Category Archives: beach

Vow Renewal: Beach in Wales

Vow Renewal

We are over half way through Love Week and so close to Valentines Day. I have been having fun sharing with you some of my most favourite photographs taken by our long time friend and photographer Miriam Pinkston. We we asked why we chose Wales as our destination for our Vow Renewal and honestly it has the best of everything. Breathtaking views, rich culture, history, romantic settings, and picturesque coastlines. The places I have lived the longest have always been by the sea and it was so important that we get our pictures taken by the ocean. Continue reading →

Barmouth Beach Pt. II

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So happy to have another Travel Tuesday with you all and getting my fix of wanderlust by hopping around all the travel posts. I hope you guys are meeting some great bloggers! I just found out that I will be attending a London Bloggers Tea next month and I cannot wait to share that all with you here on ACR. There seems to be so much going on still in 2013, so I want to share few things with you here:

Link Up! Join the link up at the bottom of the post with any travel, wanderlust, or expat post from your blog. Then hop around and get your travel fix from visiting other blogs.
Join the Map! If you click the Map link you can add your Travel and Expat blog to our ever growing map of bloggers!
Get Ready! The first Tuesday of November will be our themed Travel Tuesday post and the theme for the month will be: Relationships. Perhaps post about a place you would love to go next and tell us who you would bring with you or share your favourite family photographs from your recent trip this summer! The choice is yours and I look forward to seeing what you come up with next month.
Join the Sidebar! I love sharing travel and expat posts and stories on my blog from other travelers. Become a November Sponsor today!

Today I am going to be following up my travel post from Barmouth Wales, when I posted about The Beach at Barmouth Pt. I back in the summer. This is part II and our third trip to Barmouth Beach during our 10th Anniversary Vow Renewal trip to Wales. We just loved being at the seaside and this time we actually go into the cold water. Well my sons did anyways and the rest of us enjoyed hanging out on the beach. The picturesque views and salty air were just what I needed. Now that it is getting cold and November is approaching, I really enjoy soaking up the last memories of Summer.

(Also as a side note the girl pictured below is my sister)

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Share your Travel stories and wanderlust addictions.

HERE IS HOW IT WORKS:

1. Share a post about travel! From road trips to trips abroad and from past travels to dream vacations. You can write about travel tips and tricks, favorite places to stay, or anything in between! Just make it about traveling somewhere!

2. Grab the lovely button. If you run into trouble, just make sure to mention Bonnie in a link! 😉

3. Linkup goes live every Tuesday at 9 am GMT.

4. Hop around and meet new travel loving bloggers! Link up will be open for a few days, make sure to check back to visit some of the newer travel posts!

5. Please only one linked up post per blogger. Save other posts for future linkups!

6. The First Tuesday of every month will be a themed prompt if you want to join in!

Barmouth Beach Pt. I

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Since so many of you enjoyed the post about our evening at the coastal town of Barmouth in Wales, I thought it only fitting that I follow up with a couple more beach themed posts in the town. We spent sunset at the nearly empty beach on this particular evening and it inspired a follow up beach day later that week. During this occasion it was quite windy and tiny sand particles stung our face as our hair flew about in the wind. The tall grasses seemed to dance and the sand was textured by the ribbed pattern the wind created like art. In our exploration of the beach we found an Easter Island type statue watching out towards the ocean in solitude. My hawaiian raised boys had fun playing in the sand and running up and down the dunes. With the setting sun and the picturesque town views behind us, I walked away to the car leaving my regular glasses (I was wearing my prescription sunglasses) and my hair clip in the sand. Luckily once in the car I realised it was not on my person and we made a mad dash to locate the items. Needless to say the area had a way of capturing my heart and keeping my attention away from worldly matters and onto the details of simple beauty and the wishes that the ocean holds.

Q: Do you have a place that can put you perfectly at ease or capture your heart, mind, and/or soul?

Travel, Beach, and Sandcastles

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Another Edition of Travel Tuesday with my cohost Belinda and I decided I wanted to skip forward in my recap of Wales and share with you one of the reasons I love going to the beach. My family loves going to the beach. From the west coast of Monterey, to the island of Oahu in Hawaii, to Seaside Heights at the Jersey shore on the East coast, to across the pond to pebble beaches of Brighton, and now over to the beaches in Wales. It is all about being near the ocean, smelling the salt in the air, and enjoying our time at the seaside.

We ended up going to the beach twice during our week in Wales which made me conclude that I could easily come back every year just to spend two whole weeks at the beach. Honestly my sons would be quite happy about that. With everything we did in New Jersey last Summer, some which were not that cheap, they preferred the free visits to the beach the most. One of their favourite things to do, well after running into the ocean to body surf a million times, is to build sandcastles. Last year they had an amazing time with Nonna using all the neat buckets and shovels for sandcastle building. There is just now limit when it comes to creativity and will power.

While we were in Wales I was inspired by two builds from other patronages of the beach. Though not big and intricate, they were simple and beautiful. The first because the kids who had built it took the time to bring little flags for which to decorate the castle. They even had the Welsh flag with the dragon on it. The second was a speedboat because what could be a better setting for one than the beach?

The folks at Woolacombe Bay Holiday Parks put together a lovely infographic about The World of Sandcastles and Sand sculptures. It is all part of a Sandcastle building competition where you can take part, send in a photo, and win a holiday at one of their four holiday parks for up to six people!

Infographic presented by Woolacombe Bay Holiday Parks.

Please share this Sandcastle Infographic and Photo Competition!

Q: What has been some creative builds you have seen at the seaside?

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Here’s how it works:
1. Share a post about travel! From road trips to trips abroad and from past travels to dream vacations. You can write about travel tips and tricks, favorite places to stay, or anything in between! Just make it about traveling somewhere!
2. Grab the lovely button.
3. Linkup goes live every Tuesday at 8 am GMT.
4. Hop around and meet new travel loving bloggers! Link up will be open for a few days, make sure to check back to visit some of the newer travel posts!
5. Please only one linked up post per blogger. Save other posts for future linkups!

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My sponsor today is no stranger to the world of travel. Selena has been to over thirty countries and she plans to double that number in the next five years! Now that is a goal I would love to join in. I was so excited to find out about Selena when she found my blog because we have a lot in common. We are both US Air Force brats that moved around a lot as kids and now both live in England. I find her story really inspiring to myself. After her daughter left the house her life evolved to finding love again, moving overseas as an expat, and now exploring the world. I am just attracted to people who love life and love seeing all it has to offer. I think you will love Selena too!

Recommended Posts by Selena:

18 Month Well Expat Check Up

Be Friends with Selena: Blog | Twitter | Bloglovin

Memories Brought back by the Bachelorette

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I am not one to do weekly recap posts on television shows and my husband will probably skip reading my blog today once he reads ‘bachelorette’ mentioned. I began watching with season two of the Bachelor and then with season one of the spin off, the Bachelorette while I was engaged. Fast forward to today and that is a decade of watching a show with generally the same plot, just new characters. To be fair I would rather watch the Bachelorette over the Bachelor any day. Guys all vying over one girl vs a season full of catfights. No competition there. Why do I get sucked into it every season?

The dates? The romance? The premise that you can find your soul mate?

My favourite thing about the show is watching their dates in far off countries. Especially when they go places where I want to travel, places I have been, and those that hold a special place in my heart. The last two episodes of The Bachelorette have touched me because of the locations. Since this blog highlights on travels I would like to touch on the two places and why they mean so much to me.

On the Bachelorette Season 9 Episode 4, Desiree goes to Seaside Heights on a date and gives her date to a lovely couple whose house was hit by Hurricane Sandy. I actually stopped watching this episode when it got to this point. I continued watching it this week before starting the new episode. It was hard to watch. Seeing all the devastation from their view up in the helicopter. Harder to imagine that we were just there for a summer vacation with my family last August. We had gone there a few times growing up as my father’s dad lived nearby in Newark. He loved to take us to the boardwalk when we visited every few years from Europe. You may have even read my posts about Seaside Heights and the Jersey Shore. My husband has yet to go to New Jersey and my sons really want him to experience the summer staying at the beach house, walking minutes to the ocean, and enjoying the the fun, food, and games on the Seaside Heights board walk of the Jersey Shore. I hope that despite the tragedy this wonderful place can be restored to an even better state than it was before. So that many more can cherish the same memories at the shore.

This week’s episode Desiree took the men to Munich, Germany. A city I love so much and a country I used to live in for a few years. I was watching every second with a huge amount of wanderlust. I have been on that same mountain top that they were on and have been snowboarding in the Alps many times. It is the place of so many happy memories with my father and going on snowboarding adventures together as a family and with our friends. It was actually my first location choice for our vow renewal because of how special of a place it is for my family. I honestly cannot wait for the day that my husband can whisk us away to southern Bavaria.

Being married for just about ten years with eight and six year old sons, date nights with just my husband and I are few and far between. We have had friends watch our kids or have had arrangements set up when we were both working. But we have never had an actual babysitter who we could regularly call up so we could go on frequently schedule date nights. It is something I wish could be changed in the next ten years. My husband by far wins with who has gone out with other adults more during our time here in England.

I have been out with my husband for his Uni function (so not a one on one date), once with his Uni friends without Ryan (to get me out of the house), a girls night out with my friend from Hawaii who was visiting in London, and a girls night out in Bath with a fellow expat. Other than that if I go out it is with the whole family in tow. I think that is why I still watch the Bachelor/Bachelorette because I live vicariously through their dates. I know not everyone gets the London Eye shut down for their date or a famous band to serenade them for dancing in the city streets, but I still like the idea of sweeping a girl off her feet. That and who would not want to just jet across the world to visit a new country just for a date?

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I cherish my photographs from our vacation last summer at Seaside Heights on the Jersey shore even more after Hurricane Sandy hit and destroyed a place of such found memories. Since the passing of my father I take photos of everything because I never know what I will not have the chance to photograph again. Even now going through old photo files on external drives, you will never hear me say ‘I wish I took less photos’. If anything looking back at old photographs I wish I knew back then what I know now about photography, composition, and lighting. I definitely wish I had more photographs of my father and more photographs of all the places I have lived and travled through out the world. While majority of those I can not or not easily take photos of now, I have also realised I do not have a lot of photographs of my husband and I together. Since that is something I can change I have been working hard and on making sure we tackle that feat this year. Photographs are truly precious to me.

Question: What past moment in your life would you most like to have a photo of?

I asked this same question to my sponsors and here were their answers:

Jessica Lynn: “If I could have a photo from any past moment in my life it would definitely be one of me, my mom, and my week-old daughter together. It was just three months ago, but I regret not taking a picture of the three of us when she came out to visit.“

Tara: “I can’t think of one specific moment, but in general, more photos of me and my parents. I lost both my parents last year and it was sad to realize I could count the number of photos, after the age of 14 (and I am 27, by the way), of me with one or both of them on one hand! I photograph
EVERYTHING now!“

Rachel: “I’d love to have a photo of the first kiss between me and my boyfriend.”

Tammy: “The moment I met my hubby. that moment our eyes locked on each other.“

Melyssa: “I’d like to have a photo of my nana making me mac & cheese. I don’t even really like mac & cheese, but because she always used to make it for me, I associate that memory with the feeling of home. It was never about the mac & cheese, it was just about her love. I’d like a picture of that.“

Lisa Ng: “I would love a photo of the first time I held my son. I have plenty photos afterward, but just not the very first time.“

Thank you to my lovely sponsors for taking the time to participate today. Make sure you check out the blogs of these wonderful ladies and I’ll ask the same question to you, my reader, below:

Q: What past moment in your life would you most like to have a photo of?

Photography: Mermaid Cove

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Day 31, Friday: A Vivid Memory

It was was the last Saturday in March of 2010 on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii. I had just driven up from my home in Mililani where I had gotten model, Alysha ready in hair and make up. With glittery eyes and long red hair in waves she was now ready in wardrobe as my mermaid for the evening conceptual photo shoot. I had obtained the costume at a vintage store in Tucson, Arizona on a visit at my mum’s house and had only used it once for Halloween in 2008. Coincidentally Halloween that year had fallen on the night of my first photo exhibition in Honolulu and now it was being used again before my departure back to the mainland. I had a whole list of concepts I wanted to complete in the final months of my island life. While many male photographers were content with shooting just bikini clad models on the sandy beaches, I had my heart set on photographing a mermaid. Of course in my mind what mermaid photo shoot would be complete without a Prince Eric? So as we got out of the car we met Samart, our leading man to complete the vision.

On to the beach we went in one of my most favourite areas of North Shore for being secluded and devoid of tourists. I have almost always had this area to myself on my many drives to the area. With my camera and equipment and a bagful of props we started up the rocky cliffs for the first half of the shoot. It soon became the golden hour and the soft warm Hawaiian sunlight lit up Alysha and Samart as they portrayed my versions of Ariel and Eric. Which was good because the trade winds were having a field day with my light reflectors. While on many shoots I had the luxury of a photography assistant, today it was just the three of us. I remember before the shoot I had run down to the touristy section of walmart to pick up a collection of shells. These I had then hot glued onto fishing wire. This made it quite easy to display the smaller shells, with easy clean up since they were all attached to the same line. I had a few bigger shells and a nice starfish that I moved around the scene.

For the second part of the shoot I wanted to draw on the idea of Eric being shipwrecked and either saved or discovered by Ariel. I even had Eric catch Ariel in his net. We had a vintage table, originally from Russia, as our token piece of washed up wood. All in all it was a really fun shoot and I despite having a very small team for the day I got the images I was hoping to come away with from concept. All though my secret desire as a girl to become a mermaid was never realised, it was fun to orchestrate story I loved as a child. Thank you to Alysha and Samart for making my vision possible.

Here were my top favourite photographs from my concept shoot from ‘Mermaid Cove’.

Like that we are complete with the Blog Every Day in May challenge. If you would like to see my other posts for the month click the label/tag ‘maychallenge’ below. Thank you for joining me on this month long journey and I look forward to seeing you in June with my regularly scheduled posts about photography travel, third culture kids, and expats.

I broke up with my facial cleanser

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Tuesdays Tips & Tricks
“Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

In the last several years as a Beauty Therapist and Hairstylist, my bathrooms in all the places I have lived have been littered with a vast array of beauty products. Though some have come and gone, others made reappearances through out the years.

Coconuts. I grew up thinking they were funny. I also grew up with monty python and if you did too you can connect the dots. On my honeymoon in Cozumel, Mexico I realized just how yummy coconuts can be. A few years later my husband and I had the pleasure of living in Hawaii, on the island of Oahu, for four years. My youngest was born there and my kids grew up with the sweet pleasures of island life. Though we no longer live on the island, you cannot take the island out of this girl.

Coconuts for cooking? Yes, please!

I love to try new things and a couple of years ago we tried coconut oil in our coffee for health benefits. This went on to be used in replace of other oils in a lot of our cooking. Thanks to sites like Pinterest the many uses of coconut oil has been revealed to so many. To be fair since we began buying it by the jar fulls, I feel like I am a constantly finding new uses for this miracle oil.

When it comes to facial cleansers I am a hopper. I will try this one for a while and then try something else. Maybe perhaps because my skin is never normal. It may be beautiful and perfect for a few days then the next week its broken out and then the next its really dry.

What is a girl to do when she is unhappy?

Break up.

Since 2003 I have been using a little bit of bicarbonate soda (baking soda) mixed in my facial cleanser of choice a few times a month to exfoliate the skin. So when I heard I could mix it in with coconut oil in lieu of my facial cleanser it made perfect sense.

Here are my tips for breaking up with your facial cleanser with a DIY option:

What you need:
Extra Virgin Coconut Oil
Bicarbonate Soda/Baking Soda
Baby hair brush
Water
Facial towel

Steps:
1. Flush your face with warm water to open up your pores.
2. Mix a small amount of bicarbonate soda in with the same amount of coconut oil. My oil tends to be in a solid state. Make sure to warm it up in your hands to cause it to liquify.
3. Once the two ingredients are mixed together well you can apply it to your face.
4. Rub gently in circular motions with the pads of your fingers.
5. Using your baby hair brush which you have warmed up under hot water, continue to rub your skin in soft circular motions. Only do this step once a week for extra exfoliation.
6. With your hands rinse your face with water.
7. Use really cold water at the very end, flushing your face a few times.
8. Pat, do not rub, your face with a clean facial towel.

Advice:

It is advisable to try using the bicarbonate soda every other day and use just coconut oil for washing your face the days in between.
Your face will appear oily as soon as you are finished but the coconut oil will absorb into your skin within minutes.
Use extra coconut oil (small amount works wonders) on any spots as an acne treatment.
Consult your doctor if you are unsure about any sensitivities you may have as I speak just from my personal experiences from using this on my skin. It works GREAT!

My final thoughts after breaking up with my facial cleanser: Why didn’t I do this sooner?!

My skin has been clearer and I have not had any new breakouts since trying this out. My skin is also getting moisturized so well by the coconut oil that my makeup goes on a lot smoother. Since the coconut oil cleanses, tones, and moisturizes I have a lot of extra space in my bathroom cabinets that is much needed! But the best part…

…I smell like coconuts and cookies all day and night long. 😉 Yummy.

* Photographs belong to Bonnie Rose and cannot be used without written consent.