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Feature Friday: Alethea Ross
On Feature Friday I feature people, products or just random things that I think are pretty cool. My aim is to leave you a little bit more enlightened and inspired! And hey, I’m open to new things, so please hollar at me, if you have any pretty cool FF suggestions.
Alethea Ross of Alove Creations
This week I was inspired by women who are doing it for themselves. Those who decided to follow their hearts and do the things that they are gifted to do! This takes guts and a lot of prayer, I’m sure đOne such person is Alethea Ross, who has recently started her own business called, Alove Creations. Alove Creations specializes in beautiful handmade infinity scarves with funky and elegant designs and lots of colours to choose from! (Check out her Facebook page) I heard that she will be launching a mens and kiddies range very soon too!If you know me, you’d know that my love of scarves almost supercedes that of Hilda in 7de Laan. So I totally inlike with Althea’s product and think that ordering your very own custom made scarf (that suites your own personal style and flair…and matches what’s in your cupboard!) totally tops buying something (and spending top dollar) at your generic clothing store to buy something that everyone else has. I will be reviewing one of her scarves really soon and will show you the amazing range she has developed over a short period of time.
Besides for following her heart đ she also spends her time listening to music (she mentioned Whitney Houston, the diva!) and she says she loves spending time with her kiddies, dancing like crazy to Praise&Worship. Herself and hubby, Shilton, have been married for almost 2 years and they have an adorable little girl, Madison Taylor (3) and the warrior (as his mom calls him), Keane Thor who is 8 years old. When speaking about Shilton, Alethea gushes: “He is so supportive with all I choose to pursue or do. I still get butterflies when I think about us, and how far we have come. I am so blessed to have such a wonderful support system in him.” Awwww!
Let’s see what else she has to say:
1. So… who are you?I am Alethea, many call me Ally, a daughter of the most High, blessed beyond compare. I am a mother to two amazing children, a wife to the best husband, I work hard, am an ambitious, fun loving and daring person.
2. You’re a feature today, because I think you’re pretty cool đ Why do you think you’re cool?I am an honest, straight forward; I laugh loud, love deeply, cry hard and celebrate life like a rock star.
3. What is your favourite thing at the moment?Scarves!!! Lol, I love them, and think they just add that extra pizzazz to any outfit for any occasion â am I cray cray?
4. If you could change one thing today, what would it be?The weather⌠I donât like cold and grey weather; I want spring, the sweet smell of fresh flowers and the sun on my skin đ
5. Learnt how to make anything recently?A skirt đ I love maxi skirts and so I decided that I would start making my own đ whoop whoop
6. Share your favourite tip/trick:Itâs okay to talk to yourself đ I do it all the time
7. Imagine we’re your kids đ now imagine you had to share a life lesson with us. What would it be?I know this might sound clichĂŠ but I wish that I had listened to the many that shared this with me⌠life is a gift, you only get one, make it count. Take risks, breathe deeply and be brave. I have also learned and come to accept that being a Christian does not make you immune to the evil around us, if anything, we will probably encounter many hardships, faith is what gets you through them, and Grace is what comes in and changes it all around. Grace is not something you can ever earn; it is a second chance, a third chance and fourth. I am obsessed with grace đ
xxxL -
Technological me
I think I understand the difference between potatoe and potato when I go from using Hubstophers MacBook Pro to my 1990s Acer laptop. I feel like I’m playing ‘whose fingers are they anyways?’ It’s like: you scroll up to scroll down (huh?) and right click with 5 fingers versus “oh look there’s a button for it”.Â
You know, I used to be the kinda girl that I would call ‘old fashioned’. And that’s because I liked things that are old fashioned. I believed If it aint broke don’t fix it! With that said, I have had the same Blackberry for the past four years. This thing still works like the bomb dot com! Because of my cleverness and cunning ability to figure things out, I’ve found that the less apps I have on it, the better it works. So I don’t have waiting issues (remember the ghastly wait icon that everyone cursed to the pit of hell?) I don’t have “take my battery out of my phone quickly” problems. But I’m starting to wonder: is it enough?Â
I feel a new era dawning.
An era where I want to take photos with my cellphone and not have to find a photo app online that would make my pics look remotely okay. An era where I’d know what people are speaking about when they want to ‘load a filter’ before they ‘post to Insta’. An era where I swipe on my screen when I want to do something on my phone, as opposed to pressing a button. (It looks so cool to swipe. I waaannaaaa swiiipe tooooo) An era where I can also dubsmash and play angry birds and finally download Twitter without it making my cellphone run slower than a Bold and the Beautiful story line.
I’ve decided to give this big screen phone thing a try. I mean, it has some lady who can speak back to you and everything, so that’s a plus. And also, it looks really cool and according to my super smart husband it can do lots of things too. (List of things it can do is yet to be revealed, but I’ll take his word for it based on the fact that I am married to him).
Needless to say, since I am controlled by a spreadsheet brain and all, I will need to do some deeeeep soul searching before I make a purchase. Deeeeep. Like deeeep deeep. Like “Rolling in the deeep” by Adele, deeeep.
I’ll send an update once I find a phone worthy of my lots of moola. Until then, I’ll appreciate my BIS a little bit longer.
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Babyshower: Oh Boy! It’s a cowboy babyshower!
This past weekend we hosted a cowboy babyshower that had me saying heeehaaaa! (I just had to do that).
It was also fun to have everyone dress up in their best cowboy chaps. I mean, who doesn’t love a cowboy hat?! Decor was fairly easy… lots of cowboy hats and cowboy boots. Â I loved the theme and found lots of ideas on the net, but you could get away with anything as long as you have denim, burlap and hay! A cheap decor idea was to get bandannas in different colors which we used as overlays for the tables and even as chair back covers.
2 bales of hay were used to display the gifts on and I placed clever quips on the table, to add to the atmosphere. I tried my hand at bunting. (No, not BANTING. No banting at this party. Hahaha) For my bunting, I literally just cut out triangles with pretty cowboy print on them and pritt together. I also made little flags for the burger sliders, just to give it that some’hin, some’hin.I loved this take of a diaper cake. My friend, Melissa, created this baby (no pun intended) all on her own. What do you think? And then, lastly, I saw a really cute idea on how to make cowboy-looking brown paper bags on I Gotta Create. We filled them up with popcorn as a nifty thank you gift.
Cowboy babyshower fringed popcorn bags
 Thank you to I Gotta Create for this brilliant idea! For my cowboy fringed popcorn bags, I needed the following supplies:
Brown paper bags
I took a normal brown paper bag, measured off about 5 centimeters of it, and made a fold.
I then cut strips that are about 3-4 centimeters in length. Fringe look = Check.
I cut off the sides until I just had the front and back fringes, like so:
Took a koki and drew “stitches” on the top. And ta-daaahhhh!
A fun time was had by all, especially my beautiful baby and her bigger pals.
I know her facial expression says “Mom, why are you over there and I’m over here?!”, but trust me, she had fun.
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Things we lost in the fire: Are your kids emotionally aware?
I recently spoke to a man who had lost 2 children in a fire that ate up his home and all his possessions. I remember meeting him a few years ago right after the fire had occurred. I was working in the cellular industry and because of the fire, his insurance had to replace his cellphone – that’s where I came in.
Our introduction was a bit shaky… he came to our store to get his new phone and I remember that there were complications and he was so rude and disruptive. I did not know his story. I mean, I saw the bandages on his arms (where he tried to rescue his boy) and I saw the red rimmed eyes, but I looked past all of that, thinking “What on earth is this mans PROBLEM?! How DARE he speak to ME that way!” Later on I learnt about the fire and felt the empathy towards his situation and I immediately regretted my initial perception of him.
How often do we do this? We often judge people based on the way they make US feel, without knowing their story or their pain.
We’re deep in an era where everything is about me me me! There is a culture of utter SELFishness and the scary thing is that it has become the norm. Our children are programmed to put themselves first. Sure, we tell them that sharing is caring but in the same breath, we teach them that they have to be better, look better and achieve more than their classmates do. Are your kids emotionally aware of others?
What about you? Now I am not talking about giving your old shoes to the homeless kid on the corner. Those are very nice things to do for other people. I am talking about considering the next person’s feelings before you speak and act. Being sensitive and emotionally aware of others means showing care and love, without expecting anything in return. It is our non negotiable purpose on earth. I often need to remind myself that I was not created for ME. (Sometimes I need to remind myself A LOT, yo!) We were created for God and for Him to use us in other peoples lives. The rest of the stuff are fabulous perks.
Anyways, back to the customer and the fire. So it’s years later and he brings up the fire and all that he had lost. I was a bit shocked, because I thought the topic to be taboo and a painful one at that. But here he is, telling my colleague all about it, not missing a detail. He then goes on to say that it was a difficult time but he pushed through and that God has been so good to him since then. Â I looked at this man and thought WOW, I sure can learn a thing or 2 from him! Not only did he feel it okay to remember the fire, but instead of sowing seeds of sadness and regret (to milk empathy and attention) he rather used the opportunity to spark the faith of others – to sow seeds of encouragement! What a selfless act and what a huge lesson learnt!
I don’t know about you but today I choose to take the opportunity to allow God to heal the scars of my “fires” and to use it to be a light in someone else’s life. My world should not revolve around my pain. And my pain should not affect the way I love others.
Music Monday: Worship Mob – Carry the Fire {And Giveaway!}
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| Photo: Christian Music Review Org |
This review was originally written for and published in Gateway News
Happy Fathers Day, okay now here, eat my home made tart {recipe included}
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| To the dad in our house, from the kiddos (but mom made the card) |
For Fathers Day this year, my dearly beloved family decided to have a Sunday lunch. It’s one of those kindsa lunches where everyone comes (I’m talking kids running around, husbands sitting by the tv and chatting, wives in the kitchen doing all the slave work) and it’s a bring and share, so each mom brings something.
This year, I committed to making dessert.
Now if you know anything about me, you’d know that this is a big deal because:
1. I am generally not well known for my amazing cooking abilities.
2. I never ever make or even serve dessert at my house. My family treats their 2nd and 3rd servings of the main course as dessert. Yep, we eat a lot.
3. I don’t bake.
4. My family make fun out of all of the above, so I had a lot to prove!
Right, so let’s make dessert!
Someone really close to me told me about a no bake strawberry yogurt tart.
It sounded easy enough and no bake, so I was like, yeah!!
But instead of making strawberry, I opted for lemon instead (think: lemon meringue) and I must say it came out pretty darn awesome! I was ready to release my own cookbook and everything!
(And then after feeling like the female version of Jamie Olivier, I googled and found that other people had been making this kinda tart for like, millions of years already. So that kinda rained on my parade, but only until my second helping of tart and then I was okay again).
Another thing that I really appreciate about this tart is that the ingredients are all super easy to find and are probably stuff that you have in your cupboards already. I mean, how frustrating is it, when you’re searching for “EASY –” or “DIY –” and all you find are recipes that require herbs only found on the very top of Mount Everest or ingredients that costs you the amount of money you’d spend at KFC (bad example) for a family meal.
Anyways, enough dilly dally. Herewith please find:
The World’s Most Amazing No Bake Lemon Yogurt Tart
Ingredients:
1 packet of lemon flavored jelly
6 tablespoons of lemon juice
450g plain yogurt
1 tin of condensed milk
1 packet of tennis biscuits
250g of butter
200ml boiling water
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| Those are not my hands |
Step 1 – The base:
Melt the butter
Crush the tennis biscuits (Clip note: I love how there are tons of different flavors now! I used the cinnamon flavor for my Fathers Day tart)
Mix melted butter with crushed biscuits, to form a nice paste.
Press this into your tart dish and refrigerate while you prepare the mix.
Step 2 – The tart mix:
Add the boiling water to the jelly and allow to cool.
In a separate bowl, mix the condensed milk with the lemon juice.
Then add yogurt and mix well.
Lastly add the cooled jelly.
Pour the mixture over the base and allow to set in the refrigerator for 1 – 2 hours.
I normally make mine the evening before.
And taaa daaaaaaaaaaah!
You can add whipped cream as an optional topping.
I wish I took pics of the end result, but I promise you, one minute it was there, the next it was gone!
1 tart gave us 12 decent sized portions (which wasn’t enough for my group of savages).
If you’d prefer the strawberry flavor, then ditch the lemon juice and replace the plain yogurt with strawberry yogurt and the lemon jelly with 2 packets of strawberry jelly. Add strawberry pieces for added awesomeness.
Hey, who knew I could give cooking tips nogals!
Hope you all had a lovely Fathers Day filled with food, fun, family and lots of dishes to wash afterwards!
xxxL
Life with sons: starting a band, baby…
Our kids are weird.
I say this with all the love in the world.
These boys (aged 10 and 13) literally sit and sing together, while playing XBox. And I’m not saying this because they have amazing, Luciano Pavarotti voices. Nope, they just enjoy singing, randomly. They don’t even sing popular, trending, songs… their choice of chorus are theme songs – Movie theme songs, ad jingles, series theme songs.
Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s “shhh the baby is sleeping!” Sometimes we all join in. (How Highschool Musical of us) And sometimes, I’d be in the kitchen, humming a little tune (and by “humming” I mean “belting out” and by “little tune” I mean “Mariah Carey”) and one of them would join in! As if I invited them! I mean, hello, can you not see the spatula (aka mic) in MY hand?! Is nothing sacred anymore?!
Seth (the youngest) also has a habit of memorising tv ads. He knows all the words, all the songs and sometimes even mimics the actions! Kyle is a movie quoter. He is so NOT good at doing the accents but insists on telling you exactly what the lead actor said, in accent, even though you were sitting right next to him, watching the exact same movie a few minutes ago! He also quotes stand up comedians (thanks alot Trevor Noah) and sometimes says things and just leaves it in the air… no point. No reason behind the story.
Example:Â “Mommy, so today my friend picked up his pencil from the floor and then I was like, haha your pencil fell…” Okay. And then?
With all of that said, I remember something a dad of 3 once told us about his boys.
He said “The best thing I could ever have done for my son is to give him brothers.” (Thanks Manny)Â I was reminded of it this weekend, while watching these 2 together.
Flashback – few years ago: It was a couple of years after Kyles dad and I had split up and I remember feeling a bit disheartened thinking that my boy would not experience the joy (and torture) of having a sibling that is close in age to him. I mean, I love my sister – we are 3 years apart, and I remember many days of playing Barbie dolls together (me cutting her dolls hair in my “salon”… her crying about it) and hey those were some of the best days of my life. So I was really sad that my boy would not experience that. I mean, at best, his next biological sibling would be 10 years his junior. So no playmate for him.
Enter: Hubstopher and his boy. I think that the pair came at just the right time, age and height! I found the man of my dreams, and our boys found each other. The 4 of us fit together like a puzzle. (I said something along these lines at our wedding too. And I wrote a song about it. So original.)
So yes, our kids are weird. But they are also extremely awsome! Both sets of moms and dads (on either side) are married with a baby and these 2 have taken to it very well! In fact, they are stellar big brothers to their half sisters and brother and they are amazing step brothers to each other. They have their disagreements but I am so pleased at how well they get along. They stand up for each other, like brothers. They sometimes tell on each other, like brothers. And hey, now they sing together too. So yes, we are starting a band baby, starting a band.
Feature Friday: Mvokazi Mjayezi-Ncede
On Feature Friday I feature people, products or just random things that I think are pretty cool. My aim is to leave you a little bit more enlightened and inspired! And hey, I’m open to new things, so please hollar at me, if you have any pretty cool FF suggestions.
Mvokazi Mjayezi-Ncede of J-Star BloMag
2. You’re a feature today, because I think you’re pretty cool đ Why do you think you’re cool?
Thanks..I happen to think that you’re pretty cool too. I would say that I’m cool because I kicked fear to the curb and out of my life for good. I came to a point in life where I just decided to put on a go-getter attitude. I realised that God has got plans for my life and I really wanted to walk in my destiny, so I put my trust in God and sprinted forward.
3. What is your favorite thing at the moment?
Other than my family, I’m obsessed with my hair at the moment. You see I have this big bush of an afro; and after years of trying out multitudes of hairstyles, I stumbled upon a hair blog for natural ethnic hair. So now I’m on a mission to get healthy long, natural hair. I have a long way to go, but I’m pretty happy with its current state.
4. If you could change one thing today, what would it be?
Ooh that’s easy. I’d stop being lazy when it comes to exercise and just do it, so I can fit into my clothes again! I love what I do, and I can go without sleep for days doing it, but when it comes to my health, I haven’t gotten there yet…lol any tips for me?
5. Learnt how to make anything recently?
Lol, I like to empower myself so I’m becoming a bit more hands on with the designing of my magazine. What else?…I’d love to learn to sew. I’ve always loved fashion and have designed tons of amateur sketches that nobody would know what do do with lol, but that’s my next dream that I want to turn into a reality.
6. Share your favorite tip/trick:
7. Imagine we’re your kids đ now imagine you had to share a life lesson with us.
Dreaming with your children
As destiny walking mothers we honour God in our lives by allowing Him to reign in the lives of our children. In the book of Samuel, Hannah dedicated her son back to the Lord. This was a bold and public act of showing that she trusted Godâs Big Dream for him and was willing to sacrifice her plans for His. Donât ever give up on the Dream Makers Big Dream for you and your family â it comes from Godâ!
