What's On the Machine

This dress has been on my machine since the end of February! Its simplicity 2801 short version puffy long sleeves like the middle view in the picture. Epic FAIL!!!! Your girl is sitting at her desk reading Getting Things Done by David Allen to see if I can get my shit together cause this is ridiculous! I did get some help from Omega with making the neck line larger cause my apple head wasn't fitting in the damn size 10 opening. But really that was the only hitch so it should not be taking me this long. The only thing I have left to do is finish the neck facing, put the elastic in the sleeves, side zipper, attach skirt bottom and hem! When you itemize it like that it feels like By@tch you ain't no where near finished LOL. By the time I finish it will be too damn hot for long sleeves :o
Peace, Love, & Namaste
Shawnta
PS. This post was done by sending a mms text message to blogger. Sometimes simple is good LOL

New Ink Part Deux

I got a thing for tattoos.
Not just mine, but other peoples artwork too. I have no problem asking someone can I see their tattoo closer, or complimenting people in random places when I see someone with something I like. If I could I would buy a tattoo gun and apprentice somewhere for real, but I need to do some more research into that. :)
If you remember back in November I got the Nyame Nti behind my right ear and said that I needed something on my left side to balance things out. This month I got two new additions on my left side!
The first one is a sewing needle that has finished stitching the infinity symbol.

You ever hear the expression tattoo tear? Well this is kind of what this one is for me. My best friend's baby just a couple of days shy of 7 months old past away suddenly the beginning of the month which really put me through something. My friends kids are like my my own...I even named the last two, so it was as if something had happened to Madisyn or Brooklyn. Gozi Bear was was her nick name and she was born 8/8/08!!!! To commemorate her we both got the infinity symbol tattoos which is a side ways 8. My friend got the symbol on the tummy of a teddy bear, since she was her Gozi bear, and I got what you see here on my left wrist. I was going to get just the symbol but I decided to really make it personal so I came up with the concept of either the baby or God stitching us closer together infinitely through this crisis. It seemed only fitting as much as I like sewing so if I don't want to get too deep with people I can say it's for that cause I feel that strongly about that too.
I took a big leap with this one as all of my others are pretty concealable. Even the one on my neck with all of this hair if I need to hid it I can. Basically it is on blast all the time. Even if I turn my wrist over part of the needle wraps around and is visible.

I am fortunate enough to have a pretty decent job now that doesn't seem to mind my body art and if for any reason I need to cover it there are a lot of video and written tutorials on the subject.
About Video
Wiki How
I have also heard at one of our TPC meet ups that UDPP (Urban Decay Primer Potion)does a good job as well but I have yet to try it out yet. First of all I pay too much for that lil bottle to be slathering it on my body anyway LOL, but I think I still may give it a shot.

The second one is really apart of a bigger theme that I should have all completed April 30th. It's my birthday in Roman Numerals going along the trapeze muscle (I think...taking me back to anatomy and physiology LOL).

It's something similar to what RiRi has, but mine looks better LOL And like I said it is apart of a bigger piece so it is not completely random.
Again this is not one for a person that is ultra concerned about it showing unless you move it down the shoulder a little more. Here is a pic of how it peeks through on a regular shirt.

This one would not be too bad to cover if necessary because it is only one small piece of it for a regular shirt.

A lot of people ask about the pain and really that is relative to the person. These were cake walks for me which was a surprise, because I was on a my cycle when I got them and usually just to pluck my eyebrows has me in tears during that time. I have a tattoo on my stomach and everyone says that's the worst but to me it was one of my easier ones as well. The ones that hurt the most were the one behind the ear and the one on my shoulder blade.

In another post we will get into reactions and how I deal with that kind of stuff, cause even though it seems like everyone and their grandmother has a tattoo these days, I still get some occasional flack.
Summer is coming, any plans for some new ink to show off? If you are not the showy type, any plans for some under cover work?

Peace, Love & Namaste,
Shawnta

As Always TPC Knows How 2 Do the Damn Thing!

TPC (The Pretty Committee) was nice enough to have our March meet-up in my neck of the woods. We went to Cazbar on Charles Street for some wonderful Mediterranean food and beautiful belly dancing. Thank you Toya of Life of a Ladybug for coming up with such a wonderful idea and being such a gracious host.

From L to R Kia of Yummy411, Nykiya, Shannon of BeautyRookie, Toya of Life of a LadyBug,Nikkia of Slvrlips, Jen of Juvenescent Elixir, Suzie of Facepaint and Shana of Tried and Truth of peeking in the back there and Moi looking 11 months preggo in that bubble tunic LOL. Note to self don't bend over for pictures in that dress!

Jen was there!

Kia doin the damn thing with a eye look from a youtuber Mischievous , Nykiya

Suzie and Kia

Shana and Suzie

Toya, Moi, and Shannon

Nykiya, Jahzaal, and Toya

Nikkia and Jahzaal

And of course it isn't an outing with Suzie and I having a Cheshire cat smile pic! LOL

Until next time...
Peace, Love, & Namaste
Shawnta

When your hair gets caught in the middle

Sometimes the blahs can take over your hair. I went about 2 months not doing a darn thing to my hair. No re twist, nothing.
Whoa Nelly!!!

Well I did style it when I needed to, but I just didn't feel like putting in a whole lot of effort.



Those styles only required I re twist about three locs in the front at the most and the rest of them was like the first picture. The styles do require bobbie pins but it's really simple to do. Just twist the hair around itself and pin. You can pin as you go along in places that look right until you have put up all of your hair. I've done it with just the top half or all of the locs. The back of my head takes a minute to really become poofy in the roots but in the front my hair is very straight so that hair wiggles out of the loc as soon as it can. For that reason I usually re twist my hair every two weeks so for me to go from that to nada was a trip. It actually made me question if our journey was coming to an end. Was I experiencing the seven year itch? Most of the locers I know cut them off within the 7-10 year time line. I had always said that I wasn't going to do that but there I was feeling very apathetic about my hair.
I considered:
Cutting them
Picking them out
Dying them black
Cutting a.bout 12" off
I would feel really gung ho about all of these options, but a couple hours later I was back to the blahs. I talked to a good friend of mine and they said don't cut your hair out of frustration because you are sure to regret it. Cut it when its time to cut it. You will know....not interpreting your actions to see if it's time to cut. With those words of wisdom I decided not to cut it, but I still wasn't feeling like doing my hair, so I went and got someone to do it for me!


So she re twisted them without pins and braided them as she went along. I sat under the dryer for 30 minutes max and she cris crossed the plaits in a style for me. I kept the plaits in for 3 days and viola!

Pretty crinkles!

Now I love my hair again! LOL I use to do this style a lot probably 3 years ago but just stopped for some reason. It's a very simple way to wash re twist and keep it moving! I think crinkles will be around for a minute now with variations of my up dos for spice. Sometimes you need some good words and lil push to appreciate what you have. I share these lil random things cause I know some of the newbie locers go through times of wandering if they are doing the right thing or if they should even be locing at all, it's a natural part of the process even for a ole head like me!

Peace, Love, & Namaste,
Shawnta

Trying Something Different

Trying out CellSpin for updating the blog from the Blackberry. Not really liking the fact that i can't paste into the window and the auto texts that i have set up are not working, like bb for blackberry, double spacing for a period or turning the lower case i to an upper case I.
oh well back to the mobile drawing board.
Peace Love & Namaste

Girl ....... Where Have You Been!

So.................
It's been about two months since I last made an entry to blog and I have no excuse for why I have been absent except for a serious case of the blahs and pure laziness. I've had a lot of positive things happen during this time, but the bad has been really bad too so when they meet in the middle it just makes blah! The excitement of a new job gets played down by a sudden death of someone near and dear. It's been those kind of things that has been happening these past couple of months that just kind of takes the joy out of sharing.

Plus the winter is not my time at all! Don't ask me to do a damn thing in winter that requires more effort than I feel like putting out. I would probably be in a mental institution if I lived in Seattle or Alaska. I NEED my sunshine! Spring is here as of Friday, even though it was cold as jack frost's draws this morning, I have enough blog content drafted to at least have a post a day, and if I stay on my post scheduling game, you guys wouldn't even notice my winter blahs come next season. LOL.

Stay tuned people. I promise some funny, informative, creative stuff is on the way.

Thank you to all who kept in contact with me and didn't delete me from their reader saying 'this hussy ain't ever coming back' LOL

Peace, Love, & Namaste
Shawnta