Author: maksu2013

K is for Kimono

Published on by maksu20138 Comments

or  Kermit, have it as you would like :).

Kimono-begin

Hey peepullss

So at long last I own a kimono! I’ve been stalking this little wardrobe addition since last summer. Brandy Melville was killing me with their floral kimonos last summer. I’m sure I went to the store about 4 times just to check on “Alexis”. Anyhow I decided to make one of my own since we’re right on the cusp of summer. Despite the chilly weather in Toronto I continue to believe its spring. If I believe it then its true right?

Kimono-Begin

Making this kimono was relatively easy. The most challenging part was working with chiffon which is an eternal pain as I’ve mentioned before but I shall overcome! Another issue was that I had to make do without my scissors. I recently moved so I don’t quite have all my tools in one place but my exacto knife did the very best it could . Other than my cutting issues and the slippery fabric this was a 3/10 for difficulty.

Kimono: Begin

I love how flowy and light this piece is. It won’t keep you warm in 7 degree weather but it would be perfect for those 16 degree days when you don’t want anything too heavy. Plus taking pictures for this post was so much fun! I felt all downtown (okay that doesn’t make sense but I know what I mean) I think my brother did an amazing job making me look super cool! Begin Kimono

I’m looking into making a couple more kimonos for sale but I would like to gauge interest first. If you would like to purchase one either comment below or send an email to maks_u(at)hotmail.co.uk with “kimono” in the title. Depending on the responses I get, I’d let you all know whether or not sales would be happening.

Kimono--Begin

 

pictures by Willyverse: http://willyverse.tumblr.com/

The trouble with perfect

Published on by maksu20132 Comments

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Hello, hello!

After months of essays, tests, meetings and the sort, third year is over. At the end of second year I decided to take stock and see what I had learned. I learned in first year that sometimes its okay to let go, in second year I learned that just because you let go of a plan doesn’t mean you have to let go of a dream. After third year I’ve learned that just because you’re used to something doesn’t mean you don’t need to work at it anymore. If anything I learned that the being good at something is simply an invitation to be better

Speaking to my sister last night, she told me something that I thought summed up my “discoveries” quite nicely; “life happens”. Its really important to have a plan and know where you want to be and where you’re heading at any point in time, but it is just as important to remember that just because you have a plan doesn’t mean that’s how things are going to go. Sometimes even the most perfect plans are ruined by the smallest, most mundane things and what do you do? You deal with it.

Often times we become so wrapped up in the perfection of our plans that we’re crushed when things don’t go as we hoped they would. In my experience, life “happening” is usually just the thing you need to help you find your way. Its kinda the way things tend to go; you never try you never know, you never fail, you never grow. (really wasn’t trying to rhyme there but hey!). Anyhow I’m grateful for another year with its new experiences and all the things I learned so far. I’m looking forward to my fourth year and all the novelties it promises to bring.

What are some of your most recent life discoveries?

The trip to midi

Published on by maksu20132 Comments

Hey hey!

It’s been a little while since I posted about my sewing so here we go :). At the start of the year, my cousin asked if I could upcycle a dress for her. (Upcycling is basically recycling old clothes). This particular dress was custom made for her but well…things didn’t quite turn out so great. It was challenging but exciting to remodel this skirt. I was quite pleased with the results. Made me want a midi-skirt for myself actually, I guess that will be a project for another day.

My main challenges with making this skirt were;

-fixing previous mistakes

-attaching the zipper (as usual)

-attaching the lining and *wait for it*

-pockets!!!

The lining was really only difficult because I wasn’t working from scratch, or maybe not. Either way it was more than just a little difficult to basically sew a skirt within a skirt. As this was my first time SUCCESSFULLY adding pockets to anything, I was pretty excited.

I would rate the difficulty of this project at a 6/10 if you’re making a skirt from a dress or a 4/10 if you’re starting from scratch (I would assume).

Ibegan-Trip to MidiBegin- Trip to midi

I started off by cutting off the top piece of the dress and cutting the bottom of the skirt to midi length then I hemmed it.

Trip to midi- BeginBegin-Midi Skirt

I opened up the sides of the skirt and added pockets. Finally, I took off the waistband, adjusted the size and reattached it to the skirt, being careful to maintain preexisting pleats.  While this seems fairly basic, it was rather time consuming.

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I feel it turned out pretty well all in all. Seeing her in this skirt made me really really want it though, 0_0. *skips off to sewing machine*

 

 

Midi Skirt- Ibegan

 

Dream in color

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Dream in Color. Begin

On the 16th of March last year, I had a showing of the first play I ever wrote. It really all began the summer of 2012, I was attempting to read a book and then my mind began to wander. My first play really had nothing to do with that initial idea, it was really just me putting everybody else’s thoughts into words. I was still grateful for the experience nonetheless because it showed me that I could do it if I wanted to. In some way I feel it also showed where I was in my life at the time, I was more concerned about what other people wanted me to do than what I wanted for myself.

By the summer of 2013, I was at it again. This time I was going to write from my heart. It took a lot of poking and prodding from my family to get me to expand my vision but it was well worth it. By January this year, I had written something I was truly proud of. The play is centered around the theme of domestic violence. While I may have no personal experience of domestic violence, it hurts me to think that there are several people dealing with this everyday. I say “people” because while many women suffer physical abuse in the hands of men, there are also men who are abused by their partners. For some reason, I felt that I needed to tell this story; which is by no means a perfect representation but  felt that it captured a key piece in the problem of abuse: the disconnect between expectations and reality.

It became clear to me after reading several accounts from women who had lived through abusive relationships that they had held on to the image of who they thought they were with but the fact was, that man had changed. Often times, we continue to hope and trust that someone is just going through a “rough patch”. This expectation that he or she would once again become the person you thought they were at the beginning only leads to more hurt. Maybe that’s why many women remain. They don’t want to give up on somebody they care about so they stay to “help”, so that possibly at some point things would be as they were before. In not letting go, they become the woman that they pitied and despised. The one who didn’t recognize her worth and the one who was too blind to see how awful her abuser was.

I wrote this play with the hope of possibly touching somebody. Perhaps if I put a mirror up to their lives they might try to get help. Abuse is more than just the moment someone physically assaults you, it is the hurtful words, the disrespect, the lack of regard for your opinions or emotions. While some people are really just in a bad place in their lives and will rise above it, you need to know when to back away and be supportive from a distance.

Chocolate Chip Happiness

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Begin- Chocolate chip cookie

Hey thurr

For my bakers out there, have you ever baked a cookie so good it made you want to cry? You know those cookies that are perfectly crunchy on the rims and then perfectly chewy in the middle, or if you’re like me, the ones that are crunchy almost all the way through and then have a gooey chewy center. Over the summer I made that perfect cookie and I thought I would share the recipe.

Ingredients

2 cups of Flour

2 cups of Chocolate chips

1/2 tsp of salt

1/2 tsp of baking soda

1/2 cup of white sugar

1.5 sticks of butter

1 cup of Brown sugar

1 large egg and 1 egg yolk

1 tsp of Vanilla extract

Method

– Cream your butter and sugars until light and fluffy

-Add in eggs and vanilla extract

-Add in the baking soda, salt and flour in small amounts.

-Fold in the flour with a spatula.

-Add Chocolate chips and scoop your batter onto a greased cookie sheet.

-bake for 15-20 minutes and cool.

I think the most amazing experience was when I made a sandwich with Haagen dazs pralines and cream and these cookies *swoon*

Hope you enjoy them 🙂

Said I wasn’t going to but…

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Said I wasn't going to- Begin

nope! not going to…I shall not write a post about love in February!!

Alas here I am. February just has this insidious quality that shoves “love” down your throat 24/7. By the time March rolls around you’re so bored of the idea you don’t even want to talk about love anymore (I lie…I’m a hopeless romantic! I absolutely love love :D). Anyhow I was thinking about love the other day…it’s really quite complex for something so simple. For the most part, I generally say that I don’t know what love is but that’s just a ploy to avoid really thinking about it. My general guide to love is 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. You know, “love is patient, and kind…”; what I find fascinating though is that by this definition love is a truck load of work that promises little return. I suppose the return comes in the happiness you get when you see someone you love getting ahead in life or when you see them smile or those little things that people talk about in their wedding toasts. Or maybe love really has nothing to do with those little things. Maybe you can love somebody without liking them in the least bit. If you are patient and kind and you never envy but you rejoice in righteousness and all the pieces of that short passage maybe you have loved, but that doesn’t mean you like this person. Quite frankly you might just be loving an absolute jerk. I guess this is where “love those who hurt you” comes in cause you don’t have to like them but you have to love them. So maybe love isn’t really about going out to expensive dinners or spending every moment together or living your entire life like Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in the notebook. It seems to me that love is knowing that someone is probably going to mess up again but still giving them another chance. Love is when you have a crappy day but you’re still willing to listen to the other person complain about their day. Love is being upset with someone but still wanting the best for them.

If you ask me that seems extremely difficult cause on some level we all just want to look out for ourselves and do what makes us happy. Love finds happiness in the other person’s happiness. So I suppose when I say that I don’t know what love is, I really mean that I’m not ready to come to terms with what love is.

OR I could be completely wrong about this…oh well 🙂

Twirl baby

Published on by maksu20134 Comments

Twirl Baby_Begin

Hey there!

So I was in Nigeria a few weeks ago, all I’d say about my trip is; food, heat and family. I had an amazing time and got a couple of interesting pieces while I was there. First thing I got done was this skirt. When I first started sewing, the very first thing I made was a circle skirt. I had several glitches but I was and still am very proud of it. Nevertheless, circle2.0 was a necessary upgrade. I didn’t sew the skirt myself but I cut the fabric and well I guess that’s half way there eh?Twirl Baby Begin

This skirt was a bit of a struggle though, because there was a sudden zipper scarcity. We opted for an elastic waist but that  just looked bleh. Then my super styling mama suggested that we add a belt and BAM! we got this baby.Twirl baby.Begin

I love how effortless circle skirts are to make and style. They make me feel extra girly and  being the girly-girl that I am that’s a major plus.

Twirl Baby, Begin

Just had to throw this in there 🙂

Think Responsibly

Published on by maksu20134 Comments

Think Responsibility

Its the start of yet another semester, with its tests, papers and readings. At the risk of sounding cliche, I will say that I still remember my first year. I came into university with a strategy; read and regurgitate. Unfortunately university required a teeny bit more than that, it required me to understand and apply. This realization was fine of course until I took classes that I thought should require me to not just apply but create and then school and I reached an impasse. Don’t get me wrong I was very impressed with the new way I was learning. Never in my learning career had I been pushed to truly understand the subject matter in the way that I was being pushed and it felt amazing! (Yes I’m a nerd..deal). I guess that feeling made me greedy. Its like this, if all I ever knew was vanilla ice cream, I was fine with that but now that I’ve tried cookies and cream, its kind of made me wonder what the other possibilities are.

What framed this for me was a conversation I had with a few people not too long ago. the general consensus was that essays were a trap. You’re asked to say what you think “and as long as you defend it properly there’s no right or wrong answer”. The  truth however is that there is a right answer which is what was taught in class, then there’s the objection to the right answer which is a bit of a wild card cause your answers still have to line up to what the professor thinks the objection should be. The wrong answer in an essay is any opinion that veers too far off from the professors ideas, and while your thought process may not be wrong, it doesn’t conform so boo-hoo boo boo, you get a C for effort.

I’m not saying that this happens all the time but sometimes it feels like you have to give up expressing what you really think for an A (not that your A is guaranteed  anyhow); but you know what really grinds my gears? Its the classes that are supposed to be “liberal”. The ones that focus on social justice. They are great if you want to learn about the social issues that plague us everyday but the minute you try to talk about solutions, somebody throws you the vaguest possible term “activism”. Then you try to lift the veil on what activism really means because its all well and good to know the problem but where do we go from here? But you find nothing concrete, and when you even try to suggest that we need to think of new ways to implement social justice, they grunt and carry on. Nothing changes, we keep flying the pretentious flag.

You see the problem is that we need to evolve. University should be about much more than regurgitating and reapplying concepts the same way Marx, Kant or Foucault did, not that we should discard their works of course. University should be about creating; new ideas, new theories. Maybe some other person feels completely different but I require more from my classroom. If university intends to work me to the bone, I need more than grades, I need value.

5 ways to tame a ‘fro?

Published on by maksu20137 Comments

how to tame an afro

I will start this post by saying an afro will never do all the same things that straight hair does. Why? cause its not the same thing! And that’s perfectly fine. Think of it like finding your shade of make up, you will achieve little by trying to use make up that is a billion shades too light or too dark. In the same way you will achieve little by trying to make your lush ‘fro do things that it can never do.  Secondly, just so nobody is misled, I am by no means a qualified “natural hair blogger” I feel like there is a certain commitment to hair care that you need to have to give other people steady hair care advice. Nevertheless, I have learned a few things in the short while that I have been natural that I thought I should share 🙂

1. Just because it worked for a couple of you-tubers doesn’t mean it will work for you.

This is a hard truth to face but it would have saved me a couple of bad hair days. Something as simple as a twist out could look very different depending on your hair texture. Twist outs have just never really worked for me but bantu knots and flexi rods have. Don’t be afraid to experiment but also don’t be afraid to quit while you’re ahead and find what works.

2. A wash and go is NOT always the less stressful option.

For a girl with super kinky curly hair, you must understand that only satan himself can tempt you to let your hair shrink completely without the necessary detangling process. Oh surrre “this is how your hair looks without anything done to it”, “your God-given mane” blah-di-blah blah! A wash and go for you does not mean wash and head out the door, it means wash, detangle, twist or braid into large manageable sections until your hair is only slightly damp then you can unravel for the wash-and-go shrinkage. Otherwise you will utterly despise yourself on wash day with all the knots you will have.

3. Braids can save your life.

If you’re perfectly honest with yourself, you probably spend a truck load of time on your hair every week. While it could be incredibly relaxing to rake through your mane on a Saturday afternoon, (I know I’m not the only one soothed by that thought) you could be doing some slightly more productive things. Having your hair braided affords you that privilege for however long you decide to keep your braids in. PLUS you can venture new styling options. (yet another excuse to rake through your mane on Saturday :D)

4. A little heat ever so often won’t kill you.

I say this with caution because heat-damage is realer than real. Nothing worse than caring for your hair day and night for years or months and to have all that hard work incinerated in the menacing jaws of a flat iron. (A tad dramatic I know, but its scary though!) However, a little heat once in a blue moon used CORRECTLY can make fabulous hair.

5. When all else fails just wrap it up.

If your hair isn’t long enough yet to go in a bun just wrap your head. Actually there are days when even a bun looks kinda meh. On such days your best bet is to wrap your head and go with the “I’m eclectic” vibe. Just because you have a hot mess on your head doesn’t mean the world has to know it.

That being said, here’s to a fabulous 2014, with more good hair days than bad, more productivity than lolly gagging in bed watching episode after episode of Girlfriends, and being a better person than I was in 2013 😀

A very Happy new year to you all!

Begin-How to Tame a 'Fro

The most wonderful day of the year

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Besides my birthday..that’s usually a pretty good day.

Christmas always makes me super cheery. There are the days and the hours before everybody arrives where we prep and I start bonding with what is likely to be my Christmas day lunch. Then the day is finally upon us and the house is filled with smells of all things fried and beautiful :). Yea I really love Christmas mornings.

Of course when the family arrives there would be a ton of chasing little children around, or should I say waddling after little children cause you’ve eaten yourself silly. and all the laughs (sigh…good times)

Then of course there’s the end of the night with all the cleaning up and goofing around

But at the end of the day when you have time to reflect, the point of all this is to celebrate the great joy that Christ brings

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