Author: Gina @ Oaxacaborn
Gina Munsey is a Mexico-born, Eastern Europe-raised missionary kid who ended up being a Californian by way of Florida outside of Nashville, Tennessee. She lives her days full of coffee and adventures while her 12-year-old learns Mandarin Chinese and Greek, her 3-year-old uses all the markers, and her artist-husband creates worlds from pixels and light. A blogger since the turn of the century (ouch!) she's an editor, co-op teacher, and writer who has only completed four chapters of her languishing manuscript. You can find Gina right here at oaxacaborn.com, or in the middle of [home]school surrounded by stacks and stacks of books.
INSPIRATION :: Spring/Summer ’14 from Japanese Fashion Label FRAPBOIS
In the blogging world, everything gets so narrow sometimes. The same trends and colors and patterns — and even the same images — get passed around over and over. This can be a great tool within a specific genre (blogging tends to reveal trends), but all the sameness stifles creativity and originality. That’s why I love looking outside of the United States for inspiration. Clothing, decor, and even photography styles vary so much from culture to culture! If we want to expand our own imagination and bring something new to the creative world, it’s vitally important to explore inspiration beyond what’s currently trendy in our own circles. Plus, new inspiration is just plain fun!
These images from Japanese brand FRAPBOIS (I blogged about their Fall line last September) will have you rethinking pattern and color.
What about you — would you wear any of these looks?
After the Deluge
Monday’s post about choosing joy in the rain was barely posted when I had the opportunity to live it. That’s the way it works, isn’t it? It’s like telling God you’d like to be a more patient person — and then ::wham!:: many opportunities to practice patience appear before your eyes.
April went out with a monsoon, inside and outside. Outside, a diluvial sheet of water bent and twisted and contorted, darkening the sky, punctuated with electric bursts of thunder. Inside, an email quietly said no to something we all had hoped for.
Inside, outside, inside, outside.
It wasn’t until after the Flood that hope arrived. It wasn’t until everything drowned and the rains stopped and the earth heaved under the weight of the water that the rainbow appeared. It wasn’t until then that the olive branch soared across the horizon and into view.
“Now let the music keep
our spirits high
And let the buildings keep
our children dry
Let creation reveal its secrets
by and by, by and by
When the light that’s lost within us
reaches the sky
…And when the sand was gone
and the time arrived…
And in attempts to understand a thing
so simple and so huge
believed that they were meant to live
after the deluge.” -Jackson Browne
INSPIRATION :: A Curated Mother’s Day Gift Guide
Sometimes, I get lost in the tyranny of the urgent. Lost in the chores and the clutter and the cooking and the cycle of washing, drying, folding. I get lost and forget that all around is beauty, even inside these four walls. We were created to know beauty, and it’s worth every bit of conscious effort to choose to see it, even in the whirlwind. The Weepies knew this when they sang, “All this beauty…You can ask about it, but nobody knows the way. No bread-crumb trail to follow through your days. It takes an axe sometimes, a feather, in the sunshine and bad weather. It’s a matter of getting deeper in anyway you can…All this beauty; you might have to close your eyes and slowly open wide.”
I believe in making a beautiful home, something I learned from my mother (although I’m nowhere nearly as good at it as she is). “Anything can be made beautiful”, she always told me, “though a combination of cleaning and contentment.” And she proved this, too, over and over and over again throughout the years.
Maybe you have a mother like that too, someone who has always managed to create peacefulness and a sense of home and beauty no matter what. Or maybe you have a mom who whips up magic in the kitchen, or throws the best parties, or has endless athletic energy, or is always on top of the fashion game. (Honestly, isn’t Supermom a little bit of all that and more?)
Keeping everything a mom does in mind — and with an eye toward seeing beauty in the whirlwind — I’ve teamed up with JCPenney to bring you gift ideas for any kind of mom.
#JCPHostMom | 1. Lantern | 2. Copper Bowl | 3. Plates | 4. Card
#JCPFitnessMom | 5. Yoga Mat | 6. Tote | 7. Hair Tie | 8. Towel
#JCPDecorMom | 9. Basket | 10. Rug | 11. Pillow | 12. Art |
#JCPChefMom | 13. KitchenAid | 14. Eat | 15. Cucina | 16. Tray | 17. Bowls | 18. Mortar & Pestle
#JCPTrendyMom | 19. Lace Tee | 20. Bracelet | 21. Bag | 22. Pants
Even MORE gift ideas | JCPenney Mother’s Day Hub
This week, I’ve also joined JCPenney in tweeting little snippets of motherly advice. Being a total rookie in the mom department, it probably comes as no surprise that my quips have been of the “Don’t suction-cup the dog”, “Don’t lick the sidewalk”, and “Don’t stick potato chips in the outlets” variety. But you can use the #momisms hashtag to tweet your own, much wiser motherly gems of wisdom — and you’ll be entered to win one of several $100 gift cards JCPenney is giving away, so YOU can buy a little something for yourself!
(Pssst…a little secret? Don’t worry if you aren’t one of the winners of the #Momisms sweepstakes, because I will host a separate $100 gift card giveaway here very soon. Sign up for Oaxacaborn email updates so you won’t miss it when it goes live!)
Leave me a comment on this post letting me know which of the items above is your favorite. Since I curated the list, I can safely say….I love them all!
Disclosure of Material Relationship: I received compensation in exchange for promoting JCPenney’s #Momisms Sweepstakes/Giveaway. I personally selected all the items displayed in this curated guide, and was not required to present any specific products as gift ideas. All the opinions and experiences shared here are in my own words and are my own honest evaluation. Please be assured, I only accept sponsorship opportunities for brands I personally use and/or would recommend to close friends and family, and I will always disclose any such relationships.
Inside Outside
Spring here doesn’t approach slowly with neon green buds or opening blossoms. There is no fading ice, no crocuses or daffodils. Spring here is akin to a lobster in a pot of water, temperature unconsciously leaping upward, a baptism by immersion of drenched air and torrential rain until the whole wet world is submerged.
There is one month left between us and hurricane season, between us and and daily electrical storms. One month left until the six-month stretch of tropical storms begin and the canned goods stack up under the countertop and the gallons of water in the closet are restocked and clocks are reset by the rhythm of cyclical thunder and the afternoons are spent inside.
Inside, outside, inside, outside, inside.
One month left until the sidewalks are rivers and the windows are our constant view to the outside deluge.
I want to see beauty in it this year. I want to see beauty in the spongey grass and the low skies and the waterlogged earth and the thick roadside ponds and the one single shade of green coating it all. I want to see it for what it is, rather than what it is not. It is not the thin high skies specked with pollen and pine resin and wildfire, it’s not the sun-baked clay earth that shatters into a million immobile pieces every summer, it’s not twisted oak silhouettes or mountain ridges. The sunsets are pastel, not copper, but we are the same people here as we are anywhere.
This is a journey of becoming, after all, and a journey is not where you put on the skids and claw and pound your tent stakes in deeper and rage against the rain. Sojourning means you tend to your fires and your campsite wherever you are, keeping the light alive from dawn to dusk, no matter if you’ll pull up stakes tonight or in three months or in a year. You pull your loves in closer, you keep your eyes to the light, and in the darkness you see the One who pulls the tides and pushes the moon and punctured heaven to give you stars has not failed you yet.
And so you tarry, and so you sojourn, and so you live.
“I am not ‘for’ international adoption. I am not against it.”
“Philosophize eloquently about how children are better left in their native cultures and I will tell you from shared experience that children in orphanages do not live the culture of their country, but the culture of an alternate reality that only exists in institutions…
I am not ‘for’ international adoption. I am not against it. I am ‘for’ children having loving parents and being in homes where they have a support network. I am against children growing up in dormitories with change-out caregivers. I am against children being left without help simply because a legal definition of adulthood, in whichever country we are talking about, has been reached. ” -John M. Simmons
READ MORE from Why the Decline in International Adoptions on the Huffington Post
MONDAY’S PRETTY THINGS :: 10 Inspiring Storefronts and Cafes from Around the World
1. Fruit shop in Naples, Italy // Photograph by André Benedix on Flickr
2. Fish shop in Naples, Italy // Photograph by André Benedix on Flickr
3. Cafe in Seoul, South Korea // Photograph by handsforholding on Flickr
4. 19 Alexandra Road, United Kingdom // Photograph by Lou Archell on Littlegreenshed
5. LOKL Coffee Co. in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia // Photograph by Loo Jia Wen as seen on Bloesem
6. Julianna’s Coffee & Crepes, Atlanta Georgia // Photograph by In Honor of Design
7. Fatbird Cafe in Bangkok, Thailand // Photograph via BKKMenu
8. Hara Donuts (하라 도너츠) in Seoul, South Korea // Photograph by the Seoul is for Lovers blog
9. Purple garlic stall in St-Vivien-de-Médoc, France, during Market Day // Photograph by Oddur Thorisson for Manger
10. Bakery in Ghent, Belgium // Photograph by klaartje on Flickr
I write because
I write, sometimes, because of things I see and hear,
and other times, I write because the sound is muffled and my vision is blurred,
but mostly, I write because (the veil is still there,
the glass is still dim,
He has not yet come)
and I want to see clearly.
“Can a man see God face to face and live?
Can I not see an eclipse better through a pinhole in a paper than without it?
We can’t so much see light as we can see things because of it. So I do not meet God in a vacuum — I meet Him in the world He has provided for me to meet Him in — in a world of events and of places, of history (time and space), in a world of lives of people and their records of their encounters.
I meet God in this world — in the world of these things…
…and this is the world as best as I can remember it.”
-Rich Mullins
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