Weekly Roundup
/I'm back! I took a brief break from blogging during my vacation last week. Even though I brought my computer and had a few posts drafted, I never set aside the time to write them. Oops. Who was I kidding, though?!
We did a multi-leg trip starting off in Minneapolis. Ross and I were raised in San Diego, so snow is foreign to us other than on family vacations as kids. I worried we wouldn't be able to handle the cold, but we did surprisingly well, and we adored the snowfall. We got more of a wintery holiday trip when we ventured through the Hudson Valley which was charming AF. The last stop on our trip was New York City where my highlight was crashing the Domino Magazine Design Blog Awards Party and hanging out with blogger buddies in real life!
Ross travels a lot for work (like, half of the year). I used to rarely go with him on his work trips, but my recent travel bug has me wanting to go on (almost) all of them. If 2018 has as much travel as I hope, would you like to see travel guides or posts on our adventures? Basically, it would be a list of restaurants to go to, because that's really what exploring new cities is all about, amiright?
Speaking of which, nearly my entire Minneapolis vacay was dictated by The Faux Martha's restaurant guide. Everywhere I went on that list was a winner. Many of those restaurants were also recommended by my blogger bud and fellow Minnesotan, Alison/Scoops of Deuce Cities Henhouse. She took me on a tour of the Nicole Curtis project houses and it made all of my mid-western dreams come true!
During my travels, I shared on Instagram short videos and set them to some of my favorite music. Instagram rolled out a new feature that lets you keep some of the Stories (which normally last only 24 hours) at the top of your feed long term. So, I saved my vacation adventures there for you, in case you missed them. Note you can only view them on your phone. I got oodles of questions about the songs as well as what app I use to make the movies. I edited the videos with the Flipagram app and sometimes color corrected them with the A Color Story app. Then, I use Continual to cut the videos into 15 second clips for Instagram Stories. Coincidentally, Julia just shared a post about her favorite photo/video editing apps, so take a look at her tips on these two apps and more here. And for those songs I used in each of the videos, here they are:
If you don't have Spotify, you'll only be able to preview those tracks, but you can make a free account easy peasy to hear the full-length tracks.
And for a few things from the internet:
- 6 Ways to Cope With the Holidays When You’re Sad/Alone/Struggling
- I'm not a fan of Pantone's 2018 Color of the Year. What about you?
- Reminder: She Doesn’t Owe Anyone a Hug. Not Even at the Holidays
- Tell Congress to save Net Neutrality - you can still speak up!
- Just when I thought about doing a pie recipe post, Joy the Baker shared the best tips for making pie crust by hand
- Did you know that garden gnomes were once real people employed as decoration by the rich?!
- I have such an itch to fix up a cabin so this freshly updated A-frame not too far from San Diego is giving me all the feels.
Did you catch all of my gift guides from a couple weeks back? Most all of the products are on Amazon, so you could still order them in time for the last day of Hannukah and Christmas Day. Here are each of the guides if you need a refresher:
Psst! If you order your holiday cards by 3pm PST TODAY, Minted will get them to you by Tuesday! I know this because I'm taking advantage of this free rush shipping today, myself with code SHIP17. Did you know you can upload your contact list and it will address the cards for you? That's the ultimate time saver.
Don't forget to weigh in on if you want to see travel posts from me in the future, or if Instagram travel videos suffice. I'm genuinely interested in what you want to hear from me, so feel free to request other things, too!
Happy weekend!
