This month, I finally visited Yosemite, nailed my go-to eye look for spring/summer, launched the alpha version of Lovelyloot, and have been planning for my upcoming trip to Cuba!

Travel

Yosemite / Tenaya Lodge

Despite living in California for 8 years now, we’d still never been to Yosemite until C’s mom came to visit this month. It’s truly gorgeous, with breathtaking mountains and waterfalls. We stayed at the Tenaya Lodge resort, just minutes from the south park entrance, and also had one of the best deep tissue massages ever in their spa. I can’t believe it took us that long to visit Yosemite and can’t wait to go back. Maybe even in winter … we heard they offer sleigh rides and that the ice cracking from the frozen falls sounds like thunder. Sounds pretty magical!

Work

Lovelyloot: save & remember beauty products

Being Boss podcast

Acuity scheduling

We launched the alpha version of Lovelyloot, the mobile app we’ve created to help you save and remember all the beauty products you discover, this month to a small test group of friends and family. (So exciting! To learn more, check us out here: getlovelyloot.com). 

One of the podcasts I subscribe to is called Being Boss, and is targeted to creative entrepreneurs and business owners. They’ve been raving recently about Acuity, which is an online system to make scheduling calls, appointments and meetings super easy because you can set your availability and then just give people a link to view and choose from available times on your calendar (avoiding all the back and forth email).

I’ve been using Acuity to schedule follow up calls or in-person meetings with all of our alpha testers, and so far it’s pretty slick.

  

Beauty

L’Oreal Infallible Lacquer gel eyeliner

Colourpop Super Shock Shadow in Nillionaire

Breaking out from my usual liquid eyeliner, I’ve been using and loving L’Oreal Infallible Lacquer gel eyeliner in Espresso, applied with an angle brush. This is one of Tati’s (Glam Life Guru on YouTube) all-time favorite products, and she’s right – it’s fantastic. Easy to apply, and once it’s on, it doesn’t budge. Paired with Colourpop’s Super Shock Shadow in Nillionaire, it’s a simple yet fabulous look that I’ve had on repeat lately.

Other

Unroll.me

I heard about Unroll.me from Lily Pebbles, one of my favorite beauty vloggers from the UK. It’s a free tool that allows you to unsubscribe with just one click to any email newsletters you no longer want to receive and roll the rest that you want to keep up into a daily digest instead of being inundated by a million individual emails. It’s so simple, fast and completely cleaned up my inbox. Genius.

Reading

In prep for my upcoming trip to Cuba, I’ve been reading The Other Side of Paradise: Life in the New Cuba by Julia Cooke, an American journalist who tells the stories of people she became friends with and interviewed while she lived there for five years after Fidel Castro stepped down.  What’s interesting is that it’s definitely more of a younger generation’s perspective on life in Cuba, the opportunities that are (or aren’t) available, what to do with that reality, and how it changes society.

Even though I like to read about a place in advance, when I travel I try not to arrive with any expectations, so I can just take in whatever the experience brings…and can’t wait to share details about my trip with you next month!