Thought for today...

"Better to live one year as a tiger than a hundred as a sheep."

I'm loving this message because it's soooo true...  It's better to live one day true to yourself than a lifetime of fake plastic oblivion!  I'll never forget when I was in high school and someone started that whole "Don't be a sheep, baaaahhh!" thing, complete with little sheep stickers spattered all over the lockers and walls in the hallway.  Well, I jumped on that bandwagon quick because I liked the message it was attempting to send, which is don't be a follower!  I've never been a follower, always a leader, and believe me when I say it hasn't always been easy...  There are people in this world who, for one reason or another (from socialization to peer pressure to the media and so on), that don't know how to be themselves and a lot of them are gonna take it out on you and your truth.  Don't let them.  Don't ever believe that who you are is not good enough, it is!  Being you is better than trying to be something that you're not...  So go get'em tiger!  Haha, cheesy me!  :P

I love you all, have a wonderful afternoon!  Muah!

(Image sourced via Pinterest)

My Birthday Weekend

Good Day Universe!  

It took me longer than expected (over a week!), but here is a brief little follow-up post to let you know how my birthday went on March 25th...

As you can see I ended up indulging in some cupcakes from Clarabelle's Cupcakes!  Pictured above are their Coconut, Oreo, Hummingbird, Lemon Basil, and Triple Fudge Brownie cupcakes!  Mmmmm mmm!  By far, the Hummingbird and Lemon Basil are some of the most spectacular cupcakes I've ever had, and they're dairy free!!  Too bad they didn't have their Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup cupcake or else there would have been a hell of a lot more chocolate cupcakes in this picture... hehe.

As planned, my mom, my great aunt, my sister and my boyfriend took me out for a delicious Thai dinner that night!  We ordered a Shrimp Tempura Roll, Dragon Roll and Tom Kha Gai Soup for appetizers, then Massaman Curry Chicken, Chicken Pad Thai and Volcano Chicken for the main course.  Everyone shared so as to enjoy a little bit of everything and boy did we enjoy it... delicious!

As for the rest of the weekend, I spent it lounging by the pool and spending time with my love... oh, and guess what?  I totally blew off the Miami Design and Remodeling Show.  Wah-wah... I just didn't feel up for it.  Sorry folks!  Anyway, overall it was a pretty simple birthday, yet I couldn't have asked for more!

Stay tuned for a garden update post later, so many of my cacti and succulents are blooming!  The backyard is a veritable paradise and I can't wait to show you!

Oh, and I saw this graffiti face spray painted everywhere, I thought it was cool (albeit a bit morbid)...  It made me think of the posts that I did on graffiti art (Beatles, Istanbul and Mona Lisa) and makes me want to do another one with all the local graffiti art I've seen.  *Adds that to her list of things to do* :)

 
(All images are my own personal photographs)

The Beatles: Lyrical Art and Graffiti

The Beatles by Richard Avedon

Hello all, I know I've been missing in action this week and I'm sorry! To be honest I just haven't had the juice for it... you know, I've been wrapped up in life. Does that ever happen to you? I'm positive the answer must be yes because I firmly believe all human beings are the same deep down. With the world we live in today it's easy to get overwhelmed and carried away, there's a barrage of digital information at our fingertips, thousands of channels and crazy things happening in the world every day. Also, there's that thing called WORK! Yeah, work can drain me mentally and take away my desire to blog, grrr.

Anyway, today is Thursday and I am back! Hooray it's Thursday and tomorrow is Friday wheeeee! So, what have I been up to while wrapped up in life's little treasures? That's a question I will answer in my next post. For now I hope you will all enjoy this post on various images I have collected from the web, the common theme being the amazing and wonderful group The Beatles. I love their music and all of the art and other forms of self expression it inspires, it's truly indicative of the everlasting impact The Beatles have had on societies throughout the world!

Since this post is all about them, I started things off with my favorite piece of The Beatles art, the psychedelic portrait titled in their name by Richard Avedon (above). What's not to love about all of those funky poses and psychedelic colors?? Besides, you know I love this art because I have it in my art den at home! Take a look:


What's that I hear? You love The Beatles too and want this art in your home!? You could print them out like I did and [impatiently] frame them (they don't look too polished up close!), or you can go bigger and better (and probably really expensive and do this (as seen in my brief post last Monday):


Either way it will look good, I was just too impatient and I wanted my own Richard Avedon trippy Beatles art too much to wait! Hey, it suits me just fine for now, but perhaps one day I will get a bigger version!

Anyway, as you will see, the following images are a montage photography, graffiti and artwork which in some way represent The Beatles and their music, "All you need is love" seems to be the most popular lyric used, but I really love this first one... I couldn't agree with The Beatles more, you got to be free!

By the way, if you enjoy this post, which I hope you do, you may also be interested in checking out one of my past posts on Psychedelic Rock Concert Posters!

xoxo

This is the actual sign and gate for Strawberry Field in Liverpool, England....

...covered in graffiti from all of the Beatles lovers around the world :)....

I really like this one....

".....but I'm not the only one... I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will be as one!"

I really love this lyric.... couldn't be more true!
"The love you take is equal to the love you make"

I wanna live in a Yellow Submarine, a Yellow Submarine.... I'm lovin' this art and the metal heart peace sign too...

This funky piece is a paper cutout art by Pinky Vision....

These pieces below are by an artist named Chepita and I found them on Flickr.......

And last, you might remember these images which I have featured in past posts....

Also featured in [this post]

Also featured in [this post]


((All images via Google image search, WeHeartIt, Vi.sualize.us and Flickr)

Graffiti in Istanbul

Anarchy graffiti + groovy guitar dude + the bohemian district in Istanbul = awesome photo

While traveling, I have a tendency to get caught up in everything... the architecture, the design, the food, the difference in weather, terrain and foliage, and especially all of the little things. I take pictures of flowers, museums and art, furniture in store windows, restaurants I eat at, stores I shop at and almost every place I visit. Anything I find interesting, odd or beautiful, snap snap, I take a photo... or two, or even three and four! So I'm pretty excited and anxious to share so many of them with you, but let me tell you, organizing the overflow of photos on both my computers is a mind-numbing pain! It's frustrating to try and group them, I'm doing it [loosely] by common theme or event/location where it applies.

Part two of the Amsterdam Flower Market is coming soon, you can check out Part I of the Amsterdam Flower Market here. Today I am mixing it up with some images from my trip to Istanbul, Turkey in 2008. I went for business, plus a couple of extra days for pleasure. My aunt and I worked for a fabric company together at the time and were absolutely thrilled when we had to go to Istanbul with a few colleagues for an enormous fabric convention called Evteks. It was an awesome trip! Not only because Istanbul is AWESOME (come on, the city is on two continents!), but it's so rich with culture and beauty. My aunt and I have traveled throughout Europe extensively and we love to experience the food, the sights and the culture as much as possible! You really do learn a lot more about where you are visiting when you open yourself to seeing and experiencing as much of it [and its people] as possible. We were amazed at how the other people on our trip cared so little about experiencing the sights and culture of the city; or scared of trying the local food, such as the delicious meze, a tapas/appetizer type dish of the Eastern Mediterranean and Arab world featuring a variety of dips. Meze is everywhere around Istanbul, along with other juicy Turkish delights, pun intended, hehe. So yes, soaking up the food, culture, sights and talking to the locals is a must! Throughout time I will share with you a little from each of those categories through my memories and photography.

This post is a collection of my photography from Istanbul and the common trait is graffiti! In one way or another graffiti is present in each of the photos in this post. You might also like a post I did a while back which also features interesting graffiti called Da Vinci's Mona Lisa Becomes Star of the Graffiti World! Enjoy!

This is some famous singer/wrapper/musical artist in Turkey, or perhaps beyond in other parts of the Middle East, I'm not sure. I caught a glimpse of her on the tv in our hotel room one day and vaguely remember. I spotted this graffiti down a narrow street during one of our long walking adventures, lol....

I love this picture, especially that the graffiti looks sort of like a heart... :)

Wise moment? LOL... I don't quite remember, but I know we were on our way to get a Turkish Bath/massage!!!! I'll post on that some day, what an experience... you gotta get naked in front of a whole bunch of other ladies!! That's it, I was probably worrying about that....hehe....

Who cares about the graffiti, lovely gates....... they scream for love....

Lots of stencil graffiti here and there, this one is some weird alien type monster head or who knows what, it's blurry but there is better and more thought provoking one coming up....

A narrow street close to where we had our Turkish Bath, with a lot of interesting graffiti....

So interesting I had to awkwardly photograph myself in front of it, hehe....

Rubble.... love it....

As for the thought provoking stencil graffiti I spoke of a moment ago, this one says "colored" and has a screaming child with hair flowing behind them?? Hmm... is the fact that it's in black have anything to do with the vague term "colored," so as to insinuate race? Is someone out there seeing something I'm not and want to give their input?.....

And there I am again posing in front of a door that has layers of wild and colorful graffiti... I liked the interest it added to front of the building :)

(All photography in this blog post are my personal photos, please ask me permission first if you would like to use any of them on your site. Thank you!)