Things I'm Looking Forward To This Summer

As much as I don’t love summer, I’m really looking forward to this upcoming summer! I know that these next few months are going to be hectic and stressful, but there are also a lot of really exciting things happening that I’m very excited to be documenting on the blog. I’m going to write a post more on this later, but I feel as though this summer also marks a big transition point for me. Last summer I graduated college, and have been very open about the fact that the transition from being a student to being a working adult has been more challenging than I ever imagined. While I’m still not fully through the transition, I feel as though I have learned so much about myself and what I want out of life. Having it be a year since graduation feels like a big milestone and I’m excited to throw myself fully into being a working adult more than ever. 

One of the things I’m looking forward to most this summer is moving in with my boyfriend, Brad. I’m incredibly lucky that I’m originally from San Francisco and could have the safety net of moving back in with my parents post-college. However, it has been tough sometimes to feel fully settled moving back into my childhood home. That house will always be my home, but I’m also incredibly excited that Brad and I get to start making a home together in whatever apartment we settle into. We’ve been together for almost two years and I think both of us feel eager to move onto this next chapter in our relationship. On a more superficial level, both Brad and I are really looking forward to putting our apartment together. Neither of us are in a rush to buy everything at once for the apartment, and I think that will make for a really great oportunity to document our interiors process on the blog. 

I think for a lot of people summer is synonymous with festival season. I took a break from Outside Lands last summer, mainly because the lineup wasn’t worth the money, but I’m so looking forward to going back this August! This will be my fourth Outside Lands and I think I’m looking forward to this year’s festival more than any other than I’ve been to in the past. I'm not only incredibly excited about the lineup but most of our friends will be going, which always the experience that much more enjoyable. 

One of the things I loved about summer growing up was that my parents would take advantage of mine and my sister's homework-free schedules and do small little staycation-like weekend trips. With a jam-packed schedule, both in terms of work and moving, my boyfriend and I don't have a lot of time to be jetting off on a long-haul vacation, but we've been trying to brainstorm a few quick trips we can make over the summer to relax and recharge. 

Even though I'm moving out in a couple of months I'm really looking forward to having more family time as well this summer. I'm very close to a lot of my family and it's been hard trying to strike a balance since I've moved back to see them as much as I want between work, seeing friends, and spending time with my boyfriend. Especially since my sister will be leaving for college in the fall, I want to get in as much family time as possible. Hopefully, we'll also get to do some family weekend trips as well. 

I guess this should fall under the category of moving in, but I'm really looking forward to hosting people in our new place and having friends and family over for dinner parties. My parents were always very into dinner parties, and some of those parties are some of the fondest memories I have growing up. It's really exciting to get to play the host and it also makes me feel like a fully-fledged adult. Brad and I have also been getting more and more into cooking and I think it'll be nice to expand our horizons a bit and cook for other people. 

My Favorite Perfumes

I love the idea of fragrance, that a scent can evoke memory and that just a few notes can represent how want to express yourself to the world. In a lot of ways, fragrance has the same ability to be a form of self-expression in the same ways fashion does, albeit in a far more subtle and nuanced way. Even though I’ve always loved the idea of fragrance, I haven’t always worn in on a daily basis. This is for two main reasons, 1. When I was younger, most perfumes being released erred on the side of fruity and floral and girly, scents which I’m genuinely not enticed by or drawn to and 2. Perfume is a lot like jewelry for me, in that I love it, but it’s usually out of sight and out of mind for me when I’m getting ready and I simply forget to wear it. 

I’ve recently been getting more and more into wearing perfume on a daily basis. It's become a very simple and quick act of self-care that lifts my mood for the rest of the day. Sali Hughes once mentioned in one of her videos about perfume that smelling one's perfume throughout the day is cheering and I 100% agree. So in the spirit of becoming more and more of a perfume person I thought I'd share my favorite fragrances of the moment. 

One of my longest standing fragrances in my collection is the much loved Jo Malone Wood Sage & Sea Salt. It's a scent that I can wear no matter my mood or the season. I tend to prefer more masculine scents and this one strikes the perfect balance of being woody and masculine, while still smelling fresh and somewhat feminine. I will say that this fragrance doesn't have super long staying power since it is just a cologne, but since it comes in such a small bottle it's easy to transport for top ups throughout the day. 

I don't love all of the Jo Malone perfumes since I find some of them to be a little too floral to my liking but the English Oak & Red Current has definitely become a fast favorite. Because I bought it over the holidays, the scent tends to remind me of Christmas. The main notes are red current (obviously), rose, mandarin, musk, and oak. This is definitely a heavier perfume, but it still has a lightness to it that makes it appropriate for daytime wear. This also smells incredible when mixed with Wood Sage & Sea Salt. 

Glossier You was not a fragrance I immediately loved. I will admit that I bought it out of sheer love for the brand. I'm normally not one to buy perfumes without having smelled them first, however because I trust Glossier and it came at a pretty low price, I was willing to try it blind. I will say that this perfume is incredibly hard to describe. It's definitely on the sweeter side at first, something I'm not usually drawn to, but once it dries down you get the creamier, muskier notes coming through. Glossier You has become one of my everyday perfumes for when I'm feeling like something a little bit more feminine and subtle. 

I don't think I could write a post about perfume without mentioning Le Labo. Now unlike Glossier, there's no way I would ever purchase a Le Labo perfume without a thorough trial run, since the smallest bottles cost a hefty $180 a piece. I'm not even fully ready to commit to one quite yet. However, one of the really great things about Le Labo is they understand that their fragrances are investments and should be treated as such. Because of that they offer discovery sets and a really generous sample program, wherein you can buy a set of deluxe samples of any perfume you want for about $5 per sample. I know on the surface that sounds like a lot for a perfume sample, but because the perfumes are such good quality you need the tiniest spritz to get you through the day. I opted for the classic discovery kit, which includes their most famous and well-loved perfumes. My favorite from the set have been Thé Noir 29 and Bergamont 22, which are two very different perfumes. I like to think of Thé Noir 29 as Santal 33's underrated cousin. It has a lot of the same musky and woodsy notes as Santal, but is not nearly as recognizable as Santal has become (mainly because everyone and their mother wears it now). Bergamont 22 errs more on the fresher side of things, with its citrusy notes, but still manages to have a bit of musk to keep things somewhat masculine. 

The Importance of Female Friendship

The topic of female friendship has gotten a lot of air time in the blogging world. Lily wrote a book about it, Lizzy has talked about it a lot on her blog, and Liv and Charlotte did a podcast episode dedicated to the topic. I think female friendship has always been an extremely important part of my life, but as I've gotten older my relationships with my female friends have changed, and it's mostly been for the better. I've always been the kind of person that has a very small group of girlfriends, but the ones I surround myself with are extremely close. I've also been lucky enough to know some of my closest friends for a very long time, in fact my best friend and I have been friends since we were six months old. Because I've always kept a small group close, I've sometimes had a hard time letting people in. On the flip side, because I am very close to the majority of my girlfriends growing apart can feel devastating. Especially as I get further and further into "adult" life I've had to realize that friendship is not black and white, it's not necessarily either on or off, it ebbs and flows and that's ok. 

During my years in school (i.e. the majority of my life) managing female friendships were incredibly easy, which is mostly due to the fact that most of my friends went to school with me so it didn't require much effort to make plans and see friends. However, after college it became more and more apparent just how hard it is to constantly be seeing friends as much as you want whilst juggling a busy work schedule, family, and a relationship. I'm incredibly lucky that a lot of my friends decided to move back to the Bay Area and I get to see them on a regular basis, but it's so easy to take proximity for granted and not reach out as much as you should. Even if when I don't have time to see a friend in person, I've been trying more and more to either pick up the phone and call someone (what a novel idea) or send them a quick text asking how they're doing. I think one of the things I'm most grateful for about my group of girlfriends is that we all have a baseline understanding that even though we might not be seeing each other all the time once we do get together it will feel like no time has past. There are never any hard feelings if we haven't been hanging out every week, because at the end of the day we all work and we all understand that sometimes we won't have the time to see each other as much as we would in an ideal world. 

In all the madness of figuring out adult life and the transition from college to the "real world" (a term I really hate to use), I feel like I have a renewed appreciation for my friends and I've been so incredibly lucky to meet some incredible girls at work who have fast become some of my closest confidants. Spending time with my girl friends has been crucial in my staying grounded the past year, but especially in the past couple months when my stress levels have been off the charts. I also have a tendency to want to spend a lot of time with my boyfriend, but ever since graduating I’ve tried to make a concerted effort to spend time just with my girlfriends. I’ve never had the issue of neglecting my friends when I’m in a relationship, but especially since my boyfriend and I are moving in together in a couple months time, I’ve wanted to make sure that once we do move in we aren’t already in the habit of spending every waking hour together. If you’ve taken anything out of this long ramble of a blog post it’s that I underestimated how much female friendship plays an integral role in my life, and that coming into adulthood has made me realize how much time and care those relationships deserve. 

Spring Favorites

I really can't believe we're so close to summer. To be quite honest, I'm not the biggest fan of the warmer seasons, because I just don't like the heat. However, living in San Francisco means that summer is not like summer everywhere else. June is normally incredibly foggy and cold, and it very rarely ever reaches above 80 degrees. I do thoroughly enjoy the longer days and breaking up my very sweater-heavy wardrobe. Because I felt like I was in a bit of a rut towards the end of winter, I made a conscious effort to change up my makeup routine and wardrobe a bit for the springtime. Refreshing these aspects of my everyday life have made me not only feel excited about the changing of the season, but have also made me discover and rediscover products that have become a part of my everyday routine. Although I am going to talk mainly about beauty and fashion I also want to touch on some more lifestyle things that I've been loving for spring as well.

Plants ~ I’ve always loved having flowers and greenery around. Especially because I’m planning on moving out soon I haven’t spent that much time buying that much home stuff because I don’t want to have to pack it up and move it in a couple of months time. Plants have proved to be an easy way to spruce up my space without adding a lot of traditional decor items. I’ve really liked bringing more and more greenery into my space during the springtime because it genuinely just makes me feel happier. I’ve been looking a lot at plants from The Sill and definitely plan on getting a few more plants before I move. I also am very excited about spring flowers! When I saw the first round of peonies come into store I freaked out. Having more plants around has helped me to get out of my inevitable wintertime rut. 

Tom Ford Spice Cream Color for Eyes ~ During the Sephora VIB sale I picked up another one of the Tom Ford Cream Color for Eyes, which are some of the dreamiest (and priciest) cream eye shadows that I have come across. I have almost completely moved over to solely using cream eyeshadows when I wear eyeshadow. While Spice definitely reads as a very autumnal shade, because it is such a rich ruddy bronze. Because its a cream shadow, it can be blended out to be very sheer and it works amazing as an eyeliner, which is a look I really like for the spring. 

Hairstory Déshabillé ~ I’ve been in the process of growing out my hair for about a year and it’s getting to be the length that I wanted it to be. Part of the reason why I wanted to grow out my hair is because I want to embrace my natural curls more and I personally like my natural hair when it is long. I’ve been using a few products that really help to enhance my natural curls, my favorite of which is Hairstory’s Déshabillé spray. I use this on extremely wet hair after I’ve used the Hairstory Hair Balm, and spray it all over my hair and then let it air dry. The product is modeled after traditional sea salt texture sprays, but is much more conditioning and makes the hair feel soft rather than crunchy and dry like most sea salt sprays do. 

A Modern Way to Eat by Anna Jones ~ In an effort to start saving more money before the big move this summer, my boyfriend and I have been trying to cook at home more instead of going out to eat. We’ve started adding to our cookbook collection and one of the most recent additions is A Modern Way to Eat by Anna Jones, which is a totally vegetarian cookbook. Even though my boyfriend and I aren’t vegetarian, it’s nice to have more meatless recipe options at our disposal. I really like that even though this cookbook definitely errs on the healthier side of things, the ingredients are very easy to find and aren’t niche enough that you’d only end up using an ingredient once for a specific recipe (which is often the case with a lot of these “clean eating” cookbooks). 

Essie Treat Love & Color in Tinted Love ~ During the springtime I like to go very minimal with the nail polish. Normally during the winter my nails are under a constant state of being painted and repainted and come spring, they’re normally due a much needed break from constantly being lacquered. I’ve been trying to leave my nails bare for the most part, but when I have been painting them I’ve been using the Essie Treat Love & Color in the shade Tinted Love, which is a very sheer warm baby pink. The polish looks extremely clean on the nails and I love that the formula helps to improve the health of your nails. 

Little Things I’m Doing To Reduce Stress

I’m not going to beat around the bush, the past year has been stressful. Between graduating from college, struggling to figure out my career path, getting a job, and moving back home, my stress levels and anxiety have been majorly impacted. I’m definitely starting to feel more settled than I have in the past few months. Part of that I have to credit towards getting close to moving out and being excited about creating my own home with my boyfriend (a process which I’m really excited to document on this blog). However, a lot of my feeling settled also has to do with learning more and more about myself and figuring out what I need to feel well-rested and less stressed. Some of these things I already knew, because going to college wasn't exactly a cake walk, but it's still a pretty massive lifestyle change to go from student to working a full time job. 

One of the most important and toughest things to do to help me reduce my stress levels has been switching off and reducing screen time. I am guilty of endlessly scrolling through Instagram as soon as I get home from work because it's just so easy to revert to. I love consuming content and scrolling through inspiring imagery but it does anything but make me feel like I'm doing something productive with my time off. Same goes for watching TV. I watch a hell of a lot of Netflix and while it can be relaxing to watch four episodes of The Crown, it's not very restorative. Reading a book makes me feel so much more relaxed long term, and while it takes more effort, it makes me exercise a different part of my brain instead of just zoning out. 

I love to have a full pamper night but most days that's just not practical or even possible to commit to. I've been trying much more diligently to practice small acts of self-care on a more regular basis. Some of these things don't have to do with grooming, but I find that sometimes all it takes is painting my nails after a stressful day to make me feel a little bit better. Even something as small as doing 15 minutes of gentle yoga makes me feel reset and that I am taking care of myself.

One of the hardest things about my lifestyle at the moment is that I have a job where I don't often have weekends off, let alone two consecutive days off, which can make it extremely difficult to feel like I have time to fully rest before I start back at work. It's so easy to slip into the routine of spending all of my days off at home, in bed and watching Netflix, especially because most of my friends and family don't have the same days off as me. It's been a hard balance to strike between trying to get all of my errands done and getting in meaningful rest time. I've been trying more and more to spend my days off in a productive yet restful way, and it's definitely still a work in progress. I've found that getting out of the house is key to striking this balance. Even something as simple as going to a local coffee shop for an hour to write a blog post, feels so much more restorative and relaxing than just sitting at my desk at home and being distracted by an endless stream of YouTube videos.