San Smith

This week's Love Letter!

2013-03-27T14:11:32-04:00

Trying delicious new wines, cheeses (with "cheese honey"!) and chocolates - I've been experimenting with different flavors in all of these items lately and here are my favorites: Dark chocolate with orange rinds (around 70% cacao), Applewood smoked Cheddar and Manchego cheese (Manchego is excellent in place of parmesan!), and I love Lulu B's Pinot Noir - lovely taste and great price!
Using a paper organizer - At the beginning of the year I moved all my organizing over to a paper planner and I'm so glad I did! Technology stresses me out easily and I love being able to doodle information vs just entering it as data. Plus, Kate Spade has gorgeous planner inserts that really brighten up each month's new start!
Discovering the brand, "My Flat in London" - I stumbled onto this brand last week while out with my mother - it's a little kitschy but yet very girly and mature. I was able to get a small purse for a wedding I went to and all the details on it are darling! I also got a lovely necklace, but it wasn't made as well as I hoped. It's still fun to wear though!
Wonderful hand creams to the rescue during the winter weather - My favorites right now are L'Occitane's shea butter hand cream for the day time and Aesop's "Rind Concentrate Body Balm" in the evening - especially over areas that are sensitive from sun exposure!
Pretty and simple new nail polish - I've been wearing mostly neutrals lately because my nails chip easily at work... Essie's "grow stronger" base coat is AMAZING and I highly recommend it if your nails break easily. I also like to wear Essie's Mademoiselle on top of it or Butter London's West End Wonderland - but be warned... I've found the Butter London polishes chip easily. Fortunately, it's not very noticable with the gold glitter polish.
Bow belts for dresses - I haven't had a chance to wear these out yet but I bought a tan belt and pink belt for this spring and I'm very excited about them!! I hope they look super cute with future outfits!
Sugar lip balm by Fresh - I love both the "Rose" balm and the regular one!! These are so soft and smell amazing.
New Q-Pot goodies - I know I've blogged about Q-Pot before when I went to the store in Hawaii, but I was able to buy a few items this month from their new online shop and it was so exciting!! I love the quality and aesthetics of their company <3
Enjoying lovely youtube channels - Ones I've been watching lately: komori841, The Daily Connoisseur and YamadaRuriko.

What are you treasuring this week?

Photo booths in Atlanta

2013-03-26T09:52:23-04:00

I love photo booths! Unfortunately, they can be a little hard to find in Atlanta. I was once joking with my boss that it would be awesome if someone made an app for people to locate photo booths on their phone... and he told me I should just do it myself! I thought that was a great idea - except I don't know how to make an app... So I did the next best thing I could think of: I built a google map to share with all of you!

Below is a map of all the photo booths I've found so far in Atlanta:

View Photobooths in Atlanta in a larger map

The above map has been made public here and I'll continue to update it as I find more photo booths!

The purple camera symbols are for functioning machines that I have visited. The blue question marks are machines that I've heard exist but I haven't visited or when I did they weren't working at the time, and the red exclamations are machines that are no longer at that location.

A few notes on my favorite machines:

The machine at Urban Outfitters has tacky weird borders and is very digital looking, but the value is pretty good... $3 for 3 strips! Great if you just want strips for crafting with friends or something. I like to trim the weird borders off of mine!
I loooove the machine at West Egg! It's the only film machine I've found in Atlanta and the results are beautiful. Black and white only and a little slow to print, but there are couches right next to the machine to sit and relax on.
Definitely check out the booth at Criminal Records - it's one of the coolest shops in Atlanta and even though the booth is digital the print looks really close to film and has soft warm hues.
The digital machines at Discovery Mills mall record a video of you taking the photos and you can upload it to youtube! A neat side feature to digital printing.

Do you know of any photobooths in Atlanta I should add to the list?!

If so, comment and let me know!

Joie de vivre: Window shopping!

2013-02-17T20:33:55-05:00

One of my favorite "free" things to do is window shopping! Often I like to go with a friend, get a cup of coffee and just browse what is out in stores at the moment. This usually only happens once a month though, but fortunately my job requires me to run a lot of little shopping errands so moments for window shopping gets built into my work day sometimes!

Last week I had to go to the mall's Apple store to get a few items, and while I was there I took my lunch break to browse some of the pretty spring fashions that were just put on display.

Pretty spring prints at Karen Millen and J.Crew. I'm not very familiar with the Karen Millen brand, but I went inside to look based on this cute dress and found they have lots of lovely well made clothes. A ton of "fit and flare" dresses too for spring!

Adorable #putabowonit campaign at Kate Spade right now - I love that black dress in the window display so much! I'm contemplating saving to get it this spring... hmmm!

Casual cuteness at C Wonder - this store is new to my mall and I'm really digging it! It's a bit on the casual preppy side but they use such pretty bright colors that it wins my heart each time I walk in. It doesn't hurt that the interior of the store is mega cute too and they have lovely bicycles and vespas inside! I want to live in there! Ha! ;)

Sometimes I think I enjoy window shopping almost as much as "real" shopping! It gets me inspired about outfit ideas and also helps me decide what sort of things I want to save my money for the next time I am out with my wallet. :)

Last but not least - the above photo isn't from the mall, but actually from a magazine I saw at the salon today. I thought the cute hair bows fit in nicely with the bow styles at Kate Spade right now and I also love the sleek retro look!!