Category: fun

Valentines’ Day: A day for lovers? or for loving oneself…

~ Emmie Reve ~ Leave a comment

Midwinter has set into North America and while most of us are dreaming of warmer days and the sun, this peculiar holiday of Valentines’ Day pops up. Almost as if to validate the desperate souls that hunkered down with a body earlier in the winter; even so “cuffed” couples and couples of convenience don’t count. Solidarity in friendships, family relationships/love don’t count. No the irony and pain of Valentines is to celebrate a certain kind of love: Serious LTR kinds of love. Husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. And every other kind of love can kiss it’s butt. Valentines is very exclusive, and attempts to include other types of relationships/love are often rejected–deemed as pathetic. (the way one of my girlfriends shuddered at the thought of “Galentines” Day will forever taint my mind). I will detail this holiday’s ability to exclude: At the end of the day it celebrates something that not everyone has or can have: A committed love relationship.

Getting more personal, my last Valentines was rather sad and lonely. Not because I was single, but because I wasn’t. In fact all my unpleasant Valentines fell into years where I was “with” somebody. And that says a lot. It says that Valentines reminds us that the amorous relationships we have are not always the perfect mainstream ones that are deemed as acceptable. Last year my ex only texted me “Happy Valentines” on the day of. There were no gifts, no dinner, no chocolates or flowers. Not even a hang out or make out session. It really framed how much it sucked to be in a non serious relationship, and the sting that this holiday highlights. I really cared about my ex and I’m not bitter that he didn’t take me out for an overpriced dinner, buy me flowers or jewelry. But as a make-up expert, it hurt me that I had didn’t have a reason to preen, I had no pressure at all. It left me feeling more unloved than ever. And looking into my past, even the years where I had a legitimate boyfriend, I always stressed that we would not celebrate epically enough to represent our love relationship. Feeling actually loved on Valentines days is so hard to attain, in my experience. And again, I’m not bitter, just sad and feeling like I’m missing out. Is this why this holiday was created? The exclude the uncoupled and put pressure on the coupled to buy things?

This year, I’m actually happy for once. I’m at peace and not even the slightest bit lonely or desperate. How did I get so pleasantly at ease and grateful to be single? I feel the hurt is not worth it. I am not expected to celebrate Valentines Day nor do I want to. I am so thankful for the chance to overlook it, and to watch the real, actual healthy love couples celebrate it. And I can be happy for them. Those lucky ones that have found that someone special and it means something. And I feel lucky myself. Lucky to find myself excluded from Valentines, a holiday that has eluded to give me joy even when I was in a relationship. We all need something real something to celebrate. Or not at all.   

I believe self love, acceptance and respect is where it all begins. And understanding we are whole beings even if we are not coupled. Heart shapes represent any kind of love.❤️

How to make use of old perfumes and scents!

~ Emmie Reve ~ Leave a comment

I started this journal with an entry about perfumes and scents! This was all the way in 2013 when I was working in fashion retail and started learning more about the cosmetics world! There is lots to know about cosmetics and make-up and I feel it continues to be an important tool for self expression in today’s confusing world of hustle and bustle for the bottom line and political power. None of these worldly ideals have the power to make us happy or feel well adjusted with our bodies or with our soul. While the perfect lipstick colour will not make world domination anywhere closer, for most people, feeling good about our appearances is a good place to start. And in that sentiment, a lovely scent that completes our look is also essential. We have to enjoy our image physically to help tackle the daily stresses that our lives put us through. Whether it is political, professional, personal or psychological conflicts, something doesn’t change; we are connected to the public world and the face we put on matters…and even the pandemic of epic proportions that imposed extreme social isolation a few years back has not erased the need for beauty.

This is my current mish mash of scents that I relocated to another bottle!

I went through a troubling break up earlier this year. One that was so difficult it caused me to lose some of my hair, question my ability to deserve a long-term fulfilling relationship and distract me from what matters the most: How to be a happy person. It’s not about who I’m with. Who I am with doesn’t give identity, elegance or a sense of feeling whole. These things are found emotionally within and manifested externally. They are the things that give strength and enable us to be useful and helpful to those we care about. Together with all of my own aesthetic experiences and now that I practice working professionally in the beauty industry as a hair stylist…one thing is constant. It has to come from within first. We have to feel beautiful inside first, before we can manifest this beauty outwards. There has to be a sense of wellness. There has to be respect for our time, bodies and minds first. I feel that you can seek advice from any professional, but to be honest, it all begins with how we view ourselves.

What does my ramble have to do with perfumes and scents? I wonder this myself as I write this. I am saying that we all have that pile of cosmetics that we bought on impulse, thinking they would make us happy, but for some reason, the pile sits as a rarely used collection of dusty intentions. Wanting to feel sexy or pretty or fun has made us buy these things: the beauty industry is guilty of ramming products down our throats. Business and marketing makes us buy it, but that’s not how these cosmetics work…technically it all starts with a connection to ourselves. Even the most beautiful people in the world have had adversities to overcome; failed relationships, cheating partners, addictions and been flawed in the most human way. But it’s about how we over come obstacles that make us unique and beautiful. In that way the dusty perfume collection can be seen as some of the ways we tried to escape our troubles, and soothe ourselves.

Instead of buying new scents to feel beautiful, make a “Frankenstein” scent. Gather unused, uninspired scents and mix them all together into an empty spray bottle! The singular scents that I thought I liked, but later stopped wearing can now have new life breathed into them by mixing them all together! Most perfumes have the same alcohol base. That means different scents can be combined and blended seamlessly. There is no recipe or order. Only that most perfume bottles can’t be uncapped. So it may mean tediously filing another bottle spray by spray by spritzing it in! But it’s worth it to not waste the leftover scents! Blending them all together will make something that smells amazing. Like a rebirth, lifting us from the ashes of our mistakes. It’s a renewal on the smallest most simplest level just by spritzing it on and donning a smile.

This is the spray bottle I’m using. I suggest using a glass one for perfumes, but a small plastic one will do! I will probably decorate mine by putting in small crystals!
From my many years of wearing and blending perfumes, I believe I learned that historically, perfumes and a lot of modern day cosmetics originated in Ancient Egypt! And so did cats! This is Shady.

Mid Summer’s Day Dream…

~ Emmie Reve ~ Leave a comment

This summer 2023 has been a difficult one for me. With my decision to not travel and just save up for winter holidays, I feel I had inadvertently set myself up to be locked up in a slump. City life during the hot months in Toronto is not the most relaxing or pretty. Construction, sticky smoggy air, bad traffic and noise is the reality of summer in the city. I realized how some people, the “elite people”; i.e.. the well-to-do people of Toronto get to go away in their fancy cars and drive up north to the various scenic lakefront properties they own or rent. They get to have a real getaway rather easily, and spend lots of their weekends by sitting on the dock on a quiet lake and watching the waves, and just truly recharging.

I feel like this summer in particular, I had the need for escaping. But unfortunately, I could not. Certain aspects of my personal life and work life had gotten hectic; not being able to foresee this happening earlier this spring, as mid summer arrived, I was hit! I was left in a lot of emotional turmoil with no exit or break from it in sight. I did end up taking a week off of work…but then what? I thought to myself on the first few days of my staycation..This so called “vacation” ultimately would require me to work at turning off my brain and anxieties without a true physical getaway. I had to plan local outings, I had to find my friends. And on days where those options weren’t available I was truly unhappy. There is nothing worse that being on a vacation where I could not escape the boredom or malaise that was my life while it was summer in the city. I don’t have AC, so imagine me heatedly crouched over my bed post to stretch myself to the window to smoke mini cigars. That was my one of my escapes as weak as it was.

My week of being off work is coming to an end and I still think about how if I had been more privileged or luckier in life I too could have been one of those free people up at the cottage when us low folk down here have to work and toil. And if not work and toil, take staycations that are just unpaid unrelaxing wastes of times. My only solace was to splurge a bit and spend a half a day at a nice pool lounge in downtown Toronto. With no one bothering me and my surroundings being totally new, it was a lovely change from my usual routine. Sitting poolside or near any body of water always seems to calm me and the cool breeze of the rooftop pool was comforting. It made me forget some of my pains.

After that moment of solitude by the pool…I feel it is possible to have some beautiful moments in trying times…looking at what possessions and resources others had and what I didn’t was not what I should have been doing. But after a week off with some torturously boring moments where I wondered what I was doing with my life, I had the advantage of an good expanse of time; where I was able to examine my own resources and mobilize to use them. I was able to put down my mini cigar and realize that there are little pieces of paradise in the city and in our minds if we only allow ourselves to find it.

Working hard or hardly working? When at the poolside who really knows? This was my tiny escape from summer in Toronto with no cottage.