Potato Postcards

Apr 012012
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On my recent trip to Idaho I wanted to send a post­card home to fam­ily. How­ever, I didn’t want to just send a bor­ing paper post­card. I came up with the idea of mail­ing an actual Idaho potato with my mes­sage writ­ten on it. My friends didn’t think the postal ser­vice would mail it, but I didn’t let that stop me. I bought my potato, scrubbed it clean, let it dry, wrote my mes­sage on it with my Sharpee and headed to the post office. To my friends sur­prise, they were will­ing to mail it. There was only one glitch in the whole thing, it weighed more than a pound, so the postal stick­ers that needed to be placed on it were too big for the potato size. I wanted to share my story to ignite cre­ative ideas to mail cards and post­cards to friends and fam­ily when you’re on your next vaca­tion away…

HELPFUL TIPS:
  • be sure your object is under one pound
  • don’t assume they will or will not mail a cer­tain item, ask
  • make sure your sur­faces are cleaned well so postage will stick to surface
  • use a Sharpee pen so your message/address doesn’t smear off
IDEAS:
  • Mail an object as your post­card that has to do with the area you are vis­it­ing. Think coconuts for Hawaii, apples for New York, pota­toes for Idaho…you get the idea!
  • If you’re feel­ing more tech­ni­cally cre­ative, use an app like Cards by Apple, to mail a photo post­card right from your smart phone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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What’s Better Than a Five Dollar Footlong?

Jun 162011
 

 

 

 

Five things to do in San Diego under five bucks!

“Money doesn’t buy hap­pi­ness.” I’d like to add “it doesn’t buy fun either”! (ok, maybe it does, haha, but it doesn’t have too) Here are some great ways to enjoy your week­end for under $5 in the San Diego area. Get inspired to spend more time with fam­ily and friends  with­out break­ing the bank. Whether you live in SD or not, get a lit­tle cre­ative and search out fun things in your area to do. You might be sur­prised how many neat gems you find.

Tips:

–Google your city name with words like, free, fun, week­end, enter­tain­ment, movies, music, etc…and you will find a ton of cool stuff. You might have to sift through the junk a little.

–Have a con­test with your friends or fam­ily mem­bers (kids espe­cially) to see who comes up with the best idea/option. Then you’ll have a stock pile for the summer!

 

 

 

 

 

1. San Diego Food Truck Fes­ti­val At Lib­erty Sta­tion June 19th. Be sure to buy your ticket on my attached link for the $5 deal. For all you food­ies this is a great way to sam­ple San Die­gos food truck craze…

 

 

 

 

2. Sum­mer movies in the park is a fam­ily friendly venue that is com­pletely free! Movies start at dusk so be sure to get there in plenty of time to set up your cozy blan­kets, chairs and pic­nic goodies.

 

 

 

 

3. Vital Climing Gym is a great way to get your boul­der on! The first visit is free and shoe rental is $2. Warn­ing: it is addic­tive so you may end up going all the time!

 

 

 

 

 

4. Keys Creek Laven­der Farm in Val­ley Cen­ter give free tours. June is peak bloom so this is the per­fect time to go! Times are at 10:30 and 1:30 every Fri­day, Sat­ur­day and Sun­day. It is a walk­ing tour that cir­cles the fields near­est the gift store. It includes a view­ing of the dis­tillery and a dis­cus­sion on how we dis­till essen­tial oil. We talk about the dif­fer­ent types of laven­der that we have on the prop­erty and the home­o­pathic ben­e­fits of laven­der. The walk includes steps and slight inclines so it may not suit­able for those with sig­nif­i­cant mobil­ity restric­tions. No reser­va­tions are required. We meet at the gift store and the tour takes approx­i­mately 30–40 min­utes. Great place to take a fam­ily photo too!

 

 

 

 

5. CB Cup­cake Shop in San Mar­cos is a cool lit­tle spot to “build your own” cup­cake. You pick the cake, then the frost­ing and then the top­ping! It’s $3.50 for muf­fin size cup­cake and $1.50 for a mini. Great for a date night or a treat for the lit­tle ones…

*Feel free to add your sug­ges­tions on my comments!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Start Taking Better Photographs Today!

Jun 082011
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let me intro­duce you to Mr. Nish, a.k.a. my dad. He is going to become a con­trib­u­tor for Style­bag­gage! (whether he wants to or not is com­pletely irrel­e­vant) He is a full time pho­tog­ra­phy teacher at City Col­lege San Fran­cisco. Before his career change and move to SF in 1999, Nishi­hira was a com­mer­cial pho­tog­ra­pher in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia for 18 years. He won a num­ber of awards includ­ing Awards of Excel­lence from CA Mag­a­zine and Print Mag­a­zine. His pho­tog­ra­phy appeared in ads, cat­a­logs, bill­boards, and annual reports. Bob’s clients include Call­away Golf, Encad, Fujitsu, IBM, Jack-in-the-Box, Kyocera, and Qual­comm. His work has appeared in Archi­tec­tural Record, Town & Coun­try, Vogue, and Sports Illus­trated.
Nish grad­u­ated from UCLA with a degree in Fine Arts. He is an avid base­ball fan and played ball at Pierce College.

To get things off to an easy start, here is some basic advice from Mr. Nish:

4 quotes that will dra­mat­i­cally improve your pho­tographs.

“Please do not shoot any por­traits unless you look at the back­ground first, and make sure noth­ing there will dis­tract from your main sub­ject.” –Joyce Tenneson

“The more you pho­to­graph, the more you real­ize what can be pho­tographed and what can’t be pho­tographed. You just have to keep doing it.”  Eliot Porter

“If your pic­tures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”  Robert Capa

“Less is more.”  Mies Van Der Rohe

 

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Make a Good Vacation Great!

May 132011
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No, I’m not going to tell you to pack your bags and head to Flo­rence Italy, although that would do the trick too!

I have one word for you…Tri­pad­vi­sor! (no I do not own stock in them, no I do not gain finan­cially in any way, shape or form) I truly love this site! Tri­pad­vi­sor has been my “go to” guide for every­thing travel. Although this site can help with find­ing deals, I mainly use it for reviews.  I have never been let down by a false review, although I’m sure there is always room for fraud in this world. I hon­estly thought every­one knew about this site, but I’m learn­ing many of you haven’t. So here’s how it can help.

1) Get reviews on every­thing from hotels to restau­rants to spas.

2) My favorite, ask ques­tions in forums. For exam­ple, if I’m torn between 2 hotel choices I post my dilem­mas in the forum and peo­ple always respond with great feed­back. Let’s say I can only splurge on one great restau­rant, I ask which one is the best. The com­mu­nity in the forum is truly awe­some on this site!

3) Get deals. After decid­ing on your hotel, you can type in your dates and it will con­nect you to all the top dis­count sites show­ing you their prices. It’s like one stop shop­ping! I love this feature.

You can even cre­ate free slideshows! This travel site is jam packed with good­ies to explore. I highly encour­age you to check it out to help you plan your next get­away. It has made my vaca­tions bet­ter and bet­ter every time! Don’t for­get to “play ;) it for­ward” and con­tribute reviews too…

Tips:

You can read the “pro­file of the reviewer” to help you decide if you think their advice is good. For exam­ple: If some­one from the United States is com­ment­ing on how small a room in Paris is, they might not know that’s pretty much the norm! Whereas the per­son from Ger­many is say­ing how roomy the hotel is prob­a­bly has a bet­ter take on the real­ity of Euro­pean hotels. If you’re torn between 2 reviews, one say­ing it’s great and the other not, focus on their pro­files to see which one bet­ter matches your lifestyle and inter­ests. Another great added bonus is many times you can con­tact the per­son directly through Tri­pad­vi­sor and ask more spe­cific ques­tions regard­ing their review or stay. The awe­some­ness is endless!!

When post­ing in a forum, be sure to men­tion the occa­sion for your trav­els such as a hon­ey­moon. That will help peo­ple give the best advice and rec­om­men­da­tions possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Brown Bag a Free Trip to Hawaii! (no joke!)

Apr 292011
 

What’s the catch? Here it goes and any­body can do it…Start pack­ing your lunches and start eat­ing din­ner at home more. Obvi­ously this con­cept isn’t new or rocket sci­ence. How­ever I promise the money you will save will get you a trip to Hawaii or what­ever des­ti­na­tion you’re dream­ing about. I stum­bled across this cool lunch sav­ings cal­cu­la­tor (why not use it for din­ner too) that opened my eyes to how much I could save by mak­ing bal­anced changes. Below is an exam­ple of how I can cut back and save. You will be shocked! This is a must read…

My Results–

LUNCH– Cur­rently I am eat­ing out 4 lunches a week at $10 a pop. If I just cut that in half (and my brown bag lunches are $3 a pop) to 2 lunches out a week I save $672 a year!

DINNER– Cur­rently I am eat­ing out 3 din­ners a week that vary from a quick run to Rubios or a relax­ing din­ner sip­ping saki and eat­ing Alba­core Spe­cial rolls. If I cut that back to eat­ing out just once a week I could pocket, drum roll please… $960.00 a year!

That’s a grand total of $1632.00 of sav­ings a year! Enough to get myself a ticket to Hawaii, stay at a great hotel, rent a car and drink plenty of Mai Tai’s!

Notice this cal­cu­lated just my own per­sonal sav­ings. The real­ity is my whole fam­ily (3 of us) would do it as well, and our sav­ings would be over $4,000.00.  Hav­ing gone to Maui this past fall, I can say that is plenty of money for a fam­ily of 3 to frolic on the white sands of Hawaii.

You Can Do It–

In order to actu­ally save the money, it would be wise to cal­cu­late your monthly sav­ings and actu­ally set it aside by deposit­ing it into your des­ig­nated vaca­tion sav­ings account. (for exam­ple on the last day of each month) Oth­er­wise the money might just get spent some­where else like going to the movies or buy­ing a cool gift for me. Do what­ever works for you, just be sure to do some­thing to put it aside as it’s being saved!

So if you are cut­ting back due to the econ­omy and are won­der­ing how you are ever going to get to go on vaca­tion again, maybe this could be your solution.We are going to put this to the test. I will give you updates now and then on our progress. More impor­tantly I will give tips and tricks to mak­ing great brown bag lunches! No peanut but­ter and jelly recipes here!! Stay tuned…

 

 

 

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