We have reached that time of the year of last minute deadlines and dwindling energy thanks to December holidays. Many of us cannot wait for weekends to happen, dread the rest of the week, deal with traffic- sadly to do it all over again every week. Well, how about we add an exciting feature to it- gin!

Situated in Whiteriver Nelspruit, Casterbridge Lifestyle Center offers the best lunch spots which you can always enjoy ranges of gin that come with it and it pleases me to say, the menus have a wide range of Mpumalanga made Gins and wines.

Here are a few selection of Gins to try:

The Dollie (Blueberry & Pimento Infusion): This magenta coloured gin has a sweet and spicy aromatic flavor accompanied by intense aroma for your tasting pleasure. Best served over ice with tonic water and sprig of thyme. Add a bit of fresh blueberries or figs for more flavor.

The Dollie (Strawberry & Wild Basil Infusion): This luscious pink drink has a distinct Anita offering a refreshing indulgence, best served over ice with tonic water and a slice of fresh cucumber.

The Dollie (Rooibos & Lemongrass infusion): If Amber is your colour, then this drink is for you! This gin is full bodied with woody and grassy tones accompanied by notes of citrus. Best served to kick the boots out of you, in a good way. Just add a sprig on rosemary and slice of citrus for that throat hitting sensation.

I personally would recommend the Strawberry Wild Basil infusion Dollie because it matches my personality oh a hard working girl who like strong enough drinks for my drinking pleasure #ProudlySouthAfricanDrink

So I am proud to call DOLLIE & Co. a distinctive and highly recommended choice of gin and you should try yourself one.

Company links

Instagram : https://instagram.com/dolliegincompany?igshid=8x1yaytiuzxw

Website link : https://www.gincompany.co.za/

Facebook : https://m.facebook.com/Dollie-Gin-Company-548669938798289/

Have you seen how much diamonds have boomed over the centuries, as they have been used as the luxury form of accessory.

Its been quiet a ride!

18 Carat seems to have been working in overdrive to create stunning and interesting engagement and fashion accessory rings built around oval , round , square shaped centre stones. They have done a great job.

Its great to see the flood fresh and new ideas. 18 Carats every ring designs are fantastic shape choice for the type of style you desire from the centre stone too colour designs.

I personally love having options for my jewellery- the different diamonds shapes the better. Sometimes having one accessory isn’t enough for. So why settle for one when you can have a whole range.

I have learnt to understand that diamonds are expensive. No way around that.

Regardless of your budget, some understanding and effort can ensure your getting as much diamonds as possible, this could be your best investment.

Selecting the best diamonds isn’t easy and that is why I work hand in hand with 18 Carat to create the best quality ring for myself, that matches my personality and sense of style.

In the past couple of months 18 Carat helped me understand the terminologies of selecting the perfect rings for my collections. This is how , 18 Carat focuses on the 4C’s Model : Cut , Colour , Clarity and Carat. Each one of the Cs has a range that indicates the quality ( according to price ) of specific characteristics.

Carat : The size of the diamond

Colour : The different ranges of colours

Clarity : All diamonds have impurities. Some you can see with the naked eye, others not at all. The clarity is graded taking the following into consideration: where the impurities and imperfections are located ,the number of them and their size. Every diamond is unique and has its own clarity fingerprint

Cut : Diamonds cut Is often confused with the diamond shape ( Round, Oval , square ) . Its all craftsmanship

To have your own diamond rings designed and tailor made for you , you can go on to the link below to have a lifetime opportunity of investing in something unique and magnificent.

Take Care

18 Carat Collaboration 

Telephone no : 072 994 4071

Email :18carat@vodamail.co.za

Website : https://18carat.co.za/

Instagram :https://instagram.com/18.carat?igshid=z6jx1c2ogyq6

My love for pearls has become my Maddiction, because of one elegant fact. Did you know , when pearls become part of European culture, some countries even passed law saying that only nobility could wear them? What makes them unique, you ask? They are the only gemstones made by animals. Pearls are created inside mollusks when they deposit a layer of calcium carbonate around a microscope irritant. These mollusks use what we call “mother of pearls ” to produce the calcium.  

Mother of Pearls is the same material mollusks use to create their shells. It takes between eighteen months to five years to produce a single pearl from it’s first creation to remolding it’s imperfections to what we see today in stores and that beautiful women is what makes pearls so valuable. 

When looking for the best pearls, always bare in mind that they are not all created equal. 18 Carat specializes in the creative process by making sure you have the bespoke feel to the jewelry that makes you who you are.

18 Carat Jewellery Store also specialises on helping you select the perfect pearls for you, by helping you to know what to look for when purchasing pearls.

Not all pearls are the same quality, and not all pearls are the same type. There are many points to consider if you’re looking to make a purchase including :
Cultured vs. Natural
Size
Color
Shape
Pearl Surface
Pearl Luster

Price Range
Type
Is the pearls real or fake

My June is all about sparkles and that’s what my partnership with 18 Carats is bringing this season with their new African handmade jewelry that is sophisticated and authentic.

This season, we are putting our focus on the importance of jewelry as an accessory to the wardrobe and this has a personal sentiment right now in my life.

Every piece of 18 Carat is inspired by wealth, prosperity and glamour and being able to have custom made rocks is a representation of timeless style and individual personality to both the buyer and the jeweler.

Hand made by Helmet Muller, a jeweler born in a small Bavarian District in Germany- all his pieces are made to suits each any personal taste. His vast experience has also allowed him to be able to give advice on gemstones and diamonds for any lifestyle and budget, the kind of expertise you want when picking jewelry you want to wear timelessly.

I am excited that we both share the love for the African bush and this will be seen in his textures and designs- for me specifically, I will be showing off what it is to be proudly African without saying a word.

Although I would hate to admit it, over and over again the poorest bargain of our lives are the one we make when we forfeit our deep knowing life for one that is frail; when we give up our soul, hearts, senses our being  for a promise of something that seems rich but turns out to be hollow instead. Even though choosing poorly could be seen as a pathologically self-destructive act, it far more often turns into a watershed event that brings vast opportunity to redevelop the power of instinctive intuition nature. 

My initiation began with the poor bargain I made long ago while still asleep. By choosing whatever appealed to me as riches and security, I surrendered in return, dominion over some and often every part of my passion, creativity and instinctive life. Funny a friend told me to find a job that goes along with your passion, you will always get fulfillment from that. I seriously should have listened.

Anyways my family was just keen on me securing a job so I can sustain myself due to certain circumstances that presented themselves. So I did , I got a job that will do just that, but I had to make sure I made it purposeful and tried being positive about it all.  January 2nd was the day I started my job. I was very optimistic eager to learn and enjoyed the challenge of learning how to run such a company. In the same period I met a man I never thought I would fall inlove with, my instinct warned me about him , did I listen , no not  really . Let me just make this very clear that many things that present themselves to us are not as they seem upon first content.

At first everything seemed to have purpose, had a vision but somehow along the road I didn’t realise how much I was dying. The hours I put in at work and the lack of growth at work and in the relationship I was in. I was getting worn out. The vision I had before started to become a bit more blurry. My body was starting to show symptoms of the exhaustion. Knowing the kind of woman I am, I still ignored it all. 

I mean no sentient being in this world is allowed to remain innocent forever. In order for any person to thrive, our own instinctive nature drives us to face that fact that things are not as they first seem. I truly understand that sometimes for the first time in our lives, we have a chance to cease walking into walls of our own making and learn to pass through them instead. 

I didn’t realize that my soul was going through the ability called the processing. When we process , we sort through all the raw material in the mind and soul, all the things we’ve learned , heard , longed for and felt during a period of time. We use these processed ideas and energies to implement our most soulful tasks and to fund our creative endeavors. 

I understand that I am my own woman, my own person and yet during that time I give my arm, leg,eyeball away to every job or lover that came down the pike. My creative soul was trapped and I did that all to myself. There was so much dominion over my creative soul I couldn’t even hear her speak to me anymore. 

Now my pain became conscious. When it become conscious, I could do something about it. I could learn from it , grow with it and I there became a knowing woman. 

I would often say my mood is such that I cannot quite put my finger on what I wanted , whether it be a new job , a new lover,time,creative work. It was very difficult to concentrate. It was very hard to be productive during the time . This nerve- restlessness is typical of this spiritual developmental stage. 

During this stage I got sick of crying, I mean tired of it, I wanted to stop. But I realized it was my soul that was crying, and those tears were protecting me. So I kept on till the time to cry was over. Crying is good, it is right. It does not cure the situation, but it enables the process to continue instead of collapsing. I felt that I lost my touch, lost my usual way with the world, but powerful still in my pureness of soul and because of that, the thing that wished to destroy me withdrews. 

I in this stage feel desperate and adamant to go on with this journey no matter what. So I decide to leave my old life for a new one, or lets say one stage of my life to another. This was my process from adolescence to a womanhood. This was my death and resurgence. I left my job, left my old relationships, left my old way of thinking, my outmoded values, to becoming ones owns person. I have went through a whole new transformation, the one of awakening.

Now that the old self is gone and the deep self, the naked self, is the powerful wanderer. 

There is a being who lives in the wild underground nature of every woman. It is responsive to stimulus involving the senses:music, movement, drinks, peace, quiet, beauty and darkness. This all falls under a woman that has heat. Not heat as in “let’s have a sex, baby baby.” But like a fire inside that burns high then low in cycles. From that energy released there a woman acts sees fit.

A woman’s heat is not a state of sexual arousal but a state of intense sensory awareness that includes, but is not limited to, her sexuality. In the ancient times an aspect of a women’s sexuality was called the scared obsence, not in the way we use the word obsence to day, but meaning sexually wise in a witty sort of way, as time change so the consept of sexuality in today’s age.I recognize this when we as woman gather together to have this crazy topics about men and the funny stories of our experience in a sexual encounter.

I sometimes desire from time to time to live in a solely female atmosphere so I can have that little time off. It is exciting and causes so much pleasure. It is not one dimensional, for laughter is something one shares with oneself as well as with many others. It is a woman’s wildes sexuality, it’s all part of my natural feminine cycle.

I know it may sound a little bit odd for me to say this but sexuality is a medicine for the tough times, a strengthener for later, why do i say that ; I noted that the more people I come across complaining about sexual issues, the real issue was more often a problem of the spirit and soul. When a person told me of a spiritual problem, often it was a problem about sexual nature.

In that sense sexuality can be fashioned as a medicine for the spirit and therefore scared.

In the wild nature, the scared and irreverent, the scared and sexual, are not separate from one another, but live together like, I suspect, a group of old, old women just waiting down the road for us to drop by.

In the Oxford Distionary the word feral comes from the Latin meaning wild beast. It’s common usage, a feral creature is one who was once wild, then domesticated, and who has reverted back to a natural or untamed state once again.

A feral woman is a woman who was once in a natural psychic state, in her rightful sound mind- then later captured by whatever turns of events, thereby becoming overly domesticated and deadened in proper instincts. Her cycle and protective systems have been tampered with.

Woman have for many years been lured to the things that disfunction our mind and souls: relationships, people, and ventures that are tempting, but inside that good-looking bait is something sharpened to a point, something that kills our spirit as soon as we bite into it. I personally call this “starving of the soul”

As a young girl I was raised in an interesting home. The things as a kids that our family thinks we don’t see and understand they do catch up with us. They play like episodes in our my minds .

My mother tried her best to shelter me from these events. She made sure my minds was kept occupied with alot of work so I don’t see the truth of the damaging emotional impact these episodes had on a little girl. I was quiet a smart girl though because I used that as my strength. I created ambition, passion and love for my work and goals. Oh how fun it was to just have a whole lot of work occupying me, it makes life easier to deal with people and relationships. I created a world of work and empowerment. I knew how to channel my mind to that, it saved me alot of tears when dealing with rejection. The more rejected the more forceful I was to gaining power, but succeeding in everything, when u grow older things don’t really work out that way.
When I left this country to pursue my dreams and aspirations in life I encountered interesting people and interesting relationships. One particular relationship change my life.

There was a man who I saw was too good to be true but I went on to prusue this relationship. I will call this man Frank. He was handsome, foreign.. African foreign. He was charming could dress so well. The way he smelled so dreamy. He was good with his words charming and I tell you, his the kind of guy you want to be seen with. I loved him, but it was hard to tell. The manipulation, the lies, the making you feel bad for their wrong doing I can go on . I mean these were things that I knew.
I was trapped, not progressing. I was moving but with no direction. Do you know how frustrating that is. Feeling weak and vulnerable. Then he got someone who I knew and was friends with pregnant then I did what I do best . Start occumilating alot of work and move on. So I got more work and shifted my focus. Funny how this strategy didn’t work instead I got into another toxic personal and toxic work relationship. Eventually everything I felt for all these years, the bullying, the haterad towards family and friends the bitterness towards people who have harmed me emotionally and physically surfaced and just blew up. I know I needed time out. So I came home, home where I grew up, home to my mother. I needed to heal

I had to understand to hold on to what we have, the way to find our way back to our soul is to see the mistakes a woman like me trapped can make. Then we can backtrack and repair.
I know for sure at the bottom is the best soil to sow and grow something new again. In that sense, hitting bottom, while extremely painful, is also the sowing ground.

In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. People usually waste time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success. So u listen learn and let go.

Sitting with woman and listen to they stories made me see that nine times out of ten woman with a spiritual/psychological problem that causes her to fall into traps and be badly hurt is a woman who is currently being starved or who has been critically soul starved in the past. When a woman has gone without her cycles or creative needs for a long time, she begins a rampage of- you name it alcohol, drugs, anger, spirituality, oppression of others, promiscuousity, pregnancy, study, creation, control, education, orderliness, body fitness, junk food, to name a few areas of common excess, When woman do this, they are compensating for loss of regular cycle of self – expression, soul-satiation.

Being so consumed with day to day do lists that overwhelm you and under nourished the soul has caused my soul to die. I had to start learning to get up, stand up, no matter how homemade my platform has been, I have to live my best life the most I can, the best I can and hold out for what has real meaning and health for me.
I learnt that it is deadly to be without confidant, without guide, without even a tiny cheering sections as a woman. So I surrounded myself with woman who are noble and liberated.

Know that all these challenges in life give me courage. Courage means to follow your heart. That causes meaningful rebellion, one that would promote change, give a message, cause an awakening. I had to stop talking and obsessing and just do it.

The psychological soul-plan for coming back into one’s own is as :take extra special caution and care to loose yourself into the world gradually, setting up ethical and protective structures by which you gain to measure when something is too much. If you are striving to do something you value, it is so important to surround yourself with people who unequivocally support your work.

Refused to be captured and become one vital woman.