Men men men

You probably been ask this many times, who wasn't?
What is your type?
What kind of men make you blush, feel nervous even for a split second, or fill your fantasies?

No matter if you are married, single, dating, just like our partners, we also will let our eye "hang" for a moment on a man of our "dreams".

Perhaps he will be standing in the subway, reading news paper, in his grey sweater with black framed, thick glasses, worn out jeans and hair that say "I did style them into messy hairdo".
And you may eye his lips, full, colour of raspberries, or maybe skinny and curved into a small smirk. Perhaps peppered with light beard or 12 o'clock shadow or maybe clean shaved with perfect olive skin and wrapped in fresh scent of the cologne.

What would be my type?
Is it easy to just pick 4 limbs, head, attached eyes to it, hair, no hair, belly, no belly, with long legs, short legs, hairy legs, bald, with long hair, ponytail, curly hair, straight, red, blonde, black.
I am unsure.

Over the years I came to the conclusion that it's not really about a list of features that I look in a man but rather a set of qualities. Things that I can swap around, accept, exchange, find interest in even when I thought that I don't want to.

The way he walks, smiles, gazes at you, is he direct or a bit shy, cocky, to loud or maybe to shy. Maybe he will smell beautiful when brushing his lips against the side of your neck or perhaps his beautiful hands will push a lock of hair away from your face so he can stare into your eyes and tell you how beautiful you are. And you will know that he means it, because his smile will be real, and you know his knees feel weak when you around.

Or maybe he will be a macho man, tough, direct, smelling of fresh soap because that's all he will use, with shave head, perhaps a tattoo on his arm highlighting his larger bicep. Wearing plain t-shirt and pain of jeans he owned since 1998 and same plain pair of Nike's.

Will he wake you up with cup of coffee and kiss on the shoulder. Or slap in the butt and way to energetic rubbing because he can't keep his hands off you, even after a long, active night.
Or maybe he cuddle, take your scent with him to work, spending only 10-minutes in washroom.
Will he switch your favorite song playing on iTunes, or try to wrap his arms around you and spin you around in random dance, just to watch you chuckle then slap him on the shoulder because after all you are late to work and there is no time for goofing around, well maybe for a moment, for one more second, for one more kiss, for one more brief minute with his arms around you so you can feel like a princess at least once a day.

So what is my type?

All about numbers.

I was just taking a shower and thinking. You probably guess it already, yes, this is the reason why I decided to blog my thoughts.

Shower seems to always steam out all the thoughts out of my head. For some odd reason every time I step my foot into my little "oasis", I begin to think.

People sometimes ask me about my past relationship and subject of me being married comes up. And then they ask how long I been married. And the answer is always "ten years", though sometimes I lie a little and say nine. Nine always seem to sound so much less then ten, odd isn't?

And as I "admit" to the true length of my marriage, people "ah" and "oh" and blink at me with an odd stare fallowed by "But you are so young".

Yes, I am thirty years old and I been married since 1997, I separated with my ex in 2007.

If you did your math correctly, I was 18 years old when I got married (I'm a December baby and our wedding was in November).

At this point the "oh" and "ah" change into simple open-jaw-expression.

Then, the next question usually is "do you have any kids?". And my answer is short - "no".

This made me think about how people attach everything to numbers.

How long I was married would suggest I have kids. Being married at 18 could mean god-knows what. Number, number, number.

Because ten years sound like so much time, why do people automatically think that with number there is "more" to the story?

Numbers always hunt us. My mother asks me sometimes if I will have kids... because after all I am thirty. Oh my god, thirty. It doesn't matter that I am single, nor am I in love, nor I even have anyone in my life to call "my man". But what is important is the number - 30 -. Why?

We go though our life and we work everything around numbers. Our job around $$$-numbers, our social life around number of friends, our daily steps around number of water-glasses consumed.

A girl I know got married not to long ago, it's been just couple of years, but she already is being asked about number of kids. And the fact that she is not ready doesn't matter to society, because after all two years of marriage are perfect for making a nest.

What means a month of knowing somebody very well and twenty years of not knowing your own lover? Why do we admire the number of commitment instead of the true being ourselves, and doing what feels right, WHEN feels right?

Life is a strange place, but life doesn't give us second chances. If you live it and assign numbers to it, you will cage yourself in what seems to be an ideal plan, but at the end of the day you may die at 90, maybe 75. Will you ask yourself then if this is the right number to die? Did you live all those years without fear of loosing a day or a month or perhaps a year for doing something for yourself? No matter how silly or big it is? Will you ask yourself if years spend at what you been working for were worth it? Did you worked for it long enough? Did you smile the right amount of times? Did you cry enough, did you made love and wished for time to stop?

Or will you worry that when you were 12-years old you should have taken dance classes, or the bike ride with that one boy, maybe walk away from the woman who cheated on you but you didn't wanted for everyone to see that sometimes things simply don't work out?

Don't say you want time for yourself, just say that you are not ready. Why do you have to be?

Don't cry about lost years, if they are in your pass; Why not be happy with who you are because of those years?

Don't put all those numbers into jars of "anniversaries" and "celebrations of years of commitment". Put them into your pocket and smile, because you made your life your way, slow or fast, sloppy with mistakes, or flawless and full of laughters or tears - you took each step not because you had to meat the "deadline" but because it made your heart skip the beat and worth living.

How to Make Small Green Choices at Home

The effort to "go green" is more important now than it has ever been. The world has a fixed amount of natural resources and the population is expanding at an outrageous rate. Some natural resources are already depleted. So, as population growth continues to use up our limited resources, there are fewer resources available. If we want to leave our future generations with the same standard of living we have enjoyed, we all need to make an effort to contribute. Though they may not seem significant, there are little things each of us can do each day in our own home to help make a big difference. Here are some ways to get started.

Instructions

Step 1
Change your light bulbs. Compact fluorescent light bulbs use 66 percent less energy than standard incandescent bulbs and last up to 10 times longer. Replacing your old light bulbs with compact fluorescent ones can save $30 in energy costs over the life of the bulb.

Step 2
Buy "tree free" 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper. You can buy it for everything from greeting cards to toilet paper. Most tree-free paper is bleached without the use of toxic chlorine-derived bleach, so it reduces chlorine pollution in addition to saving trees.

Step 3
When you decide to put in new flooring, opt for bamboo floors. Bamboo is attractive as a building material because it is very hard, strong and dimensionally stable. Using bamboo flooring allows you to freshen up the look of your home and help the environment at the same time.

Step 4
Buy hemp rugs. They are both stylish in design and affordable. Hemp rugs are all-natural area rugs that are good for the soil. Hemp fiber is stronger than cotton and has a naturally course texture that will somewhat soften with time. The rugs actually become stronger as they wear. Hemp is also naturally resistant to rot and mildew.

Step 5
Use healthier paint. A variety of healthier paint options are now available. You can add character to the rooms of your home by painting your walls with natural paints, zero volatile organic compounds (VOC) paints and low VOC paints, all of which are considerably healthier choices.

Step 6
Make use of organic cleaning products. Natural cleaning products offer environmentally safe, cost-efficient alternatives to the toxic and potentially lethal household cleaning products used in many homes today.

Step 7
"Go green" in your garden. Incorporate used or recycled furniture in your designs. In addition, avoid all chemicals and use natural remedies. It is also a good idea to include native plants in your design. They are generally disease free, use little water and help attract beneficial wildlife. These ideas not only help the environment, but also help make your garden look beautiful.

For more info on how to improve your life, check out book by Method "Squeaky Green":

Random can be good

So you are Polish eh?

Yes, I am Polish.
I was born and raised back home. I left Poland when I was 18 years old and very often people ask me about Polish cooking.
This is the reason why I decided to creative this post (links to recipes included).

Polish cuisine (Polish: kuchnia polska) is a mixture of Eastern European (Lithuanian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Hungarian, etc.) and German culinary traditions, with some Russian, Italian, and Turkish influence due to historical reasons. It is rich in meat, especially chicken and pork, and winter vegetables (cabbage in the dish bigos), and spices, as well as different kinds of noodles the most notable of which are the pierogi. It is related to other Slavic cuisines in usage of kasza and other cereals. Generally speaking, Polish cuisine is hearty and uses a lot of cream and eggs. The traditional cuisine generally is demanding and Poles allow themselves a generous amount of time to prepare and enjoy their festive meals, with some meals (like Christmas eve or Easter Breakfast) taking a number of days to prepare in their entirety.

Traditionally, the main meal is eaten about 2 p.m., and is usually composed of three courses, starting with a soup, such as popular bouillon or tomato or more festive barszcz (beet) or żurek (sour rye meal mash), followed perhaps in a restaurant by an appetizer of herring (prepared in either cream, oil, or vinegar). Other popular appetizers are various cured meats, vegetables or fish in aspic. The main course is usually meaty including a roast or kotlet schabowy (breaded pork cutlet). Vegetables, currently replaced by leaf salad, were not very long ago most commonly served as 'surowka' - shredded root vegetables with lemon and sugar (carrot, celeriac, beetroot) or fermented cabbage (kapusta kiszona). The sides are usually boiled potatoes or more traditionally kasha (cereals). Meals often conclude with a dessert such as makowiec, a poppy seed pastry, or drożdżówka, a type of yeast cake. Other Polish specialities include chłodnik (a chilled beet or fruit soup for hot days), golonka (pork knuckles cooked with vegetables), kołduny (meat dumplings), zrazy (stuffed slices of beef), salceson and flaki (tripe).


Grandmother's Cheesecake (Sernik Babci)

Dough:
1-1/4 cups flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1 egg
3 Tbps sour cream
1/3 cup confetioners sugar

Filling:
6 eggs
2 cups confectioners sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 lb. farmers cheese or ricotta
2/3 cup melted butter
1-1/2 cups mashed potatoes (not seasoned)
Save the ones from the night before.
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup grated orange or lemon peel

For the dough, combine the flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl. Cut in the butter with a fork.

Beat egg into the sour cream. Stir into the flour mixture then stir in the sugar. Knead the dough until well mixed and smooth.

Roll dough on a floured surface into a rectangle. Line a 13x9x2 inch pan with the dough and bring dough part the way up sides.

For the filling, separate 1 egg and reserve the whites, beat remaining yolk and whole eggs with the the sugar for 5 minutes at hight speed of a electric mixer. Add the vanilla, beat at high until the mixture is soft.

Press cheese through a sieve, blend cheese with butter add the potatoes, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt. Stir in organge peel. Fold into the egg mixture. Turn into prepard crust in pan.

Bake at 350 degrees F for about 45-55 min. or until set. Cool well before cutting.

Poppy Seed or Nut Roll

8 cups flour
1 pkg. dry yeast
1 stick of butter or margarine melted
5 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 cups of warm milk

Filling:
1 lb. poppy seed or ground nuts
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 sticks margarine or butter
1 cup milk, hot
1 lemon rind

Combine all filling ingredients and beat well.

Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup of the warm milk. Combine the flour, sugar, salt and eggs. Add remainder of the milk, butter and yast mixture. Beat until elastic. Sprinkle top with a little flour and cover with a cloth. Let stand in a warm place until double in size. Punch down. Divide the dough into 2 pieces. Put on floured board and roll out into a rectangle. Spread cool filling and sprinkle with raisins. Roll like a jelly roll. Place in greased pan and let stand to rise again. Brush top with margarine or butter bake for 45-60 min in 350 degree oven.

Cabbage Rolls (Golabki)

1 head cabbage
1 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb. ground pork or veal (opitioal)
16 oz can tomato sauce
8 oz can tomatoes
2 cups cooked rice
2 eggs
1 onion finely chopped
2 Tbsp. margarine
Salt and pepper to taste

Remove the core from the cabbage. Put the cabbage in boiling water and remove the leaves as they soften. Saute the onions in the margarine for a short time. In a bowl add the onions, meat, rice, eggs and salt and pepper, mix this well.
Place about 2 Tbsp. of the meat mixture in the center of a cabbage leaf and roll. Put the meat rolls in a large pot and pour the tomato sauce onto the rolls. Then squeeze tomatoes from can and arrange on top of the rolls. Simmer over low heat for 2 hours.

Fire Vodka (Krupnik)

1-1/2 cup honey
2/3 cup water
1 tsp. vanilla extract or 1 vanilla bean
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
8 sticks cinnamon
2 whole cloves
3 strips lemon peel
1 bottle vodka

Combine honey with the water, vanilla, spices and the lemon peel in a large saucepan. Bring this to a boil cover, and simmer for about 5 min. Add vodka, remove from the heat serve hot or cold.

Instead of designing icons and costing me extra, why don’t you just use the ‘Wingdings’ font?

clientsfromhell.net

"I’ve decided that the amount you invoiced us for is far too much. Here’s my thinking: We are paying you to come up with an idea — we’re not paying you for the time you take to think about it. The actual idea must only take about 30 seconds to think about as you come up with it. All these visuals, that’s just typing. I can do that in Word. It would take me 5 minutes. So I only want to pay you for 5 and a half minutes work."

Client: “The blue isn’t right.”
Me: “What PMS color are we trying to match?”
Client: “Oh, you know, the color of the Texas sky around daybreak.”

“I hate this new font. Use the first one I showed you. This one makes the site look cheap instead of elegant.”
The ‘cheap’ font was Georgia, the ‘elegant’ font was Georgia Italic.

"Wait, you’re working on other projects? For the money I’m paying, you should be exclusive to me."

"Thanks for emailing me the PDF. Can you please resend it to me at 100% and not at 147%."

"Well I’m a bit of a designer too. I have a Myspace."

One client called me this morning. After a brief discussion and proposing the price, suddenly he said :
“I’m sorry, I thought freelancers work for free.”

Client: “It’s a great design. Beautiful, classic, elegant and sleek. It hits everything on our wish list, can we add in some cheetah or leopard print?”

"We shouldn’t have to pay you for this, because if we had the resources in-house, we’d be able to do it for free."

"We need a logo. It needs to have a picture of a barn, a river, and some fish in it, along with our name, and our tagline. It’s very simple. I already drafted up the idea for you in powerpoint. It should be pretty easy, and won’t take up much of your time. You can do this for free, right?"

Client: “That font right there! It’s clean yet edgy. There’s no WAY I’ve seen that font before, I would’ve remembered! What font is that?”
Me: “Arial.”

"Make sure it’s not too edgy, not too flashy, not too much detail, not classical/traditional, not too complex, exciting, but not all over all over the place, efficient but fun, clean, fresh, modern, up beat, contemporary, high readability, smooth, shapeless, timeless, not outdated, but simple."

A client just submitted his logo to me by sending a link to his store’s address on Google Maps… “Click on the thumbtack and it will take you to a picture of the front of my store. The logo is on the sign.”

The Grumpy Sailors

Welcome to the world of Ray Ceasar

Title: "From such foulness of root does sweetness grow"

Yet another amazing artist I stumble upon years ago. I believe I saw his work promoted in one of the art magazines.

Ray Caesar creates fantastic, grimly hopeful and gravely whimsical images of wizened children who radiate an enigmatic serenity. Sprouting bio-mechanical limbs and appendages, the figures are otherworldly, a melding of sci fi fantasy, lush landscapes, and Victorian sensibilities. Working for 17 years in the Art and Photography Department of The Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto, Ray documented things such as child abuse, surgical reconstruction, psychology and animal research. The artist explains, “I often awake in the middle of the night and realize I have been wondering the hallways and corridors of the giant hospital. It is clear to me that this is the birthplace of all my imagery.” These experiences continually haunt and present themselves in his dreamy images, which draw inspiration from the works of Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali, and Paul Cadmus.

Ray's work is most astonishing in the fact it is all digitally created; most people assume they are looking at paintings due to the seamless blending and "painterly quality" of the work as well as its unique emotional impact. Creating models in a 3D modeling software called Maya, he then wraps them in painted and manipulated texture maps. Each model is set up with an invisible skeleton that allows him to pose each figure in its 3D environment. Digital lights and cameras are added with shadows and reflections simulating that of a mysterious and strange “real” world.

www.raycaesar.com

Title: "Kitty Kat Study"

Title: "Messenger"

Title: "Bride Study"

I am just a greek in london.

I would like to introduce you guys to an fantastic artist.

Her name is Christina Koutsospyrou.

Christina Koutsospyrou is a London-based illustrator and screen printer renowned for her unique depictions of contemporary culture which sit at the forefront of the London art movement. Her critically-acclaimed pieces are influential and dynamic while retaining an underlying innocent and romantic narrative. Christina's extensive work has afforded her a staunch worldwide cult following with companies eager to brand her distinctive and progressive style. Her illustrations have been snapped up by international record labels, magazines, fashion houses and TV companies as well as other individuals and organisations who source visually-stimulating art. Apart from producing digital work, Christina creates beautiful delicate screen prints, which she has been exhibiting successfully in various spaces around London over the last few years.

link: http://www.dieforlove.co.uk

Playing games & being creative

cover design by Agnieszka Jeglinska

I really love fun games, and if they happen to include creativity then it's a win win situation if you ask me.

This was an old game which was circling around Facebook, but probably one of my favourite.

So here we go, rules are simple, go nuts! And blog about it and show me later, I want to see it!

The album cover project.

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

The man who told everything

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QNB9mwBPus

There are moments in our life when we wonder if what we did, or said was right. Those little situations when you take a step back and wonder, what if.

Sometimes lies seems to be the only way to go, until you loose something close. Till you feel the burning pain of not really telling what was sitting in your heart forever.

And on those rare moments the truth hurts more then anything, it will bring tears and will make you want to run, run far away from everything.

So what do we choose?

How do we go about our life and live...right?

Where is the line of right and wrong? and who is there to say that what we did wrong now, may at the end be the right thing to do?

If you had one moment to pause, one decision to put on hold, one person to ask to come back, would you? Would you change the way you make your decisions? Would you change how people see you? Would it make a difference? if so, why?

Life is to short.

We all will die at the end.

So tell everything, in right moment, or when asked, or when expected.

There is no more to it.

It's pretty simple.

Before you loose something dear to you.

Spring is in the air.

photo by:

A. Jeglinska

/brokenheart

When a girl meets a boy - on-line

I've been doing on-line dating for about two years now. On and off.
I end up going out with bunch of men I've met in this odd place where e-mail, photos and first hello is the way to impress somebody.

I've to say that it's not only fascinating place but also frustrating one. From "oh hello there" to "You jerk", you can browse through and talk to hundreds if not thousands single (sometimes not) men.

I have to tell you, I think I met everything. From mister bomb, with his shirt magically blown away as he was snapping his picture with web-cam while flexing. To, hi I'm mister fake name and fake photo pulled from stock images site, I didn't even bother to crop out the logo or watermark because most girls will be dumb enough to not see it; after all - I am hot! Fake hot!

One of my favourite kinds are those who don't talk about themselves, oh no, that would be a crime. They talk about girls they came across. It's one big profile of bitching and complaining. A river of tears, bitter words and anger.

Please, just start a blog for that, don't write it in your profile!

Why would a girl be even mildly interested with your whining? What on earth were you thinking? Do those men really believe that after reading a sea of complains anyone would be willing to message? "Oh hello there mister cry-baby! I loved your profile, so intense, so passionate, you really must hate everyone, but I love you, I will love you forever and ever, let's have a drink!"

Really?

There is also another group. I call them "editors", they will read your profile and point out missing comma and a pimple on you chin. They literally will copy and paste your entire profile and sentence by sentence they will give you free editorial, including (just wait!) a psychiatric evaluation! That's right. All for free.

And the funniest part about it is that at the end, they will still ask you out. Really? Hello!

No way in hell mister Editor.

Here is the thing.

You can complain or vent or talk about on-line dating, share your experience (like me) but there are some rules as far as that first contact with other human being.

I mean, you can't see me, I can't see you - why not write something that will make me -want- to see you?

Not interested? Delete the e-mail.

When I first joined the world on on-line dating I was surprised with entire delete thing. I found it a bit offensive. But I quickly did learn that it is a way to go.

Imagine mister Bob (let's call him Bob, shall we?) sending me a nice e-mail. It's great, nice guy, but just not my type (say all you want, but there are just some looks we are not into, everyone has their own "yes, you are cute" and "ehm...no, not my type"). I would replay, perhaps slip little thank you for complement or comment on something he wrote. Then simply at the end, as a sign off, I would slip in "not interested" part.

You are probably thinking this is it? That mister Bob moved on. Wrong.

In 95% of cases like mister Bob, they will end up still spamming you with letters. Some will ask why? oh why but why and why? I don't understand why? Sometimes, you may even try to explain why.

BIG mistake.

Writing "you are not my type" is like a stab in heart to many (so I've learn).

They will eat you alive, and as you run for your life, they will chase you and hunt you down and curse you out (something along the lines of "if you are looking for a hot model then good luck bitch!" etc).

That's right. Men, do not like to be rejected. Hell, nobody does. But let's be a bit normal about it, shall we?

So I stopped.

I simply delete the e-mail, do my little "hey I'm not interested" by NOT replaying.

How to eliminate potential horror dates.

It's really not that hard. Trust me. Well, unless you have completely no clue how to catch those little "red signals" of when to run.

I usually start with casual chat via e-mail. Do my little exploration of the surface, ask few questions about music, movies, dreams.

Then I start to dig a bit deeper. I ask about why the last relationship did not work out (good way to get a small hint on personality of our future date), what made them smile today (if his a selfish bastard the answer will be "my reflection". But if he writes something sweet and cute, hey! he may have a heart). I sometimes even like to toss little "hey, where do you imagine yourself in 10 years?".

Eventually when the vibe is good, sense of humour checked, we go to stage #2 - a phone call.

This is crucial.

I kid you not, but I've been in many situation where edited 50 times, lovely e-mails turn out to NOT be that kind of phone chat I was expecting.

Besides, phone is a great way to hear his voice (good voice is my weakness. A man who can tease and flirt by using tone of his voice will melt me completely), see if you will stumble with conversation or chat over each other, or will he talk about himself way to much and never ask a single question about you. Perhaps he will be so high that nothing that comes out of his mouth will make sense. Or he may turn out to be a guy still obsessed with his ex who he broke up with 2 years ago, and all you will hear is how big of a bitch she was (I had that happen to me once, after 40min I hanged up on him).

Others had nothing to say, even though the e-mails were a sea of great conversations.

So chat, ask about few things, don't talk way to much, after all you want to leave some topics for that dream date of yours.

Even though I had to dig through "hey babe" and "men who like to write everything in one sentence and don't feel the need to use period even when they switch the subject because for some reason that is normal way of writing probably they didn't even read the email before hitting send they still send it in hopes for great date with a wonderful woman like you" and those who yell and cry; I still met great guys.

I had very good times going for coffee, having a drink or a dinner.

So don't give up.

Learn how to deal with on-line dating.

And if you find it way to frustrating, simply delete your account.

After all, not all of us can take well a meeting of 25, handsome 5'8", fit man who turns out to be somebody different then pictures attached, shorter by 5' and heavier by 200 lb.

(this post may be edited later)

Taking tattooing to the next level

Tattoo above was done by: www.amandawachobtattoo.com

I have a great passion for tattoos. I simply love them. I am not sure if that has something to do with me being a designer or with my rebellious personality.

Personally, I only have 3 small tattoos. Each of them have a meaning to me, and any new one I will get will represent small part of me.

For now though, I have two dragons which represent my passion for fantasy, also the beauty of mystical creatures and dragons are my little protectors as I go through my life.

My third tattoo is new. I just got it about month ago. I always wanted to have a tattoo that simply means love. Why?

I guess it's because love is the key thing in my life. Love will always guide my choices, love will always be the most important thing to me. I live for love, because once you have it, that's all you need. Everything else will fall into right place, and you can fight the biggest battles of your life and win or loose, and it won't matter because you have love by your side.

I didn't want to go for heart or anything that could easily be read as "love", so I found a symbol (I love symbols, yet another of my fascinations).
It's a African symbol (Adinkra) "Odo nyera fie kwan", which means "Love does not lose its way home" (Blessing in loving).

Being somebody who lives away from home (ocean away in my case) it goes beyond "love", it's about home, my parents, my existing family and family I will have in the future with a person that I will love.

Little bit of history on Adinkra:
The Adinkra symbols are believed to have their origin from Gyaman, a former kingdom in today’s Côte D’Ivoire. According to an Asante (Ghana) legend Adinkra was the name of a king of the Gyaman (Nana kofi Adinkra). Adinkra was defeated and captured in a battle by the Asantes for having copied the “Golden Stool”, which represents for them absolute power and tribal cohesion. He was finally killed and his territory annexed to the kingdom of Asante.

The tradition had it that Nana Adinkra wore patterned cloth, which was interpreted as a way of expressing his sorrow on being taken to Kumasi the capital of Asante.

The Asante people around the 19th century then took to painting of traditional symbols of the Gyamans onto cloth, a tradition that was well practiced by the latter. Adinkra also means ‘goodbye’ or ‘farewell’ in Twi the language of the Akan ethnic group of which Asante is a part. It has therefore been the tradition of the Akan especially the Asante to wear cloths decorated with Adinkra symbols on important occasions especially at funerals of family relations and friends. This is to signify their sorrow and to bid farewell to the deceased.

Creative inks
Recently I been trying to design another new tattoo.
I'm picky. I have million ideas, and really hard time picking what suits me best. But that's a different story.

Where I was going with this post was to show you a really creative and interesting tattoos, which may blow you away,
or maybe stimulate you and if you happen to plan your own tattoo, perhaps you will push the subject and do something unique, something that doesn't follow the "tattoo standards".

Introducing Amanda, a fantastic tattoo artist from New York City.

Enjoy!

Meet the artist
Artist: Amanda Wachob
Portfolio: www.amandawachobtattoo.com
Located: New York

Question
If you have a tattoo, what is it and why did you get it?
If you are planning tattoo, what is your inspiration?

In the world of watercolour and ink

I came across Stina Persson's portfolio by pure accident.
I was amazed and glued to her work right off the bat. Her work is not only filled with beautiful colours which tease our eyes, but also with passion. The work is simple, yet deep.

Enjoy.

www.stinapersson.com

"I keep a close watch on this heart of mine. I keep my eyes wide open all the time"

Lately I been listening to some Johnny Cash. I never been a fan, though I respect him. There are some beautiful songs created by Johnny. One of them is Walk the line.
I was just listening to it and it made me think.. how many of us really do mean when we say we will walk the line?
From my dating history and men who sneaked into my heart I found that not many of them really mean when they say they will walk the line.

What's your story?

How many times will you get disappointed, cheated on, lied to till your heart shuts and becomes numb?
And for those of you who have that true love, do you fully cherish it? or take it for granted?

"I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you're mine I walk the line."

Shoes! Shoes! What? Shoes!

Yeah, so I am officially that girl who is crazy about her shoes. I never been one, I never understood why some girls are. But the day has come. I'm 30 years old and I love my new white shoes (thank you Karina).

What I discovered is that no matter what mood I wake up in the moment I put my shoes on, I feel special. I put my headphones and listen to some old school punk or rock (recently it's been The Runaways). And I feel... good.

So, if you feel shitty... wear something that makes you feel like a superwoman.

Maybe even sing some while walking the street. So what if people will think you are crazy.

After all, you are the cherry bomb!

When did you last kissed?

I was watching Remember Me just the other day. I won't really talk about the movie because that's not the topic of this post.
I finished movie feeling old, and I realized I really miss the casual making out. The kissing for hours, the one where your friends would comment "did you see that couple over there in the corner eating each other?", the one that leaves your skin irritated and red, lips hurting because he didn't shave this morning and heart beating so fast.

The question is, when was the last time you kissed? Make out till dawn... and even though you spend hour kissing it never lead to sex.
I can't really remember the last time.
I know I miss it. I miss having that man beside me who will hunger for my lips and who will know that sometimes it's all right to just leave it at that... a kiss.

Art around us

This is pretty old photo, probably done last year when my building was going through some heavy renovations.
Every day I would leave my apartment and stare at the ground with a smile on my face, because what I was staring at was a naked concrete, which looked like canvas to me.

You be the judge.

Welcome

I decided to try a bit of blogging. It probably will be a page with links and random photos I ether found or took, perhaps some of my work.

Day one of blogging.

yay!