Happy New Year| 2020

Happy New Year to everyone! Sending positive energy, love and light your way always.

- Creatively Coiled

#OOTD | Our trip to Wakanda #BlackPantherMovie

Unless you have been living under a rock since the announcement in 2017, you know Marvel' s Black Panther is now I  theatres. I'm a big fan of Marvel and their content so of course I've been waiting for February 16th.

In celebration of the release and for the culture, decided to go through my arsenal of fabric and create some accessories. Oh the things you can create with a hot glue gun 😏.

I love a good chambray because it is easy to dress them up. I really this long one by Ava & Viv. And while I'm not a fan of tights or leggings but I like the comfort of these jeggings.

My DIY accessories included button earrings, collar and a mini  draw string bag because... why not?

What was the most recent movie you've seen in theatre? Was it Black Panther? 

Motivation Monday| Social Media

We know social media drives a lot of lives; whether it be yours or people you know. Lot of us take time out of our day to stroll down timelines on Facebook, view the visual art that is Instagram, catch up on what is happening now on Twitter, watch reality on Snapchat or whatever other sites you have access to. 

In a small attempt to keep a positive flow of energy going, I use some of these outlets to post quotes from empowering, motivation and memorable people. 

I'm not a big fan of constantly posting on social media however, thanks to Snapchat and [the shady but cool feature that is] Insta-Snap (or whatever it is called) I post there:

Insta handle - creatively_coiled

What are your favorite types of post on social media?

Ancestry| Tracking Our Lineage

A few years ago, my sister and I talked about tracking our family tree and lineage. While the thought was awesome, it was difficult knowing where to start. With the bit of research we were able to do then, we found a few names and following names, tracked our lineage back to Nigeria. But other than that, we found limited information on our family (ie: names, US location, etc.)

2017 lit a fire under my sister again to start researching; looking at county census and speaking with our parents and grandmother to obtain and confirm information. My sister really hit gold with finding family signatures and tracking children she was able to trace our family back to the early 1800's... Which is more than what we recovered previously.

While confirming names with relatives, we also decided to take an ancestry.com DNA analysis: This requires a saliva sample that is sent off for analysis to identify the region(s) your ancestry is strongest in. 

Well, we received the results in April and discovered that we [of course] are of African decent (87%):

• 45% - Ivory Coast/Ghana
• 21% - Cameroon/Congo
• 8% - Nigeria

We also discovered that of the information reported so far, our family has not ventured too far from the East Coast of the US (NC, VA, DC, MD, VA, NY). This helped us confirm some family members by location to confirm that what my sister previously uncovered were the right records. 

So we know that our lineage is strong in West Africa which means that we were on the right track a few years ago when looking but gives much more than what we were able to find. 

Things to know about DNA analysis: 

• The results may vary from test to test - We used Ancestry DNA however, if we were to take another from a different service it is possible that the result will be different
• Siblings can carry different numbers - Siblings carry a difference percentage of DNA from both parents so your siblings results will of course be different from yours. We only sent in one sample may do it again to compare the results.

Are you tracking your family tree or thought about it? Have you submitted a DNA analysis to any sites? 

Let me know!