outfit: f21 striped red tunic & tiered lace mini, vintage 40s hat, vintage crystal ring, diy gold chain necklace, and jessica simpson heels.

You don't know how happy I was to find these shoes because there was no way I was able to get the original Charles Anastase platforms! I was swooning for these a year ago (and his entire collection as well). So thank you Jessica Simpson, you made it into my shoe collection because of him. Speaking of shoes, I also ordered the Jeffrey Campbell 'Charli' platform clogs in natural and Cleo lace up sandals in mocha. I'm getting my "tan" on...Black is for winter, Tan is for Spring.

Valentine's Day, Chinese New Year, and President Weekend..what a heavy holiday this past weekend and I was quite busy last week too - working for nearly 10hrs everyday and going into work on Saturday for 12 hrs straight. I was pretty delirious by the end of the night and having dinner at 10:30pm. I missed couple of events while I was busy finishing up lookbooks for a tradeshow. I felt really bad missing out on dinner with my family for Chinese New Year and promised to have brunch with them soon. And for Valentine's Day, the BF and I decided to make Heart Shaped Lobster Ravioli w/Pink Sauce from scratch. It was quite a process that took nearly 5hrs. We didnt anticipate it being that long and didn't actually eat til 1 in the morning! Now that's love :)
rolling the dough to create 2 layers of pasta
ingredients for the lobster stuffing
it smelled so good and we were contemplating on eating some beforehand
letting it cool down for 30mins
sealing the edges with a fork

after boiling them, we mixed it in with the pink sauce
boyfriend getting all delirious at midnight
gotta have rose champagne to complete our meal!
Look at our cute little antique stained table we got from ikea! our very first furniture piece in the apartment. place mats are from anthropologie and the black lace thing was leftover fabric from making the lace bunny ears last year. I was iffy about putting it there at first, but now I'm starting to love it. Plan on replacing those blinds with lace curtains and maybe another layer with vertical stripes to add height to our kitchen/dining area. It feels good to put my interior design skills to task.
by the end of the night i only had 2 pieces of the ravioli and was ready to fall asleep.

My heart sank when I first heard that developers are trying to take down the Hollywood sign and build luxury housing units that look over Los Angeles. How could they take away our only landmark in LA? I have comfort driving up and down La Brea everyday and see the Hollywood sign from afar. It's been here for years and the sign is significant to our city. What would become of San Francisco without the Golden Gate Bridge or New York without the Statue of Liberty??? You can't screw with history without people fighting for it and the only way I can bring attention to this is by taking a photo of the peak from the rooftop of my apt and blog about it. The Hollywood sign has been covered with "Save the Peak" last week in an effort to raise money to buy the acre of land to add to Griffith Park.

We made it back in CA just in time for NYE, decided to skip the partying in SF and headed to Pacifica for a more relaxed beachy celebration. We ate at this nice Japanese restaurant and bought a bottle of champagne and watched the countdown from our beach front hotel at the Lighthouse.

the view from our hotel room

Sometimes I get really eager to wear new items I buy while traveling. This was one of those moments. Zara leather jacket, Bycorpus x UO snow leopard dress, vintage Christian Lacroix belt that I got from Avalon vintage in Portland - a total gem! It has gold hearts and leaves, thigh high suede boots bought from H&M in San Francisco.

I don't really keep track of the things my boyfriend buys, but I do know that silver blazer is from H&M and he made that plaid scarfy thing a long time ago.

Next morning we went over to Nick's which was across the street. I decided to start the day early with a glass of bloody mary. They actually put red pepper in the drink.

This is what the edge of California looks like. Isn't it interesting? It's very hilly and all mountain. We stopped off at one point to take pics of the view.

I got this vintage 80s Missoni cardigan just in time for the trip! Didn't get a chance to wear it until we got back to CA...what a great representation of the bright sunny weather of this place. It was awfully windy too and I couldn't keep my hair tamed. Silk blouse by H&M, High waist skinnies by J Brand, Nine West lace up boots, and Luella x Linda Farrow sunnies.

Happy cows comes from California cows..hehe.



and this completes the roadtrip series! :)

Here are a few more photos in continuation of the last post!

We visited Powell bookstore. The first time I wanted to check out the design section to get my study on.

Dinner at a fancy butcher shop called Laurelhurst Market. I had the Tournedoes Rossini..so freakin good! I forgot what that drink is called but the ice smelled like smokey barbeque.

The next day of our Portland trip we headed to see the Pittock Mansion. I only anticipate it to rain and wore my wellies, but couple of flakes came down outside the window of Mother's Bistro (they have the most amazing matzo ball soup ever!) where we ate lunch. Just watching how the flakes fall made me smile.

This was a ceiling of one of the foyers, so amazing.

I love how they had a Christmas theme for the holidays. It was pretty fun to walk around and check out vintage fixtures they restored. Really wish we still use stove like those.

peeking through the window




We were too busy playing with the snow and checking things out that I forgot about taking a full shot of my outfit. Pretty much the same few as the last post except with a Diane Von Furstenburg leopard print leggings, zara silk blouse, f21 houndstooth scarf and vest, and hunter wellington boots. My boyfriend bought the same color too so we had matching boots.
Seattle




After going through couple of rainbows we finally reached Seattle. We only stopped by for a few hours before heading all the way back to CA. The public market center is 10 times better than the farmer's market here..in my opinion. They have 2 levels and lots of unique things.
I found an antique store up the hill and spent the remainder of daylight there. My boyfriend got upset because he really wanted clam chowder, but all the shops closed by the time I was done getting lost in the antique store. We asked a local where we could find good clam chowder and he directed us to Ivar's Acres of Clams.

Little did we know that it was right by the ferry trams. I was so enthralled by the fact that cars can drive onto a boat and drive off on the other side! So it was a semi success of visiting Seattle. BF got the best clam chowder ever made and I had a dozen oysters, and didn't do any sight seeing...but we did walk by this one store....

with lovely window displays! It really made me want to wear candy as art!

I have 2 more posts from my trip before I make any fashion posts from the current times, haha. I hope you all enjoy these!