“There are moments when troubles enter our lives and we can do nothing to avoid them.
But they are there for a reason. Only when we have overcome them will we understand why they were there.”

—	Paulo Coelho, The Fifth Mountain

“It’s very dear to me, the issue of gay marriage. Or as I like to call it: ‘marriage.’ You know, because I had lunch this afternoon, not gay lunch. I parked my car; I didn’t gay park it.”

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.”

—	Bob Marley

 

Somewhere in your closet there lies a long sleeve top that’s begging to be revamped, repurposed and worn to death. Help a shirt out with this DIY project that requires no sewing or mechanical skill whatsoever.

1. Fold the top in half vertically so that the fold is down the middle of the front and back. Align the side seams so you know you have an even fold down the front of the shirt.

2. Now, cut the front of the shirt in half from the top of the shirt to the bottom, using the fold as your guide. Try to cut it as straight as possible. If your top has a thick neck, cut off the neckline as well. Voila…you now have a cardigan, but let’s spice it up a bit.

3. Time to crop the back a little bit. With the inside facing the table, spread out the shirt. Draw a slight arch from one side of the bottom to the other (I used a fine-point Sharpie), so that the middle of the back is a couple inches shorter than the front.

4. Time for some fringe. With the shirt still spread out, cut roughly half inch wide vertical strips that go up into the cardigan as far as you prefer (or about three inches). Do this all along the bottom edge.

5. Now tie a small knot at the end of each strip. This weighs the fringe down and gives it a more finished look.

Done. An easy, breezy comfy cardigan you can throw in your bag, wear over a tank or dress, that also gives you a reason to bust out the cha cha.

TIPS FOR A SUCESSFUL AIR-DRY. 

Being able to take the time to actually attempt a blow out on my tresses is a luxury. I like to think of it not as being lazy or a result of procrastination, but a way to relate with my ancestors who were alive before electricity.

Anyways, by rarely getting to blow dry my hair, and frequently hopping in the ocean,  I’ve discovered a few fun ways to still control how your hair looks, that amazingly enough turn out deceptively well styled.

Air Drying style tips:

*a good leave in hair conditioner is recommended. I love Moroccanoil or biosilk.

1: Tuck the hair around your face behind your ears until it is dry. When it’s dry, untuck and you will have a natural face framing curl. (This works insanely well. Total life saver.)

2: Part hair in the opposite direction you normally do, let dry, then flip to your normal part. Va-vavoom! easy volume.

3: Tie hair in a knot on top of you hair until it dries, undo knot. Oh, hello natural wave.

4: Put hair in a loose French braid. Tie it as loosely as possible at the end (or not at all). Let hair dry and comb through with fingers.

5: Go to bed with wet hair. You will wake up with great bed head and unpredictable style

Air drying: Save time, save energy, save your hair. High five.

GROWING LONG & HEALTHY LOCKS

Something about long hair just screams “BEACH!!!” So, in case you ever feel like omitting a bikini top and opting for long, mermaid-esque locks that will supply adequate coverage…

Here are a few tips on growing or maintaining some long, healthy, shiny locks.

1. Flintstones vitamins aren’t just for kids, the right vitamins also are key for helping hair grow. At the very least, make it a habit to take a good Multi-vitamin each day (I like centrum for women or what I can find at Costco) **Zinc, Iron and Folic acid in the multi-V are an added bonus.

2. Get familiar with your Omega 3’s. An omega 3 complex pill, taken consistently, (2-3 times a day totaling about 2,000mg per day) will have your hair brushing the small of your back before you know it. These fatty acids are a fat everyone should write a love note to. If they had an address, or publicist.

3. Find a leave in conditioner that suits you, and make sure you take care of your ends when your hair feels frizzy or dry.

4. Use a sulfate free shampoo. Just trust me.

5. Get a good hair stylist who knows that if they cut off more than the 1/4” needed on your maintenance trims, things might get a wee bit ugly.

I love being bronze, I love looking bronze, but I don’t like little bronze specks known as sun spots. Enter the wonder product, bronzer. Problem, I also am wierded out by all the unpronounceable ingredients in a lot of bronzing powders. So I was rather giddy when I I found this intriguing recipe on crunchybetty.com for homemade bronzer. It works, is customizable to your desired lever of bronzification, looks natural, and if you have a craving for something cinnamon-y, you just figure out a way to lick your face.

Here is the how-to, try it out and let me know how it works:

HOMEMADE BRONZER. SAVE MONEY AND YOUR FACE.

Ingredients:

1 tbsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp cocoa powder
1 tsp nutmeg powder
2 tsp cornstarch
15 drops rose otto, lavender, or rosemary essential oil

A few tips on the color: Cinnamon = glow, cocoa = depth and darkness, and nutmeg = a sunkissed brown. Cornstarch spreads it all out and lightens it. Essential oil keeps it together and thickens. If you want just a loose powder, leave out the essential oil.

Adjust the levels of ingredients to your shade and mix well in a small bowl, and break up any clumps until it’s smooth. Place the powder in a clean, empty compact and pack it in firmly

Try it out, but don’t go overboard, or you’ll look like this.

20 ways to conserve water at home
Cutting back on your water usage means not only a happier environment but a lower water bill. Try these easy ways to conserve water at home.

10 Ways to be Beautiful without Spending a Penny

1. Get Plenty of Beauty Sleep. Sleep may be for the weak, but friends, it is also for the beautiful. Sleeping Beaty didn’t get her name for nothing. Your skin renews itself as you sleep so too little can lead to dull skin and those infamous dark circles. Let’s hear it for a good eight hours of shut eye!

2. Drink to Your Beauty. To keep your skin hydrated and fresh, drink plenty of water. Sure, we all need the occassional glass of wine or our daily lattes, but the rest of the time it’s all about the H2O. And here’s a little supermodel secret: drink ice water which requires your body to expend calories to get the water to body temperature. Every little bit helps, no?

3. Breathe. Alright, so you are on your way to an event and the traffic has you running a few minutes behind. Do you rush in a big frazzled mess? Or do you arrive collected and offer a kind apology? Take a deep breath and hold yourself with grace and dignity. Beauty is more than the products you put on, it’s the way you carry yourself. Speaking of which…

4. Practice Good Posture. Good posture can instantly make you more beautiful. I know, I know: it is also difficult and annoying. We should practice together. Let’s all be lovely ballerinas at our computers–stomachs in, back flat, chin up. Look at that. We are prettier already.

5. Exercise. It’s amazing what a regular workout can do for your body. In addition to overall body fitness, which always makes me feel and look better, improved circulation makes skin and hair look brighter.

6. Smile. A simple and straightforward beauty tip that is twice as attractive when it’s genuine.

7. Edit. It’s time to implement the old adage: less is more. Go through your closet and get rid of all the items that make you feel frumpy, that are worn and outdated, and that simply don’t fit. It’s far better to work with a limited, tried-and-true wardrobe that makes you feel good than have an endless supply of shabby items that just don’t work.

8. Be Classic. It’s terribly expensive to constantly be updating your style to align with the ever-changing trends. Remember: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being classic. Take a look at Audrey Hepburn, a perfectly timeless example of elegance. Her simple, understated wardrobe would be just as stylish today. When you are about to charge an outrageously trendy item on your American Express, ask yourself: What Would Audrey Do (WWAD)?

9. Know that you don’t have to be perfect, to be perfect. The flaws, oh, the flaws. We all have them (well, except maybe Elizabeth Hurley). The wrinkle here. The pimple there. The frizz, the freckle, the scar. Too thin, too wide, too small, too large. There’s a reason the models in our magazines are airbrushed. It’s simply impossible to be perfect! So, it’s time to let it go. Seriously. Accept the imperfections, whatever they may be. This is probably the hardest item on the list, so make a resolution to make peace with your flaws in 2011.

10. Build Your Confidence. Ladies, you are beautiful. Believe it. Radiate it. Confidence is beautiful.

A Pictorial Guide to Avoiding Camera Loss by Andrew McDonald

 

Have you lost your cam­era recently? Mis­laid it some­where in a national park? Left it in a taxi? Dropped it in the gorilla pit? Any­one can be a vic­tim of the thought­less­ness and/or sleepi­ness that can lead to Cam­era Loss.

‘How can I pre­vent Cam­era Loss?’ I hear you ask, wish­ing I’d get to the point. Well, you can’t pre­vent cam­eras from get­ting lost, but you can do some­thing so your cam­era can be found very soon after it has vanished.

All you have to do is take some pho­tos – which you never delete from your cam­era – so when some­one finds your cam­era at the bot­tom of the gorilla pit they are able to locate you and return the lost prop­erty to its right­ful owner.

To illus­trate just how you can safe­guard your cam­era from the crip­pling effects of Cam­era Loss, here are the pics that I always keep on my camera.

 

I think the happiest people continually create their own options and choices, and I think the unhappiest people are the ones that feel unable to do that and so they are stuck in their situation. You have to practice being proactive about finding ways to make your life better, and you might have to make changes, even if you are scared. By practicing these two things, when a bad moment does come around, you will already have a reservoir of confidence that you can trust yourself to find and execute a way to make it better.

How to be (less) Awkward: If you are bringing a camera to an event, make sure to take pictures of everyone in the group–you want to make sure each person, even acquaintances, feels included.

The same way people don’t like to get a trim when they just really want to grow their hair long, sometimes people are slow to cut off bad romantic matches when they just really want a relationship. But a trim of things that aren’t working, whether it’s dead ends or go-nowhere match-ups, is usually the best thing for the overall health of your hair or your heart.

Life Tip: If you are sitting across from someone and they have something in their teeth but you don’t know how to tell them, quietly ask them at the end of the meal if you have something in your teeth. Most likely, they will respond, “no, do I?” and then you have an opening to discreetly tell them.

Life Tip: When a salesperson asks if you need help, she is trying to make your life easier. “No thanks, I’m just browsing for now” said with a smile is all you need to say if you are not interested in her help. If she persists, saying in a friendly voice “thanks, I’ll let you know if I need anything” will give her the hint that you’d like to shop privately.

How to be Smarter: The same rule to getting a tattoo applies to sending a harshly-worded text message: stop, take a moment to think about it, and decide if it’s really the impression you want someone to have of you forever.

 

Some Thoughts on Love

Before anything else we need self-love. Otherwise we won’t feel we have anything to offer others, and we will doubt the love offered to us.
It can be felt for people we have just met, or people we have known our whole lives. Not to say they are similar in nature, but you can love everyone you meet, even just a little.
We cannot survive with too little, we will starve for the affection. But in an ocean of love we lose ourselves, we tire and drown.
It can knock you down, and make you feel the worst you’ll ever feel. But at other times it can just as easily pick you up when you stumble and make you feel whole again.
It can be therapeutic and cleansing. When we love someone we give them a part of ourselves, we share the brightest parts of our soul with them. Whether for a few hours, or for decades, we become renewed.
Fear of losing love is perpetrated by the misconception that we are in some way alone in our experiences. Someone somewhere will always love you, and that is strength enough. Enough to forgive others, forgive yourself, and slowly start all over again.

Whenever I have a problem, I just sing. Then I realize my voice is worse than my problem. And move on.

Kahlil Gibran on sorrow and joy.

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see in truth that you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

Your pain and sorrow is in retrospect often a gift. It makes you stronger. More empathic and understanding. It helps you out in some way and guides you. You can always look back it when you feel down and be happy that you aren’t in that place anymore.

And it’s often in the sorrow that we later on create our strengths. Many very fit people started on that path because they had hit a big low point health wise. And many great speakers or just very social people may have been being deathly shy at a young age. It’s to a large extent all that emotional leverage and all those painful emotions that at least initially give people a great motivation to change their lives in a radical way.

Your sorrow expands the spectrum of human experience, understanding and emotions for you. You become more grateful because of your sorrow. The sorrow carves deeper. And the deeper it carves, the more joy you will also be able to contain. The sad times make the happy times even sweeter.

These are PINS.

Click through:

 

Without change, you just don’t move… — MARC JACOBS

The triangular theory of love is a theory of love developed by psychologist Robert Sternberg. In the context of interpersonal relationships, ‘the three components of love, according to the triangular theory, are an intimacy component, a passion component, and a decision/commitment component’.

Intimacy – Which encompasses feelings of attachment, closeness, connectedness, and bondedness.
Passion – Which encompasses drives connected to both limerence and sexual attraction.
Commitment – Which encompasses, in the short term, the decision to remain with another, and in the long term, the shared achievements and plans made with that other.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangular_theory_of_love

Forgive and let it go.

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

“An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

Fighting evil with evil won’t help anyone. And as said in the previous tip, you always choose how to react to something. When you can incorporate such a thought habit more and more into your life then you can react in a way that is more useful to you and others.

You realize that forgiving and letting go of the past will do you and the people in your world a great service. And spending your time in some negative memory won’t help you after you have learned the lessons you can learn from that experience. You’ll probably just cause yourself more suffering and paralyze yourself from taking action in this present moment.

If you don’t forgive then you let the past and another person to control how you feel. By forgiving you release yourself from those bonds. And then you can focus totally on, for instance, the next point.

if you’re not trying to make something better then as far as I can tell you are just in the way.

Fact: 80-90% of what you fear will happen never really come into reality.

This is a big one. Most things you fear will happen never happen. They are just monsters in your own mind. And if they happen then they will most often not be as painful or bad as you expected. Worrying is most often just a waste of time.

This is of course easy to say. But if you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more and more of that worry from your thoughts.

Avoid a dependency on validation from others.

“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”

“Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.”

The ego wants to add because it thinks it’s not enough. One way of doing that is by craving validation from others. We want to feel smart, pretty, successful and so on. And the validation makes you feel good for a while. But soon you need a new fix.

And the problem with being dependent on validation from other people is that you let other people control how you feel. This creates a rollercoaster of emotion in your life.

To find more emotional stability and to take control of how you feel you need to get your validation from to a more consistent source. Yourself. You can replace the expectations and validation of others by setting your own expectations and by validating yourself.

And so you validate yourself by thinking about how awesome you are. You don’t sell yourself short. You appreciate how far you have come and the positive things you have done. You appreciate your own value in the world. You set goals and you achieve those goals. This builds confidence in yourself and in your abilities. These things will help you to build a habit of inner validation.

Now, showing off. Why do we do that? To get validation from others. However, this need for validation often shines through and that is why a thing like bragging seldom works. Instead of seeing the cool and successful person you are trying to project people just see the insecure and needy person looking for validation. And your bragging falls flat.

We can’t afford to do anyone harm because we owe them our lives. each breath is recycled from someone else’s lungs, our enemies are the very air in disguise. you can talk a great philosophy but if you can’t be kind to people every day it doesn’t mean that much to me. it’s the little things you do, the little things you say, it’s the love you give along the way.

Winnie the Pooh on appreciating the little things.

“Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon”

Daily happiness is to a large part about appreciating the small things. If you just allow yourself to be happy when accomplishing a big goal or when having some great luck then you are making life harder than it needs to be.

Instead, focus on appreciating things that you may take for granted.

Take two minutes and find things in your life you can appreciate now. If you want a few suggestions, here are a few of the things that I like to appreciate:

• My food.
• The weather.
• My health.
• Friends and family.
• This blog and the opportunity to write about what I want.
• You, the reader.
• Myself and the fine things about me.

The funny thing is that if you just start appreciating something you can very quickly start jumping around with your attention and appreciate just about anything around you. You may start with the food you are eating right now. Then move your attention to the phone and appreciate that you can contact anyone – and be contacted by anyone – you’d like. You might then move your attention outside, through the window and see the wonderful sunshine, then kids having fun with a football and then a really attractive person walking by. And so on.

Or you can take a couple of minutes each night and write down 5 things you are grateful for in a journal.

Doing any of these two exercises will over time make it easier to naturally in everyday situations be more appreciative and grateful for your life.

“It always comes as a shock, the moment you realize it’s over. One minute you’re standing on solid ground, the next minute, you’re not.”

—	Grey’s Anatomy