Home made Love: Red Abaya and Tassel Earrings

This past week I traveled to New York City for a lovely tea party honoring two amazing bloggers, my beautiful and insanely stylish friend Jean from Dross Into Gold and the adventurous and eclectic Judith from Style Crone. I was so honored to be invited by Jean for this amazing party hosted by designer and artist Carol Markel of Femme et Fleur.

This is the outfit I put together for the party.  Photos were taken by my husband Anthony in New York at a park near where we were staying. Love looking at these and remembering the aura of New York (miss it!!).

I had been contemplating making this linen dress that has been in my head for months and I finally had an excuse to go ahead and make it. I was trying to decide on a color before I found out about the party and once I knew I was going I had to go with red. Red is just a color I am always in love with, my couch is red and I love red lipstick! The color of passion. My mom sort of held my hand throughout the process of cutting out the shape and how to put it together because I only ever made one thing before this dress. The design was simple enough though, and I just had to put in the time. It came out pretty well for my second ever creation. It's interesting that I made it with my mom because it almost felt like a Abaya or Kaftan arab dress inspired by her motherland Lebanon. The head wrap style and accessories echoed the feeling. I felt amazing in it and it kept me cool in the heat without sacrificing the more modest look I feel most confident in. I styled it with some earrings I also made on the bus ride into New York. I started making these tassel earrings last summer but it felt like the perfect time to finish them up to go with this dress. Talk about last minute, but I'm happy I went ahead and made them. I missed the feeling of creating things you imagine in a more tactile way. Hope you enjoy this summer look!

I will post some pics from the party up next. I had an amazing time and loved seeing Jean, meeting Judith, Carol and the many fabulous women I will gush about in my next post. Stay tuned!

Linking this post with Judiths June Hat Attack on her blog Style Crone. Happy headwear art!

XO
Feda

Outfit Details:
Headwrap: White Tassel Scarf from H&M  (recent purchase so you should find it there)
Dress: handmade
Earrings: Handmade/Upcycled- silver piece was from an earring set I was gifted- from Spain
Rings- all collected over the years.
Afghan large stone rings are from Avizeh Jewelry
Silver Filigree ring from Zamarut Jewel
Bag & Shoes- TJ Maxx a few years ago

Summer fun with my niece Ayah and Anthony!

Continuing with some older posts because I'm a bad blogger! I'm finally getting some time to blog so forgive me while I post, post, post.

Over the summer I did a special shoot with my fashionista neice Ayah. She is such a talented little artist and she got the fashion bug like crazy. This girl has given me so many makeup transformations and she is always painting/drawing/creating!!

I had an idea to do an outfit shoot together and she loved it. Of course she put together her outfit herself and I helped her with the boho turban. Funniest thing is she somehow convinced my husband Anthony to join us! Anthony has a sense of style but he's very lazy when it comes to clothing so me and Ayah picked out his outfit to match us. So his outfit is a joint work of art ;)

Yes, we're silly!!! Hope you enjoyed!

XO

Grow A Garden

The journey to creating these images was quite interesting. I had found this amazing handmade floral dress at my local thrift store. I was staring at different floral editorials for the last few months, mostly inspired by the amazing Frida Kahlo and then this dress just showed up in my face! I went home and played around and it went perfectly with this Russianesque scarf and shawl I also thrifted a while back. I stuck some flowers in the scarf and voila! I took these on new years eve and the first image in this series was photo 365 for my Project Life 365 photo series.

So the shoot actually was very difficult to do because it was freezing outside and it almost turned out terrible until the last 10 minutes. I will explain...

I went to my go to farm in the blue hills area to get a nice neutral backdrop for this bold dress. I walked out into an area with a big field and it was really creepy because there was not one human out that day. I set up my camera on the tripod and adjusted the settings and did some test shots. The camera was just not focusing. I tried and tried, changed a few things a bunch of times, and still it was just not working. It usually takes a bit of effort to get right. I move the focus point to match where I'm standing so when I press the remote it focuses on me, but this time it just would not focus. Meanwhile I couldn't feel my fingers and my nose was dripping all over the place. To top it off I kept hearing something in the woods nearby. I know deer frequent the area but they are generally not out to get you. I was just nervous about whatever else lives in the woods. I was actually hoping to see a deer because I think they are really majestic creatures. One time I spotted one on a hike. It just stood there in the middle of this golden field of tall grass with the mountain as a backdrop and just looked at me with such poise. It had huge antlers and it was like I was in some dream/movie. It wasn't frightened, it was just IT! It was a magical moment that I still daydream about. I'm convinced it was some sort of spirit/animal guide speaking to me and now I just really love deer!

Sooo, I kept trying because I didn't want to give up. I came all this way and I was all dressed up. So I moved into another area thinking the camera would have a better time focusing with a different backdrop and that didn't work either. At that point I really couldn't feel my body and I think it was getting dangerous, so I had to go back to the car and warm up. After I warmed up a bit I decided to try my luck in another spot near the car as a last attempt. It was still having trouble and then this thought popped into my head to use the camera in LCD mode with the screen because it does a pretty good job at detecting people, and it worked!! I was able to get in a few shots and hopped back into the car to go. Just in time to see inmates stroll by picking up trash along the street. I did not want to be stranded in the middle of an abandoned farm with prison inmates nearby.

While driving away I was literally beaming! I was proud of what I could withstand to get those shots, proud of not giving up, and grateful for the powers above for helping me learn a new technique for taking self portraits. It's sooo much faster now and I wouldn't have figured it out if I didn't sit there and struggle with it. Which got me thinking...this was much more than a shoot...I was cultivating a habit of determination and drive and learning through DOING.

sort of like growing a garden...
We're all given these life experiences. Some beautiful and others incredibly traumatizing. It's hard to let go of the ones that are not so great but when you start to realize that YOU, your true being, are not defined by any of those things. If you let them, they can, but you can also decide to use them like seeds to plant your own garden.

Gardens take time to grow. They need to be watered, nurtured, and brought to life with patience, care and love. They go through stages of birth and decay and recreation over and over just as we do. We evolve and change constantly and need nourishment to sustain ourselves through each stage. Are we nurturing our souls enough? Because we should all take time to grow our own gardens. Peel back the layers and get to the root and plant it firmly into the ground and let yourself flourish. I've been doing a lot of this lately. There are so many layers to peel back and so much left to nurture and grow within... and I'm loving being the watcher of it all.

So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul.

-Veronica Shoffstall

Much love, water, and light
Feda

Eid Outfit!

Photos taken by Neda Eid

Laid back Eid, as is every Eid. For us Eid usually consists of waking up super early, drinking tons of coffee, Eid prayer, doing the face painting for the kids, going out to eat, eating way too much only to then drop dead when you get home. Eid Mubarak to those who celebrate!

Wish you all love and light!
Feda

It's allll about the love! and the story about why I have so many rabbits!

More love please!! If you follow me on instagram then you've seen this image before. Meet my girl Moona. Can you tell I'm obsessed with my animals yet?!?

I  realized I never told the story about my rabbits on here. Or did I? I have such a bad memory.

It's been about a year since we've had them now. One crisp fall afternoon last year Anthony was heading out to practice with a friend. I was in the mood for taking pictures so I went along with him because I knew there was a scenic area around where he was going. When we arrived I got out and started walking toward the outdoor area and saw these rabbits hopping around. I was like woaah, so cute! I noticed the rabbits were white and different variations of tan and realized these were not wild rabbits! As I walked closer, I saw a white rabbit on it's side dead near a tree. Then I noticed the large cage with the door wide open close by. Someone had abandoned them there :((((

I got extremely sad and I even shed a tear or two for the dead bunny (I'm a huge baby when it comes to animals). After I figured out what happened I decided we had to save them. I went to get Anthony and he along with the lady he was practicing with and her neighbor got together to find and catch them. We ended up taking three rabbits home in our car that day. The neighbor reported the fourth rabbit and animal control found her the next day. We went to get her for fear of animal control putting her to rest (little Moona pictured above, glad we went back for her!).

We originally only planned to keep one, Brownie, because when we found him he was sitting next to a tree all ready to give up. He was limping and looked really sad. When Anthony caught him and gave him to me, he snuggled right into me so sweetly and I fell in love with him and knew he was coming home with me. After that I knew this all happened for a reason. 

 (Brownie and Moona. These two bonded quickly and as you can see are attached by the hip to each other, which is why we ended up keeping two)

We got in touch with an animal shelter to find a home for the rest and when we got there they told us they would probably have to kill them because they had mites. They didn't want to risk spreading it to the other animals which we understood. We had just saved them so there was no way we were saving them only for them to die anyways! The shelter gave them shots for the mites and they eventually went away within a week or so (don't worry mites do not spread to humans-we were not in any harm). A friend referred us to an organization called house rabbit network (they are a no kill organization) where they take in rabbits, treat them, and find them foster homes until they get adopted. We got in touch with a lady named Allyson who helped us sooooo much. She bought us food and supplies for them (SO SWEET). We still keep in touch with her! We ended up fostering all four rabbits, two we eventually adopted ourselves and the other two we fostered. Azlan (below) got adopted a few months ago. He was the baby of the bunch and such a funny guy. We miss him!

Little Bobo is still searching for his forever home! People get scared of him at first because he has red eyes but once they see how cute his personality is they love him just as much as we do. This guy is sooo adorable, soo sweet and really smart. Our birds seem to have really taken to him too. They will always sit next to him and sing for hours, especially Pep. If we had room and were more financially stable I think we would keep him too. We have SO much love for him, it's going to be hard to let him go. Love his little brown paws!

So that's why I have so many rabbits...