just let me be. me.

just another passion of mine that i have been working on lately - these are some of the first of the collection that i'm working on and i will have a website up soon enough for those of you who may be interested in purchasing anything! everyone of my pieces is handmade & original - i don't believe in making the same thing over and over again so each piece is unique! i combine old and new products because i like the juxtaposition of the two ! i hope you enjoy & let me know what you think! :)







all of the above are pendants and necklaces - i should have some bracelets and such up soon!

laugh. it's my favourite thing to do - and it needs to be done more often. life is far too short to take it so seriously so laugh at the little things and the journey will be much more enjoyable. being cynical gets you no where but somewhere alone. allow yourself to enjoy the life you're living, even if it's not the greatest at times - you're still living it - so take the time out of your day and laugh - it will make your world a lot more brighter, i promise. :)

find something you're passionate about and happiness will follow.

But everything I have to give I'll give to you
It's not like we planned it
You tried to stay, but you could not stand it
To see me shut down slow
As though it was an easy thing to do
Listen when
All of this around us'll fall over
I tell you what we're gonna do
You will shelter me my love
And I will shelter you
I will shelter you
I left you heartbroken, but not until those very words were spoken
Has anybody ever made such a fool out of you
It's hard to believe it
Even as my eyes do see it
The very things that make you live are killing you
Listen when all of this around us'll fall over
I tell you what we're gonna do
You will shelter me my love
I will shelter you

oh photography - how i've missed you. lately i've been tapping into one of my most adored passions of all time & i've realized just how much i truly missed it.

You’re like a wet blanket on a Saturday night
Trapping me in and nothing feels right
Holding me down and soaking me through
Let me break free and let go of you
Soaking me with pain and regret
Fighting for air from this suffocating net
Let me break through away from this place
Of broken memories and heartache enlaced
Holding me down and drowning me through
I’m gasping for air for all to undo

there really is nothing better than spending time with old friends and laughing your faces off. with school winding down and my last exam on monday (thank god!) i was able to come back to the mainland and see friends whom i haven't seen in far too long! but although time passes friendship sure doesn't fade - i don't remeber the last time i laughed so much in one night, it could have been the mojitos or the wine but i think it was moreso the company of the people i was with that night that made it so great - from feral children, to mermaid girls, to octopus kids and tree men -to spooning in a bed with 2 of the bestest/greatest friends in the world and to witnessing a dog take off running through traffic down broadway ( it still sends chills throughout my body) ahh! i like to think he's safe & at home now - i couldn't have asked for a better night with better people! thanks guys for being such great people and some of the greatest friends a girl could have!! :) <3

if you don't already own this album - BUY IT!! one of the greatest albums i have ever purchased to date. for reals.

Defined by what we are told is true

Wanting to break away from the mold created

Questioning all we have learned from a young age

Watching people fall into the categories told

Let me wander into a life less defined

And free my soul of definition

Upside down trees falling from the sky

Landing on the earth with their roots in the air

No one knows why the trees are falling

No one seems to care

Fall from the sky little trees fall

There’s no need to grow from the ground

So fall trees fall, stand tall with your roots in the air

Labels pasted on faces of those who don’t fit in

Difference is but a disgrace to those who condemn

Power is a molding block to make others follow

Shame goes to those who wander freely

Who don’t conform to the rules of the beholder

Please let me go and discover a world like no other

Upside down trees falling from the sky

Landing on the earth with their roots in the air

No one knows why the trees are falling

No one seems to care

Fall from the sky little trees fall

There’s no need to grow from the ground

So fall trees fall, stand tall with your roots in the air

I want to know a world free of disgrace

A world where everyone can be

Where difference is not singled out

And love can be any way

A world where no one is defined

And labels are bestowed

Where trees can fall from the sky and no one questions why

Upside down trees falling from the sky

Landing on the earth with their roots in the air

No one knows why the trees are falling

No one seems to care

Fall from the sky little trees fall

There’s no need to grow from the ground

So fall trees fall, stand tall with your roots in the air

- written by. me.

classes finished! woohoo - so yesterday was the last day of classes & i could not be more ecstatic! summer is just around the corner, which means sunshine, bbq's, friends, coaching softball & making money! this weekend is the home opener for the softball team i coach and i could not be more excited - i love those kids & i can't wait to get out on the field! here's to a good weekend & hopefully lots of sunshine! :)

The night-time shadows disappear
And with them go all your tears
For the morning will bring joy
For every girl and boy
So don't let the sun catch you cryin'

writing a 10 pg paper on health promotion amongst older adults is about the most un-fun a day can be. 7 pages to go...

Dear Bruce Springsteen;

I

Love

You.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=129kuDCQtHs

(Courtney Cox featured @ 3:20 in this video - so young! haha)

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) e.e. cummings

meet my huge, geeky literary crush - e.e. cummings - i've been hunting used bookstores for about a year now looking for any works by him - if anyone ever comes across one, i will compensate you - i promise! his words are amazing - if you are not familiar with his works i urge you to be asap - you will not regret it.

"to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting"

- e.e. cummings

so i just celebrated my 23rd birthday. crazy right? feels like just yesterday i was hitting a ball of a tee and tying up my ballet shoes. 23 years of my life have gone by and as i sat at the table in the bar, celebrating my birthday with my friends, i realized how fortunate i am. i've always known i had the greatest friends in the world - as i am sure everyone believes this is true of their own. however, i really do have the greatest friends - some new, some old but regardless, they really are the best in the world - no joke. they have been here for me in more times than i could ever count and they make me laugh when no one else can. throughout this past school year, i decided to take the trek, pack my bags & move to the island. knowing no one but my roommate alicia & bailey - i decided that i was going to do this for me, get out there and experience the world on my own (well, partly). little did i know this year would bring about a heck of a lot more stress, anxiety, fear... the list goes on, than i could have ever imagined. i mean yes, it wasn't that bad since im still able to type this excerpt at the moment. but trust me - it was bad. from countless arguments & struggles with the landlords, to living in a house infested with bugs, to renovations that were never completed, to robberies and stolen laptops, to catching robbers on our back porch, to roommates peacing and at not paying, to family being in and out of the hospital, to brothers being in car accidents.... and trust me the list goes on. i don't mean to sit here and complain ANYMORE by any means but just to give you a taste of what i have been through in the past 6 months. through all of this my friends never left my side. although a ferry ride away they, and one in particular, supported me and was there for me in more ways than i could ever thank her for. she is truly the most amazing person in the entire world - her heart is larger than anyone i have ever known and her strength and independence is undoubtedly remarkable. if she knew i was saying this about her she would be saying "oh my god no.. thats what i'm here for-thank you for talking to me". She is so humble and so genuine that anyone that is able to have her in their lives is better because of it. She has travelled to endless places in this world and of all - her main goal is not to do it selfishly but to help others along the way. from helping children in kenya and uganda to , well you name it-shes done it. she is truly one in a million and i am so very thankful that i have her in my life.... i love you mariiiika. you are the greatest person and the bestest friend i could ever ever have & i love you so so much. these 23 years of my life have been wonderfuuuul but they became truly better when we became friends! thank you for everything - i love you forever! - when you move away from home you really do realize who are your true friends, who will call you, who will be there for you & ive really realized that over these 6 months. i realized that the friends that are there for you and that treat you with the upmost greatest respect are the friends to keep around. people who pretend to be this but then you realize one day that they really aren't who you thought they were - those people are not worth keeping around. the good ones, the ones like marikkka are the ones to keep because those people no matter what will have your back in anything you do. so, with all that said - that has been my greatest lesson learned over these years - that true friends are in fact true friends and that anything else is just not worth heartache and hope. so heres to friends and the happiness they bring to your life ! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuzi-yH9VLo

- a great feel good song -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qelpxf2cGu8

life is very short and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friend. i have always thought that it's a crime, so i will ask you once again: try to see it my way, only time will tell if i'm right or if i'm wrong. while you see it your way there's a chance that we might fall apart before too long. we can work it out.

"this is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families; read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life: re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul." - Walt Whitman

one of my favorite things to do of all time, as I'm sure others can attest as well, is to people watch. Perhaps because it distracts me from what I should actually be doing at the moment, like reading a sociology textbook that I have yet to open. But needless to say, there is something overwhelmingly satisfying about watching others go about their day. At the moment I am sitting in a coffee shop with many others who I know nothing about. Yet, for some reason we were all brought to this very place at this exact moment. Its funny how we can know absolutely nothing about each other but somehow something can connect us, in some way. In this case, a cup of coffee, or a cup of tea, but when I look around there seems to be more conversation going on then actual coffee/tea drinking. I took a sociology class a couple semesters ago that studied the concept of popular culture. Through the course we studied the concept of "going out for coffee" and what it actually means. When discussing, we concluded that going out for coffee isn't so much about the subject of coffee anymore but rather the subject of company and conversation. In conjunction, being a popular culture class and all, we also discussed how coffe itself has been completely transformed into a commodity and how it has been branded to negotiate and re-negotiate meaning through the different settings it situates. Take Tim Hortons and Starbucks for example. The two companies both acquire most of their capital dollars on selling the steaming black liquid that we all stand far too long in line for. However, the feeling you get when you step into the two places is completely different. If you walk into a Tim Hortons you are provided with an image of employees in beige khaki uniforms, brown and white painted walls and the smell of comfort baked cooking. Time Hortons embodies the comforts of home - a feeling of warmth and a place where you always know what you are going to get when you order it. It provides a traditional, simple menu and easy decision process for the customer. Starbucks on the other hand is very much the opposite of all Tim Hortons embodies. Starbucks offers th consumer an upscale, trendy environment with more choices on the menu than one should have. It has turned coffee into what seems to be, an individualistic experience where consumers can customize and create their own drinks, original to their own tastes - non fat, fat, soy, skim, sugar free, half foam, no foam... and the list goes on. Both Tim Hortons and Starbucks have successfully created two seperate environments for their consumers to sip their steaming cups in whichever environment they choose and both have branded cofee in two seperate and distinctful ways. Whichever place the consumer chooses to fill his/her cup is up to them, but what is important to keep in mind in all of this is that we shouldn't be blinded by the label of the coffee we are drinking. We should take into consideration where the coffee itself actually comes from. I am not going to get into a "drink fair trade" coffee lecture here, even though I feel it is extremely important to do so wen you can, but we should just know that there is a far greater story behind the cup of coffee we are drinking rather than just the label. This relates to my favorite part, of what I said at the beginning before I went of on this random tangent, of people watching which is that behind everyone's outer shell there is a past, a history, an experience and a story that I know aboslutely nothing about. We all share a common characteristic in that we all have a past , we all have a story and while each of our stories are different, they are extremely important to who we are. I feel, this is why we should never judge each other because we never truly know where anyone came from and what is defined in their past. All we can do is wonder where they are headed after they walk away from the moment that brought us together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGsAwBCzkhc

love this song at the moment - and pls note i did not create the video...

one of my favourite quotes by ee cummings i found painted on a wall in victoria..pretty much made my day. :)

good day sunshine

I still remember the first time I picked up my first cd that introduced me and made me appreciate the music world more than ever before. I must have been around 15 at the time when I was about to enter the world of crazy, psychotic boxing day shoppers at the mall... I remember running into HMV and picking up a copy of coldplays , A Rush of Blood to the Head. Although, I'm pretty sure it wasn't on sale, I couldn't leave without it. I bought it, brought it home and popped it into the cd player. I listened to that cd over, and over and over. If I went out of the house I brought it with me in my red discman and would listen to it, despite every time it skipped a beat. I remember the feeling that cd gave me and each song spoke to me in a different way. The songs changed the way I viewed the world at that moment. A walk down the street could turn into something completely different and I would be transcended into an entirely new world at just the push of a button. It has been since that moment that music has become my escape. When my world around me seems in complete dissaray it has been to music that I turn to to make everything just stop for a couple minutes. Music takes me to a place where only I exist, where everything else around me seems so insignificant and for just a moment it's only me and a song. It's funny how a certain song can take you back to a time and bring back a feeling that existed so long ago. Like scent, certain songs, have the ability to rewind your life and bring you back to a significant moment in the past. Music has spoken to me in more ways than anything ever has and allows me to find the words when I can't find them myself. Music has and still continues to be my escape from the world and the sounds of coldplay bring me back to a place where I was just a girl discovering a world that would ulitimately change my own.

So, I've been doing a lot of thinking over the past couple weeks and well, I guess you could say a lot of analyzing and or over analyzing of my life to date. With this whole catastrophe in Haiti that has left so many innocent people in complete dissaray, it got me thinking about where I am in my life. I know that probably sounds impeccably selfish to be thinking about myself when so many people are suffering. I have and still do think about those poor souls in Haiti left to suffice and adapt to the catastrophic environment that has become apart of their everday. I wish so badly that there was so much more I could do for them, other than donating money through a website, but truth be told I can't. I'm no doctor or medical professional but if I was I'd probably be on the next plane if I had the chance, or at least I'd like to think I would be. But I'm not and I don't. All i can do now is hope that someday the hopes. dreams and lives of the Haitian people will be restored to a greater being, that they can and will rise above all this and not be defined by what has been doomed upon them. that they will find the courage and strength to build an environment that restores hope in the land and a will in the people to carry on in their everyday. I believe that this can happen and I believe that this will happen, someday. But for now, today, i am here analyzing my own life and where I stand. What crossed my mind when watching the coverage of the reports on Haiti and seeing the bodies laying motionless in the crumbled town was, would I be satisfied with where I am in my life to date, if something so tragic were to happen to me tomorrow? What would I miss the most and what would I cling to if I knew that my entire world was about to crumble before my eyes? I'll be twenty three in March, and currently I have been in school for about seventeen years of my life. woooooopeeee.... Now, don't get me wrong, I am so fortunate to be in school and I know that there are so many, too many, people out there in the world, girls especially, who are not afforded the privilege to education. So by no means am I bitter, it has been my choice to study in post secondary education, in hopes that someday I can become a teacher and afford children the opportunity to learn. However, being stuck behind books for the past five years really hasn't left me with much room to explore the world. I work during the summer months to be able to afford school and rent, so my entire post highschool time has been spent working and studying. While has been my choice and I know I will be thankful for it in the long run, I have watched so many people pack their bags to travel and explore the world and I admit that I am totally jealous and bitter. It has been a dream of mine since I was young to travel to all those places on a map that no one knows anything about. The places that when you put your finger on a globe to stop it from spinning, you never even knew that place existed until that moment. Places that don't get two minute advertisements on telivison and posters in store windows. I want to go to the places that can educate me in ways that I have never even thought imaginable - education that you can't get out of a textbook. So, while I was thinking about my life and if something like the eartquake in Haiti were to happen here tomorrow - that would be my one regret. That I never took the chance to just put my life on hold for a month and discover a world completely unknown to me. I have always said one day after school is done and out fo the way, I'll pack my bags and discover the world, one day. But what if that one day never came? What if the people in Haiti were thinking this very same thing when their entire life just stopped. Everything they had ever known came crashing down upon them and all their hopes and all their dreams for the future got smashed by crashing buildings and crumbling concrete. I know it isn't feasible for me to pack my bags and hop on a flight to LaLa land but I jus thtink that sometimes we are too seroius in what needs to be done and waht we have to do in order to do something else. I know I am making complete generalizations here so for that I am sorry. But we tend to live our lives on such a schedule and agenda that sometimes we can never truly stop and enjoy life and live in the now. We need to put the cell phones down, stop texting during dinner and coffee with a friend and just simply enjoy the moment. After I was sitting here analyzing my life and wondering if I would be happy with what I have accomplished to date and what regrets I would have if something so catastrophic were to happen to me tomorrow, I realized that if this whole catastrophe has taught me anything it's that we, I, need to stop analyzing and over analyzing everything in my life. I need to stop living on such an agenda of events and stop taking life so seriously. We need to have more fun once in a while and laugh with each other a hell of a lot more often because if everything were to be taken away from us tomorrow we would live with far to much regret if we didnt laugh at the small things in life. We need to stop living in the past and for the future and start living in the present. We need to take a moment out of our day to just, well, breathe and enjoy the company of the people around us. Because at the end of the day when all is said and done, it's not the cars or the shoes, or the clothes that you cling on to, it's the people in your life that surround you and fill you with joy and happiness. That make you laugh and smile when you're having a hard day and that no matter what never leave your side. Because life isn't about schedules or agendas or regrets, It's about people and love and laughter and happiness. It's about right now. It's about the moments that we share with people, even if they are just for a moment. So while i regret that I haven't travelled more and taken more chances, I know that if something so catastrophic were to happen to our environment tomorrow, I would be surrounded by people that I love and care about and that means more to me than anything else ever could.