The Self-Love Tag

What does self-love mean to you?
Self-love means that I love myself as I am through all the imperfections that I might have. I have learned throughout all these years how to love my body and also my wheelchair too because it’s part of me too. It took me years to find peace with everything but I’m glad I did.

What is your favorite way to pamper yourself?
I have love having moments outside with the cats, taking pictures of them, the sky, and the trees.

What are your three favorite hobbies/pastimes that make your soul feel on fire?
I like doodling, I have these little Velveeta boxes that my papaw collects for his trains, and I have been using these boxes as storage boxes for smaller stuff. The first box I ever got I am not kidding you, my nana and were going through her old stuff and we found a sticker page of Winnie the Pooh. I now have a box with nothing but Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and Piglet. I love watching Disney movies, I’m still a kid at heart. Lastly, I love listening to music it feeds my soul.

What movie always puts you in a good mode when you’re not in the greatest mood?
If I’m not in the best mood on any kind of level, I usually try to watch something that funny, but yet action movies work the best, like Fast and the Furious, Transformers, and Avengers movies.

Who do you trust so much that you would easily believe in anything and everything they said?
My nana, she’s my best friend. I can basically tell her everything in the free world. Nine times out of ten she believes me and I believe her.

What quote totally motivates you?
I have absolutely no desire to fit in.

When was the last time you took yourself on a date? What did you do?
I have never taken myself on a date, however I do eat alone in my room every night so does that count?

What make-up or beauty products makes you feel a million bucks?
I always like a bit of eye shadow. Which is funny because I don’t normally like anything going around my eyes and I’m perfectly fine with them, but other than that I don’t need make up to make me feel a million bucks. My clothes do that enough!

What is the last thing you did for somebody else that made you feel amazing?
I love being to figure out things and I’ve been able to master doing certain things for my grandparents. My nana loves it, but my papaw would much rather me NOT doing them. We tend to get in matches and I usually come up on top, sometimes he does win though!

Do you feel comfortable with and without make-up on?
I don’t feel like myself with makeup on, which is why I felt weird going into the makeup aisles in Walmart the other day because I have no idea about anything in there besides the lipsticks and nail polishes.

What piece of advice would you give a child about to grow up with the pressures of today’s
media and its crushing expectations?
Don’t believe everything you hear and everything your brain is telling you, because not everything you’re is true. There’s hope in finding love for yourself in this world, but when you’re more attached at finding acceptance with everybody else, you lose a sense of who you are as a person and it takes some time to get yourself back to normal but by that time you’ll see everything in your life in a light and you’ll never want to go back there. You’ll have temptations but it’s just better to find your void in the meantime so you have something to distract you from them.

What song puts you in a good mood every time?
Anything upbeat and fast, the lyrics don’t really matter, I’m just more into how it sounds as a whole then picking it apart.

What is the best advice someone gave you or you realized about life?
Oh gosh, I don’t remember any advice. Which is sad but its true. Advice just cycles in and out of my mind anymore.

Who makes you giggle like a giggle monster?
My family has that power, mostly my uncle David. God, on the days he and my Aunt Katt visit it’s like we have to get him to talk about his trips on the road because you know he’s got more than one good story. I was blessed to come from a families of secret comedians I swear!

What is something about society that bugs you that you wish didn’t?
How we complain that everybody is so judgemental but yet we do it to not only others but ourselves all the freaking time! We don’t get a waver, we’re just as mean to ourselves as we are to the rest.

What is one of your favorite things to do on the weekends?
Wake up early and think. Not going to lie, I tend to do this after I’ve had my five minutes online and if I think somebody’s up at like 7 or 8am then I fake asleep and just think about things.

What is something you’re really proud of that you’ve done?
I’m proud that I kept a smile on my face when things are just tearing me apart. I have no idea how I get through those times but I do. I have God to thank because at night, I give it to him and leave it up to him. However, don’t be surprised if you see me crying my eyes out because I can’t do anything about it. I’m strong but sometimes I break…

What is one of your favorite memories with one of your friends?
The first time I ever went out my friends was in my senior year of high school. I hadn’t been out of the house without the accompany of some of my family members. This time it was me, my friends, and my cousin and we were celebrating my 19th birthday and we went out to the movies, out to eat, and then went to Walmart. Since I’ve never went out before then with anyone, I never had to worry about a time ton get home. We got home at 2am. It was an eventful night but weirdly enough my mom actually told me that my dad asked what time we were going to come home and then they realized that they gave us a time and it ended up being a funny memory for us.

What advice would you give someone who needs a boost in confidence?
I would tell them something funny. I’ve never been good at real advice but nobody can deny a good story. I’ve been blessed with comical roots, so I know how to get somebody in a better mood.

Lastly, how do you plan on investing in self-love?
I plan on seeing everything as they are, it’s been working well for me and just letting things flow.

Is There A Difference?

 

Tuesday’s are a day of fun, at least for me they are! I do a lot of different blog chats throughout the week and Tuesday’s are the busiest day of the week because I have three chats going on back-to-back in the afternoon, of course they’re all UK-based chats so it’s evening there for them. My first chat starts at 2pm and my last that I haven’t been joining in the last few weeks starts at 4pm. In between those two, I have my favorite out of three chats that I love the most, the #fblchat (Fashion, Beauty, and Lifestyle Chat)  if you’ve seen me tweeting this hashtag and always wondered why I end with that, now you know! Different bloggers host the chat and come up with the different themes of discussion. Yesterday the topic was about bloggers being influential. I thought this was a good topic to talk about, but by the middle of the chat I was either losing interest or getting tired of sitting up, and I was hardly getting any notifications of people favoriting or retweeting my tweets of their agreement. Which became a good thing as I answered the last question in my personal opinion, is there a difference between being a Blogger or just having a blog? My answer was simply:

“Ooh, I think a “Blogger” is someone who wants to share themselves with the world and is proud of it to talk about it in everyday life.”

After I posted my answer, I began to read others answers and realized that I might’ve been wrong on how I answered it, but then again I thought, “no, there is a difference between the two.” People were saying that if you have a blog, you’re automatically a blogger. I don’t agree with this and instead of explaining my answer on Twitter during the chat, I stayed quiet hearing my thoughts boil up to the top. I knew I had to release it sometime. So here are my thoughts on this subject. There is a difference between the two, being able to call yourself a blogger and having a blog are two completely different things. No matter what anybody says. I stand by my answer and say that I’ve been a blogger for five years (almost six) and have used two different platforms, learned how to do everything on my own and kept at it after going through different things. I never stopped doing it. I talk about it in my everyday life, almost everybody that comes around me gets told different parts of my blog. I am very open with it because it has become part of my life and I cherish it. Not only that I’ve healed myself from different things that I’ve gone through by keeping up with my blog. I honestly don’t like admitting it, but I’ve helped people through my posts. I am very proud of myself and my little blog for doing so much. I feel so blessed to have met other bloggers and enjoy reading all the nice comments I get on different posts. I don’t know what I’d do without my blog, so that’s why I’m in defense mode as you can tell, sorry!

Now on the part about just having a blog, when I think of someone just having a blog and not really doing anything with it, I don’t consider them being a blogger. You don’t have to blog everyday I know that, I understand writer’s block very well trust me. This isn’t about writer’s block here. There is a thin line between having a blog and actually blogging on it. To me, blogging is more about pictures and that goes for all of the different themes you select for your blog, beauty fashion, parenting, etc. Blogging is about pulling somebody into your little world that you’ve created in this 2-5 (or more) paragraph post. You try to make them see and understand your pain, struggles, joy, humor in one single post. That’s why I am not a person who supports this thing of calling people who use Tumblr bloggers. They are NOT bloggers by any means! At least none of which that I’ve seen over the years. Both Tumblr and Pinterest are not the ideal platforms to use to share anything. Yes, a picture can say a million words but it’s also like an abstract painting, not everybody is going to meaning of it if you don’t explain why you’re talking about it. I mean, come on! I’ve had lots of different bloggers agree with me on this before, because if you’re just reposting pictures and calling yourself a blogger, you’re calling us real bloggers a bad name. We work hard to give our readers a glimpse of our loves and everyday life and here you are just liking a picture of somebody else’s work and putting it on your profile. You get excited of how everybody is loving your new post. How is that blogging?

Let me just say to finally end this post for good. I know I am not the most perfect blogger in the world but I do try to be the best person I can be, and I’m only being honest and real with you. You can agree or disagree with me, I really don’t care what you think. I just had some thoughts on the matter that I think need to be considered before I did anything else today. At least now I’ll be able to go about my evening in peace.  So I hope you have a good night and enjoy your Thursday!

Tune Tuesday: India

I’ve got such a love for this week’s travels. It’s kind of like one of my best kept secrets. I love India! I got introduced to this beautiful country but accident. In the same time as my sister and I were obsessed with High School Musical movies, I was very into The Cheetah Girls. So when I saw the previews on their last movie they made, One World I was completely taken over by all of the bright colors, culture, the Hindu weddings, and surprisingly religions. I’ve actually watched quite a few documentaries on different topics about the people who live in India. I’ve actually obsessed Bollywood dances and music.  Now that I’ve said this though, since Bollywood music isn’t very popular here in the states, I haven’t been introduced to any artists or DJs in the last several years since the release of both One World and Slumdog Millionaire. So I kind of picked the only song I knew but if anybody knows any other songs please send them to me! I will love to hear them!

Jai Ho by A.R. Rahman featuring The Pussycat Dolls

 

I Break Too

I hope everybody is having a wonderful Monday. It’s the last week of the month of July as All That Glitters’  Candice reminded me. It also doesn’t help that schools here are going to start back up on FRIDAY! What the crap? When did they start so early? And why? Because you know they’ll be released at the exact same time every year. Our winters are never the same I get, but still if you’re still not going to release the staff and students on an earlier week than you usually do whenever we don’t have bad weather in the winter months then why bother? I feel bad for every teenager who is going to school a few weeks earlier than the average college student.  I’m having one of those Monday’s, can’t you tell? 

If you follow me on Twitter, you probably just read or reread my tweet I posted about the boys of One Direction. I’m not that big of a fan of theirs. My sister is, but I have been wanting to see their movie This Is Us since I heard it was being released in theaters. I saw that STARZ was going to be playing it a few months ago, it seemed so long ago actually! I finally found it yesterday morning and recorded it on my DVR. I told my sister that I had taped it and asked her if she wanted to watch it with me. She couldn’t last night but we decided to watch this afternoon instead. I was pretty stoked I’m not going to lie, because truth be told she was the one who made me watch Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never movie with her and yes, I did watch it and actually enjoyed it. So she sat on the floor, while I was under the covers on my bed and we watched the movie together.

Since I don’t know much about these boys I thought the movie would explain about their childhoods along with their journey with Britain’s The X Factor and Blondie and I thought that was pretty interesting. Even though it didn’t really let us in on their childhood I was completely okay with that. It’s kind of sad that we were agreeing of how massive the crowds were in different countries. How the fans were crying and going absolutely crazy for them everywhere they went gave me a sense of like you can’t make fun of them, because you know if it was anybody you heavily listen to, you’d be doing the exact same thing but I digress. Anyways, I tweeted that hell might’ve frozen over since I followed three out of the five members of the boy band. Harry, Niall, and Zayn. ♥ Blondie’s totally team Louis if anybody was wondering!

I don’t know what tomorrow has in store but I hope it’s a smooth sailing kind of day that’s all I’m hoping for at least. I can make it a Hemsworth brothers day since I have both Thor: The Dark World and Love and Honor in my DVR as well. I could also try to get passed 60% on The Fault In Our Stars by John Green too. I have no idea at the moment. I’ll figure out when it gets here. Have a good night and great Tuesday! Come back for tomorrow Tune Tuesday, where we head to INDIA! 

A Week Of Feeling Calm

I’ve been practically missing from this week. Despite talking about the new Fifty Shades of Grey trailer, a Five Sentence Fiction entry, and the book review. I really haven’t done a lifestyle post for this past week. I think since it’s Sunday, it’s a perfect day for that. First though, I am going to explain this picture. This will probably be the only picture I’ll ever be allowed to post on here of my dad. I bet you’re asking yourself, “are you sure that’s your dad? I mean that could be anybody?” Yup, that’s my dad because you know how, because I can see that beard of his in the outline of the light of this picture. Last night we had a pretty big storm and in the first twenty minutes of it our lights begun to flicker on and off. At 8:48pm it decided to just stay off for the next three hours.I spent my time listening to my iPod through my headphones and my parents and our family cat Oliver taking turns of scaring the living shit out of me. Oy!

This past week has been a very weird one for me. Yesterday I was supposed to go to my first bachelorette party since I turned twenty-one. I have been excited for it since the end of May. The bride-to-be actually arranged it on the weekend on a day where my mom was off so I could be included in it. I thought that was so sweet of her to do, but I had thoughts about rain. Just rain. Ruining the experience for me. I have a history of blaming the whole universe of things that can’t be changed and this time I don’t know what happened. I found myself on a Tuesday afternoon looking at the time of when it would start and seeing how the weather would be for that night and it said, scattered thunderstorms. In my mind, I went “well they can change their minds before then.” Even after I said that to myself I got this feeling of calmness and that if everything doesn’t work out I’d be okay. Which never happens! I had that feeling the whole week, even when other things were coming from other directions I still had that feeling about them too. Except for when a friend of ours came to pick up little Silver Moonlight. I was sad but I now understand that even though I named her I never felt any connection towards her. She would be the first to leave the nest.

Ever since I adopted the saying, “no expectations, no disappointments” into my lifebook. I have been hopeful over things but I also know better that plans sound a lot better when you’re talking about them then going and actually doing them. However, when I decided to be good about it this time I kept myself off my Twitter and the blog. I didn’t want to ruin my comfortable state of mind. I also didn’t want to be a child in how I was acting because I wasn’t getting my way. I understand now that you can’t have everything, but you can choose to see the joy and laughter in things. Saturday morning was just this, my mom has known about how excited I was to be invited to this. She’s been the one quiet in this situation too. She hardly told me what the weather would be like until Friday afternoon and of course yesterday morning too. So she had a plan of her own. She came in suddenly and I was in the middle of watching The Nanny when she grabbed the remote to pause it. I thought I was in trouble by how fast everything at this point was going. She sat on my bed and told me how bad she felt that these storms were going to happen on the exact time the party started, how ironic right? She suggested that we go to Evansville and go out to eat. I was completely excited because after I agreed, she asked me where I wanted to go. I said Steak ‘n Shake. Mom was apparently not in the mood for that by any means but when they realized how cloudy it was outside and which wheelchair I’d preferred to take with us, something would be soaked by the time we got there. So we went to Washington instead.

My parents and I went out of eat at Ponderosa and went to Wal-Mart afterwards. It was the first time in a while were it was the three of us out to eat, so it was weird but one of the things I was going to get by the end of the meal was something sweet. I finally got to have ice cream! Vanilla soft serve ice  cream with peanuts and crushed up M&M’s. My dad had a twist of chocolate and vanilla with a slice of carrot cake. When we finally said we were stuffed, we weren’t kidding! I was definitely stuffed. I never usually leave a restaurant feeling like that. When we decided we were going to go to Wal-Mart I immediately thought, we did this backwards. We always do that wrong. You should shop first and then eat. Unless you’re at the mall then you shop for a bit, eat and then go back to shopping. Anyways, it was weird feeling again. My parents are usually good about leaving me to do whatever I want when we go to Wal-Mart, because I usually know where I’m going. This time I didn’t. After I took my first stop in the makeup department. I realized of how little I know about my skin and what shades would go better with me. I should never go in there without my mom and/or my sister. I felt weird but not ugly which I thought was interesting. I never wear makeup. Like NEVER! So actually considering a foundation and a bright red lipstick for the month of September scared me a little.

I went into ever aisle I think because the place was packed and when you’re in a powered chair you need to move quickly. Funny thing is, when I was looking at the posters I was apparently taking up the aisle with my chair for the PEPSI dude to get through. I didn’t realize this until he gave up waiting and went through the clothing aisles by this time I was on the last two. I felt bad because then again he did find another way to get through. I went through the two “artistic” aisles. One is full of early school supplies and the other is just for crafts. On the other side of the craft aisle, I saw these beautiful vases that I literally wanted to take home but yet had no idea where they’d go. They were a deep red that to me, was a feeling of warmth to them. I had to show mom when they finally found me. Anybody want to guess where I was? My sanctuary. The entertainment department. The only things I found there that spiked my interests was the new Linkin Park album and I found the two seasons of Sons Of Anarchy that I need to get soon, trust me even my dad was like, “Ooh! This is what we mean!” The only thing stopping us from buying it was the fact that both seasons were close to $30. Yikes! So that’s it of my very calm, but great week. I love good surprises! Onto this week though!

Earlier this week, it rained and my mom caught our babies all bundled up together taking a nap next to the door. If you look closely on the top right corner, you see Kelso watching over the backyard.

We had the three other babies in my room. Who knew a stick from an old bookshelf and toliet papers rolls would be perfect kitten toys?