Girls Trip to Las Vegas - A Photo Story

Hey y'all,

This post is a long time coming! I originally planned to put up these photos from our girls trip to Las Vegas late last year. Unfortunately, I just got really tired and could not bring myself to blog at all. I was still active on social media (mostly Instagram), and putting a lot of efforts into my podcast (Mommy Oyoyo). Admittedly, I also toyed with the idea of shutting down the blog - I know you're rolling your eyes at me, because it's not the first, second or third time I've thought about it. Anyway, as you can tell, the blog has not been shut down, LOL.

I hope you enjoy the photos. Scroll down to the end for a little note on why I went to Las Vegas, and what we got up to while there.

5 Lessons Learned from Ending or Losing a Friendship

This is a hard post for me to write. In the past two years, I have lost three friends that I thought would be lifetime friendships. I won't go into the details about each of them, so that I don't rehash hurt feelings (on their sides, or mine), but I do want to talk about the experience of losing friends. I imagine it's weird to lose that many friends in a short amount of time, but it is what it is.

BERRY VLOG - Random Questions with Verastic!

I finally met Vera, whose blog I have followed for the past few years, in December. When she told me she would be in Atlanta during Christmas, I immediately jumped at the chance to stop by for a visit with her. Little Miss Cocoa and Ada Verastic were friendly towards each other, and Vera and I talked like we were old friends. I thought it would be nice to film a video with her - I'd like to do more collaboration videos this year, and we had a blast answering the questions from the 300 Writing Prompts journal (remember when I tried to make it a regular series, called BERRY WRITES on the blog?). Anyway, I hope you enjoy our video.

Have a great weekend!

Something is brewing - Tea With Cubes

If you follow me on Instagram you may have noticed my teaser about something brewing. Well it's time to reveal what it is!

Brunch at Henry's Louisiana

WARNING: If you are hungry, go and get something to eat BEFORE reading this post. If you don't, you can't blame me for whatever happens to your tummy :)

One of the things I planned for this year was to have a quarterly brunch outing with my sister and cousins. At this point in our lives, everyone's busy with families, growing families, careers and more, so it can get difficult to really catch up with one another. It's not as if we don't see or even chat regularly on Whatsapp. But I also wanted for us to be able to get away from the husbands and children and just be girls (or women). It's nice to "escape" for an hour or two, innit?

For this outing, we stayed close to home and went to Henry's Louisiana Grill.

God Works in Mysterious Ways

In 2010, I was in my late twenties, working an okay job in Atlanta and wondering whether I should move back to Nigeria. You see, I left Nigeria at 15 years old and I didn't know what it was like to experience Nigeria as an adult. Lots of young Nigerians like me had moved back and seemed to be having these great, awesome lives. I really wanted to find out what opportunities there were out there for me, so after praying for a bit, I made the decision to move back right after my sister's wedding and my birthday in 2011.

Goofing Around With My Cousin Rexie

Hiya!

I hope you had a lovely weekend, as I did. I didn't do a lot, but attended a seminar in church that was quite eye-opening and powerful. It definitely cemented in my heart that God does know us BEFORE we're even conceived or born.

Anyway, you guys have met my cousin Rexie before. We went to this event together (the photos from today's post are actually from that day). We've talked about Aso Ebi drama on my Youtube channel. And she's appeared here and there on the blog.

Radisson Blu Lagos Weekend

AM I IN NIGERIA?!?!?!?!?!! And I didn't tell anybody?!?!?!?!?!? The answer is no. These are old photos from when I hung out with my friend Feyfey. I actually met her through blogging, and you might remember her from this post. Anyways, some time this year before this happened, we met up to have drinks, food and just talk about life in general. She's such a sweetheart, and I'm really thankful for her (and others) who I've met through blogging.

Visiting Washington DC Weekend - Part 1

Hey y'all,

How was your weekend? Mine was good but very very tiring. The fact that I have this post up means that I love you guys, and I wanted something for you to read - because all I want to do is SLEEP! If you saw my Snapchat story over the weekend, you know that we barely got any sleep between Friday night and Sunday morning. In fact, we slept for 3 hours on Saturday night after my friend's wedding as we had to be out of the hotel by 4:30am to catch our early flight back to Atlanta. I'm going to break up this post into 2 parts because I have too many photos... what else is new?

Style Swap with Nemi

Hello there Double D's!

How was your weekend? Mine was pretty darn good with lots of laughs - including going out for appetizers and desserts with my sister and cousin, and finding out that I forgot my handbag at the restaurant AFTER WE GOT HOME!!! I'm the only person that such things happen to, but thank God, they kept my bag and I rushed back over to get it :)

This is a video I promised a long time ago, but never got around to editing.

Our UK Family Holiday - Part 5 - Girls Day Out

Let's get right into the next part of my family's UK Holiday series, shall we?

Remember in my Travel Tips for Large Groups, I mentioned that you should schedule personal/alone time? On the Sunday while we were in England, we were all free to do anything we wanted. I decided to meet up with an old friend from secondary school (she blogs here), and a new friend from blogging (she blogs here).

We met up near here, which I've already blogged about.

ASK!

While doing a little reflecting recently, it came to my attention (again) that while many would call me a good friend, there's a particular habit that I think needs to change. As regular readers of my blog, it's fairly obvious that I'm a transparent person and it's not hard to air out my feelings or share my experiences. I have not always been so outspoken. In fact, I was painfully shy as a child. Even now, sometimes I get frozen in a corner if I'm in a room full of people I don't know. One of the ways I used to combat my shy nature was by being more outspoken. Being this way has its pros and cons.

Style Swap with Me!

Hey everyone!!!

Thanks for the birthday messages! I was really touched by every single one of them, both online and offline :) I'm back in Atlanta now, after traveling for almost 2 weeks. Our time in the UK was so much fun - I'm pretty certain those who follow me on Snapchat can attest to that. There were a lot of activities planned, and one of them was an outing with fellow blogger Nemi aka True Sorella.

We ended up hanging out in one of the H&M stores on Oxford Street, and she came up with an idea for us to style each other in different outfits. She's been able to get her video of me edited already, so I thought it'd be fun to share here. I have a backlog of videos to edit, but I'll try to get hers done soon as well.

Enjoy!

Berry's Bible Study - Praying For Others

I'm in the middle of a Romans Bible Study with some ladies, and in the first chapter of Romans, a certain verse struck me and stayed with me. I shared it and my thoughts on Instagram and thought to share it here too.

Berry Atlanta Weekend

Hey hey hey!

Who's excited for Christmas?!?!? I'm looking forward to it but December seems like it's going to be really busy, and honestly, I'd really like to get some time to rest. While here in Atlanta, resting hasn't been possible - we've been out and about, and Cakes even had orders!

Anyways, my sister, brother, his friends, Cakes and I had a fun weekend that consisted of visiting a few places in Atlanta. Where we live isn't in Atlanta proper, so getting to go to the city made me feel like a tourist. Have you ever noticed that when you live in a city, you don't take advantage of what it has to offer tourism-wise? There are so many places in Atlanta that I've never been to and I lived here for 7 years! I think it's a good point to make a habit of discovering the city you live in. Have a staycation sometimes :)

Berry Thanksgiving Weekend

'Ey yo!

How are y'all doing?! How was your weekend? How many of you got into Black Friday shopping? Can I just say that it makes me chuckle that Black Friday is now a thing in Nigeria? Most of the deals I saw floating around were online though, so shouldn't it really be Cyber Monday? Ah well.

The whole week was really full - family photos, Thanksgiving dinner, outings, etc, so I'll break them up into different posts. This one will feature very few photos from the dinner itself.

Berry New Beginnings Weekend

Hiiiiiiiiii!

How are ya? My Monday's off to a funny start, but I'm praying for a great week regardless. What did you get up to this weekend? Mine was full of new beginnings for friends of mine - I went to a baby shower on Saturday, and yesterday was one of Cakes' best friend's introduction. For non-Nigerian readers, an Introduction is held after a guy proposes to his girlfriend - his family is required by tradition to visit her family to introduce themselves and make their intent known. It's pretty funny because it's usually stated as, "We're from so-and-so... our son was passing by and saw a very beautiful flower in your garden... we want to pluck the flower with your permission." LOL! It isn't usually a big event, but these days, affluent families are turning it into mini-weddings with canopies/tents, catering, new outfits for everybody, etc. For OUR introduction, I wasn't even there. I was in Lagos, and I heard about it afterwards. Oh well.

I don't have too many photos and didn't take any of myself this weekend - for some reason, Cakes and I "disagreed" quite a bit this weekend, so I did a lot of sulking. And sulking ain't cute, so no photos of me *hides face*

Berry Indy Weekend

Hello Double D's!

I'm specifically calling you DD's today because on my last post someone referred to my large nose, and I responded with the fact that my nose isn't the only big feature on my person. :-| *chuckles to self*

Soooooooo, what did y'all get up to this weekend? My weekend started off packed, and was supposed to be full up until Sunday. And then, I went and ate chicken pie from a fast food place on Saturday afternoon... let's just say that by Saturday night, I was wondering if I was about to die. I was dizzy out of my mind for hours, and ended up throwing up in my friend's house - so embarrassing! Because of that, I canceled my plans and spent the whole of Sunday at home. Anyways, let's get on with the weekend shenanigans aye?

Berry Afropolitan Weekend

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiii,

I had a smashing Friday and that's all I'm going to tell you about :D

Well, yesterday I went to the She Leads Africa SheHive Opener, but I'll post those photos tomorrow. Friday was just FUNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!! So much so that I slept upside down on my bed, and Cakes said I kicked his face the whole night. Since I was so tired I refused to leave my apartment on Saturday. And my shoulders were aching from the 35 push-ups I did on Friday (video on Instagram). This weight must go!

Berry Culinary Weekend

Hey y'all!

How are ya and how was your weekend? I hope none of you are hungry because this post is all food and nothing else! My darling friend invited me to an evening of learning how to make some gourmet, fine dining dishes at The Culinary Academy, and it was honestly a lot of fun! It took longer than I anticipated, but then again, we got there kinda late. Ah well, there was great company, wine, and lots of very very good food!