Hi friends,
Thanks so much for sharing your instagram photos. I loved seeing them! Below are the 10 entries I promised you. Now it’s your your turn to vote for your favorite. Voting closes this Wednesday at 8:00pm, and I’ll announce the winner this Thursday.
Entry 1
Entry 2
Entry 3
Entry 4
Entry 5
Entry 6
Entry 7
Entry 8
Entry 9
Entry 10
You only get one vote, so choose wisely. I can’t wait to find out who wins!
Bonjour mes amies -
Even though we took a break from the French Friday photography posts, here is the last one. I hope you enjoy!
When my fiance came to visit me during my semester in Paris, we took a quick trip to Normandy and took the most amazing tour with the former Battlebus tours. It was worth every penny. He still talks about how amazing it was. We saw Utah, Omaha, Point du hoc, St. Mere Eglise, and more. I highly recommend it!
And send me your favorite instagram photos at fromkristina@gmail.com! (Who doesn’t like free Starbucks money?) Contest details here.
Welcome to Part II of our San Diego trip! Now I really only brought my camera the first day (it was supposed to be a relaxing vacation after all) so don’t judge me because I’m wearing the same outfit in today’s post as yesterday’s post. It was the same day!
Like I mentioned yesterday, we took a day trip to Old Town San Diego, the birthplace of California. California, for the most part, is not very old. When you find something built in the early 1900′s (like the US Grant from yesterday’s post), it’s quite rare. But San Diego has an extremely rich history. It was inhabited by Native Americans as far back as 9,000 years ago and the San Diego area became a Spanish settlement in the late 1700′s when Father Serra established the first mission in California.
Today, Old Town San Diego is historic state park and many of the original buildings have been restored to their original glory and function. It’s so fun to walk around the buildings and shop around!
I have a soft spot for old fashioned candy stores
He couldn’t resist
I bought these amazing tissue paper flowers!
And old tobacco shop
After all that walking around, we needed some… libations. Lucky for us we can across Old Town Mexican cafe and stopped for some drinks and snacks. The handmade tortillas were amazing!
I hope you enjoyed the photos from our mini-vacation! Do you ever take mini-vacations? Where do you go? What do you do? I would love some suggestions!
Hi friends!
I hope you had a fabulous (and hopefully long) weekend. For once my fiancé and I were both off for three days in a row together, so we decided to take a mini-vacation and drove down to San Diego for the weekend. It’s about 160 miles or 3 hours from Los Angeles (3 hours because I’ve rarely done it without traffic). So we packed up, downloaded some new music, and headed to San Diego Friday morning.
We didn’t have any plans going down there, but decided to stay downtown at the US Grant hotel because it’s an awesome hotel and my favorite restaurant is in downtown San Diego. (For those of you that are in the area, go to Searsucker, it’s the greatest! You will not be disappointed.) Anyways, we were pleasantly surprised with how gorgeous this hotel is. Can my house look like this please?
Trying to figure out what’s next on our agenda for the day. The lighting was so awesome in this room that we couldn’t help but take some pictures…
The hotel itself has an interesting history, and we randomly learned about it from a very nice trolley driver that we happened to say hello to. here is what we learned: The hotel was built in 1910 by Ulysses S. Grant’s son, and is subsequently named the US Grant. It was the place to see and be seen in San Diego for many many decades, and housed many notable guests including Albert Einstein, Charles Lindbergh and numerous US presents. However, the hotel fell on hard times in the 1980′s and finally in the early 2000′s the Kumeyaay Nation, an Indian Tribe native to San Diego, bought the hotel and renovated it to honor President Grant who supported the tribe while he was president. You can read more about the history of the hotel here.
Gorgeous, right? Join me tomorrow for some pictures and stories from our day trip to Old Town San Diego, the “birthplace of California”!
Bonjour mes amies! Here is my second installment of “photographie atelier“. I hope you enjoy!
I hope you all have wonderful weekends ahead of you. Does anyone have any fun plans? I’d love to hear about them! My fiance and I are headed to San Diego for a mini-vacation – I’m sure I’ll have lots of lovely pictures to share when we return!
And the french word of the the is, as the title says, Les enfants: the children!
Bonjour mes amies! I’m not sure when my love affair with photography started. I’m pretty sure I was always that kid in high school that took too many photos, and just never stopped. I am not a great photographer to be sure (yet?), but it wasn’t until my semester in Paris that I really started to learn the basics of photography. (I will continue to romanticize that semester for the rest of my life.)
While there I took a photography atelier with a photographer named Philippe Vermès. It was the greatest class ever! Every Thursday we would meet Monsieur Vermès in some seemingly random place in Paris at 9am. A cafe in the dix-huitième arrondisement, or an graffitied alleyway in the seizième (seriously, that happened), or outside the Moulin Rouge. It was the best because not a lot of people were hustling and bustling about yet (by “people” I mean “tourists”), and he would take us to his favorite places in Paris, including the bakery he thinks has the greatest tarts. And they were pretty awesome.
It was our assignment each week to take a roll of film and spend 4-5 hours developing a couple of prints from it. Yup, it took me that long to do just a couple of prints – so different from digital photography! Anyways, I ended up with three series of four prints that I really like, and today I’m sharing with you the first one – and perhaps my favorite. Oh! And apologies that these are not the best quality images – they are photos of photos because well, I don’t have a scanner.
I hope you enjoy!
And today’s French word of the day is trompe l’oeil, or “trick of the eye”. It’s one of my favorite french phrases! (Click on the link for some great examples)
Hello friends, I hope you all had a great weekend!
My fiance’s birthday was a couple weeks ago and mine is coming up in a week, so our super awesome friends decided to surprise us with a joint present. We had no idea what was in store. All we knew is that we had to show up at their place by 6:00pm, and I shouldn’t wear a skirt. So we showed up on time and headed off to our super top secret birthday surprise. A few short minutes later (after driving past the road where Kristin Wiig epically drives back and forth in Bridesmaids was filmed) we arrived at Van Nuys airport. No sooner than 10 minutes later we were standing in front of a helicopter getting instructions on how to get in. What?! Amazing!
Only four people can fit in these awesome little things, two drivers and two passengers, so we took one and our friends hopped in the other (the one you see above!)
My co-passenger!
So excited!
The trip through Topanga Canyon as we headed towards Malibu. Those are our friends!
Santa Monica pier
Hollywood and Highland, and the (formerly known) Kodak Theater
Downtown Los Angeles
Griffith observatory (I wish this turned out clearer!)
So close!
Watching the sun set from the air
Aaaaaand the conclusion of our adventure.
(Thanks Elite Helicopter Tours for the awesome ride!)
Bon vendredi mes amies! I thought to round out the past couple days of GORGEOUS images via Wedding Chicks and Primary Petals, I’d share with you some lovely images of Paris from Chelsea Victoria. I’m loooooving all the balloons and heart bokeh.
If you love these images as much as I do, you can head on over to Chelsea Victoria’s shop and look around – she’s having a buy one get one free sale through the rest of the week!
And this week’s french word is pamplemousse, meaning grapefruit! (yum!)
I’m excited to introduce today’s guest post. Enjoy! :
Hi! We are Ryan and Cassie Russek, a husband and wife photographer team from Southern California. We could not be MORE excited to be featured as a guest on Kristina’s blog! Recently, we took an [unintentional] All American Vacation to New York, Connecticut, Boston, and Washington DC. The reason we say unintentional, is that this started off as just a fun vacation to the east coast and managed to turn into this extravagant vacation to see America’s History.
We started off in New York, staying at the beautiful Roosevelt Hotel where we traveled by train, subway, cab, shuttle, foot and ferry all over the City, getting to see The Chelsea Marketplace (a chic, indoor “farmer’s market”), The Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, 911 memorial, The Apollo Theatre, Times Square, 5th Ave, and our favorite experience was walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. We ate at famous Food Network restaurants, our favorite was Bobby Flay’s MESA Grill and we were even lucky enough to meet Giada DiLaurentiis!
After NY- we trained to Connecticut to visit some family, and then trained into Boston, which, I HIGHLY recommend!!! The train travels up the eastern coast, through Rhode Island, which was filled with pure white sandy beaches, gorgeous skies and adorable victorian style beach homes. We stayed at the Omni Parker Hotel in Boston, another huge recommendation for those of you traveling to Boston. The hotel is filled with amazing history, it happens to be the oldest hotel (still running) in the United States and was the spot where John F. Kennedy proposed to Jackie Onassis, pretty exciting! In Boston- we traveled the Freedom Trail, which takes you to the historic landmarks of Boston, our favorite being the Old State House, where the Declaration of Independence was first read! We also visited Fenway Park, Cheers, Mike’s Pastry’s (YUMM!), Antico Forno (the best Italian food ever!), and Harvard.
We LOVED Boston so much! So, because we were having a hard time finding a flight back to California (long story) we ended up flying into Washington DC, thus creating the [unintentional] portion of our All American Vacation. In DC, we were mind blown by the sites. Between the White House and seeing President Obama’s motorcade, we were pretty stunned. We saw the Capitol, the Washington Monument, The Smithsonian, The Lincoln Memorial, War Memorials, Martin Luther King’s Memorial, and the National Archives (which houses the original documents: Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Emancipation Proclamation and the U.S. Constitution)… DC is pretty amazing. At one point we sat at MLK’s Memorial looking across the water to the Jefferson Memorial, and we couldn’t believe that we had accomplished such an amazing vacation. We hope you enjoy the photos!!
The Statue Of Liberty in Black and White, standing directly in front of her
Ellis Island from the Ferry. Ryan’s mom Edith came into Ellis Island in 1952 (2 years before Ellis Island closed) from Germany. It was amazing to stand in some of the same spots where she once stood so many years ago. We were both VERY emotional.
The New York City Library
Times Square at night
Central Park, where we took our first break from the hustle and bustle of the City. We sat and took in this gorgeous site, and dreamed of what it would be like to see this daily. Lucky New Yorkers.
The Brooklyn Bridge from the middle of the bridge. It feels like we are entangled in a web of cables.
The Brooklyn Bridge from Brooklyn. We took the ferry from Brookyln back to the City, it was so fun to see the City from this viewpoint. We highly recommend this!
The Old State House in Boston, Where the Declaration of Independence was first read. The photo with the Marines happened to be a parade that was going on that day. It was a special moment for us.
The Old North Church, the site where Paul Revere gave orders to fellow member of the sons of liberty to notify the people that the British were coming by hanging lanterns, One if by land and Two if by sea. Two lanterns were hung that day!
The White House, where moments prior to this photo, President Obama’s motorcade arrived and left.
My little sister is currently in Madrid (I know, I’m jealous too) and I’ve asked her to share some of her photos and stories when she gets back. Until then, she’s sent a few quick shots as a teaser. I can’t wait to see more and hear her stories!
[One of her favorite streets from the first day. Love all the colors!]
[Her lunch! That chocolate croissant -ish thing looks amazing.]
[A cute little bookstore]
Other interesting finds:
