to update the nation. I remembered then that my mother and grandmother had left for that beach I posted about a while ago and had been gone three hours. When I called they were walking into the front yard though so it was all good.

I had to call up my other friend when I realised things were getting more and more panicked, she does love a good conspiracy and what are good friends for after all?  We talked a lot as people tend to in those moments, all the what would happen ifs and the many people we knew that had recently had dreams about a tsunami and a fearful mixture of fact and fiction.

Well, armed with my trusty radio announcer I became privy to the voices of people in the north of the island who alerted us that they were experiencing multiple earthquakes as we speak. A lady from the north of the island called then and said things are pretty bad, so many heavy earthquakes, seconds apart, plus the ocean is turning white she said.

There was finally a brief national update that said everything was fine, just some palatal shift, no tsunami watch anywhere in the Caribbean. More updates after the emergency meeting.

My other friend called back and said the tsunami watch is definitely true.

I updated her.

There was a press conference later explaining that the volcano has been under monitor for some time now and was having tiny eruptions as volcanoes tend to do and in fact as ours often does every year, which caused a few earthquakes in the part of the island closest to it. Some time later someone else released video of the ocean and lo and behold it was apparently not in fact white.

What really annoyed me was the misinformation that ran rampant that day. I was getting messages on my phone when the internet came back of a pictured volcano attached to a message about how dyer things are and how we are one category away from eruption evacuation. The pictured depicted quite a scary notion and people in the group I was in again talked of the fact that we are on tsunami watch not just for us but the entire Caribbean another friend said

Nobody was citing anything though.

There was no system in place to be prepared. We did not know where we would need to go if or what we would need to take with us and that became painfully obvious. Most people I know turned to speculation and their speculations were shared far and wide.

Most felt helpless, there was no internet to validate or sway our fears and little means to reach others via phone for most of the day. I was calm, I had no energy anyway but it taught me how reliant we had become on technology. How before we may have all known better what we needed or where to go from reading it in a book. Now we take for granted that we will always be able to google our troubles away...

A friend of mine said this the day after when everyone had calmed down and all but forgotten how scared they were the day before now that their internet returned and their cellphones worked.

We often joke saying that it always takes a disaster to get us ready for a disaster and as you can tell the volcano didn't erupt, it wasn't much of an alarm, the orange alert just wanted to alert the marine workers to keep the necessary radius as the eruption could cause a change in water density causing boats to sink.

Still, what a reminder that natural disasters don't care about your internet speed or your wifi availability.

Sunday 9 August 2015

My Colour Quest :: Summer of Colour 2015


Not bad not bad.

Most of my summer was spent doing school work. It's painfully sad but what ya gonna do? Even as I worked though I kept my eyes hoping for a glimpse of the brightness of this world.

I saw my favourite home skirt with the palm trees against a bright wall I'd walked by most of my life // Coconut trees against a purple sky, in the foreground of a blue moon // the lush green rain watered grass behind my friend's meticulously done nails near her bright mauve pink dress // watermelon against cotton candy pink soft flowers hanging in the midst of a workplace. // that blue wall // the mimicked image of sunflowers with an orange mani // well fenced greenery and a snow cone in my country's national colours // watermelon while I had a cold // rainbows hiding in plain sight.


Have a happy Sunday my friends. I pray you find beauty, even in the moments when you feel in the midst of the breaking down of business.


Peace. Love. Calm down, look aground you.

Friday 7 August 2015

Musing :: Style : MAC Shy Girl


If you know me well you know that I really only wear very bright lipsticks. It's one of the reasons I love MAC lipsticks; their pigments are bright and consistent. This lipstick that is the subject of my post today, though it is the lightest shade i still have come to love. Today I wanted to talk about as nude in lipstick as I think I will ever go and that's with the creamsheen shade that MAC Shy Girl.

When I first bought it and tried it on I will admit I almost regret my decision; That's because I had no idea it was going to be so pale looking against my complexion, usually because of my albinisms all pigments shine bright but this time that was not the case.


Shy Girl is definitely appropriately named, it is really creamy and has an ever so slight shine to it. I often wear it on the days I feel lazy and don't want to do much by way of lipstick but have enough energy to put in a little effort. Most call it the 'natural' look I suppose.

It isn't a nude but has a slight orange tone to it, keeping it fun and peppy without effort.  I think it's the perfect blend of peachy plus beige with an ever slight touch of shimmer. If Shy Girl could be a television character I feel like it would be that typecast girl next door.


I will admit, creamy as it is I usually have to swash it on my lips a good four times both ways for me to have a fairly noticeable tint. If I'm only going for barely there twice will do just fine and create an opaque, barely there colour. The longevity is good too, I don't usually have need to reply unless I want a brighter go of things or my day extends past 8-3. Which I think is fair because then I would be going from dayware to eveningware anyway.

Before Mac Shy Girl I was considering getting Crème Cup but now this notion is no more. I've warmed up to Shy Girl well, it is relaxed, calm and comfortable.


What's your go to nude lipstick shade?

Peace. Love. Creamy days.
check my other MAC lipstick reviews here.

Tuesday 4 August 2015

Summer to do list update :: The Book Shelf Purge of 2015



Oh yeah that's right, I already tidied my book self baby! Well, one of them, which was after all my goal. I've got three so I do hope to tackle the next two soon but maybe I'll give the bookshelves a break and focus on clothes yeah? Meanwhile, have a look see at some of the highlights of my book shelf tidy.


One of my favourite novels is Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This is my display copy. Hardcover, beautiful watercolour cover illustration and gold ribbon along the back spine. Oh swoon!! My only regret is not buying it's brother book in this style but when I went back the most glorious bookstore we've ever had on the island had closed down.  I mourned the loss of it for a long long time...


This is a picture of some of my filled sketchbooks. I need to remember to only buy hardcover, as you can tell the soft covered ones have not held up so well over the years...


Perhaps the first time I was published, I co-authored this book when I was around 14-15 We had a wonderful time making it. I have my own work in there along with illustrations.


My vintage movie collection. Wanna come over for wine and a motion picture?


Three of my favourites from the list!


Five hours later and I'm all done!


I'm kind of impressed. I didn't have any trouble breathing or anything! You can't see them well it is likely but now I can plainly see my favourite books displayed like:Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix and the last of the series. Eat. Pray. Love. which I haven't finished because it's just so good....

Honestly I just realised that I need to add my most favourite book The Alchemist and Who Moved My Cheese to this list stat! Ah but I've running of space...

Tell me, how DO people have just one booksehelf??

My last shelf is a mixture of English and Literature resource textbooks and so because you know I live the passion boo. That teacher life kind of demands it anyway. I aint mad.


What are some of your all time favourite books?

Peace. Love. Read On.
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