Stereohypes

Not all Muslims are bad, 
Not all Christians are good, 
Not all stoners are lazy, 
Not all blacks are hood, 
Not all white girls are sluts, 
Not all dreadheads are dirty, 
Not all goths shoot up schools, 
Not all men are flirty, 
Not all people live in their stereotype, 
Remember the news is full of misleading hype.

-Sarah A. Newton

DIY RAINBOW ECO-FRIENDLY WEDDING

It's already been a year since I broke all my tough-girl rules and got married. I was never the little girl who dreamed about getting married or spent my days planning my magical day. I was the girl who didn't give two shits about guys or marriage or babies and just wanted to float around the world as a free spirit. Well, somewhere along that path, I met someone who i adored more than pizza itself so i married him!

Naturally, I had a kickass vegan rainbow wedding on a helipad in DTLA with my favorite live band, stilt-walking fire-breathing burning man performers, gemstone gift bags, a rainbow cake, and a keg of kombucha!

I did my entire wedding for under $15,000. Which is pretty damn good considering half that was for my rooftop helipad venue in Downtown Los Angeles.
Being the control freak Aries that I am, I did almost everything by myself. DIY all the way!
Here's how I did it.

RAINBOW BRIDESMAID DRESSES: I found a designer I liked on Etsy- Armoursansanguish I worked with this shop to design the exact color palette I wanted. Then, each girl went on Etsy and purchased their dress. They ran about $150 each. For a custom dress that's not bad at all! Especially considering David's Bridal charges $150-$200 for basics. They do take several months though so order in advance.
When ordering custom dresses online it is important to note that alterations made be needed. One of my bridesmaids was 6 months pregnant by the time of the wedding, so you can imagine she needed a little altering. That's why its important to order these dresses early so you have time to make the alterations you need.

FLOWER GIRLS: For the flower girls I went with the same designer I used for the bridesmaid dresses. I told her I wanted one girl in half the colors of the rainbow and the other girl in the other half. The first round of flower girl dresses ended up being horrible! They looked like a piñata exploded in a very unflattering way. So, the lesson here is BE SPECIFIC!!! The designer can't know whats in your head unless you tell them in detail. Luckily, they were nice enough to re-work the dresses so I could have the look I wanted. The flower girl dresses were about $90 a piece.

For their baskets, I bought basic wooden baskets at a craft store for a few dollars and spray painted them before adding the rainbow ribbon. I ordered a bulk bag of dried lavender and dried roses for the flower girls to toss.

THE BRIDE'S ATTIRE, HEAD TO TOE: Since my girls were decked out in rainbow, I decided to stay classy and simple(ish), hiding my personal rainbow touches to be revealed later.
I bought a classic dress on sale at David's Bridal for $300 + $80 in alterations.

Not being a high heels kind of girl, I stayed true to myself and wore a pair of super fresh white patent Doc Martens.

I added my rainbow touch by wearing thigh high rainbow socks under my dress, which I didn't reveal until the ceremony. My husband got jealous I didn't tell him to wear fun socks, but not my problem!

I made my headpiece by purchasing a string of tiny natural pearls and hot gluing them to a pearl fascinator I made from scrap fabric in the fashion district downtown and finished it off with white feathers from the craft store. My good friend, Nathan Cheli is an amazing Los Angeles hairdresser and he brought everything on my head together in a beautiful, elegant way (including someone else's very expensive hair!) I had just cut off my 10 year old dreadlocks and didn't have a lot of hair left to work with, so we improvised and just bought someone else's.

GROOMSMEN: All the groomsmen wore classic three piece grey pin-striped suits, as not to upstage the bridesmaids. They each wore a boutonniere with the same color flower as their matching bridesmaid.

BRIDAL GIFTS: For my bridesmaids and flower girl gifts, I had personal rainbow leather journals handmade for them from a leather designer in England . They cost only about $20 each.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/JackdawBindery


PARTY FAVORS: For my party favors I had tiny drawstring canvas bags printed with S+J, off of Etsy. I had heart shaped seeded-paper in a rainbow of colors(paper that you plant and wildflowers bloom) and I wrote a little poem on each one that said,
"Plant your heart and watch it bloom, with love from the bride and groom."
I put a heart in each canvas bag along with three gemstones.
The gemstones were bought on Amazon in bulk.




FLOWERS: Being fortunate enough to live walking distance from the wholesale flower district in downtown LA, my mom and a bridesmaids helped me pick out rainbow flowers the day before the wedding and we simply made the centerpieces and bouquets and wrapped them in white silk ribbon, sitting them in water until the wedding.

WEDDING CAKE: My husband and I each got to pick what was absolutely the most important things we wanted with this wedding. He chose a rooftop helicopter landing pad as the venue and I chose a rainbow themed wedding, an entirely vegan menu, and a rainbow cake.

Doomie's vegan home cooking in Hollywood did the catering and cake. Which was perfect since I'm from the south and love me some soul food! We had a delicious entirely vegan menu of:
BBQ pulled pork sandwiches Creamy Mac n Cheez Cole slaw Mini Apple turnovers Mashed Potatoes and Gravy Honey Glazed Carrots and RAINBOW CAKE!

The poor baker at Doomie's had no idea how to make a rainbow cake, but Doomie insisted he could pull it off and he definitely did!

BAND: Ok, so I didn't have a band of musical rainbow unicorns playing at my wedding, but I did have my most favorite band (and friends) SUN SALUTATION drive across the country from Austin, Texas to play my wedding. If you haven't heard of them, check them out. They're amazing!

https://www.reverbnation.com/sunsal


PERFORMERS: If you are fortunate enough to know some cool performers then definitely see it they'll do a little performance at your wedding! Our good friend and groomsman Daniel Cheli (Kozmik Twins) came out on stilts and blew fire. Since we already had to pay for a fire chief since we were on a rooftop, we took advantage of that and were able to have a safe supervised fire performance. My guests loved it!

https://www.gigsalad.com/the_kozmik_twinz_stilts_and_fire_beverly

MCs: My good friends April and Bobby Black are professional MCs for High Times Magazine so it was a perfect fit having them MC my wedding! And April played along and wore a perfectly fitting rainbow dress!

Tip- when keeping your wedding costs down, let your friends use their talents to help out. Having talented friends definitely helps cut costs along the way and they will be thrilled to help out in whatever way they can!

PARTY RENTALS: When having a rainbow wedding there is a lot of color everywhere, so to keep it from becoming tacky, it's best to keep the party rentals, chairs, and tablecloths a clean off-white color. This way the color pops of the flowers and favors get to really shine through. This also saves money since often times using colored tablecloths and napkins is more expensive.


BOOZE: One of the most important parts of a wedding, lets be real, is the booze! Have you ever gone to a Catholic wedding before? If so, i'm sure you swore them off as soon as you left the church, like I did. Boring! So, reward your guests with some happy juice! Kegs are great and more eco-friendly than individual bottles of beer. And if you're a bartender, like I was at the time, then ask your fellow bartender to serve the booze at your wedding. Chances are you'll get a way better deal than hiring a bartender from a catering company, and you get to be surrounded by people you know and like!


NON-ALCOHOLIC OPTIONS: I got lucky and a friend of mine had started a Kombucha company earlier that year, so his wedding gift to me was two kegs of delicious kombucha! Which in my circle of health conscious granola crunching friends was a huge hit! Check out KOMBUCHA DOG. Each bottle of kombucha has a dog on it thats up for adoption. So far, Kombucha Dog has helped tons of homeless dogs find happy homes! How cool is that?!

www.kombuchadog.com

ECO-FRIENDLY SERVINGWARE: I wanted my wedding to have the least environmental impact as possible, so I opted out for all bamboo plates and silverware and sugarcane "plastic" cups. Everything looked great and the plates and cups were super durable! I found them on amazon for a reasonable price.



RAINBOW LED ICE CUBES:
To add another one of my magical little rainbow touches, I found rainbow LED ice cubes on amazon. They are reusable, bright, and made our champagne toast that much cooler! It's all about the little touches that make it your own, which is so much more fun and more memorable than just paying half
a year's salary to a wedding planner to do it for you.

Everything came together so beautifully. It's important to remind yourself that everything will work out exactly as it's suppose to and no one will know if it doesn't, except you. If there's white roses in your bouquet and you wanted pink roses, the only person it will bother (if you let it) is you. So, roll with the punches, get crafty, be creative, and design the kickass customized wedding that defines who you are (and your husband if you let him be involved!)


and of course, don't leave out your best friend...

Sacred

Wavelengths and Westerns

An amazing part about human existence is the close interconnectivity we have with other human beings.

This connection goes beyond the physical plain, beyond the emotional plain, beyond what the eye can see and the heart can feel.

This connection is a wavelength that you are constantly riding with those other beings that you are connected to in some way.

It's like the scene in an old western movie where the good guy is on top of the train running from the bad guy but, no matter how many train cars the good guy hops over, the bad guy keeps running behind. The good guy just can't lose him.

That's what it's like to be on the same wavelength as someone. You just can't lose them no matter how hard you try or don't try.

Life's Greatest Lessons: Chapter9- EMPATHY

Empathy is the capacity to share the sadness or happiness of another sentient being through consciousness rather than physically. Empathy develops the ability to have compassion towards other beings.

Each chapter in our life is intertwined with a lesson of significance, something that, though it may not make sense at the time, will regardless play an important role in our lives, as you will only truly see for what it is at the end of life when you are left to reflect on your personal successes; spiritually, emotionally, and physically and piece together why things happened the way these did throughout your journey.

Each experience, each thick chunck of our personal biography, is part of a greater whole.

That whole, being our evolved state of being at the end of the road when our spirit is free of form, floating in a sea of memories.

As the end of my 9 year cycle passes and the beginning of a fresh new chapter starts (its in the stars), I am left to reflect on what all I have experienced and witnessed in this past 9 year cycle. Ages 15-24...that is a lot to reflect on...but, even without digging up the treasure chests of secrets hidden in my mind, I am able to positively say that one of my greatest lessons in this time has been empathy.

For one reason or another, I was meant to truly embody the most raw, gritty, empathetic state of human emotion possible. This has been a very interesting lesson for me, because I grew up very un-emotional. I did not often cry, unless I wasn't getting my way, I often laughed for no reason at funerals, sad movies bored me, and I didn't ever want to be bogged down with the hassles of being in love. I was a "tough- girl"....Now, I have been forced into the experience of being the "emotionally raw girl". I have felt pain that I was unaware I could feel, I have been saddened beyond belief over other people's pain and misfortune, and I have basically been stripped down of any emotional walls and left to hang naked and exposed in the sun.

Most interesting is that this state, these emotions, these tears that have uncontrollably melted out of my heart and down my face are most often shed, not for myself and my own life, but for other people. Empathy overwhelms my body and I literally feel the pain they are in... I see a person in a car accident and I feel their pain and I cry without thought, and I ask the gods to disperse just a little bit of their pain unto me and everyone else in the world in order to lessen the burden of their misery. I feel it and it causes physical pains projected on my own body and mind.

I watch Fahrenheit 911 and I feel the pain of the mother of fallen soldiers, I feel the cries of the soldier who's arm just got blown off and is dangling by a bloody tendon, and the cries of the mentally distraught, and it makes me cry.

This lesson on empathy goes even deeeper... I feel the presence of spirits/ghosts and I can feel their residual energetic imprint. I even feel for those who have passed on for cryin out loud! Each time someone I know passes, I always see them and speak with them in my dreams. I always acknowledge that they are dead and ask questions about the after-life and I get to hear their insights on what it's like to be dead and what they still feel in that state. Then they leave me with a piece of advice or like my Uncle Mike, they ask me to look over their loved ones. After that I usually don't see them again....just feel them.

I feel as though I have been bathing in empathy in order to truly learn the human experience in every capacity, even in death. I am suppose to embody various emotional experiences of others so that I can stay connected to the human race and help them in some way at some point..or perhaps all along... Perhaps I will eventually be the leader or politician that changes the world and being able to empathize with all people will be my greatest tool in staying grounded, motivated, and able to be a change-maker, life-saver, consciousness-raiser gift to humanity.

Whatever the rhyme or the reason, I am right on track universe!

Curious Things

My head is not in the clouds, the clouds are in my head.

And in this head of mine, I am constantly contemplating the multi-faceted layers of the universe, of our Earth, and of the little people-creatures that crawl around inhabiting this earth, leaving their trails of cosmic smog behind....

The way we humans scurry around the Earth and the way we interact with one another and impose rules and regulations upon ourselves, this is all very fascinating to dissect and attempt to comprehend.

Why is death not free?

In fact, why does it cost thousands of dollars to simply put a body back into the earth where it came from? This body once served a lively purpose and now it is empty and serves the purpose of feeding nutrients back into the earth. The body is paying the Earth but, people want their payment too. They think they deserve to be payed each time a person leaves their human shell behind. People want to profit on every single thing imaginable which brings me to my next point...

Why do the people-creatures think that they own everything?

These creatures, that think they are the most spectacular things ever created, truly believe that they own the rights to everything on earth. For real, EV-E-RY-THIN-GGGG....

They find a furry type of creature minding it's own business roaming freely, and the people-creatures take these furry creatures, bring them to their homes, put chains around their necks, and claim ownership over their lives until the day the furry creatures die. The furry creatures have no say in this matter but, the people now dictate when this furry creature will go outside, eat, drink, sleep, and even crap, everyday for the rest of their lives....

Then these people-creatures take the pure land of Mother Earth, this free and beautiful and graciously open land that is intended to be shared by all creatures, and they divide it up into sections and they get to decide who owns what piece of the earth. They decide what beach, river, lake, and land mass is private and which is public, but even the "public" land isn't really public considering, you can not just set up camp and sleep on any public land, only the public land that is dedicated to that sort of thing and even then there are still restrictions on what you can do there, how long you stay, and how much you have to PAY to stay there...yes yes this public land is not so public. the private land is not so public. This piece of earth belongs to this country and this piece belongs to that country....the most amusing part of all this is the truth that really, the earth owns the people.

And then there are things that are completely stolen from nature without permission and sold for profit as if the sellers even owned them to begin with! For example, flowers are picked straight from the ground, their roots clinging on to the cold earth for dear life, are brutishly stripped out of the ground, wrapped in cellophane, and sold for profit....Then we have trees, the most beautiful and magnificent of all of nature's plant kingdom, solemly standing higher than we can count, with a waist wider than a house at times. These plant creatures are truly majestic! Yet, they fall prey to the people-creatures who claim ownership over the trees that have been around for hundreds of years. Yet, regardless of their age and wisdom and all that they have seen and all those years they stood firmly in the earth providing creatures with shade, fruit, syrup, leaves for eating and nooks for napping, regardless of all of this, the people somehow think they own the trees. With this ownership comes the right to chop them dead and turn them into extremely unnecessary lavish resorts and homes and toothpicks and paper and whatever the hell else people want to use them for....But these trees stand tall and take it, without a fuss or a fight, not because the trees are weak and scared, but because the trees know that they must serve as a lesson for the people-creatures, ironically enough the lesson will only be learnt by the last person on earth...

I am also curious to know,

How do people-creatures decide what natural resources from the earth are acceptable and which are not?

Well, most natural things are good, great, useful even, they all serve some sort of purpose. Mother Earth knew what she was doing when she allowed these plants and fruit and flowers to grow, yet the people think that they know what is best. They then proceed to create a manmade replica of something that is said to benefit you the same way that the natural counterpart can benefit you, except that it is manmade and it usually turns out being harmful to the people bodies in the long run. But, somehow it becomes acceptable to take some strange powdery white pills that are packed with a plethora of chemical that we don't even know how to pronounce, opposed to taking the natural alternative, the simple pure right there growing in front of your face "alternative"....the natural one came first, so shouldn't the after-market manmade one be the alternative and not the other way around.

And why do these people-creatures take one crop, like tobacco, and mix unknown chemicals with it before proceeding to make it the #1 legal addiction, yet they claim tobacco's much sexier and healthier 2nd cousin, marijuana, is illegal and worth punishing people who choose it over tobacco.

And then we get to one of the most fascinating observations of people...

How can one people-creature tell another people-creature how they must love??

This emotion of LOVE can not be taught, it can not be crafted in a controlled environment like a lab experiment, and of all things, it can not be forced. Love is the only thing that truly flows naturally, without explanation, without warning, without any notice from the cosmic realm. And considering how fascinating and bizarre these people-creatures are, it does not suprise me one bit that Love comes in the most interesting packages....

Sometimes different shades of people-creatures fall in love, and though for a long time this was not acceptable according to the mass of these people, now it is okay to most.

Sometimes people-creatures of the same "gender" fall in love, but thats only okay on 0.01% of the earth. The other 99.99% says that that type of love is not okay, only their preference in love is okay, not the other people-creatures.

But, how do they come to this conclusion? If over 50% of the people-creatures decide that it is okay to love the same gender, then will that make heterosexual love the new non-acceptable type of love?

I guess there are many curious things on this Earth, people-creatures being the most curious of all...

Pack Leader Pt.2

Sundara likes to watch The Bachelor
mozart like to sleep on me like a wee baby


THANKS MOZART!
Have a nice Day!