*Wednesday love*

Wrapping. I love it. Most people don't, I know, but for me it's just another way to make things pretty. It brightens up yet another grey, wet, grey, grey, wet day in Swansea! This particular one is winging it's way over to Birmingham. *wednesday wrapping love*

*Early Wednesday Love*

I am so excited right now! Yes, I got it! I love it... love it love it love it!!! Now, this is making me smile. I could just listen to it all day long while I am in my kitchen cooking those lovely recipes from that delicious book! It took me forever to find it, but I am persistent enough to get the things I want. lol This is my early Wednesday love cause I was way too excited to wait until tomorrow!!! Did I mention that I am working on becoming patient? That's a part of beauty too, right? ;)

For last Wednesday...

I am making the most of my internet so, here is what I would have posted last Wednesday if I were in the civilization. lol
Let me introduce you to my new recipe book. I am loving it. I love cooking. If I could spend my days in my kitchen, I would. It's one of my favorite room in the house. This is such a beautiful book. It makes me smile. It inspires me. And makes me hungry!!! lol I just love discovering new flavors and tastes. New smells and spices. Everything new. Adventure. I love it.

Peace... just being at peace with myself. Just enjoying who I am. Who I was in the past and who I have grown to be. To be me. Everyday. Circumstances in life have changed me a lot, but somehow I try to see the good in the bad. To see beauty in the bad. So, that ashes may be transformed into something beautiful. It's not easy. But possible. By just being. That's the peaceful I have found. And. I never wanna leave that place of rest. Just to be.

Finally...

Hey there,

I bet you've been wondering if I truly exist after not hearing from me since... well, since the beginning!! My amazing friend Rhi did an amazing job at making this blog possible and so beautiful. The story of our friendship has been pretty amazing and I consider myself extremely privileged to have her in my life. She is so amazing, unique, talented and truly is beautiful. I admire her. She has taught me so much already and has inspired me to be.

Yes, it is all about beauty. About true beauty. Does that make sense? Does "true beauty" even exists? Oh yes it does... gosh! I so want it. I am pursuing it. And probably will purse it all my life. It's all about growing and discovering who we are as woman. To me, beauty, true beauty starts by just being. Being who we are everyday. That's what I can do. That's what I am. And who will always be.

I have been living in Maripa Soula, which is a tiny village in the jungle of South America. It's been a wonderful experience to be there. My hubby and I are loving it. The only down fall is that the internet connection doesn't work so well... that sucks and it's really frustrating. But, I am now back for a bit more than a week. I am going to make the most of it!!!! :)

Well, it's 1am for me, so I guess, it's bed time! Sweet dreams and don't forget to be. Be you.

Eventually...

I passed a house sometime last week with this name. I thought it was so beautiful I just stood stock still and stared. I was tempted to wip the camera out and snap away, but decided against that, thinking they might think i'm some kind of crazy mofo, and would not be happy with pictures of their house plastered all over the internet.

But it still remains, that the name of this house has stuck with me. *Eventually* there is so much hope in that name. So much optimism. So much strength. That word really speaks to me. It invites me to believe in "One Day". It reminded me that things will be okay, eventually. I will see people again, eventually.

It's made me wonder what word I would want to sum up my house. What word do I want to live my life by. What word would adequately challenge and inspire those looking in on my life. They are hard things to contemplate...if I stripped it down to the bare essentials of life, the only word that keeps coming back to me is Love. I want my house and my home to be about Love. I want my relationships and encounters to be about Love. I want my actions and my life to be about Love.

Now the question is...how can I do that? That's not so easy to answer.

*wednesday love*

Being a second year English Literature student brings with it alot of reading. Perhaps sometimes I should be more organised with this reading, like this book for example. Due to be read by tomorrow, and currently only 90 out of 400 pages down. Yes, doesn't sound very likely to be done does it?

The extremeity of some of this reading is made happier by the ability to do it in my pyjamas at 1 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon. Yes. This makes for a very happy wednesday, and very deserving cadidate for *wednesday love*.

Yours?

*wednesday love*

Wednesday already! Woop. Another *wednesday love* has arrived. As my wednesday was spent cleaning the house, doing the laundry, and pretending to read, my beauty had to be found indoors. And right now, one thing that is making me smile whenever I enter the room, is my boiler! Yes you read right. My boiler! It's a pretty boiler, gradually being covered with things I love, photos of people I love, and little reminders and words here and there. It adds a little bit of beauty to my otherwise quite boring kitchen :) There's part of it in the piccie. I hope you all have special places of beauty here and there in your homes/rooms.

Now onto the winners. They have been drawn, and the lovelies who will recieve some pretty post will be *drum roll*

Christine and Starlight!

Send me your addresses via email lovelies, and you will recieve some pretties in the post sometime soon!

Keep looking for and sharing your *wednesday love*. I love to read them.

lovely + heads = lovelyheads

I should mention a couple of things before I make the real point of this post. Firstly My crazyheaded friend Flora, is off somewhere in the South American jungle at the minute with her hubbie, doing some work over there. Making friends with people, showing people love, general loveliness. We thought she was going to be able to connect to the internet, but obviously she must be having some problems over there. She will be back to the land of the civilised French Guiana sometime in the next couple of weeks though.

Second. I will be drawing the names of all your commentage on Wednesday, so you can check back then to see if you've won some goodies.

I've been asked a few times by people now what exactly a lovelyhead is. A lovelyhead is just that, a head that is lovely. That is to say, it is not a prettyface, or a fabbybody, it is a lovely head. A person who is beautiful to look at and be around, because they seem to possess some inate sense of loveliness. In their actions, thoughts, and words they are just completely lovely. The kind of person you want to be friends with, the kind of person you can learn from, and the kind of person you want to be.

I want to be a lovelyhead. I want to be able, in any situation, to deal with it with gentleness, love, strength and grace. These are just some of the things I believe make someone lovely. And these are most of the things I certainly don't have. Through the gift of friendship though, I am pretty sure we can all learn from one another, and encourage one another to be lovely. In all things. Not that we won't have excruciating hard times, sorrow and defeat. But that in it, we can somehow grow and be lovely from it. Or that we will be able to be lovely for someone else, in their times of pain.

This is the basic premise of a lovelyhead. It's something we are both still discovering and working out as we go along.

*wednesday love*

Wednesday has always seemed a kinda sucky day. Mid way through the week, another two days to go till the weekend, not really all that much to look forward too. This = not happy in rhi's world. SO I gots to thinking...what would make this day better? Prettier? More beauty filled?

*wednesday love* of course! Which is basically an ultra cute way of challenging myself to find some glimpse of beauty within the day. Even when it's freezing cold, grey, and all I want to do it wear flip flops and sit on a beach crocheting. (yes. I crochet.) Sometimes I find it's necessary to do this. To force yourself to see something positive in the day. To choose to see something that makes you smile inwardly no matter how you feel generally. I try to do this daily, but for the sake of this blog, wednesday will be the day that I, and Flo, will photograph at least one thing that we have found beauty in. That has made us smile. We will be posting our finds every wednesday, and I have a sneaky suspicion in the exotic environment Flo lives in her's WILL involve flipflops and a beach!

Please post things that have made you smile this wednesday. Or Thursday as i'm a little late in posting ;o) Post a picture if you want. Leave your comments here on the blog, or on our myspace if you fancy it that way. As this is the first official *wednesday love* all of your entries will be put into a hat and two names will be pulled out at random. Those two people will recieve a little postal love from us. Because post is always a garantee to make you smile.

My *wednesday love*? Having coffee with a friend on a freezing cold grey welsh day. In Starbucks of course ;o)

Now...time to find my socks...it's not quite time for flipflops just yet.

Here we go...

The ultimate point of this blog for Flora and I is to get to know each other better. To learn through each other, and to perhaps encourage each other. In a world that is very preoccupied with the media's idea of "beauty", with outer appearance, and possession of items, we just want to create a little space for true beauty. For things that take our breath away. For beauty in character. For things that make us smile, and giggle, and see a little piece of prettyness within an often ugly and judgemental world. We want to try and understand what beauty is, how we can become it, and hopefully clean up the areas of ourselves that aren't so beautiful.

We would love it if people want to take this journey with us. This space is for beauty. We will talk honestly about how we feel. We will share things that shine with beauty to us. We will strive to find beauty amongst things that would seem to ugly or "normal" to societies values.

We believe we are all beautiful. And we just want to understand more what this "beauty" really is.