6 Things You Should Know About Me

Casey from True Colours tagged me in this get to know you tag where you pick 6 out of 9 questions (at the bottom) to answer about yourself. 

1. What do you find inspiring?

i find a lot of inspiration in landscapes and other people. This is probably one reason that I am so addicted to traveling. Seeing new landscapes and meeting people from different backgrounds and cultures helps to give me perspective and inspires new ideas. 

2.  What is your favorite season of the year and why?

Autumn. It's so gorgeous with all of the changing colors, has amazing seasonal fruits and veggies, is the perfect time to get out your favorite sweaters and is my birthmonth. What's not to love?

3.  Of the places you've lived, where has been your favorite and why?

I haven't moved around too much- I move often, but often to the same place, or am actually on the move so I'm not living anywhere in particular. A suburb of Seattle, WA in the US, Chofu city in Tokyo Prefecture in Japan, New York City, NY in the US are the three cities that I've called home. I love them for all different reasons so I honestly can't choose just one, but I think that I'm subconsciously put them in the order that I love them when I listed them. 

4.  What has blogging changed about your life?

Blogging has introduced me to world and friends that I had no idea existed before. It also gave me a great creative outlet for my writing and photography and taught me the importance of having a schedule and keeping to it. I'm still not the best at this, but I'm working on it!

5.  What song is at the top of your playlist currently?

I also have Emi Meyer's On the Road on my playlist when I'm ... erm... on the road ;)

6.  What do you think is your best quality?

I'm usually quite down to earth, which is funny because I was always high strung growing up. I guess that's what travel and being an expat does to you- or at least did to me!

Thanks for tagging me, Casey! Click here to read Casey's post and to get to know her!

// Instead of tagging specific people, I'm going to leave this open ended. If you'd like to participate, please consider yourself tagged. Be sure to leave a comment down below so I can add a link to your post in this one. And if you'd like to just choose one or two and answer those in the comments below, I'd love to hear from you that way, too!

1. What do you find inspiring?

2.  What is your favorite season of the year and why?

3.  If you could jump on a plane right now, where would you go?

4.  If you met someone who wanted to know about your blog, how would you describe it?

5.  What is one goal you'd like to accomplish before your next birthday?

6.  Of the places you've lived, where has been your favorite and why?

7.  What has blogging changed about your life?

8.  What song is at the top of your playlist currently?

9.  What do you think is your best quality?

{{ Happy Tuesday, Everyone!! }}

Hilarious Yelp Review

Do you use yelp?

I generally use it as a way to sift through all of the restaurants here in NYC. Sure not all of the reviews are helpful, but sometimes they tell you what the must-get item is. There are dishes I probably would have never tried, had it not been for yelp reviews. 

However, there are times when you find one that is so unhelpful it's hilarious. 

Just now I was looking for a restaurant to satisfy a pho craving and ran across this:

I star review of a Vietnamese restaurant called Cong Ly from Dave in El Paso, TX:
"Cold entrees, cold appetizers, horrible service.  Took my wife here for our 5th wedding anniversary, this place ruined our night.  She's now filing for divorce. Thanks, Cong Ly-ing about how good your food is."

uh... pretty sure this restaurants didn't single-handedly ruin your marriage, Dave. 

Socially Responsible Brands: Raven + Lily

I have been drooling over the pieces above for quite some time now. The beads used in the pieces above are  not only beautiful and very intricately, they are actually made from old bullet casings!

Raven + Lily is a really cool, socially responsible company based out of Texas that works with women artisans all over the world. They achieve this through collaborations with various organizations around the world. To learn more about them and their products, check out this article that I wrote about them for the Culture-ist! It was a lot of fun to research & write; promise it's worth a peek :)

To make things even better (for everyone except my wallet), they just added a collaboration with Maasai artisans in Kenya, with whom they will be creating these beaded bangles.

Unique and gorgeous pieces that employ women with talent and dreams for a better life for themselves and their families? What's not to love?! Check out their full campaign here and the video from their page below:





// What are some of your favorite socially responsible & sustainability-minded brands?
_________________________
*I have not been asked or compensated to write this in any way. I just like spreading the word about cool and sustainability-minded organizations :)

New Series, Need Title

They say that as a consumer, you should vote with your wallet. I'd like to start a series where I introduce some awesome companies and what they are doing to create socially responsible products as well as those that promote socially responsible ideas. I don't know what to call it, though... "Sociably Responsible Sunday"? That seems like too much of a mouthful. Any ideas?

Instagram Addiction

As you can probably tell from the squareness of posts, I finally caved and got instagram. I also just discovered this as a draft in my Blogger dashboard. Oops. Better late than never?

I have a serious Instagram problem. It's so much fun take even the smallest bits of life and to describe them as an artsy little square. My blogging, particularly my travel blogging isn't quite real time (partially for security reasons), but my Instagramming is. 

I find that I tend to rely on the same filters. I'm not sure if that reflects my personal style, or my inability to branch out artistically. Hmmmm.. what do you think? 

Leave me a link to your favorite instagram photo that you've taken!

Product Review: Nivea Lip Butter

I was a bit skeptical of this at first, since I'd tried other nivea lip products before and never found to be very moisturizing. I actually remember the disappointment. I was in France on a short-term study abroad program while I was in high school. I got 2 Nivea chap sticks- one with shinner, one without- because I had this impression that Nivea was a special brand and I was on a trip (and therefore able to get things I normally wouldn't). They smelled so good, but remember being really disappointed that they didn't really work. Regardless, I used them with pride at my luxurious products. Many years later when I was living in Japan, and found myself with chapped lips and no chap stick. I wasn't quite sure what chap stick to buy, so I went with a familiar brand. I remembered the disappointment so many years ago, but also hoped that they'd changed the formula during those years. It had not. I was sad.

However, after hearing some Youtubers rave about them, I decided to give the brand another try. Plus, these lip butters were relatively new, so perhaps they were the formula change that I'd been hoping for all those years!

Thankfully, the lip butter is amazing. It smells really, really sweet in the tin, but is actually fairly faint once it's on your lips. I think it's just the perfect amount of scent for a lip product. Even better than that, it keeps my lips moisturized for quite a long time.

It's in a small tin, which is cute and thin so it fits into clutches without bulking them up, but it also requires you to apply it with your finger. Recently, I've started to just touch one of my lips to it, so it kind of looks like i'm taking a bite out of it. Not the classiest, but I figure that it's better than smearing public transportation germs all over my lip butter!

As a softer product, I was worried that it would melt and run everywhere, since I'm sure we've all had that happen once of twice with chapstick. Though we're in a heat wave now, and I've left it in a relatively hot car before, it has yet to go runny on me. That being said, I wouldn't really risk it, because that would be one sticky mess to clean up. It seems to work for what I need it to do. One huge downside to this, however, is the lack of SPF. This girl doesn't want sun burnt lips!

Once I've finished it all up, I'm not sure that I'd repurchase it immediately (especially because it lacks SPF), but I will eventually, just to have on hand at home.

Fashionable Friday: Subway Cuffs

Unfortuately, I don't own one and can't pull a picture off the website to show you, but you need to see these cuffs for the travel-chic girl. Ok, they're a little ridiculous, but actually pretty wearable at the same time.

These stainless steel cuffs are engraved with the subway maps of a city of your choice including London, Paris, Milan, NYC, etc.

I'm going on a trip to Europe soon... perhaps I should get one for every city. Then I could put them all on at once and look like a robot! *does a poor imitation of the robot dance*

Check out the cuffs here!