Suki Says: Promo Work? No Thank You.

 There was an incident earlier this year that was the start of a series of events which severely damaged my confidence in blogging and had me resorting to blogging about mainly beauty because I felt so discouraged to blog about anything else. This incident made me deeply unhappy and angry and over time it grew until eventually I was in a dark mood for a very long time. Why this happened? I put my all into my online life: what you see of me out in this vast World Wide Web is who I truly am in real life. I honestly cannot lie in real life. It eats away at me and being the type of person who feels guilty over throwing something inanimate away obviously lying would destroy me. So obviously why would I do it to myself? It is selfish, to assert that I am this pure person. I’m not, it’s not like I don’t lie but I don’t lie to the extent that it is ridiculous or will cause someone harm – more often it causes me harm. I don’t know how many times I have lied to myself that I don’t want that last piece of cake but secretly, deep down…

Er. Anyway.

Rambling about my lack of purity but abundance of truthfulness aside, the incident affected me deeply. At the time I curled up and cried. I felt humiliated, bullied and controlled. I pathetically fought with myself, there was the part of me that was adamant that I wouldn’t be told what to do and that I certainly had rights and then there was the part of me that wanted to please everyone, make things right even if it meant I had to suffer because of it. I sacrificed my pride and it was a mistake, I should have never bowed down and been untrue to myself. So this is me coming out and saying I won’t ever be bullied anymore, never again.

Suki Says: Bringing Up The Past - Right to Speak

Go ahead and judge me all you want - I'm a tsunami of a person

(Just a little note, hopefully during the holidays I will work on TSC and take it back to the old days with the tags I used to have! In case you were wondering where these suddenly pop out from)

I was certain I wouldn't make it to my Anthropology tutorial today as I was struggling to finish a Metaphysics essay (I know, I keep doing this to myself! As it is I have a History essay due tomorrow, oops) but surprisingly I finished it and managed to get to my tutorial. Why should you care? Well for one, I love Anthropology to death, especially the tutorials this semester so if I hadn't made it to the tutorial I would have been in a rather irritable mood (and no one cares for a moody Natsumi...) so that's one main reason! But probably more relevant to this post, another reason is that almost always my tutor has some words of wisdom that has an impact on me somehow.

So what was today's words of wisdom? More like a thoughtful comment: we have no freedom of speech nowadays. This is so true! When my tutor declared this I immediately thought of an incident a few months back involving this blog and some real life bullies.

I'm not going to get into it on this post just in case the company contacts my Anthropology tutor and tells him to, er, remove his thoughts...or something (entirely possible, wouldn't put it past them) because it was his fault that I call them out.

Lets get something straight: I'm not hating on them, but it's about time I stop this nonsense of not blogging about what I want to truly blog about. I, Natsumi Suzuki, pride on being truthful in this blog so nothing and no one should have the right to stop me from being truthful.

Freedom of speech, yo! So look out for more Suki Says posts! In the meantime, here is my message to all of you because I know a lot of you have this similar problem: be truthful even if you think you will offend someone. I think we have the bigger problem of going around the bush as so we don't step on anyone's toes these days which is making us more repressed and thus more prone to lashing out when it comes to withholding our true opinions. I for one know this is true, I have tried to repress my true opinions, thoughts, etc. and have been so unhappy and angry because of it. So, don't do it! Say what you want to say and if people cannot handle it then that's their opinion and they shouldn't make you feel as though you need to choose their opinion over your own.

Heads Up! Plus a loving Suki Giveaway

First person to notice something relevant to this blog and totally major (and gets it right) gets a heart felt gift and letter from me (as well as 3 extra entries in my piCture pOlish giveaway as that giveaway seriously NEEDS SOME LOVING, YO). So leave your comments and how I can contact you - love you all SO much!

I hope this is the end to a very long battle with the issues I have been having.
xo. Natsumi aka Suki.

piCture pOlish GIVEAWAY

(Pictures are from piCture pOlish's website and are (in order): Aphrodisiac, Denim and Bombshell)

NOTE: I have been awful with advertising this giveaway and encouraging y'all to enter and I apologize to piCture pOlish as well as you lovely readers because I should have been more on top of it and enthusiastic. I'm sorry, relaunching a blog (or two) is definitely difficult.

A few months back I was a part of piCture pOlish's blog fest and this month I am one of the blog fest bloggers able to give you the opportunity to try piCture pOlish for yourself! Thank you so much to the girls of piCture pOlish for giving me this chance to treat my readers.

Burt's Bees Freebies

A while back I subscribed to a years worth of Cosmopolitan (it's a nice silly indulgence when you have a good friend to share it with) and it came with a special offer of a variety of Burt's Bees lip balms worth over $60. Now I don't normally like Burt's Bees purely because they seriously are overpriced and a little overrated but I may have been more inclined to subscribe to Cosmo because of the offer...and maybe because the subscription was relatively cheap too.

Out of all I have tried the top two pictured above: Pink Blossom tinted lip balm and Replenishing lip balm with pomegranate oil and the second last one Lip Shimmer in Rhubarb.

First, to get it out of the way, the Replenishing lip balm with pomegranate oil disgusts me. The texture is overly waxy, the smell is too strong and reminiscent of incense burning for too long. It makes my stomach churn. However that said it is a good base for lipsticks that drag...not that I would ever use it ever again unless I'm having a permanent blocked nose.

The Pink Blossom tinted lip balm is so divine! It actually makes my lips look nice and pink without looking overly unnatural. Yay for good pigmentation in lip balms! It is also AH-MAZING on the lips and I love how soft it makes mine. The pink, the softness...definitely worthwhile. Plus the packaging is super neat. 

My favorite of the lot though is definitely the Lip Shimmer in Rhubarb. It says 'The World's Best Lip Balm in Sheer Luminescent Color' on the tube and it definitely is both a great lip balm (not the best, think the Pink Blossom tinted lip balm is a better lip balm) and the sheer color?! What sheer?! It is amazing! I love that it manages to color the natural pigmentation of my lips! And it's such an easy color too, not too pink nor too red but in between for a great daily color. It does have a minty smell to it but it isn't an overpowering breath mint stench, more like a natural mint scent. On the lips you can feel a minty effect but it doesn't last forever. Definitely one of the better lip balms but also one of Burt's Bees more overpriced ones.

Missing The Past

As of late, for the most part, I have been happy. Not overjoyed, want to scream from the heavens and break out in random song happy but happy enough that I don't cry myself to sleep. Then suddenly I'm thrown into this spiral of unhappiness where it starts with something simple. For example, today I bought a bag of chocolate chip fudge cookies and if you know me then you probably know that I can demolish an entire bag of cookies within one episode of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch. So there I was, happily munching away on a cookie while happily watching Sabrina (get the theme here?) when abruptly Sabrina finished (end of season) and I went to reach for another cookie...and I didn't want one (in hindsight, better for my waistline). I started putting away groceries and then proceeded to completely reorganize how I stored groceries, unpacked my bag and repacked a bag for tomorrow, cleaned my desk, looked in the mirror for a bit then sat back down.

Seemingly harmless, right? Now if you don't know me and even if you know me you probably would not know this, that that whole series of events was me going through a semi-breakdown which results in a completely unhappy Suki. See, from the moment that I didn't want another cookie anymore, things started getting bad. The meticulous cleaning reinforces things are bad. And the looking in the mirror is reflecting on what else is bad.

So the point of all this analyzing of my behavior? I'm fed up of this rut I'm in with blogging. I hate that people ruined blogging for me. It's ridiculous that I have two blogs and I feel so sad whenever I look at the old TSC. I'm still contemplating how to fix this.

1.6 ♥

(How good was my outfit for the day? People must have thought I was so cheesy dressing like an animal!
Luckily none of the animals thought I was an actual leopard...)

Scott surprised me yesterday for our anniversary by taking me to Monarto and we got to put the lions to bed! A keeper was the one who directed the lions from their main enclosure into their night quarters but we got to feed each lion dinner (there were two lions, four lionesses and a cub! Oh, and six of us in the group so each one of us got to feed a lion) which was amazing - although I was definitely squeamish and morally challenged when it came to handling the piece of horse meat and pretty reluctant about giving it to the lion but that's the circle of life.

Thank you so much for an amazing anniversary, Scott! I love you and I'm still daydreaming about the lions - this week is going to be so bland in comparison!

'Suki Says...' launch and piCture pOlish GIVEAWAY

Dearest readers of mine, thank you for putting up with me throughout the more tumultuous times of my blog and thank you especially to those who were supportive and encouraged me to keep this blog going. True to my thoughts, I've revamped this blog (not much, just the header for now but eventually it'll be different) and it will feature nothing but all my beauty ramble. The other ramble I have been reluctant about posting will go in my other blog and finally I feel like there's a way for me to be myself as well as still be able to distract myself with mindless beauty materialism. However you want to describe it anyway.

To celebrate you wonderful readers as well as celebrate the launch of a new blog I have for you a very special giveaway!