Broken Roof.

Stand under this broken roof of mine
It’s a measly protection from rain and sun
There will be leaks and drafty air
And I can’t always shelter you from them

But under this broken roof
You can lay down and count the stars
Until you fall asleep facing heavenward
With the moonlight encasing you

Then you’ll wake the next morning
Opening your eyes to a piece of the sky
So breathtakingly azure and deep
That you would think you’re still dreaming

Take shelter under my broken roof
And you’ll see life a little clearer

Just another random poetry…. again. Do check out my other works at Writers Cafe! Thanks guys!

xoxo

Steph.

Fashion Spotlight: Rock the Color of the Year!

Every year, Pantone releases an official color and theme to set the tone for beauty, fashion and everything else. Last year it was the bright and punchy Tangerine. So for this year, the color-identifying company picked the hue Emerald or the “Ultramarine Green”. I think it’s a lovely shade that doesn’t get much attention. Our style tip here can help you incorporate this jewel tone into your wardrobe. With its pop of color, everyone will surely go green with envy.

To make the emerald really pop, pair it up with neutral or black shoes and contrast it with a bold and bright lippy shade. Throw in some regal touch by wearing gold accessories. To make your look extra edgy, have your nails in metallic shades. Wearing green with red will make you look like a walking Christmas Tree so avoid those two color combinations.

Anastasia S. of Lookbook

What’s more, don’t be afraid to try out quirky prints and patterns in your pants and blazers this season. After all it’s the individuality that counts. Green is universally acclaimed as flattering on all skin tones. According to style authorities, it is “a color of elegance and beauty that enhances our sense of well-being, balance and harmony”. I was browsing some really good candy green pieces to incorporate in my wardrobe for this season’s in color and I stumbled upon these fabulous finds!

 

I’ve found them all at UDOBUY, one of the best online stores that has been helping the fashion-conscious look fabulous since 2008. Based in China, Udobuy offers the latest street style dresses, coats, boots & more. The store is currently having a  Candy Green in Season! Sale where you can enjoy 15% off your purchase from this collection. And have I mentioned, they offer free shipping worldwide? x)

Whether you prefer hunter, emerald, candy, or Kelly, you’ll be tempted to turn your closet into a green scene after taking a peek at their pretty items. Flip through their website to check out all you can do with the versatile hue. Green is a beautiful color, appropriate for every occasion and every season. It’s very elegant, and vintage in some ways. Not everyone can pull off wearing it, but with the right combination of shoes, bags and jewelry, and depending on what you have on in this color, dress or a blouse, you can look like a diva!

xoxo

Steph.

All About Mom. A Mother’s Day Special + Giveaway.

We all have our own idea of what the perfect mother should be, whether she be the archetypical mother who bakes cakes and tends to our damaged knees or the dynamic career woman who juggles many different roles whilst still finding time for her children. Mothers Day can be a time for reflection; reflecting on the relationship we have/had with our own mother and also on the role that mother has played within our own family.

I look at my grandmother, my mother, my friends’ mothers, etc, and I think they are all amazing in their own rights. I know that there are many days that if I was in their position I would’ve stayed in bed and covered my head with pillows to block out the existence of all around me… but a mom won’t do that. Even if a mom is sick she is up taking care of those she loves. Moms are self sacrificing… it is in their nature. I don’t think it is a trait that females are born with though… I think it is a trait that they acquire when they have a baby. Moms will go without just to make sure that their children… their husbands… their families are taken care of and have everything they need.

Moms also have the innate ability to make everything alright. You can have the worst day of your life, when you were little you’d come home from school sad over a fight that you had with your best friend at school. Mom would listen to you, wipe away your tears… and tell you how much she loved you and tell you she knew that tomorrow you and your friend would be okay… she’d give you a cookie and everything was okay. When you got older all it took was a phone call to mom, she would listen to you and her words would take all of the pain away. Moms never stop… they never get a day off… they are never really rewarded or credited for all they do.

Year after year I have given mom handmade cards and I remembered last year, I made her a poem and added some embellishments on it so she could hang it to remind her how much I love her. But now that I’m no longer a little kid, I can’t find the time to put my thinking cap on and whip something awesome and handcrafted for her so I decided to go look online! Here are some of my finds for different moms with different sense of style and taste.

Yes, these fabulous items are all from Udobuy Shop and you’re in for a luck because they are now hosting A Mother’s Day Special Activity and Giveaway where you can join in 2 ways!

Part 1:

Shop in their site and you can get a 25% discount when you use the promo code 2013MOM. What’s more, you will receive a $10 voucher on your next purchase! If your purchase amounts up to $69 or more, you are entitled to receive a free necklace.

Part 2:

What do you want to say to your mom? Write it down and share your experiences together. Send it to udobuy@gmail.com and get two freebies – one for you and your mom.

What gift do you want to give to your mom? If your story can move them, they will do their best to meet your wish. The gift can be of any amount.

So, there you have it peeps. It’s not yet too late to get a little something for your mom! But you have to hurry because this promo will only last until the 23rd of May. For more details, you can go here and while you’re at it, you might as well explore the shop’s trendy and fashionable items you can get for yourself and for your mom of course.

This year, on this Mother’s Day take the time to thank our mothers. Let her know how much she means to you. While in the end moms believe the greatest reward for all they have done is seeing their children turn into happy successful adults… they could all use a little acknowledgment a love from us along the way.

So from the bottom of my itsy bitsy heart, Happy Mother’s Day!

xoxo

Steph.

I’m a Dreamer. It’s a Dream Catcher. Do the Math.

I got so excited today after receiving the dream catchers my friend made. Looking at pictures, I have always been fascinated about dream catchers and I can’t be more happier knowing I already have them!

There was a time in Anishnabe history when the people were being tormented by nightmares. The elders and “medicine people” all tried to solve this problem on their own, but not a one made progress against the dreams; so a council or all the people was called. During this council one elder had a vision of a spider’s web in a hoop with a feather and bead attached that would catch the bad dreams while letting good dreams pass through. The elders went to work fashioning dream catchers in the manner prescribed by the vision and when the people started using them, the bad dreams went away.

The dream catchers my friend gave me. Aren’t they pretty?

The dream catcher is hung above a sleeping area in a place where the morning light can hit it. The nature of the Dream Catcher will attract all sorts of dreams to its webs. When bad dreams come, they do not know the way through the web and get caught in the webbing where the first light of day causes them to melt away and perish. The good dreams knowing the way go through the center of the web and slide down the feather to the sleeper below.

I have also been taught that the web catches bad/unimportant dreams and allows the good/important dreams to come through the middle and slide down the feather into the sleeper’s head. Bad dreams are malicious in intent, or simply unimportant fleeting images. Bad dreams may be very disturbing, but still have a very important message for the dreamer, so that the dream catcher doesn’t necessarily get rid of bad dreams in the sense of nightmares, but bad dreams in the sense of distracting dreams that have no significance or meaning to the dreamer. I have also been told that they were always hung on cradle boards.

Because dream catchers are beautiful and also because the idea of protection from nightmares is compelling, dream catchers have become very popular. The dream catcher reminds us how important the dream world has been to people throughout time. Dreams have provided medicine men, shamans and prophets a portal to another realm. Even though today most of us tend to focus on the physiology of the dream state, we can still appreciate the power of our nightly visits to that other world.

xoxo

Steph.

The Writer’s Lounge: Where I Write. (Sort Of)

The ultimate in writing spaces seems to be the writing shed, a spare, distraction-free room set in some verdant landscape, where, in fertile solitude, the writer may create worlds out of nothing. Roald Dahl had one, so did Mark Twain and Virginia Woolf. My own writing world is a pretty cramped room with barely enough light to inspire you within the day. I started as a freelance writer just a year ago and since then my “home office” kept changing.

I have a small desk that houses my vanity stuff and some manuscripts zipped inside the folders. In most occasion, my desk is a one big mess but today I cleaned it up for its “photoshoot”. Before I moved in to my new room, the walls are completely bare and it was up to me to breathe some life into it. I’m pretty happy with how it looks now. My writing space is an extension of myself…It’s fantastical. A world outside of this one, an escapists world filled with cartoons and fairies and dragons. In this picture you can’t see the bookshelves laden with stories collected since I was four… Notebooks everywhere; half empty… Pens stashed so that I would never be without one.

There is something inspiring about writing in notebooks with pens. The inability to erase makes the thoughts careful in their choosing. There is no white out in my space. Just a permanence to the words. I write young adult fantasy, because my world resides in that age… because pieces of me never grew up… because its of my own story are mixed into the stories I write and read.  We read to find others like ourselves and share in our troubles, share in the inability to fit into society, into school, into the world in general. We like stories that we can say “I have felt this and know, there are others just like me.”

To write means for me, more than just taking one pencil and write what my mind dictates to me. Writing is the possibility to touch the sky with your fingers, is the way to create an imaginary world around you and discover a treasure in the heart of the earth. My room is my space where I spend hours writing, dreaming and reading.

Each space as unique as the writer’s fingerprint, the spectrum of spaces are as infinite and varied as snowflakes. Whether they be public, private, nomadic, permanent, messy, neat, inside or in the wild, each carries an individual and sacred voice.

Honor yours.

I’m An Unfinished Poem.

Tonight, I look
like an unfinished poem.
My hair is messy and down
far past my waist. I have
two pockets full
of mournful and a changepurse
full of sky.

I am staring into puddles 
on the sidewalk and asking myself
how I can float in such shallow water.
How I can nosedive into such
empty promises.

Tonight, my body 
is a costume to a party
that I am attending alone.

It is a postcard signed
wish you were here 
but it has
no address,
no one
to bury it
in their notebook
like a secret

like I am the love poems
I write to ghosts.

In Reverie.

Find me there, in the place where I belong, in the land of distant reverie, where everything seems a dream.

Let me show you what I see up here amongst the clouds, but oh how small you look there on the far off ground.

I want to show you all that floods my mind in this never passing time, but you refuse to come and explore these places in my brain.

Come, can you see? The place it seems only I can see? No, oh no, there’s no one here but only me.

I wish, oh how I wish in these translucent hours that you could come and find all that flows in these recesses of my mind.

And so I shall explore this place all alone as I usually find myself on these all too rare and ever fleeting occasions.

How to find my way in this patchwork work of trance-like insimplicity? It’s mine; is it not? Yet I know not these odd sights and fading fantasies.

Each time I come it is different, affected somehow without my knowledge or consent. How odd to think that I am not the one in control of my own imagination. Is that not the one place where I should have domain?

None can join me. None can see. How lonely. No, how freeing? An odd sensation, to create with no audience to see. Time slips or doesn’t exist in the land of distant reverie

Make Believe

I’m currently putting together a “writing portfolio” I can carry around when applying for a job. According to mom it’s necessary. Anyways, while I was going through some of my old journals, I found this piece I wrote 5 years ago for our school paper but unfortunately, it wasn’t published. This is called “Make Believe”.

Castle walls in the skies kept me safe
until you crept up behind me out of sight
you broke into the vault of chained melodies
music of the heart written in braille
you pierced the outer membrane
it oozed a sudden aubergine recognition
bejeweled crystallization of this vessel’s tune
i felt an ancient nagging dance within my soul
old heated tempos tangled in my toes
let me waltz the passage before a tango
crumbling walls desire avowal to prance
upon flooded fortified fortress chambers

So I guess I was born a dreamer.

xoxo

Steph.

Into The Dark World of Freelancing.

To commemorate my first anniversary of being a Freelance writer, I guess it’s but fitting to look back on this journey and where it got me.

Just a warning, all opinions stated below are entirely my own. Thank you.

My grandfather called me up last night and asked how I was doing with my work and all that. I told him, I resigned from one client and the other ended our contract without paying me for the story I submitted. He was quick enough to say, “Oh don’t worry just go and find another one. It was on the news today. There’s this contractor who’s earning $750 a month.. blah blah blah’ I couldn’t even explain myself to him that employers like that comes once in a blue moon.

I signed up in odesk as a freelance writer and after a year, I’ve worked with different clients with different needs. I’ve written stories for children, romance novels, blog posts about fashion, beauty, etc. I can work for several clients long as I can handle their projects. There came a point when I didn’t know the concept of sleep because I was working for a good 20 hours a day. My brain is always in an overdrive with all the deadlines to meet.

There are so many things to love about the freelance lifestyle. I can work weird hours and rearrange my schedule on a whim to take advantage of nice weather or have the free time to do something with friends as long as I find the time to complete my client work. I like being able to work from a variety of places: my home office, a coffee shop, a friend’s office, my back porch, a park or almost any other location. I enjoy having the freedom to take on new clients (or not) based on whether the project is (or isn’t) interesting to me. I like having the ultimate level of control over my career.

However, it isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. Most employers there are offering a pittance of a wage and what can best be described as slave labour online. Some of the adverts are an insult to professional writers because they are asking ridiculous amounts of work for very small amounts of pay. I have seen ads wanting writers at $1 an hour or worse and stating that unless you are prepared to work for this amount don’t bother applying.

The next problem I encountered is that the employers often cannot write or speak very good English themselves, and yet they have the nerve to criticize what you have done and ask for rewrites and make suggestions even when they are only paying some small amount like $1 an hour. Some do not explain what they want properly either so it becomes a matter of guesswork.

At first, I was excited that I could turn things that I was passionate about and doing for fun as hobbies into something that people would pay me to do. I could do fun work and earn money! This worked for me for quite a while, and maybe it continues to work for some people over long periods of time. For me, those things that I used to do for fun all became work, and they became less fun as they started to feel like work. I also realized that I really didn’t have hobbies anymore, and I was just spending all of my time working, which left me burned out, tired and grouchy.

“This is the real talk about the hard knock freelance writing life. Where the hopes and dreams of aspiring writers meet the hard road of rejections and deadlines.”

I am now considering my friend’s offer to teach basic English to Korean students here in our place. I hope this goes well for me. But don’t get me wrong. I haven’t completely cut off my online writing gig …. yet. but through it all, I’m still proud of what I’ve accomplished so far. I’ve been published multiple times, I’ve received positive feedbacks from my clients saying how they love my writing style and I was able to buy a special gift for myself out of my hard earned money. Though there are times freelance writing can be devastating, I’m still thankful

xoxo

Steph.

P.S. If you have the time, come visit Freelancer Real Talk. It’s a hilarious site that covers everything that goes inside the head of a freelance writer and yes, I can relate to most of it. And I bet you guys too.

365 Reasons to Smile.

This post has been long overdue already especially since we’re almost halfway through the year. And since I didn’t start this project yet, I have an excuse to post this up! Supposedly, this should begin by the start of the year. The whole concept of this project is to write down all the good things that happened to you on a card or piece of paper every day and stash it inside a (cute)  jar. By the end of the year, you’ll be surprised by how many good stuff actually happened. I like to personally call it a 2013 Memory Jar. And it seems as though a lot of people has already started doing this.

I found an old medicine jar lying around in the kitchen so I figured to add some embellishments on it.

I love the idea of looking back whenever the year ends. I love writing journal entries whenever something good happens. But what I fail to realize is that, every single day, good things DO happen. It’s just that, I’m too lazy to write something about it in my diary. This is actually a fun project and even if I’m way behind already, I can still fill this up. After all, we all have something it’s never too late to realize the good things that come our way every single day.

xoxo

Steph.