december 15

[a beautifully decorated Christmas mantel]

december 14

[my friend's blinking Christmas light bracelet]

december 13

[It's hard to tell but there is a tiny Christmas tree on top of this pedicab. Outside City Bakery on 18th St and 5th Ave]

december 12

[friend's apartment and lovely Christmas tree]

LA on style me pretty

Check out the amazing wedding florist on Style Me Pretty from Friday! She's pretty cool, too. (It's LeeAnne!!!)

[photo taken from Style Me Pretty blog]

polaroid

The "new" polaroid cameras are one of my favorite things on the market today. They are so fun and retro, and although I can instantly see every picture I take these days with my digital camera, there is something so much fun about shaking a photo and having to wait a full 60 seconds to see the outcome. Brendan and I went to a Christmas party this weekend with a mini polaroid and guests were asked to take photos and hang them in a designated spot. I was probably (way) more excited than Brendan about this, as evidenced in the photo below (he said they caught him in the middle of a brownie, so I believe that), but I still love the vintage coloring and aesthetic!

december 11

[Shake Shack Upper West Side December custard calendar]

december 10

[Union Square, 18th Street and Broadway]

december 9

I love when I get texts like these:

"Thinking of you :) @ Target"

-from a sweet friend who knows my rainbow taste

december 8

[Time Warner Center @ Columbus Circle]

december 7

[5th Avenue]

honorary team member

While we were in South Africa, we adopted Lea as our honorary team member. She is from Point Community Church and she served with us at Arise, she ate with us, she laughed hard with us, and she shared her life with us. She is fluent in 9 languages and teaches (I asked her to tell me happy birthday in all of them, but I'm still waiting...) and brought so much joy - and spunk - to our team. A couple of days ago I had a quick g-chat conversation with Lea and my heart swelled with happiness. Even with thousands of miles between, a hemisphere difference, and across several time zones our friendship can continue. And even better, Lea loves New York, as you can tell!

december 6

[ok, ok...so I didn't leave the UWS tonight for the Christmas photo, but it was rainy. maybe tomorrow!]

i wish i could go!

I got this in my email yesterday (thanks Anthropologie!) and almost jumped for joy! I wish it fell on a different night so I could attend. I'm dying to read this book (my friend just got it as a wedding gift at her bridal shower this past weekend) and would love to hear what the founding editor of Domino has to say. If you're in New York on Wednesday night, will you please go in my place?

arrival in Cape Town

After departing from JFK at 10:40 am on Friday morning November 18, we finally arrived in Cape Town at 1:30 pm local time (which was 6:30 am New York time, exactly 24 hours since we had hopped in our Super Shuttle and left my apartment the day before) on Saturday November 19. This was my first experience traveling such a long distance + across time zones. Boy, was I in for a surprise! Shortly after we took off in New York, it was lights out and windows closed on the plane. They fed us lunch (which was more like dinner) and then immediately tried to get us on South African time...which meant I was trying to sleep for the night at 1 pm in the afternoon. I watched a few movies (The Help, Tree of Life - which I don't recommend, especially for a flight) and then slept on and off most of the way. 14 hours later we arrived in Johannesburg to catch our flight to Cape Town.

It can always be challenging to get 16 people headed in the same direction at the same time, but when you add an airport in there the difficulty seems to grow exponentially! We made it...but it was a close call and our flight was cancelled so that gave us a little extra time.

Around 11 am local time, we hopped aboard a short 2 hour flight to Cape Town. When I stepped off the plane, I knew it was worth it!

We were greeted by these wonderful faces & wonderful signs!

(barely holding my eyes open here...can you tell!?)

[Believe me, so much more to come...I haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet. Stick around.]

december 5

[Apartment building on Broadway between 73rd & 74th. I promise I will branch out of the UWS tomorrow.]

december 4

[71st Street and Amsterdam]

december 3

[Upper West Side 'tree farm']

december 2

[Lobby of 1359 Broadway, Redeemer church offices]