Travel Stuff

I have to admit, I wasn't too thrilled about my Christmas present this year from my husband, a Kindle.  In fact, about 3 hours after I opened it on Christmas morning, I uttered the words in a very frantic, almost nonsensical pace "I didn't want a Kindle, I don't believe in them."  He, being the wise ass he is, returned with "What do you mean you don't believe in them, it's not the Tooth Fairy.  Keep it, try it out, you'll end up liking it, you'll see." 

And while I do like it, I have to admit I don't love it.  Yes, it is beyond easy and convenient to travel with.  The weight of it in comparison to my humongous copy of Elle is ridiculously light.  It's easy to read and can store something crazy like a thousand books.  But the things to love about it all relate to convenience. 

The things I love about reading a book have nothing to do with convenience.  I love the smell of the paper, the way it feels to hold it in my hand, seeing the progress I make as I turn the pages.  There are no page numbers in a Kindle, only percentages of progress.  I love going to the library or bookstore and browsing through books.  (Kindle cover via Knitty Bitties)

I also love to be nosy and look around at what people are reading when I am traveling or on vacation, or just sitting on the beach.  I have read several books that I love based purely on the sheer number of people I saw reading the book.  That is getting less and less relevant.  On my flight over, 4/6 people sitting in my immediate area on board were reading Kindle's.  I guess I could strike up a conversation with those people and ask what they're reading, but while many would probably politely indulge me as a curious lover of books, others would surely see it as an invasion of privacy and telll me to mind my own business?  I don't need to open myself up to that type of hostility in the name of books.

The other nice thing about reading a book?  It never runs out of battery power.  My Kindle is dying and I forgot my charger (I remembered both of my cell phone chargers and my laptop charger, I can't possibly travel with yet another charger).  I was so looking forward to finishing up 1000 Gifts by Ann Voskamp on the flight home.  I finally got back into it after taking a 3 week break, and Chapters 7-9 rocked me to the core.  Chapter 8 had me so unglued I had to get up and go to the bathroom for a breather.  Now I will have to find other things to do to fill my time on the 6 hour flight home tonight.   

So while my technological geek husband would love it if I loved my Kindle, I still just like it.  I will continue to carry it around, but I will be making a trip to the library soon just to get my hand wrapped around a real, good old fashioned book. 

In other non-related news, I filled up some time last night walking around my hotel and taking pictures of the outrageously consistent themed decor of blue.  Want to have a look?  I apologize for the bad cell phone pics...these pics below are of the lobby area.  While I love a consistent color palette, this is a little over the top for me.  Between the pleather seating areas, the feathered lamp shades and the pulsing techno music playing 24/7, I feel like I'm in a middle aged hipster's dream.

The outdoor dining/bar area was very pretty, but again, it was just SO much, I felt very distracted sitting at the bar having a drink with my coworker.  We both just kept looking around, almost in amazement at all the stuff to look at.

These huge apothecary jars were very pretty.  The intentional, very precise mixing of the chairs at each table almost seemed forced though.  What do you think? 

All the corridors are painted blue and the mirrors are also blue.  Standing in the long hallway taking a picture, I almost felt like I was in the Shining.  I half expected a kid to come around the corner riding a tricycle. 

There is plenty of seating area throughout the hotel in case you get tired at any point through your hipster journey.

At least the rooms are pretty simple and basic.  The only hint of blue is the painted ceiling and the patterned toss pillows.

Each room comes with an iPad.  I keep sliding around on that darn swivel chair though. 

And here is the reason we all travel right?  The little sample size goodies.  This line is pretty good and smells nice.  But I still like the Kiehl's travel samples I get when I stay at the 60 Thompson.  Please tell me you all take those travel samples home with you right?  It's a waste if you don't because they just throw them away after you leave.  Don't worry, I just take the one I use.  I'm not pilfering them like Ross on that episode of Friends.

I will leave you with this picture.  This toilet paper holder configuration has got to be the worst case of functional design I have seen in a while.  I have to twist every time I need the paper, and then it doesn't unroll properly, so the paper comes off 1 sheet at a time.  I keep taking it off that little holder and putting it on the floor, and housekeeping keeps putting it back.  A minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things though ;)

And that concludes this post on travel stuff.  So tell me, do you have a Kindle and what are your thoughts on it?  Love it, like it, hate it?

(Bad camera phone pictures brought to you by Droid, as I'm not hipster enough to have an iPhone).

Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner!!

The winner of the Knitty Bitties camera strap cover is:

Thanks to everyone who entered.  Over 75 of you entered, that's the best reaction I've ever had to a giveaway!  Andrea recently added some new colorways to her shop, so even if you didn't win, please go on over and check it out!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Oh, and don't forget, you can still head on over to Cherry Tree Lane to enter a giveaway that I'm hosting.

You've Got Questions, I've Got Answers Part 1

 Thanks for all the questions everyone!  Fun, interesting and thoughtful questions that I thank each of you for taking the time to ask.  You guys are the best.  If you have a blog I'm linking back to you, and if you all get a chance, stop by and say hi to each other.  There's been a lot of blog love lately in the blogosphere, maybe because it's love week, and it gives me the warm and fuzzies!  Let's lift each other up and support each other, even if its just with a simple "hi!".

So that I don't bore your socks off, how about I break it up into 2 posts over the course of the next couple of days?

Allessandra asked:

What would be the first thing you'd do if you had 24 hours to dedicate to yourself?

The very first thing, or just in general the first thing?  If I hadn't had a manicure/pedicure lately, I'd go get one of those because I love freshly painted nails.  Then I would go get coffee and read a book or magazine in my home all by myself.  I love being at home and I especially love having my home to myself sometimes.  Anyone else love to have the house to yourself and relish in the silence?

Jen asked:
What is your favorite go-to accessory?
How many white t-shirts do you own? Mine are out of control.

My favorite go-to accessory is a belt.  It can dress up a pair of jeans, and make a sloppy shirt look more refined.  It can accentuate your waists and hold your pants up!  I love belts, but I only have 3-4 that I wear on a consistent basis so don't feel like it's a pair of earrings and you have to own 20.  A casual black and brown one for pants and jeans, and a dressier thin or thick (whatever your preference) black or some sort of metallic colored belt will do just fine!

And you would think I would own 20 t-shirts since I work for a t-shirt company, but I don't.  I own 3 short sleeve and 2 long sleeved, and I think 4 white tank tops.  I am not counting the old ones though that I now wear around the house and as pj's because they are stained or dingy.  I have about 5 of those maybe?

Laura asked:

#1 I'd love to know more about your job. 

I'm always inspired by women that have creative and unique jobs.

Wow, this was the most asked question.  Let's see, where do I start?  Basically, I work in the Sales department of a fairly large, but still very small, clothing company that is best known as a T-shirt brand.  I'm an Account Executive for the brand, which means I am assigned a group of accounts and my job is to manage every aspect of their business.  My accounts are Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus, Barney's and Nordstrom.  Yes, we have some pretty good customers :).  

So it starts with the "Market" process, this is where the traveling comes in, and also the fun part (the market part is fun, not necessarily the traveling part).  I go to NY and Dallas on occasion to see Neiman Marcus at their headquarters, and sell the buyers our latest collection in our showroom in NY.  This happens each time we have a new collection, at least 6 times a year. Why NY?  Well, while there are many showrooms here in LA, NY is still very much the hub of it all and I can see all my buyers at the same time.  I get up and present the line and try to steer them towards certain styles that I think will sell well for them or that our Design team think are important.  

Once we've chosen their "buy", I come home and work on maintaining the account.   This is the unglamorous, not so fun part.  I work with production to make sure we ship product to our accounts on time so the shelves and racks stay stocked.  Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't.  When product is late, the buyers don't call up production and yell at them, they call up me and yell at me!  I also look at how well things are selling or not selling.  If something is selling well, I try to get them to reorder more of that style.  Last week I brought in 2 pretty large reorders so yay for me!  When things don't sell well, the buyers call me up and yell at me for selling them sucky product.  I also occasionally visit stores to see how our product is represented.  If it looks horrendous, I get to call up my buyer and yell at them!  :)  Bloomingdale's wants to move our space in a bunch of their local LA stores, so for the next 2 days I'll be visiting stores to check out the new homes and report back to corporate if they're acceptable or not.

And that's about it.  In between there's a lot of spreadsheets, phone conversations and emailing back and forth just like any other job.  The subject matter in mine just happens to be clothes, which is fun.  I love my job and I hate it sometimes too.  At the end of the day though I feel lucky to have found a niche that is interesting and relatively 'fun', but when tempers start to flare and people start getting pissy and all worked up, my favorite saying is "Simmer down everyone, it's just clothes.  We're not saving lives or anything."

#2 Are you a California native? If you could live anywhere else where would you choose?

Yes, I am a California native, born and bred here.  I loved it for most of my life, but in the last couple of years the love affair with California started to fade.  I started to feel congested by the small yards, and it bums me out that homes are so expensive and the general cost of living is so high.  The traffic sucks too.  I can really see myself back East somewhere on a smallish farm living rather simply where I can experience true seasons.  Maybe Connecticut or Vermont?  Sounds bizarre, but I really crave simplicity and a much more stress free life so badly.  But this is where God has placed me and my family for now so I will make the best of it.  We have friends and every single family member here in Southern California.  All of my siblings and both sets of parents, aunts and uncles are within 45 minutes of each other.  The kids love having their cousins all so close too (there's a total of 9 under 7). 

Oh my goodness I've been yammering a lot here.  I promise in Part 2 I won't be so verbose and will keep the answers short and sweet.  The job one took up a lot of space :)  Speaking of that job, I better get to it!

Thanks for reading, and Part deux tomorrow!  Oh, and the Knitty Bitties camera strap cover giveaway ends today at midnight.  Go enter now you crazy kids!  I will announce the winner tomorrow!

In Honor of Valentine's Day, a Giveaway From Knitty Bitties!

I've been planning this takeover for quite some time, a year at least.  I have been carefully plotting and thoughtfully training so that eventually, I could be, would be, known as the family photographer.  You see for years, years I tell you, Art has been the camera guy, the guru of all things technical, the master of digital in this family.  He did, after all get his degree in Film and spent many years learning the technical art of lighting, f-stop, ISO, blah, blah, blah.  I watched him fiddle with the dials on our digital cameras to adjust lighting and film speed and I let it intimidate me.  So I let him continue to be the photographer of the family.  Everyone referred to our digital camera as "Art's camera" and I got stuck with the tiny point and shoot.

But as I started to blog, I realized that I too could become the photographer of the family.  Actually I realized that if I wanted to get a post written and published before the next ice age, I would have to become a photographer.  Not necessarily ideal to wait for the hubs to get home every day to take blog photos, you know.  So I slowly started picking up that bad boy of a camera and began playing around with it.  I asked questions, read tutorials, studied what I liked about others photographs, until I started to feel comfortable and slowly but surely, that camera is now as much mine as it is his.

We recently upgraded lenses, making the camera a couple of pounds heavier and the strap quite a bit more uncomfortable.  I'd been on the lookout for a sweet camera strap cover to add some padding and style to the boring black strap that is standard with all digital cameras.  And what do you know, Andrea from Knitty Bitties hooked me up!  I can't tell you how excited I was to dress up that boring strap with the pretty little cover.  And you know what?  Soon after the camera got a makeover, the kids started referring to it as "Mommy's camera."  Aha, camera domination had taken place by the woman of the house.  Finally!

Andrea started her own Etsy shop over 2 years ago to share her passion for sewing.  She is a wife,  a mother, a runner, a reader, a baker, a blogger, and a crazy skilled seamstress.  Her work is as flawless as her taste in fabrics and design.  I love her use of color and the way she mixes patterns in an unexpected way. 

 {iPad soft cover}

 {coffee coat on left and kindle soft cover on right}

 {oh snap mini wallet}

 Today, in honor of Valentine's Day, Andrea is giving away one camera strap cover of your choice to one lucky reader!

To enter, please go visit Andrea's shop and leave a comment here telling us what your favorite item is.   Extra entries for "liking" Knitty Bitties Facebook fan page, and for following Andrea's blog, and by following my blog (the other Andrea).  And heck, if you tweet about it I guess that deserves an entry too!  Make sure to leave a comment here for every entry so they all get counted.  I will leave the giveaway open until Thursday 2/17/2011 11:59 PST and I will announce the winner on Friday 2/18/2011.  


Happy Valentine's Day Friends!  I hope that no matter what your plans are, your day is filled with love.

Family Friday

Valentine's Day weekend is upon us, and even though our house has been decorated for almost a month, we don't yet have our Valentines made for Taylor's Kindergarten class.  While browsing the last couple of days, take a look at these cute homemade lovelies I came across. 

Adorably simple paint chip bookmarks, stamped with love and with a simple signature on the back. 

The best part is I have plenty of V-Day stamps, I'd just have to make a quick trip to Lowe's

Via My Three Little Birds

And look at what this simple color block artwork turned into via mer mag:

Absolutely brilliant, and tres chic.

I'm almost thinking a combination of the two would be absolute perfection.  Color-block artwork bookmarks.  No need to actually run out and pick up the paint chips or buy the vellum envelopes, although I do love a vellum envelope.  By gosh I think I've found it!

I worked from home today which is always a treat and was kept quite busy.  We did take a little break for some post school frozen yogurt though :)  I'm looking forward to a family weekend filled with my nephew's 7th birthday party and another birthday party for one of Taylor's classmates on Sunday.  And then the big day on Monday!  Anyone have any special plans for the day or night?  It's a regular work day for Art and I, but I plan to make a lasagna for dinner and just be together as a family.

I sadly found Leslie's Valentine Day Advent calendar too late to make one of my own this year, but its not too late to head on over to her blog and read her thoughts on Valentine's Day together as a family.  I love, love, love what she has to say.  Please stop on over and say hi if you get a chance.

In between parties I do have to make my way over to get Taylor some new shoes.  I have a policy that when it comes to shoes, I go for quality vs. quantity.  I used to buy her shoes from Baby Gap when they were on sale, Target and Payless, but they're just not comfortable for her and she doesn't end up wearing them.  I don't blame her, I can't stand cheap shoes either.  Too many years working retail and standing on a cold showroom floor.  So for about 2 years now I spend $40 on a good pair of Stride Rites or Pedipeds.  Her 1 of 2 pairs of school shoes have had it and they stink up her feet so bad the whole room smells.  It is no exaggeration.  I was a little embarrassed when I picked her up from Nana's house yesterday and she politely told me the shoes have to go.

All this to say in a very roundabout way, where do you shop for nice quality children's clothes and shoes?  I really want to enact the quality vs. quantity policy for all their clothes and shoes now that they are a little older and aren't getting so messy.  I find that when I do buy quality, it obviously lasts longer, but they seem to enjoy wearing it more and are even more comfortable.  Besides, the Target girls section now that Taylor is in a 6x leaves much to be desired.  Have you seen some of the clothes in that department?  Biting my tongue.

Oh, there was one last thing that I had to share before I go!  Have you heard of Knitty Bitties?  Well she is a fellow Andrea and we have become friends through this wacky world of social media.  The girl has mad sewing skills and her work is flawless.  I can personally attest to it.  Come back on Monday, the big big day for a special something from Andrea.  I promise you won't want to miss it!

And I will leave you with this fun snippet.  I was reminded of this video I saw last weekend when I used the term roundabout. Watch it.  I promise you will laugh, even if you're not a Star Wars geek.
Happy Weekend Friends!