Walking into the unknown..

Lights blaring at her,
Horns hooting,
People scuffling,
Everybody seems to be in a hurry to somewhere,
Little children begging on the streets,


Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, says the Lord...

God are you there,
Can you see this,
Can you see me,
Can you even hear me...

Jeremiah 29:11
Thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

So rest easy God has you,
No you will not solve all the problems of the world,
Neither will everything be all sweet and dandy,

Breath in and out,
It's going to get better...
90 of 365...and counting..

Rooted...

I came across a cut tree stump today in the morning. 

When I saw it I thought I should have taken a picture of it before they cut it. The tree was so big and beautiful. Yes I am talking about a tree, I am an environmentalist of sorts. That is a story for another day. 

But so this big tree stump is right next to a stream... yeah you read right. I cross rivers and streams on my way to work. 

Where am I going with all this, a simple point. I am sure the tree never thought (yeah trees think) It would one day be cut down and all that will be left of it is a stump. It's the same thing with life. Do not get too comfortable and think that you have it all together. Live knowing that one day you could loose that which you hold on too so closely. So with that I leave you in the limbo mode of thinking for yourself.... Yeah!!! Like the bauss that I am.... lovely weekend. 

Saw this awesome quote

''The best use of time is to freely love

  the best way to love is to spend time

  the best time to love is always right now.''

It's the 87th day of the year 2014. Yes thank me later :-)

Then what???

I was chatting up a friend of mine and we were talking about how we are more prayerful when things are thick. You know when you're loosing a job or you just lost a job, when you lose a loved one... you know when life happens and you're not happy.

When this does happen I sometimes, please note, sometimes I become more prayerful and closer to God.
So what happens when all your prayers are answered and life is a sweet happy smooth all the way affair?
Do I forget God? Then does that make God like an antibiotic that I use when am sick or something.... I don't know. Think about it...

I will leave you hanging...on the thread or something close to that. It's like Homework...

Hope is all we've got... or so it seems

Another day, another chance to make  a difference in the ecosystem.

How??? well... since we have the option of writing things online, it means I will not write on a piece of paper, get dissatisfied and throw away the paper I wrote on. Yes so virgin paper is cheaper than recycled paper but people do not care really so they litter everywhere.... I have  evidence.

We can do better than this...

 

This did not happen overnight , it was something that am sure started with probably one piece of paper or one bag of trash....

Ok we'll look at the adverse effects of littering much later...

 I think we are surrounded by so much trash in our lives and the worst bit is not realizing it's trash.

I'm learning to see things for what they really are. The sun and how it looks is always available to me at no cost but if I choose to not see it, it's my loss.

Am sure we all have drama happening in our lives like it's being sponsored by Coke or some big company. But if you focus on the drama and fail to see the blessings that you already have around you. Then it's your loss... ''Loud note to self''.

I can go on and on about what's not working in my life and take five minutes or less to tell you about what's working. Reason, what's working does not seem to be as important as what is not.

I think the Sun is therapeutic,
 or taking pictures of it.... 

Hope never ends...
that's what I think and I'll stick with it..

I am blessed, I have a family that loves me, regardless of the fact that am eco-friendly. Check previous post for details. I have friends who actually love me, they have a choice you know, but they choose to love me. I am of sound mind , or so I think and  no you're not welcome to share your thoughts on that.

Nature speaks a universal language

Perfection is overrated....

He makes all things beautiful, In his time..

Well... this is environment friendly on another level. I guess it's less painful for the wood...

 I am holding on to hope in this crazy world, I am one of those folks who still believe in miracles. I may say I need a miracle now, but I know I see miracles everyday. I'm a  breathing walking giggling, sometimes sneering miracle. Keep the hope, God has you.....

Miss Beans :-)

Happy Monday,

Note to self, stay away from beans. I know they are healthy proteins, but the band in my stomach is just too much.

Scene 1

Silent Bus, 

The ones we now like, where you can sleep when heading home. No loud blaring music with words that you cannot even understand.  The silence does not work well with the band in my stomach. Ok may be it's the perfect situation for my band to get it's big break you know. rumble rumble... rumble and especially when am seated next to our greatest fan, ''mama nani'' giving you a not so approving look. Reason being beans are not only serious band catalysts but they also into saving the environment. 

Energy saving to be precise, biodegradable substances. I know people who can be used to run engines with the gases they release after a meal of beans. I contribute to the ambiance  

Scene 2

Official Meeting at work.

Those people who feel the need to pause unnecessarily when making a point. The 30 second pause is when my stomach after a meal of beans feels the need to holla at the world. Yes, letting my boss know that am in the room and I will not be ignored... yeah 

Scene 3

Hanging out with ''friends'' 

I always get kicked out of the room if I had beans. 

Long and short of this.... whatever you do will always come out. 

Careful what  you plant, the harvest may be good....

Lovely week....

DIY- Home Decor

Today am totally excited to post about what I did on my own. I wonder if this qualifies me to be a guest blogger on La Maison Chic

There was a lot to learn and hanging out with totally awesome people. Am telling you these women are wise entrepreneurs and  I want me some dose of that.

So yeah I was doing flower arrangements for the house.

These are things you would see on television on a series or a movie, but I did it after being challenged by Jasmine of cooking with Jaz. So she bought a bouquet of pink roses for only 200Kshs. (T.I.A * This is Africa*  yeah we get flowers for like 3 dollars :-). She then asked me to arrange them, am a lazy artsy chic, there are things that I can do but I do not do simply because am lazy about it. But now since I was home early and the flowers were there, it did not make sense to say '' just put them in a Vase and am sure they'll look good. ''

I didn't, instead I went all out on doing these beautiful flowers. I've never really been a flowers person but it seems to have grown on me. I like flowers but I wouldn't go out of my way to deal with them so this is a fast for me. The other thing is Roses, beautiful as they may be, have thorns... ouch. So I guess it's the same thing with somethings in life. But I usually want to get the roses without necessarily  dealing with the thorns. As in who wouldn't want it  easy.

The struggle is real... thorns are real

But hard as it was to deal with the thorns, I had the determination of Akoko and Lupita. Nothing was going to stop me. My dreams, were valid and have always been, but the worst is when you kill your dreams because of laziness or because you want it easy. The other thing am learning is thorns did not stop the flowers from blooming. Things do get hard in life, don't quit, just because its hard...

So I had that whole bunch of flowers and no fancy vases since the one fancy vase we have has a bunch of dried flowers already. My life has always been like that, I want something, but it's not exactly what I want or it's taken or everyone is doing it, or it's too expensive and many other excuses as to why I cannot get it.
with life work with what you have....

For Vases, we used the mason jars that we got from a friends wedding....

Beauty is usually a process...

The thing with me is I like fast things. I want my prayers answered instantly, when I ask someone to do something, I want to see them act on it immediately and all. It's something I get from my Dad, and him being in the military. Much as that is what I want, I never like it when people expect an instant result from me... yeah simply me. But yeah,  am learning that God is not into instant. He's also into humble beginnings. Humble beginnings sounds so sweet,  right, but ask anyone who's at that beginning point. It's not that sweet, but a lot is learnt at the beginning. Character is developed in the humility of beginning...  

James 1:4
and Let endurance have it's perfect result,
so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

I was hanging out with a famous baker and actress. She does awesome cakes. She told me that it started as a hobby and passion drove her to who she is now. We had an awesome time together with Lasagna prepared by Jaz and cake by Heavenly delights. I did the flowers and yeah the rest the pictures will speak for themselves.

Cut the flowers to match the size of your vase

Or Cut it to match what you want to achieve..

Careful with the thorns....

Cut the edge in a diagonal  manner to enable easy absorption of water 

Tools of trade, flowers, vase, salty water and a pair of scissors

The complete work....

Then we had Lasagna, for dinner and you can get the recipe from Cooking with Jaz

Then we had a chocolate orange and yeah yummy cake from Heavenly delights

In life am learning that I decide, what I get to deal with, I want the good things that this life has to offer and am willing to do what it takes. It's not going to be easy I know, but seriously something has to give and I will give it my all. It's day 79 and am going all out!! World watch out am coming :-)...

Facing my Culinary Fears

It went down for sure....

As I write this I still do not have a title for it. But I am sure about what I want to achieve. I want be featured as a guest blogger in two blogs that I follow.
Reason I want to be featured is because of what I was able to accomplish yesterday.

I got home to an empty house dirty  dishes and no food. The only food that was there was one egg and some left over rice. I hang out with the right people and one of them is a professional Chef. Usually when she cooks up a fancy meal, one minute she's walking in with ingredients and the next something fancy is being served. So after watching a video of the same from her blog, cookingwithjaz  I decided to give it a go.

Mine was the basic Stir Fried Rice with eggs.

My ingredients were as follows;

1. Rice from the day before
2. 1 Egg
3. Garlic.
4. Cooking Oil
5. Many spices all up in the kitchen.

How I prepared it is what the video in Cooking with Jazz showed. What I got at the end of it was an awesome meal and a sense of accomplishment. I cooked it myself and I also deserve to be featured in La Maison Chic la-maison-chic  , because it was a DIY affair. I did not order for Chinese take out (yeah we order for Chinese take out, while seated at the food court, you place an order and take it out to the house) , I made it myself.

This is how it went down...

My stir fried rice with eggs :-) ok with 1 egg 

After the first bite :-)

Three bites later, ok or more....

I stopped counting...

In conclusion, I made my own stir fried rice and I loved it. Lesson learnt, do not be afraid as fear can paralyze you. I actually never thought I could cook up a fancy meal. I normally do the basics, Ugali, Rice, Pasta and am still learning about chapatis. 

I can choose to hold back on so much within myself because am scared I will fail, or I can take a risk, do it fail or not fail. Other than cooking, there are so many other things that I stop my self from doing, because of fear. I am good at being scared and making safe decisions. So this is me venturing out... don't stand there and look at me go. Get out and conquer some giants.. let me know how that goes..

 It's good thing you cannot tell how  the food tastes from the pictures. Yeah, it's the 78th day of the year. It's good to be alive....oh and spruce up that meal, with a fruit or something. 

I had an apple. 

This big thing called Trust!!!!

This popped up on my computer screen and I was like what??? Trust relationship, how now. So the IT Geeks went on and on about what it is and why it happened and how to resolve it.... when they got to how to resolve it, that's when I started paying attention to what they were saying. Before they said, '' Blah blah blah and  ''you will loose all the information on your computer'' . I wanted to cry, what do you mean all the information on my computer,and he goes on with their IT Jargon and no emotion at all. Like everything will be lost. WHAT??? Yes I did not have any back up for all my information and  I loose all these because of a trust blah blah blah. Why??

Anyway that went to show me in more ways than one, the importance of Trust in any Relationship, at all levels and all sorts of relationship. Even relationships I cared less about, Domain and my workstation, like really!!! and because they have trust issues I loose everything... sigh.

When we were kids, we would sing, trust and obey for there's no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey. I would obey because it will have a good result, but before I obey I need to trust this result is actually a good thing. What am doing is for my good, right and if I trust God, then if He asks me to do something I would do it, simply because it's with my best interests in mind... right?? and I trust him. Well... I may have sang the song, probably wore a T-shirt and all that, but I have had so many moments when I did not trust, and because I did not trust, I lost it all. I'm not sure about how many people it affected, because I did not trust them but I can't ask them since because we did not trust each other. Ok because I did not trust them then we no longer talk and yeah it has been awkward and stuff. My point is , Trust is a very important aspect of any relationship.

I'm learning the hard way, from this my machine and it's domain issues. I have lost so many of my pictures, my documents, recordings, writings, I have lost so much, simply because of a  trust issue.

Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your Path.

I don't want to lose out on my life, so hard as it may be for me * I don't know about you, it's probably  walk in the park * I will choose to trust in God, He's got this...

So yeah look up :-). Well I looked up from my phone, seating backleft, ok back center in the matatu to work and saw all the people with leg room issues. I love my height, sorry I digress.

So yeah look around you smell the roses,ok if you can't see the roses, then take a picture of the flowers around you. *warning, you will look a bit demented, but that is the cost*

But yeah, look up, God has your life, Trust him, Trust!!!! Don't loose it all...

Careful you don't fall when looking up. Multi-task in a way.. it's the 78th day of the year. Thank me later. 

Fundamentals.... tihihi

Greetings Earthlings,

Of all songs to be playing in my head, ''the fundamentals'' is track one and on repeat.

Anyway it's about the basics, I cannot believe I am doing this but well here it goes. 

The bible says that I am a child of the King, meaning I am royalty. I grew up in a military barrack and as my Father's daughter I also got some level of respect. In the same nature there are some things that I could never be found doing or places I could never be found,  simply because I am my Father's daughter. It's the same thing in God's Kingdom, what He says is his, is also mine since I am his child. ''The Fundamentals''

If it belongs to my Father, then it is also mine. Wait a minute before you go prancing around with your Father's property. You need to be in the right state to get what is ideally your father's. If my Daddy had a gun, *am not so sure about that since I never saw it, but the boys in my hood knew my Daddy could use a gun..* so if my Daddy had a gun, he wouldn't give it to me just like that. I need to be trained on how to use it otherwise I would end up hurting myself. If I asked for 1000kshs from my dad at the tender age of say 9 years... He would ask a number of questions before giving that to me. Not that I did not deserve it, or I was unworthy of it, but in His wisdom, seeing as I was only 9, I would have blown that money in seconds on lolly pops and Barbie dolls.

Same thing, with God, we pray earnest prayers asking God for stuff that well.. we may no be best placed to handle though it's ours. The bible says that we should ask for wisdom, when in lack.. Not sure I have ever made a more earnest prayer for wisdom as compared to when am praying for money to buy a nice pair of shoes.
So my big little wisdom nugget for today is this... Pray for wisdom, and remember me in those prayers, I need a whole bucket of it.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He also has planted eternity in men’s hearts and minds [a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy], yet so that men cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

He Perfects what concerns Him... 

One last thing, that fundamental song... is for special people*you included*... I have never listened to the whole song but the chorus which I heard by mistake, goes something close to this;

#77of365

''These are the things,
These are your things
These are my things'' by the famous  Ken Wa Maria... Runs for safety...

Monday Colours... weekend adventures

So for the past few weekends, I have been getting myself a proper tan. Reason I say this is the sun in Africa has been ten times hotter in the area I am working than it is in other areas... or so it feels. I have evidence of the same, but due to the kind of audience we are exposed too, we (me myself and the committee in my head)  have decided that the images that would be displayed are too graphic. So you will have to take my word for it.

So this weekend as it went down, before I forget, On Friday I had a near death experience. It qualifies as near death since my heart almost stopped beating. So I had just picked up a fancy fancy Camera from my good friend, *name withheld since I did not think I would blog about it and I did not ask for permission to use his name*. I have this fancy fancy Camera in my handbag, with rent for this month, yeah my landlord is a kind human being, I hope they never read this. But I had like lot's of money in the bank...and in my handbag. Anyway the  long and short of this is we were accosted by like four guys who for whatever reason, ok my mama says it was the doing of the Lord, they probably saw a big light and bam!! they couldn't touch us. I kid you not they followed us, I tried walking very fast but they caught up with us and did not lay a hand on us. Anyway that was Friday.

Saturday was a cool  day, when it started it was raining but I caught a glimpse of the sun in the morning, peeping through the clouds. It was warning me that when it comes out will shine and burn. I still found it super cute.

I saw the sun and I remember thinking God, please don't let it rain. Point to note, he answers prayers.
Another point to note, be specific in your prayers. I forgot to ask for the sun to be easy not too hot and not too cold.

Then yeah so the adventure into my life continues. I was taking photos of people, running up and down in the sun as I got my tan on. Ok may be not but yeah. There's always something to learn in all of it. At some point, I got tired. I got tired of the sun and of what I was doing. I started asking myself those weird questions, for ''what on earth am I here for..., what is the point in all these.. why me, God no one else could take this photos, when am I going to do my hair.. ok and other deep questions. After all that the loud word that came from the heavens was, well, very loud,

Colossians 3:23-24

Whatever may be your task, work at it heartily (from the soul), as [something done] for the Lord and not for men,

²⁴ Knowing [with all certainty] that it is from the Lord [and not from men] that you will receive the inheritance which is your [real] reward. [The One Whom] you are actually serving [is] the Lord Christ (the Messiah). 

That was well, very down to earthing.

Rather it literally pulled me back to earth and I went back at it with my all. I was taking those photos like there is no tomorrow. Well may be not but with more zeal and joy and peace.  But it was a good reminder. Why do I do what I do, to essentially glorify the one who created me. When I do what I do to meet a human need for my self, I can never get satisfied with life. Not that am satisfied with my life, I may need to change a few things here and there but before I get lost in that again.. the main Idea is I am most at peace when I do it as unto the Lord. I could go into the detail of this, but I will not. I don't have a very good reason either but yeah.




So from that what I do when I loose the zest in life to do the things of the earth, running the rat race et al.. I look up..

Ok when I looked up, I thought this was cute.

Evidently something from when the colonialists were still here and space did not matter. It's hard to get such architecture in modern buildings. We're always too engrossed in using up any space that we come accross. It's a selfish society out there. We never think about the children and where they will play when we litter and when we build.  Where will the sun peep into your house.

Then I walked out and looked up.

 Even better.

Sometimes, life and all that it comes with can be extremely overwhelming. At times, you feel like you're all alone, dealing with all this hard blows from the thing called life. That's how it feels to me, I don't  know about you...

But am learning, to look up, to step out into the elements. Sounds deep right :-). But yeah am learning, it's never that serious, though it is, but there is hope. There's a big plane that's missing from Malaysia and all the international media houses keep repeating the same thing. If all else fails keep hope alive. I will add my own, and find something to cheer you up... have a lovely week. #74of365

When is the last time you saw a functional aquarium in 2014 in a Parastatal Building......
 My point exactly.