Book Review: Power Play by Jasmine Winterson

July 30, 2014

Power Play by Jasmine Winterson
Book #3 of Uncertain Ground Series
Genre: Fiction, Mystery 

Synopsis
The compelling new novel from Jasmine Winterson.

We live our lives. We follow the rules. We die.

What if things could be different? Imagine a world without limits. A world with a brighter future for everyone. What price would you be willing to pay?

Power Play roams from Alaska's North Slope to Brazil's urban slums. Webs of murder, jealousy and revenge threaten to rip apart families and destroy entire communities. Secrets may offer the only path of salvation.

No one said change was easy.

Jasmine Winterson is the author of these three novels. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Review

Power Play, is the third book of the Uncertain Ground series, and Power Play is where the characters that were introduced in the first two books get come together, and fight for what they want and what they believe is right.

Power play is an exciting, intriguing novel. With so many things going on between those pages, it felt like a page turner, though at first I found it hard to keep track on who's who and what's what.The storyline felt a bit elusive But once the pieces are put together, it all made sense. 

Going through the book, learning more about the characters, it was funny to see how they react to silly things, but when things got serious, panic arose, plans were quickly made and the excitement was back on. I like how Winterson has a pattern of building up the level of excitement to it's peak, then decreasing the emotions to a calm humorous level, and then driving the exhilarating adventure back to it's peak.

Power play is an exciting, intriguing, thought provoking, crime novel that can get shocking and dark.
I recommend this to those who enjoy general fiction about business ventures, exciting races and mysteries.

~~~
More about the author

Buy the book

Uncertain Ground Series

   

   
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Pastel Blue and Cream Room

July 28, 2014
It's be a whiiiile since I made a random set on polyvore, today I decided to go ahead and compile my first home related set. I usually go for the fashion sets on polyvore and never really tried out the "home" tab on the platform until now.

Daphne from Chairish contacted me and asked if I would like to compile a set around one of their vintage chairs. I thought, "Yeah! Sure! Never really did a home set before but let's give it a go!". Thanks to Daphne, I got to try out the "home" tab on polyvore, and I found out that I don't really need to turn to Sims when I want to redo my room or design my dream home. Plus waiting like 30 minutes for the game to load disintegrates my drive to interior design. 


This is what I came up with. I went for faint pastel blue cream tone so that one can relax if ever they virtually enter this room. 

It was super fun to make this! I'm totally going to make more.

You can also check out Chairish's store, they can pretty sweet looking furniture!

Have you guys ever made home sets before? Show me a few, I'd love to get a look!
Hope y'all are having a great Monday! 
 
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Keep Calm and Enjoy Summer & Merlin

July 25, 2014

One has gotta to love morning shots. I woke up this morning, looked outside my window and saw that it was beautifully cloudy with a slight breeze. It rarely gets cloudy here in Bahrain so this got me excited enough to wash up, dress up, grab my tripod and camera to go out and take photos. 

I am definitely enjoying this summer weather because despite it being hot with the heat waves, mirages and all that summer related phenomenons, there will sometimes be a cool/warm breeze passing by. Now that's what I call the perfect summer weather. 



Blazer (similar), Ring, Sandals - Forever 21 Shirt - Redbubble 
Jeans - Bershka Bracelet - Ebay | 

This shirt is something I will cherish for - forever. Yup, forever. I would definitely cherish this shirt forever. It's a shirt I would barely wear since I didn't want to risk a nasty spillage incident anywhere near it. It costs a little bit more than a normal basic tee, which is unfortunate, but the print is too much of a classic Merlin pun to not get.

"Keep calm and don't be an idiot Merlin"

If you haven't watched the Merlin BBC TV show, go watch it now. It's amazing! Despite the not so magical CG, the storyline and the hilarious script is what makes the whole series worth watching. Gotta love Merlin. 










I love mornings with great weather! 
Have a great Friday everyone! 
 
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Wowcrary EFW - Silvina Maestros Theorema

July 23, 2014
Wowcracy.com has something called Endless Fashion Week (EFW), where in new designers post up their work on the website, and bloggers choose their favorite designers and write a feature or review about their work. It's fun, interesting, and you get to see very talented designers from all over the world!

While I was scrolling through the site, one of the designers that caught my eye was Silvina Maestro, with her collection called Theorema. Her designs are so angled, it looks so chic and sharp, that makes it a perfect outfit for a gala, a dinner party, or just a fancy schmancy outing or just a day out with you best gals.


About the designer
Silvina Maestro is a conceptual fashion artist. Her London based studio encompasses a unique stance on design as a creative expression combining the disciplines of art and fashion in a manner not seen before. She graduated with an honors degree in fashion design from Central Saint Martins and was immediately offered a job at Givenchy in Paris were she worked with designer Riccardo Tisci. She also worked for Emilio de la Morena and had the honour of completing a long internship and later on freelancing with the late Alexander McQueen. She has been selected as one of the finalists for the prestigious Fashion Fringe competition by John Galliano. Vogue Italia and New York Times have listed Silvina as one of London’s emerging talents.

 Theorema



My top three favorite designs:




I absolutely adore the print of the tops and the angled cut skirts. 
To preorder her designs or read more go over to Wawcracy

What do you all think of this? Would you wear it?

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Book Review: Beautiful Stranger (Beautiful Bastard #2) by Christina Lauren

July 21, 2014

Beautiful Stranger by Christina Lauren
Series: Beautiful Bastard (#2)
Genre: New Adult, Romance
Synopsis:
Escaping a cheating ex, finance whiz Sara Dillon’s moved to New York City and is looking for excitement and passion without a lot of strings attached. So meeting the irresistible, sexy Brit at a dance club should have meant nothing more than a night’s fun. But the manner—and speed—with which he melts her inhibitions turns him from a one-time hookup and into her Beautiful Stranger.
The whole city knows that Max Stella loves women, not that he’s ever found one he particularly wants to keep around. Despite pulling in plenty with his Wall Street bad boy charm, it’s not until Sara—and the wild photos she lets him take of her—that he starts wondering if there’s someone for him outside of the bedroom.
Hooking up in places where anybody could catch them, the only thing scarier for Sara than getting caught in public is having Max get too close in private - Goodreads

Review

The book starts off by going directly to the point. Sara leave her ex in Chicago and flies to New York to work for her best friends boss/fiancé, Chloe and Bennet. The same Chloe and Bennet from book one of the series, Beautiful Bastard.  

It quickly escalated to a night out with the gals at a night club. Sara then walks in a wall of a man at the bar who appears to be one of the sexiest thing on earth, Max Stella. Tease here and tease there, the two end up getting down and dirty in a night club. One mind blowing night sets the two off on an agreement that's filled with a whole lot of feels, risks, and adventure.

Beautiful Stranger is filled with public sex scenes, quirky comments, and a gorgeous description of the streets of New York City. One thing I love about the book is the how they portrayed New York, it's such a big beautiful busy city, and what are the chances of running into that one person on the street over and over. The other thing I enjoyed about the book was that it had both the protagonists POV's. It gives us a chance to get to know both the main characters and watch them grow and change individually. 

When Max starts to realize he's feeling something much more than "casual sex" for Sara, it was just so darn cute to read through. I fell for him right then and there. He's one hunky piece of man with a huge soft side! Gotta love him! 

Other than that, Beautiful Stranger is great novel! It was engrossing towards the end; since it didn't really catch my full attention until I got to the middle, highly entertaining, romantic, intense, and an easy read!

A recommended book to those who wish they had beautiful strangers in their lives to devour them during the night! 

  
 
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Too Faced Chocolate Bar Review

July 18, 2014
This product review has been drafted ages ago, and I just remembered it. Since I'm going slow on my laptop for the next few days, I didn't want to overwhelm it with photoshop. Anyways...

Finally, a proper eye shadow palette. Those 3 in 1 or 4 in 1 eye shadow palette are just so annoyingly limited, and I am grateful for my fabulous cousin for buying this awesome yummy palette for my birthday a few months back. Thank you so much. 

The moment I got this palette and opened it, the whiff of chocolate mocha essence flew out of there like a roasting chicken on a stick, or freshly cooked french fries for all of you vegetarians & vegans reading this. Excuse my chicken reference.

This is the Too Faced Chocolate Bar eye shadow palette. It's got 10 shimmer shades and 6 matte shades, including the two wide highlighter shade. The eye shadow is made from 100% natural mocha powder. which results to the aroma of chocolate mocha when the eye shadow is applied. Sadly, the eye shadow is not edible. 

 



 

The eye shadow is very pigmented, and as you can see some of the lighter tones like Marzipan and Creme Brûlée have a very natural skin tone to it. You can barely see the pigment if it wasn't for the shimmer

I use this palette for almost every toastmaster meeting and for some special occasions. I absolutely love it. It's very convenient since its filled with neutral everyday colors that you can mix up with any other colored eyeshadow, it's a great basic palette!

I recommend this to very young woman out there who is hunting down for her first little palette, and of course to those who adore the aroma of chocolate floating from your eyes. I love it!

 
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Mini projects and a little reading

July 16, 2014
Due to my laptops mini malfunction, I'm letting it sleep for a few days.

Poor thing has been working nonstop at the speed of light with all the programs I install and the processes I force it to do. I like to speed everything up by multitasking, so that means about 15 tabs open on my browser, and Evernote, iTunes, and Photoshop all launched and bouncing about at the bottom of my screen. So my poor Snow (yes, I named my laptop) needs his rest for a few days.

I am very grateful to have a PC to use as backup. But, it just has Microsoft Picture Manager and no Photoshop, so we'll have to go for quick and simple re-sizing of the photos to make them look BEAUTIFUL!

With my laptop on vacation for a bit, this gives me the perfect chance to finish some of my unfinished projects that I have around my room; like the unfinished button up that I tried to re-size to look presentable to the public eye, and catching up on my reading before the book I've been itching to get my hands on arrives.



I'm currently reading the second book of the Beautiful Bastard series, Beautiful Stranger. So far, the book has been filled with hook ups, quirky comments, and a growing possibility of a fist fight. I can feel it's going to happen sometime in the book. (Goodreads)


Hopefully by Friday my Snow will be good as new, and if not, then we'll see what happens. Because I honestly don't want to use this computer for editing photos. :(

What have you all been up to lately?

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Minty Green

July 14, 2014

Since the week started I've been going back and forth to my old university (okay I only went back twice), to deal with the remaining paperwork thats holding up mine and both my sisters' degrees. So far, the very kind registrar at uni gave me a list of things I needed to get and places I need to go to get them. She then very sarcastically said "have a nice day" with a smile as I said my thank you's and good byes. I don't miss uni at all, but the registrar made my day. 

I'm keeping my optimism as high as ever with the hopes of getting all of this done by the end of the week. Whoop!


This morning while digging through my closet, trying to decide what to wear, I found these old black jeans that looked brand new. These jeans were the ones my mom used to buy for me when I didn't know how sizes work. "Thanks mom! but these jeans never really fit me anyway - until now that is, kind of"

| Shirt - Forever 21 (similar| Jeans - Lee
| Shoes - H&M | Accessories - Gifted |






 


I hope you all are having a great day so far! :3

 
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