Rainbow Roses & Henna

to be
soft
is
to be
powerful
– Rupi Kaur, Milk & Honey

Better a Diamond with a Flaw than a Perfect Pebble

Thought this was beautiful – a colour spectrum of diamonds by Langerman Diamonds. A little beauty for the middle of the week : )

Happy National Chocolate Week!

This could quite possibly be my favourite national celebration of the year (except for my birthday, which should be a national holiday) – it’s National Chocolate Week!

I’ll be helping the country celebrate and doing my part by buying a few luxury chocolate (or a thousand) and pondering the benefits of chocolate (i.e. nuff’ serotonin = happiness) while I curl up with my latest book.

In other news, here’s a peek of the Cake and Bake show my sister and I went to last week, a little chocolate Morphe-type man! Isn’t it cute?

Nostalgia Fun with Troll Dolls

My sisters and I have always loved things that remind us of our 80s and 90s childhood, and we love how these are recycled and re-interpreted in today’s media and fashion. One of the things we all remember having was troll dolls – ugly-but-cute dolls which brightly coloured long hair for us to style (and accidently cut) into funky shapes.

With the new Trolls movie being released in October, I’ve been seeing a surge of funky-haired dolls everywhere – including these pretties below in makeup store Mac, which was releasing a range of Troll-coloured makeup! The makeup itself was a bit too bright for me but I loved the different coloured trolls and their hair!

Worth the trip to memory lane!

Weekly Beautiful Libraries Links

I’ve been looking for books to read, but have ended up finding silly links and games to play – so far I’ve played 5 rounds of Battleship on my mobile and only won twice. Here’s some links while I play again.

If 2016’s Oscar-nominated movie posters told the truth – let’s see which one of them wins tonight!

When Frozen meets Star Wars. A mashup by artist Katarzyna Witerscheim.

And while you’re at it, here’s some hijabi-fied Disney Princesses.

A magnetic collage – a short story with GIFs.

Thought this was good – a piece of fiction on an alien’s take of human behaviour.

This is one for Londoners – cute and quirky cafe shops around London to visit for something a little different.

This white chocolate sphere dessert. Surprisingly not that difficult to make!

An interesting article on China and it’s women-only mosques – part of BBC’s documentaries about China.

I’m a real library freak, and I always look for pretty bookshops and libraries whenever I travel abroad. A list of beautiful libraries around the world to add to my bucket list.

5 second films – enjoyment and wasting less of your time. Or more of your time depending on how many of these you end up watching.

Writing on the Wall: Currencies of the World

…all on one board. I found this in a little deli hidden away on Green Street, East London, which the proprietor had displayed on the wall, probably to show the different type of customers and currencies he has come across.

I loved how this looked on the wall, a mish-mash of colours, cultures and odd bits all lined up together to form a small piece of art to catch your eye (and probably to remind you to pay for your food!)

World Hijab Day…2016

I love that there’s an official celebration for hijab every year, and the message that World Hijab Day tries to promote. While the event tries to promote hijab and show the various fashionistas, business women and pioneers of hijabi women, I think that it’s also more important in showing the non-hijabi women out there what it’s like and how empowering hijab can be, rather than oppressive.

I’ve seen a lot of fabulous hijab stories out there already, and it’s amazing to see them come from countries all over the world – for me it just proves that modesty and hijab can be a universal concept, rather than just restricted to the idea of a piece of fabric covering your head. I have said before that I believe it’s important to send an important message to our younger generation of girls – hijab is not something to be ridiculed, ashamed of or misunderstood, and that there is nothing wrong with wanting to cover. If there are questions about it, we are always happy to spread awareness and show the reasons why we cover.

I have heard it said that us ‘hijabi’ bloggers can get a little obssessive over the hijab and tend to write about it too much – while I agree that we see it as part of our identity, perhaps we write about it so that we can get others to understand how we feel and who we are. I do think that the hijab brings out a lot of our inner traits which we may not necessarily be confident about if we were too focused on the way we look – in today’s Facebookin’, Intagrammin’, Twitterin’ generation, this is becoming more and more important to us.

But I’ll leave you with something a little more light-hearted – perhaps we love our hijab so much because it allows us to show women’s beauty and what we love about ourselves –  I certainly think it helps me enhance my bright lipstick of the day!

Back To The Future Day – 21 October 2015

It’s here! It’s finally arrived! The day that Marty in classic Back to the Future II dials to find goverboards, microwavable pizzas, self-lacing shoes and flying cars – although not all that we’ve been promised have been developed yet!

I’m off to celebrate with a Back to the Future Marathon, pizza that doesn’t microwave and a skate board – but it’s amazing to see how time flies. No, I don’t feel old at all!

You can read some live updates here and here by The Guardian, and BBC here.

modern art simplified…by John Atkinson

Really does sum it up, John Atkinson of Wrong Hands on Art.

Books to Look Out For #6: Othello the Bard-Ass

If you ever thought the talents of Mr T were wasted and needed to be re-chanelled into the works of Shakespeare, search no more – Mr T is the new face of Othello. I’m hoping he knocks out Iago with a Snickers bar and tells him to stop being a dam’ fool in this one.