Just one favourite today. My mom painted this for Derek and I as a gift for our first anniversary. We met in Hawaii, and all of the signs point to places that are special to us.
Lanikai is my favourite beach, Derek used to work at Sand Island, and the Barefoot Bar is the place where my parents met him for the first time.
I love it.
And also, my mom has mad skills.
Here are a few things that are making me happy right now:
This article about living in Hawaii. Makes me happy/homesick.
My co-worker went to Italy for a few weeks and brought me back some truffle risotto. Amazing.
I love discovering news words like this one:
fernweh – (noun) a craving for travel; being homesick for a place you’ve never been.
Also, I have recently discovered this amazing spray that has actual magical powers. I’ve been kind of hating on my hair lately because no matter what I do it seems kind of dry and frizzy. I tried using WEN for a few months, and as always happens when I try to do nice things for my hair, it completely rebelled and looked worse than ever.
Apparently my hair is still 13 years old and only likes things that are mean to it. But I tried It’s a 10 spray with Keratin last night, and my hair is soft, shiny and frizz free, and for the day after I wash my hair that is almost unheard of.
It usually takes at least two nights of me sleeping on/aggressively rubbing my head against my satin pillowcase to achieve this kind of sleek manageability. It’s a bit expensive, but worth it if these are going to be the consistent results.
Dear California,
It’s been two years since I left my old state to come be with you. People warned me about you, and told me things like “You won’t like it there, people are rude”, or “Seriously, you’ll never be able to drive there, everyone has road rage,” but I ignored them and jumped in head first.
The honeymoon period was great, it was all trips to Disneyland, Long Beach and Capitola, “Here have some more cherries”, and “Want to go wine tasting?”. But once it was over, and real life began, things got a little shaky in that I hated you and would stay up late at night crying over my ex (state).
We’ve had our ups and downs, but as a wise man once said “You can’t force somebody to love you, all you can do is stalk them until they panic and give in.” It took some time (about a year) but you’ve definitely grown on me, and now we have a bond that will last forever. Or at least for one more year, whichever comes first.
xoxo,
Jasmine
My friend Paula is very artistic, she is a talented artist and photographer. She took these pictures of Derek and I:
She is currently battling thyroid cancer, and raising money while she gets treatment by selling beautiful hand-painted hats like these:
She does a lot of Hawaiian themed ones, but she is a very talented artist, and can do any design you can think of. She is very collaborative, working with you to develop the idea and make sure you are completely in love with the finished product.
You can order one for yourself here.
Some more pictures of our wonderful Hawaii trip. Derek graduated, we kayaked out to the Mokulua islands, went to Sandy’s, did the booze cruise, and stayed at a cabin on Bellows for 3 days. We ate at all of our favourite restaurants, and just relaxed.
It was heaven. Excuse the gratuitous beach porn shots, it was soooo beautiful I took like 500 pictures of nothing but sand, sky and water.
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I’ve wanted to do a triathlon for as long as I can remember. And by wanted to do, I guess I thought about it abstractly in the same way you would think “I’d like to have the power of flight” or “I’d like to be able to wear 6″ heels all day and not want to die”. Things that are nice in theory, but basically impossible.
I even had triathlon down on the list of life goals I made when I was 13, but I really never thought I would do it. Luckily I had a really good partner to do it with. We didn’t train anywhere nearly as much as we should have, but we did eat a lot of carbs the day before, and we bought oreos to bribe ourselves with when things got tough during the race.
The swim was by far the worst part, my goggles were leaking, I got kicked a few times and I swallowed so much salt water that I had a sore throat the next day, but we actually did the swim almost twice as fast as we had planned. The transitions were a bit shaky, when I got off the bike to start the run I felt like a newborn baby giraffe, wobbling around, but after the first few kilometers it was not bad.
I’m so glad we decided to do it, we were definitely nervous going into it, but as soon as the gun went off and we started going, that stuff kind of fell away. You forget about the other people (when they aren’t kicking you in the knee) and just concentrate on yourself and getting through that next section.
All in all, it was a great experience, and it was actually pretty fun. If you had asked me the day after I ran the Marathon if I would ever do another one, I would have punched you in the face. But honestly, I would definitely do another triathlon, and I’m excited to start looking around for my next challenge.
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| Before… |
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| Setting up at 4 am |
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| Our trusty steads |
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| “It looks like I’m wearing a condom on my head” |
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| 1364 representtt |
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| Sweaty and tired, but finished |
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| sexy |
Yesterday I got to celebrate with that one guy as he graduated with his Associate’s Degree.
I’m very proud of him, it’s been two years since he started taking classes, while working full time, commuting an hour and a half each way to work starting at 3:30 a.m. and still finding time to do lots of fun things with me since I was sad and lonely and had no other friends in California.
Next up, his Bachelor’s Degree.
Last weekend I had the most amazing girl’s trip with my mom and sister in Hawaii. I was so happy to be back there in the place I love the most, and my sister and I had so much fun showing my mom all of our favourite local spots.
I went into the tattoo parlour to get the islands inked on my foot, but I didn’t leave enough time, and the tattoo artist I wanted to get wasn’t available. I’ve wanted to get it done for a long time, I’m kind of hoping if I move some of my 808 love onto my foot, there will be a little bit more room in my heart for California.
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| Lovers for life |
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| 5 hour flight, only got to see her for 5 hours. Worth every second. |
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| Me and my mama, she used to be taller than me a longggg time ago |
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| Pillboxes hike |
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| Nashville’s aka my other home |
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| our shorts are cooler than your shorts |
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| love her |
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| Pali Highway |
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| Lanikai < 3 |
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| Booze Cruise |
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| I wish you would step back from that ledge my friendddd |
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| Waimea Bay |
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| Huge, scary waves on North Shore |
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| Koko Head, you win again. Everytime. |
loveliness. 