A Meditation on Beauty: Lupita Nyong'o

Hello everyone, and happy Thursday to you!

I saw this video earlier this week and was so throughly impressed with this speech, I cannot help but share with with as many people as I can. Lady and Scholar Lupita Nyong'o seamlessly connects the need to acknowledge other kinds of non-cookie-cutter beauty as truly legitimate, as well as the often overlooked need to honor beauty of character/inner beauty. She does all this while being a bastion of strength and hope for underrepresented aesthetics, and acknowledging her own very human desire to be her own stumbling block--and tells how she didn't give in to that desire.

I am so fully impressed with this speech. The first time I heard it, I laughed, clapped my hands and cried "Yes!" when she mentioned Alec Wek's name. I smiled when she said that when Oprah says something, it's a fact! The second time I watched this video, my eyes started brimming with tears to hear of Lupita's fan almost bleaching her skin, and the hardship Lupita herself went through. I know as I continue to return to these thoughts, all kinds of thoughts and emotions will be evoked in me while hearing these words; hopefully it will continue to elevate my spirit and break through misunderstandings, obliterating the strict rules of beauty that so many take as granted. Because I hope it will do the same for others, I share it, now, with you.



Thank you all so much for reading.

Pretty Claws: A nail art blog

Hello everyone, and happy Thursday to you!

I'm always happy to know that I'm reaching friends at home as well as an international audience, and today I discovered that over the past week, I've had some readers from Lithuania. As I'm always trying to expand my mental map of the world, I looked it up and saw that Lithuania shares borders with Sweden and Denmark, and has so beachfront property along the Baltic Sea. On their very fresh and visually appealing travel website, I learned that today it is only 7 degrees over there. Stay happy and warm, friends, and welcome to the group!

Related to my earlier post, I decided to save one of the details for today's post, and that was my nails.

 I remembered the most random but also highly impressive detail of the 007 movie Skyfall. The beautiful but ill-fated Severine, I feel, is the epitome of the femme fatale look. She dares to wear dramatic eye makeup, long claw-like nails and backless dresses that are positively devastating, rather than just cute.

My inspiration

What makes her manicure so interesting, other than the long length, is that she has the underside of her nails painted in gold, rather than left plain.  I decided to take a cue from her, not long ago.

Something I like about this look is the length requirement. It simply won't work with the short nails that I've been trimming for over year now. When I noticed I was due for a trim it felt uncomfortable. But when I remembered this look, my nail length was purposeful, indeed.

I felt ridiculously fancy with my lengthy, two-toned nails... until one of my nails broke a week later! Ah well, back to square one.

OPI created a line of nail lacquers that were inspired by Severine, including a red and a gold shade. But I used Estee Lauder's "Le Smoking" and Wet n' Wild's "Gold Rush" (if I recall correctly). I think any similar shades would do, and am even planning to do silver on the under part next time.

Thanks so much for reading, everyone, and I hope you have some fun nail adventures this week!

Gifts from the Momma!

Hello everyone! Happy Thursday! I hope you all are well!

This month I had a reader from Belgium, and I'm not sure if I've singled this country out on this blog before, but here it goes: Belgium shares borders with France, Germany, Netherlands and Luxenborg (which my sister actually said she could see herself visiting and maybe living there for a while). They have both a Prime Minister and a King, and they have three official languages (German, French and Dutch). Thank you to my reader(s) in Belgium; glad to have you in the group! :D

This week's photos were taken sometimes edited by my awesome, tech-savy sister. I believe she's having as much fun taking and tricking the photos out as I am coming up with ideas, modeling and maintaining the blog. I'm very grateful.

On Monday I got a care package from my mom. It had two things that I just loved: My long lost mini-iPod, and this beautiful black and white dress. I tried it on, and we walked outside to take some photos of this super-soft, comfortable little number.

I can't wait to pair this dress with more bright colours!

Don't mind me; I'm just being silly.

See how cool it looks with green!

Favorite boots

Thanks for reading, everyone! Hope you have great weekends, and that all kinds of lovely things happen to you today!

Saving Big Tests for a Pretty Day

Hi everyone! Happy Thursday! I hope everyone is doing swimmingly!

I have some good things going on in my life right now... things that were in the works as early as February of this year. I made some big decisions back then, and have finally been able to realize a part of those plans. I've made it through my training to join the financial industry, in order to help people's financial lives run more smoothly. I took the test that would qualify me on Tuesday, and tried to bring it with the wardrobe as well as the knowledge! Here are some pictures of that. :)

I wish I could have taken a photograph of the sunset that day, but perhaps, you'll just have to trust me that it really was a beautiful day out on Tuesday.

I was being goofy-fancy, but I like how it came out! haha

Oh, it's going down!

Ring by Earthbound 

:p

As you can see, I had a little fun with the details of this ensemble, and I'm happy I get to share this with my great readers. I hope each and every one of you get to do things that benefit yourself as well as others, which is what I intend to do, too! 

Thanks for reading and happy Thursday, again!

Well-Primed

Hi everyone! Happy almost Thursday! Depending on what time zone you are in, happy first few hours of Thursday... or happy Friday! :p

This week I indeed tried Something New. I was thinking about how obsessed I've been lately with my favorite color, and dressed to reflect that. My wonderful sister/photographer let the creative juices abound when she took the photographs with a lot of empty space framing me. Later as we talked about it, she mentioned that we could put song lyrics or text in the spaces.  Here are the photos with some of the lyrics of Janelle Monae's Primetime, a song that gets stuck in our heads often.

Thanks everyone, for checking this out, and I hope you liked the slightly different style of post this time!

Recommended Reading: How the Gucci Bamboo Handbag is Made

Today's Topic

Hello my dear readers! Happy Friday!

Sorry I was missing in action yesterday. Have you ever had one of those days where you get a lot done, but for some reason the details of how you'd like the day to go... never really fall into place? I had to put more than one or two wants aside, including posting something nice for you all.

In other news, today, I saw that I had (what I believe to be) my first reader from Belarus!

True to my curious self, I looked it up! Belarus' capital is Minsk, which was mentioned a few times in the television series Friends. I loved hearing from the stuttering, forlorn but terribly romantic scientist, whose relationship never really takes off because his chemistry research brings him to Minsk. He talks about how lovely it is in the spring, even! Belarus actually shares a border with Poland, Ukraine and Russia, and I will admit, until know I thought it was currently a part of Russia. (Sorry, everyone! My bad!)

I could go on (because Belarus has a really informative official website!), but I'd also like to share some recommended reading with you all. I perchanced across a website called lxrco.com, and while exploring it a little bit, I found this article about the birth of the Gucci Bamboo-handled handbag. It has been said "Necessity is the mother of invention", and I think that necessity is also the refresher of fashion. I love the resourcefulness that people can have sometimes, even during difficult times in human history. Maybe looking at things differently will help us have fewer difficult times in the future...

Yes!

How fun are these? May I have the lavender one? :)

Hey, is that Florence Welch carrying one?

Thanks so much for reading, and have a wonderful weekend! Happy Friday!