Fashion · How To · Lifestyle

Boobs, Breasts and Bras…

Yes, you read the topic ‘boobs, breasts and bras,’ correctly. This is a little chit-chat about your bosom buddies and they are nothing to fear or dread. Being a woman, you can’t disassociate from parts of you that accentuate your femininity and if you’re like most women, you know your breasts intimately – their ups and downs, how they fit into your bras, the way they look in certain dresses, what they feel like at different times of the month and perhaps if you are getting on in age, the changes they go through as the law of gravity helps them head downhill.

Interestingly, it took me getting to the ripe old age of my 30’s to get comfortable with my gals, and I attribute our delay in getting to know each other well to two main things: frustrating bra shopping escapades and lack of better insight on how to find the right kind of bras for me.

As odd as it might sound, choosing the right bra for your shape and size isn’t always that easy, and sadly, most women find the experience to be such an ordeal that sometimes after scouring through dozens of bras, sweating, huffing and puffing in the changing room, you end up leaving the store with nothing at all, or sometimes you leave with a bra that’s entirely wrong for you, which I presume is worse.

For those of us who have been well endowed in the upper chambers of boobs department, finding comfortable, yet beautiful and efficient bras that help to support our buddies and boost their confidence is truly a path to wellness and peace of mind. I vividly recall my last months’ foray into a well-known top brand store that I shall keep a secret, every bra – even though they were meant to be my attributed size – left me thinking that I had supplementary breasts and by the end of the frustrating escapade I’m not sure who felt more pained between the attendant and me. The whole experience left me feeling like an elephant trying to wear fripperies and negligees and I couldn’t help venting a little on my Facebook update.

Following my little update, a friend sent me the image below which not only made me chuckle, but made me realize that the journey of the bras is a common denominator among women and with my tongue in my cheek, I dare ask, which illustration matches your predicament?

I have reached an age where I am no longer going to part with my money for flimsies that don’t uphold me no matter how pretty they look. In search of great, high quality bras with good support, I have abandoned those infernal underwire cups that most times leave you feeling pinched, caged in and out of breath. Let the truth be told, at a certain age, the law of gravity brings the perkiness of your boobs down by several notches and though you don’t want to look ridiculous trying to push your boobs up to the high heavens, you equally don’t want them dangling to your knees. What you want is the right upliftment of comfy, beautiful and supportive bras that will treat your bosom buddies right.

Quick Tips on How to Make Bra Shopping Less of a Pain

  • It pays to know your size. To find your bust size, measure around your ribs just under your breasts and measure around the fullest part of your breasts. Subtract the band measurement (ribs) from the bust measurement to get your cup size.
  • Make sure that your entire breasts are in the cup, not spilling over or to the sides.
  • Check that the straps are not digging into or sliding off your shoulders.
  • The centerpiece between the two cups should lay flat on your sternum.
  • The thicker the band, the more support you will get.
  • Be patient and have fun with it.
Wordless Wednesday

Gathered Blooms…

There’s power in the flower. I wouldn’t have noticed this shop nor curious enough to enter it if not for the flower decor.

Flower shop, Flower decor, Bloom, beauty

Flowers in the city are like lipstick on a woman-it just makes you look better to have a little colour – Lady Bird Johnson

Gratitude

Handfuls of Spring…Thankful reflections

Painting, Art, Spring, Beautiful Colours

Spring follows Winter seamlessly as it has done over the ages and time passes by so quickly, sometimes in a blur that we tend to take the itty-bitty parts of our lives for granted.

In Spring the heat of the sun gathers in momentum over here, that by Summer time it’s literally steaming and baking at such a degree that the heat wallops you in the face and every hidden part that it can get. I consider myself a child of the Sun, I love warmth, but not the unbelievable scorching sun of the Middle East that makes you feel as if you are dough brought out to rise and bake in the torrid desert heat.

As I drive around pursuing the days business, I see dots of umbrella’s waving down the streets sheltering the heads of their owners and I know untold pleasure and gratitude over having the comfort of my car and the air conditioner that keeps me from perspiring and swimming in my own sweat.

 I am thankful for the gift of being their mother as I listen to my children chatter and squabble over what radio channel to listen to as we drive home from school and I wonder how we take such comfort for granted.

Sometimes, my heart knows untold joy for things that I can’t explain and I wish I could freeze frame those moments so that I may look at the beautiful, divine colours that these moments make.

Spring is such a beautiful season, so does every other season that we are given hold its own beauty. We are only given a handful of Springs in our lifetime and one thought that stays with me as I write this is, may we thankfully plant in the Spring of opportunity of our lives so that we do have a great harvest in the Fall.

Peace be with you. What are you grateful for today?

Jacqueline

If you wish to participate in a gratitude challenge, there are several gratitude/thankful platforms in the blogosphere that you can tune into and get your ithankful going on. I can’t express in words the enormity of Joy and fulfillment that comes from having a heart of gratitude. Please check out Maria’s blog, Colline’s blog and Bernadette’s for thankful/gratitude challenges.

Mundane Monday

Love thing – Mundane Monday

Mundane Monday Challenge is created to find beauty in almost everything.

The challenge is simple : find beauty in everyday mundane things, capture the beauty and upload the photographs.

Love_sign_1[1] Love_sign[1]

I opened a bread bag to make some toast and left the piece of rubber string used for tying the nylon bag on the counter as I ate for some reason my eyes drifted to the counter and I saw that the string reflected on the counter to form a love sign so I just decided to play around a bit.

The first photo was taken just as I saw it and the second was my son walking past in his red jersey top and his reflection also got caught 🙂

Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder and we can create beauty out of nothing.


Below is my first just published Poetry Book “Out of the silent breath” which is available on Amazon and Smashwords.

When you buy my book, you support me in an invaluable manner.

 

Wonderful, evocative poetry by a talented writer. Left me hungry for more. Jacqueline can write! Linda Bethea

Out of the silent breath

If you enjoy my works and would like to do so, you can fuel my creativity with a slice of cake or coffee😉

Mundane Monday

The Odd Passenger – Mundane Monday

Mundane Monday Challenge is created to find beauty in almost everything.

The challenge is simple : find beauty in everyday mundane things, capture the beauty and upload the photographs.

The_odd_passenger[1] The_odd_passenger_1[1]

I got into an empty lift two days ago to head up to the 23rd floor of an office complex and I was busy ruminating in my head over what I wanted to say to the person that I was going to meet when a crawly movement caught my eye.

Believe me when I say I literally squealed and hopped in the air, but on a closer look I saw that it was a GECKO!

Phew! I know that they are insectivorous lizards and don’t feed on humans, however between Gecko and I, we maintained a respectable distance since I couldn’t very well jump out of the lift 😉

If you want to know more about Gecko’s you can read this up 20 interesting facts about them that I googled up.

Have a great week.

Jacqueline


Below is my first just published Poetry Book “Out of the silent breath” which is available on Amazon and Smashwords.

When you buy my book, you support me in an invaluable manner.

 

Wonderful, evocative poetry by a talented writer. Left me hungry for more. Jacqueline can write! Linda Bethea

Out of the silent breath

If you enjoy my works and would like to do so, you can fuel my creativity with a slice of cake or coffee😉

Personal · The Daily Post · Writing

My Writing and me…Personal

Like most humans, I’m multi-layered like an onion and beneath each layer is a different facet of me, but the thing is that every part of me is held by one thing and that’s my writing.Writing_beauty[1]

My restless spirit finds peace and rest through my fingers. My thoughts are better articulated, processed and understood and my pain is dealt with through the words that pour into my soul.

Writing fuels my creativity. Writing is a stabilizer for me and is a compulsion that I am drawn to on a daily basis. As melodramatic as this might sound, writing surpasses a desire but becomes a self-expressing way of being.

You can very well say that writing is my raison d’être and that’s the truth.

I am a better human, a kinder person due to writing. It takes stress off me. Nothing else under the surface of Earth brings me the cathartic satisfaction that writing gives to me. Nothing!

I am a better wife, mother, friend, sister, daughter, lover, thinker, neighbour, teacher…. all due to writing. It took a while to correlate my periodical crankiness and my writing. When my spoken expression is at sudden loss, my fingers don’t fail me and I always feel out of sorts as if something is seriously wrong when I don’t write. It gives me pause to appreciate the beauty of life and all that surrounds me.

I have oscillated from different things over time, but my scribbles remain a constant which goes way back to as long as my conscious mind can remember. I fell in love with words at a very early age and that love keeps going strong and I daresay that if you are a writer, you need no one to tell you.

Encapsulating it, writing is a love of my life that no one can take away from me. A sacred place that gives me enough reason to hope, a sense of purpose and the audacity to dream vividly.

© Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha

Raison d’être, The Daily Post Prompt


Below is my first just published Poetry Book “Out of the silent breath” which is available on Amazon and Smashwords.

When you buy my book, you support me in an invaluable manner.

Out of the silent breath

Dance to your heart’s delight my African child, until echoes of your stamping feet, beating heart; bright eyes, smiling lips; and waving hands, resonates over and over like thunder claps, reverberating throughout the Universe.

Just dance.

Midnight motivation and musings

Midnight Motivations and Musings # 52…

Different view

Life is a continuum and as such we are in a constant state of change.

This change should equally apply to the way that we view things.

Are we of such mindsets that are so rigid that they’re as good as being cast in stone?

How enabling has certain ways of thinking been for us?

Could a little tweak in our perspectives bring about better change and expand our horizons?

These are questions that I like to pose often.

What if?

I have found and still finding that sometimes we simply go through the same old, same old automatically that it becomes an ingrained habit.

However, we can rewire our perspectives to see just a little bit more beyond the surface and we will be better off .

©Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha

 

Mundane Monday · Photographs

Dead and Alive…

Mundane Monday challenge is created to find beauty in almost everything.

The challenge is simple : find beauty in everyday mundane things, capture the beauty and upload the photographs.

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I found this flower as I walked the pavement.

Though it had weeds trying to share its space, it still stood out.

Even the dried one’s had something  beautiful about them.

They’ve lived. It’s time to go and make space for another bloom.

Possibly, their pollen will help do the job of propagating more beauty elsewhere.

© Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha

Inspiration - Motivation · My Thinking Corner · Uncategorized

Tuesdays Thoughts…My Thinking Corner #14.

Every Tuesday, I share snippets of thoughts that I call ‘My Thinking Corner.’

I would like to invite you to participate. The challenge is quite simple.

Each Tuesday, share your very short snippets of positive, inspiring, motivating, health, spiritual, writing advice, clips, posts etc, that can serve as a prop to motivate others and simply add my link to your post.

I call it my thinking corner because, I actually take out a bit of time just to think through things, encapsulate my thoughts as much as possible and detoxify my mind. It helps give me clarity of vision and might help you too.

It might work for you in a different way, but the idea is to get the positive thoughts flowing.

Please send in your little thoughts. You never know whose life you might inspire.

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  • ♥ When you keep undermining your self-worth, no one else will take the time to elevate it.
  • ♥ We fritter away our lives with too many details. Simplify it! Keep whittling away the excesses.
  • ♥ When we have joy that runs deep, nothing can rob us of it, because we can dig in deep and reach for it. Every other hurt will be on the periphery.
  • ♥ The recipe for unity is not complicated, but it takes love and perseverance.
  • ♥ As you proclaim peace and love with your mouth, endeavour to see that your heart matches your proclamations.

© Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha

Our last week thinkers brought in dollops of good thoughts:

Enlightenment from Dollops of Heedful Ramblings A sweet short quote that cuts into the meat of the matter.

Inspired Series from Seye never leaves me empty handed. I always come away richer.

Simple Power from Kay. You need a shot of this. Never underestimate the strength of your words.

Thank you to all the contributors. May these words take roots in our lives and may our harvest be bountiful 🙂

‘So, when will you share those nuggets of wisdom of yours?’

*P.S. I know that I read more thinking thoughts from other bloggers than those listed above, but for some reason, I can’t find the ping backs to some of them. Please give me a heads up if your’s is not showing here.