forgetful seasons

ou know summer has arrived when you start getting a sandal strap tan lines.  I did a bunch of gardening with these sandals on, so I had a nice dirt layer "tan-line" but then when I took a shower to wash off the dirt, the lines didn't go away.  Officially summer!  We've been barbecuing and gardening and farmers market-ing like summertime pros.  Summer always throws me for a loop.  I'm so used to bracing for cold when I leave a building, and now when I go outside it's perfectly warm and pleasant.  Now I have to brace for going into buildings with overly ambitious air-conditioning.  I think I prefer that kind of bracing though. Washingtonians are notorious for complaining about the weather regardless of what it is: rain, snow, sun.  They can find a reason to hate it.  Nine months of complaining about grey and rain and then the first week of hot summer weather and we're all, "Waaah! It's hooootttt."  I went to Target the other day to buy a fan and the entire shelf of box fans was empty.  I'm pretty sure Washingtonians forget that summer exists every year.



dress/modcloth :: sandals/courtesy of moorea seal :: necklace/courtesy of musana jewelry

don't worry, be yonce

ridays at my gym are leg-day and last Friday I wore this shirt because I knew that Queen Bey would get me through all the squats and lunges.  Alas, I am still sore three days later.  Oof.  Even the power of Yoncé can't heal 170 calf raises.  Yowch.  On Saturday Dan and I drove up to spend the afternoon with his parents and grandparents and I'm pretty sure I was walking around with the same hobble as his 80+ year old grandma.

I didn't really mention it here on the blog, but if you follow me on Instagram you know I was home in Alaska last week.  My mom is trying to clean up the house now that the nest is empty of all the kids, and after living there for almost 20 years, it's a tall order!  A lot of our stuff is still there being stored, so I went through boxes of my old stuff and tossed a ton of stuff and picked a few things to save that will eventually get shipped down here.  It was an interesting few days, sort of reliving my entire life through all the knick knacks, journals, and photos I'd squirreled away over the years.  Everything from my preschool teacher-parent journal, to boxes of fancily folded passed-notes from my BFF and high school ex-boyfriend.  Stuffed animals, homework, horse show ribbons, yearbooks.  It was interesting to be confronted with so much of my past all within a couple days.

On my last night in town, I dumped out the box of notes from my high school ex-boyfriend on my bed and decided to read them.  All of them.  I knew it was a toxic, unhealthy, manipulative relationship, but reading over a year's worth of his notes all in a few hours was, well, heartbreakingly illuminating.  I found myself both ragingly irate at how he treated me, and devastated for the girl I became while I was with him. I sobbed for her, surrounded by a pile of crumpled, scrawled notes.  I wept for the precious time she wasted trying to manage his emotions and psychological issues.  I cried thinking about how powerless my parents felt watching him writhe his way into my life. I watched, retrospectively, as he tried to shrink that wild-hearted girl into a little safe box where he could control her.  And then I wiped the tears away and the next morning took every last note and burned them.  At first I felt compelled to watch them crumble amidst the flames until ever last one was consumed, but then I decided I wouldn't waste another second of my life on that boy and walked away as they smoldered.

I've done a lot of burning-things activities over the years at retreats, camps, etc., but being able to physically burn that relationship away, even though it was a relationship I hadn't given a thought to in years, burning away all those manipulative words... it was good.


 
top + jacket + shoes/courtesy of modcloth :: tights/target :: bag/courtesy of fossil
 

#FLASHBACKFRIDAY // saturday market

his outfit shoot has always been one of my all time favorites.  It's just in the alley behind my old apartment, but the dreamy sun, dandelions, and the outfit together made this such a fun shoot.  Thinking back to this time, I used to wear so many more hats!  I just noticed all my hats hung on my closet wall the other day and I don't think I've worn any of them since I hung them there!  Perhaps my hat wearing days was just a phase.  This little boater hat looks totally cute in these photos but for some reason I feel like if I wore a boater hat now I'd look ridiculous.  Maybe I'll take that as a challenge to grab this hat off the wall and try to style it up again!

Saturday Market // May 20, 2011

Lately I've been feeling spread too thin. For being technically unemployed, I am doing a hell of a lot of things. This week I've been driving back and forth to various locations, trying to get blog designs completed, stressing about where I'm going to put all my things once I move out of my apartment, working on this blog, trying to maintain a social life and so on and so forth. I'm tired. Let's be real, I'm pretty bad at multitasking. Supposedly girls are wonders at multitasking, but this girl has a one track mind and when I try to diversify, I just end up failing at everything I'm trying to juggle. Right now I have too many commitments and not enough me to fulfill all of them and it stresses me out. Mainly because I don't like failing. I don't like admitting that I can't handle it. I'm competitive, I want to be the best at everything I do, I want to make people proud of me... but sometimes I need to remember that I also need to stay sane.

I think this summer will be good for me. I'll be reeling in some of my overcommitments and I'll be existing more in the real world than the blogosphere, and though I'll probably miss spending as much time as I do now reading my favorite blogs, I think it'll be healthy for me to take a bit of a step back.

dress/courtesy of modcloth :: skirt/vintage via delightful dozen :: shoes/kensiegirl

hat/claires :: shades/vintage

Today I helped with a little fundraiser market for camp, which was pretty fun. I was in charge of the facepainting/hair wrap table. If you've been to my facebook page you've seen my Bowie-inspired facepaint! There ended up not being very many kids at the market though, so I only did facepaint on... me. And I only did a few hair wraps, but it was still fun.

This skirt is from Veronika from the Delightful Dozen. When I saw it I fell in love! It's such a lovely shade of light blue and the vintage cut is so great. It reminds me of something my Mom would've worn when she was my age.

sweet potato steak tacos

ummer days are here, which means barbecues, campfires, popsicles, and tacos are at the top of my must-have list these days.  The thing I love about tacos is that the options are pretty much endless and they're great for throwing together leftover ingredients.  Dan worked for a local restaurant as a cook last year and their kitchen focused on south and latin american inspired dishes, which meant lots of tacos.  He made us lots of tacos during that time but now that he doesn't work there, we've fallen off the taco wagon.  I took it upon myself to get back on that delicious wagon and threw together these babies last week for a scrumptious, fresh dinner.



Ingredients (yield: 6 tacos):
2 tbsp olive oil
1 sweet potato, peeled + diced
1/2 onion, diced
1/4 green and/or red pepper, diced
1/2 c fresh corn
1 tbsp chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
salt + pepper
1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 lb round top steak, thinly sliced
salt + pepper
1 tbsp butter

corn tortillas
lettuce, chopped
shredded/ crumbled , cheese (your choice, cotija is my favorite on tacos, but for these I had aged cheddar on hand)
avocado, sliced
tomado, diced

1. In a pan on medium heat, heat olive oil and add sweet potato and season with salt and pepper.

2. Saute for about 5 minutes and then add onion, peppers, corn, and garlic.

3. Saute for another 25 minutes or until the sweet potato is cooked through and soft.

4. In another pan, heat butter over medium heat.  Add steak slices and season with salt and pepper.  After about 2-3 minutes, flip the slices and continue grilling until cooked through, another few minutes.

5.  If you'd like to heat up the tortillas, heat another pan over medium with a 1/2 tbsp of butter and cook the tortilla for a couple minutes, flipping once.

6. Once everything is done cooking, assemble the tacos and enjoy!

love your curls

 recently shared this link on my facebook page, and while I did a fist pump in the air for pretty much every single post shared in that article, this one struck a chord with me:

http://womenaresociety.tumblr.com/post/115394923469/wesley-crusher-radical-as-fuhk-why-dont-we

Growing up, I had no curly hair role models, especially not in pop culture or media.  In every single makeover plot line, the girl who gets made over has curly, unruly, big hair and then they straighten her hair to look like the classic Disney princess hair, slap on some makeup, pluck her eyebrows, ditch the glasses, and voila!  Now you're pretty.  Because you couldn't possibly be pretty with all that big, curly, frizzy hair.  It's... unkempt.  It's... untamed.  It's... uncomfortable. 

I was never the girl who could wake up hours before school to straighten her hair, put on makeup, and put in effort to look cute.  It was all I could do to get up 15 minutes before I had to be out the door.  I wasn't a primper, managing my big mane was a low-key affair and it was a constant battle.  I battled with the cut, spending too many years getting out of the stylist's chair with my curly hair shaped like a triangle because they cut it like it was straight hair.  I battled with being able to style it myself at home and using products (unwittingly) that were designed for the complete opposite type of hair: straight, think, limp.  It wasn't until my junior year of high school that I finally started to feel like I was getting the hang of it, and I was out of college when I got around to feeling super confident with my hair.  Now, I wouldn't trade it for anything, except maybe bigger and curlier hair!

 

I wear my hair natural and curly 99.5% of the time.  I don't work in an industry where I feel pressured to wear my hair in a "professional" way (whatever that means), but I know plenty of women with naturally curly and ethnic hair who work in more professional environments have felt a lot of pushback and criticism regarding wearing naturally curly hair.  When I posted that first link on my facebook I got quite a few comments echoing that sentiment.  It's like, there's nothing said outright, just a general vibe that curly hair, worn naturally, is not professional.  It's "messy."  Unless you have nice, neat, soft curls made with a curling iron. 

I don't know how it is for girls now, but I grew up in the 90's and early 00's when everybody was into pin straight hair.  "The Rachel" cut was all the rage, and there was no way in hell my hair would ever be anything like Rachel's even if I had a stylist give me her cut.  Even if I straightened it, the texture is too coarse and I don't have that shiny sleekness that Jennifer Aniston has.  All my friends had that hair.  They could go to the stylist and get the styles they wanted.  And there I was.  With poofy hair that would explode into a mess of poofy frizz if I brushed it dry, and tangled moments after getting it combed out in the shower.  I got my curly hair from my Dad.  My mom, while her hair is thick and gorgeous, had no clue how to deal with my curls, other than desperately trying to detangle it.  I had no culture of curly haired women around me to help me learn the ins and outs of naturally curly hair.  Now, with the internet, online communities of natural curly girls are banding together, forcing the status quo of straight=normal to finally shift, slowly but surely.

I don't have a daughter yet, but if I do (and she's blessed with the gift of big, curly hair), I feel a lot more positive about the how culture will view and approach her curly hair.  Campaigns like Dove's Love Your Curls are encouraging and eye opening when it comes to revealing how our culture can affect little girls with curly hair.  Dove also has created a fun little Love Your Curls book, and you can download the e-book and customize it for the curly girl you love.  It's a perfect gift for the little curly girls who are likely to feel discouraged or frustrated about their curly hair.  Full of little encouraging poems and prose about curly hair, it would've been great to have had something that actively praised my wild mane as a little girl.  I would've died of happiness for a Disney princess like Merida!

By and large the majority of hair products seem to be designed for the masses, and curly hair's needs are ignored.  In conjunction with their Love Your Curls campaign, Dove has also created a line of curly hair products, Quench Absolute, which they designed just for curly hair to help nourish and shape curls.  They sent me the Quench Absolute line to try out, and while I was disappointed that the shampoo contained Sodium Laurelth Sulfate, which is definitely on the no-go list for curls, based on my research (and I'm also a no-poo advocate, so I was disinterested in the shampoo to begin with),  I tried the Restoration Mask, Nourishing Conditioner, and Créme Serum and felt that the products did and okay job, but I wasn't blown away.  I would need to try it for a couple more months to really get a feel for how well it works.  Since I only wash my hair once or twice a week, the process of trying out products, for me, takes longer.  I'm a fan of much more natural products, and big companies like Dove tend to swing further into the chemical realm when it comes to their products, but that being said I'm glad that companies are finally wising up to the needs of curly hair and working to create products with our specific needs in mind.  Curly hair often needs a lot of moisturizing, conditioning, and protection, since the bends of the curls can weaken the hair if not protected.  Dove designed the Quench Absolute line to help moisturize and keep curly hair healthy and manageable.  I haven't gotten the best results from the products, compared with other products designed by companies whose main focus is curly hair and curly hair only, but I'm excited to see more companies realizing the special needs of curly hair and working to normalize and embrace naturally curly hair.

 

 
I learned to love my curls because I was entirely too lazy (and SO not enough of a morning person) to go through the work to straighten it every morning, but I know so many curly women who felt forced to straighten, either out of obligation or frustration, and while it's not something I've had to deal with, I know that wearing your hair naturally, for women of color, has a racial issue component as well.  There are a lot of social, racial, and cultural forces that can affect curly girls from a very young age and hopefully with campaigns like Love Your Curls and the support of online and local communities, we can help encourage our daughters and other curly girls to love their hair as it is naturally.  I used to only wear my hair naturally because I was too low maintenance to bother with styling it straight, but now I feel like wearing my  hair naturally, not only because I love my curls, but because I want to encourage other girls with big, "unruly," curly hair to embrace the mane and let it do it's amazing, natural thing.  I've gotten emails over the years from curly girls who were encouraged by my blog to put down the straightener and start wearing their hair naturally and I get so excited when I get messages like that.  Rock it, curly girls!  #LoveYourCurls!

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.