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Happy holidays bohindie babes!! With a pinch of magic, we thoughtfully put together a holiday gift guide to find the perfect present for your loved one. Whether it's for your friends, your main squeeze, mama bird, or even for yourself, we've got you covered. We handpicked each of these jewels with you babes in mind!
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]]>As some may know, Bohindie Stream has just finished shooting the lookbook for the new Summer collection. As the social media intern, I got to help out with styling and planning some of the shoot. Brainstorming and collaborating on ideas and concepts, then being able to see it all come to life was extremely satisfying. In my opinion, the most important thing to keep in mind is the mood of the entire collection. As fun as it is to imagine new ideas and possible styles, it's important to remember that there is a goal to be achieved. However, after the conceptual part of the process was complete, meeting everyone was so much fun, and it was great to have everyone come together. Other than being kicked out of our original location, the shoot itself was the most memorable part of this journey. Everyone’s energy was great and it was amazing to see each person bring their own individuality and skill to the table and be apart of something bigger than us alone, and become one. From my point of view, I am really excited to see the reaction to this new collection after seeing all of the effort put in by everyone to make it all happen.
Written by Amber Ladyman
]]>The first piece of Selenite I ever interacted with came into my life as a gift. It was a special crystal to me, laden with the association of the friend who had bestowed it upon me. A few months after receiving it, as I was packing up my apartment before traveling, this beloved crystal of mine fell from my bookshelf and landed hard on our old brick floor, cracking into two pieces.
I regretfully examined the two new fragments, and my disappointment quickly alchemized into awe at the perfect way in which the Selenite had broken. Made of gypsum, Selenite is a soft sulfate mineral, and the smooth ridges of the perfect crystalline structure had maintained its integrity through the damage. The pieces fit together perfectly, no part lost, rather more beautiful from its fracture and in the way the pieces came back together. How appropriate that this pearly, celestial treasure, formed when the salt water of the ocean evaporates, is named after Selene, the moon goddess and influencer of the tides.
Highly associated with purity, peace, and higher consciousness, Selenite never needs to be cleansed; In fact, vibrating with a frequency of 244.5 MHZ (that unit means one million cycles per second!), Selenite doesn’t need to be cleansed and charged like other varieties, and for this reason is used as source energy to charge other crystals. To ensure that all your crystals are always cleansed and ready to protect your energy, charge them up overnight on a selenite plate: as powerful as it is pretty!
I was absolutely amazed to discover that Selenite produces 800 negative ions per cubic centimeter in the surrounding air, which is double what a pristine forest produces per the same surface area. It is absolutely incredible that this crystal, which you can carry with you and keep in your home, is twice as powerful as a healing-grade forest! No wonder this crystal is associated with the Crown Chakra, divine spirit, and unity.
Written by: Melanie Rose
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The magic of gratitude is that it never leaves us. No matter how dire the circumstances or how small the golden nugget we may unearth, a glittering, golden space always exists within… waiting for our return. Discovering a connection to this quality in yourself is like owning a pair of enchanted glasses that allow you to always see clearly the reality of a situation when you can’t find your way through the fog.
I’ve been lucky enough to travel considerably as a young independent adult, and in September of last year, I woke one a grey morning in Milan with unexpected weight of unbearable frustration pressing down on me. I was temporarily sharing space in a small studio apartment at the time, and the lack of connection I was feeling with those around me brought up a deep struggle with the familiar human experiences of social isolation and personal insecurity. I found myself going through the motions in a new land and ultimately spending my time in Italy dully trailing behind a group and wasting time between opportunities to eat pasta, lost more in a detached corner of my mind than the strange and exciting streets.
The frustration happened all at once: why was I throwing this away? I recognized in some tiny corner of my consciousness how absurd it was that I had gone through the trouble of crossing an entire ocean only to waste time like this, but I just couldn’t find my way out of the isolated fog that had caught me. In the early morning darkness with my roommate still snoring on the bunk below me, I rummaged for my notebook, drunk from the fizzing buildup of apathy, pen in hand and blank page before me, ready to scrawl my inward-directed frustrations until the ink was dry-- but what came to the paper took me by surprise. It looked something like this:
Yes, all the cash got stolen at the train station, but at least we have the debit cards still. I don’t have anyone to say this to, but at least I have this notebook to write in. I have enough Euro to afford a coffee this morning. If I’m going to be lonely and drink coffee, at least I get to do it in Italy. At least I had a warm bed to sleep in last night. I woke up alive...
Almost as quickly as it had come on, I was done, drained out, flipping through the pages I had filled with every single element of my current condition I could conjure to be grateful for. Rereading my own inky handwriting, I realized that every single thing I had written down, all four pages of it, was true. It was a turning point in my travels and in my life: I was free.
This is what the practice of gratitude can do. It’s powerful, simple, sweet stuff, and the good news is that you don’t have to wait until you’re reeling like I was. You can practice gratitude as a moving meditation throughout your day, as I’ve come to do (“I got to see a hummingbird today!”) or whenever your mind doesn’t know what else to latch on to, keeping your stream of consciousness from losing its way in the muddied waters of anxiety or negativity. The more you train your mind to think this way, the more second-nature it becomes, and is scientifically proven to make you happier.
The next time you’re feeling lost or down, I challenge you to write down everything you can think of that you’re thankful for in that moment. Can you find 10 things? 20? When you’re navigating troubled waters and need to ground yourself more than usual, return to this practice as often as you need to. There’s deep solace and joy to be found in a daily ritual of gratitude, and you will never run out of things to be grateful for!
Now is a great time to start: what are you grateful for, in this moment?
Written by Melanie Rose
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I’ll never forget a specific moment I shared with a stranger at a dinner party years ago. I can still remember how he reminded me of a youthful Santa, rosy-cheeked and beaming at me, cookie in hand.
“Are you an artist?” I asked him, noticing the fresh paint splatters on his arms and boots.
“Eh, you know, everyone’s an artist,” he shrugged simply back to me, attention already redirected to the dog who had wandered underfoot.
At the time I was a recent graduate, working through a sense of restlessness, as many students do. What did I want to do with my life? What did I even enjoy? I didn’t have any clear vision for myself. As I grew up and started to focus on how I would support myself as an adult, outlets for expression faded out of my life.
The stories I told myself as a college student had morphed from the childhood imagined adventures I scrawled down in diaries to repetitive lies: I am not talented enough. I am not creative. I despaired over my college catalog and skimmed over the creative majors my heart felt drawn to without any thought beyond: I am not talented enough. I am not creative.
Fast forward back to this dinner party: “eh, everyone’s an artist.”
The casual, pure way he said this will never leave me-- because it’s the truth. Everyone is an artist, and my journey of reconnecting to my own creativity has been one of the most exciting and engaging adventures I’ve experienced in my life!
“A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner—continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you—is a fine art, in and of itself.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
First things first: connect to yourself to connect to your creativity. Show up for yourself and do some deep work by asking yourself:
What brings me the most joy?
When do I feel the most free?
If I could do anything, what would I do?
Work with creativity-boosting crystals like amethyst to help you visualize and invent, and try your best to let go of any feeling of guilt or inadequacy that might surface as you begin this process!
Once you’ve found what your soul is connected to, release yourself from any burden of self-criticism, comparison, and judgement that you might have accumulated through the years. This can be a difficult part of the process, but it’s vital; keep your intentions in check; you don’t need to be the next Picasso. You’re in this to enjoy and express yourself!
Just like mindfulness, creativity is like a muscle you can strengthen by exercising. Keep it in shape and show up to your art; you will begin to find yourself discovering more and more inspiration throughout the rest of your day! Carry a small notebook in your bag so when you do have these creative jolts, all your magical inspirations are kept safe until you can revisit them again. Build a ritual in your life around your creative time. Stay dedicated to finding that soul connection, free of judgement for how the project might turn out and rather in the simple, meditative joy of creation. The beauty of creating is that we will never be done with our art, and it will never be perfect; our creativity will continue to challenge us and evolve with us throughout our lives.
You are enough, and you deserve to express yourself fully. Happy creating!
Written by Melanie Rose
Images from Pinterest
Opal: the crystal of self-worth, confidence, lightness, creativity, and spontaneity. These sparkling gemstones truly dance in the light! Elements of earth, water, and fire all sing out from crystal opal, one of the most distinctly vibrant and recognizable stones due to its natural iridescence.
Several cultures in the pre-modern world believed opal to be the most powerful gem due to its spectacular vibrancy, a handheld representation of natural occurrences: the ever-flowing ocean, electric sparks of lightning, the dancing of a hot fire, all flashing through this crystal’s diffraction.
The opal, a delicate mineral formed of silica deposits, is 20% water-- and therefore holds a powerful space for energy and manifestation. These are highly absorbent and reflect what is around them, amplifying any energies it absorbs, so it’s important to stay mindful and positive when wearing opal! We love wearing opal jewelry for the sweet, light energy it carries and amplifies within. A good way to care for these crystals is to submerge them in water for a few hours at a time, to prevent them from drying out or even cracking over time. This will keep them hydrated and charged up!
Opals symbolize inner radiance and intuition because of their highly reflective quality, identified strongly with expressing self-confidence and passion in one’s life. If you’re looking to cultivate a stronger connection to your creativity and higher self, this angelic stone provides an ideal energetic mirror to help you see your true self and creative expression more clearly.
These are purely unique specimens, just like we are; no two opals will ever be the same. This serves as a physical manifestation of and freeing reminder that we are all divinely different and carry a unique light to reflect into the world!
As an Earth sign, I am so grateful to live in a time when self-care has become a sizzling conversation for the collective. I’ve always had a love for personal care that borders on being excessive - true, I might be a bit of an indulgent Taurus!-- but I have always found a deep appreciation for the simple pleasures in life & real value in connecting to myself.
With the daily, unyielding exposure to cortisol-triggering stressors, we manage a beast of stress in this modern world, so it’s no surprise that we’re in the midst of a massive shift to personal re-centering and grounding. How fortunate are we to be able to participate in the active conversation of redefining wellness and the acceptance of prioritizing “me-time”?
The way we practice and develop this relationship to ourselves is as unique and multifaceted as we are! Self-care can mean a candlelit bath and cozy book, having a private concert and dance party in your room, or simply allowing yourself an early bedtime if you feel your body craving rest. There’s no one-size-fits all for the practice of returning to yourself, and the explorations along the way hold a space for fun and reflection in our lives as we discover what recharges us. What have you noticed along your path that works for you?
The most beautiful part of the ritualistic self-care movement is that we will return to it, to ourselves, again and again- and that when we care for ourselves deeply, the loving undercurrent of our intentions is that we will be able to show up for the relationships in our lives as a brighter and more loving presence. The mission of spreading love into the world starts within ourselves first, until we can then overflow to others.
You already know this, but we’re big believers in affirmations, so here it is, just in case you need a daily reminder: you deserve the brightest, happiest, most loving life. Show up for yourself today, so you can show up for the world!
Written by Melanie Rose
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Life is made of days and nights, both the light and the dark, the exhilarating spectrum of joy and heartbreak. As humans we all feel the depth and range of emotional experience: wild, raw, and as out of our control as a churning ocean tide.
No one can control what happens to them, but we can all learn and develop the skill of positive responses and thinking. We can only ever truly control our experience from the inside out, so why wouldn’t we fill our inner landscape with as much beauty and love as we can?
The “good vibes only” movement is not just an idealistic concept or trend. There’s real studies behind the power of affirmations and intentions! You might already be familiar with the famous experiment by Masaru Emoto: in the early ‘90s, this Japanese scientist exposed frozen water crystals to different thoughts and feelings by presenting songs, photos, words, and prayers to the samples. Amazingly, he found that the molecular structure of samples exposed to positive messages, such as “love and gratitude”, developed a beautiful structure resembling a complex sparkling snowflake, while samples exposed to negativity such as “you make me sick”, displayed irregular and incomplete expressions.
We can actually see these variations at the molecular level in water- which also happens to make up over 60% of the human body- so just imagine the power of generating our own positive thoughts and intentions! The way we speak to ourselves and others has a very real effect. What kind of ripple are you sending into the universe? Exercising a positive outlook can take time to cultivate, but it’s something that gets stronger with time and practice. Consider the affirmations you assign to your favorite crystals: what does it represent to you? What do you choose to hold in your heart as you move throughout your day?
Just as we can assign beautiful meaning to & cleanse negative energy from our crystals, we can generate loving intention within & cleanse ourselves in each moment. Don’t underestimate the power of positivity in your life, babe- show up for yourself, and never stop tending to your inner garden with love and care!
Written by Melanie Rose
]]>A new time is here, a new year, a new stage, a new blank screen, a new Bohindie Stream Blog and a New Writer. A new energy. What better way to signify this time of new beginnings than to bask in last year’s energy, and use that energy to transform this fresh, new, crisp, gently flowing, white sheet of an untouched year, into the best year of all our years.
We as humans all encounter ebb's and flows, ups and downs, roller-coaster rides of emotions, happenings, situations, good and bad in equal measure. No matter what our overall feeling of an entire glorious year is, it is undoubtedly just that. Glorious. The bad and the good all hold such large, vibrating energy surrounding them and when used to our advantages, these extreme amounts of energy can be used to enhance us as human beings. From experience, there are 5 things to keep in mind to harness energy for good, or at least 5 that I find enhancing for me. 5 things I learnt, 5 things that have allowed me to begin this year on cloud 600.
1. UNDERSTANDING - Getting down and in depth with your own emotions can be blindingly overwhelming for most. Understanding what has caused certain emotions, situations, and feelings to surface for me, often is the hardest part of moving forward from things. But it is so needed in order to become in tune with yourself, understand what makes you tick and what you can and cannot with hold. We as Humans, are complex creatures, get to know yourself first.
2. ACCEPTANCE - No doubt, bad things will happen. Whether it be something as simple as scuffing a shoe, or as large as losing a loved one. It is imperative to accept what has happened. That it is life, and that life pans out how it is meant to. Each occurring thing that enters our lives is MEANT for us, even the ugly. Learn to spread your arms open and welcome the ugly, just as you do the beautiful. They are transformative and vital parts of the journey to becoming who you are and who you are meant to be.
3. MOTIVATION - Ah, our dear friend Motivation, one that is so tricky to track down and seldom sticks to planned hangouts. I have found over time that past happenings and the burning fires or dark and deep blue oceans they have brought about inside your gut are fuel in every sense of the word. Use whatever swirling source it has conjured up, to your advantage and allow it to push you so much further than you ever thought was possible for your limbs (or brain limbs) to take you. The fire inside only dies if you let it. Revisit the past happenings as many times as you need. Remind yourself what you learnt from those happenings, how they made you feel and use it as rocket fuel. Once accepted, they are a brain bound photo album to flick through when you need a hit. Use it.
4. PROGRESSION - We all as human beings on this big ball of blue and green, make mistakes, mishaps, great choices, passion dripped gestures, exceptional movements, giant leaps and ugly failures. The beauty about this life is the amount of time we have to filter through and progress. Progress from the bad things, change and alter our new moves, even the smallest change. Manifest the magic things and fill our lives with more and more. Each life trip comes with a lesson, and that lesson guides us to our next choice. We are the makers of our todays, our tomorrows and our next years. Yesterdays are merely stepping stones, some a little wonky, some we lose our balance, and some are filled with wonks and wonders in equal measure. Today is new and fresh. Put your teachings into action, the rest falls into place.
5. LETTING GO - Everyone instinctively sets out a path in their brains that they wish to stay upon, a path that includes milestones and marriage and babies or no babies and no marriage or a gold plated career or a simple home in a barley field with small dogs and 6 chickens or to walk the moon, or to write movies for big time humans. whichever part of the spectrum your path fits into. Let. It. Go. The constant need to be on the path we have told ourselves we must be on in order to be fulfilled and happy, stops us from being just that. It clamps our freedom and puts us in boxes like battery hens. The fun in life, when the true adventure begins, is when you allow your path to simply become a goal, an end point, the real deal, and embrace the crazy, passionate, odd, breathtakingly unplanned journey to your destination. Do not hold back, let life take you, and have faith in the knowledge that you shall always end up where you are meant to be, with who you are meant to be with, doing exactly what you are meant to be doing. Make the journey a crazy one. Let loose.
Life begins with life's past. Every year, Every month, Every week, Every day. It makes your future. Allow it to expand all corners of your soul, grow from it, inhale it, bask in it and own it. Hold it close and simmer in it. It is the driving force that creates today.
I hope you are able to make this year the most extraordinary year you have been blessed to enter, and find some form of solitude in the steps above, use them at your will, or use them at your wont. Simply know that life is waiting for you, this fresh new beginning alongside it. And that you have everything it takes to achieve unimaginable greatness inside your very birth given fibers.
So much joy,
Connie P Xo
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This past Sunday, we at Bohindie Stream had a very cool photo shoot in the small, antebellum town known as Thomasville, Georgia. The old-south aesthetic and interesting, local shops make Thomasville a must-go location for anyone within a day’s drive. Just make sure to get there before 6pm for the shops and definitely don’t go on Sunday if you want anywhere to be open.
The second place to go is probably my favorite of the three and it’s the Sweet Grass Cheese Shop. This really is a cheese and hard meat shop that kind of morphed into a great, charming little restaurant. Don’t expect to be going anywhere fast and don’t mind the wait, enjoy it. This place is beautiful and the food is amazing. It’s not your traditional restaurant in that it’s primarily group appetizer centric. It’s a place to go and talk while enjoying tasty and unusual local foods.
The last place on the list is a great place to get dessert after a nice day on the town. While Smallcakes may be a franchise, the Thomasville location is certainly the best I’ve been to. The cupcakes are great and this is a wonderful place to end off any date night.
These are all good recommendations, but don’t stop there. Go and explore Thomasville yourself. Find your own favorite spots!
Written by Charlie Barrineau