Yesterday I went to The Pinewood Tippling Room with some girlfriends and enjoyed a tasty spin on my usual Old Fashion. I snapped photos of their charming Southern decor and wrote about it on I Spy Atl, read and view the full post here.
Monthly Archives
June 2014
This weekend friends and I headed up north to Cleveland, GA (sound familiar? I was just there, read about it here) for our friend Jessica’s bachelorette weekend. The intentions of the weekend were to relax, chill by the pool, EAT, sip on drinks, hike and of course celebrate J Step’s upcoming nuptials. We managed to check it all off our to-do list and more! Here’s a short recap..
After arriving and unpacking the car we noshed on a cheese platter and hung by the pool. We all pitched in and brought floats, squirt guns and other water accessories. I made a white and red sangria for the night and we all combined forces to make about 6 pizzas of different fresh ingredient varieties. The next day we went for a hike behind the house but realized it wasn’t as “legit” as we wanted so we set out for Duke’s Creek Falls but on the way got distracted by “Helen Tubing” signs and decided that was more our speed! We spent about 2.5 hours floating down the Chattahoochee with several hundred other people from all walks of life, it was something else!
Saturday’s delicious breakfast provided by Muriel included a blueberry “french toast” casserole, an egg and bacon spinach dish and fresh watermelon. Take me back to this meal! But not that coffee, it was gross, we couldn’t figure out the fancy coffee machine and this ended up tasting like glorified gas station coffee..
Despite being gross from our float we couldn’t resist a photobooth in Helen which was obviously made for two people max!
I brought friendship bracelet materials and on Saturday after we sat by the pool and made alphabet bracelets. There was a “Bitch Please” “Stepweber” (bride+groom combo) and I went with “LF FTW”
On Sunday I got dropped off at Dustin’s place and we made our way to Sweet Water Brewery with some of his family and friends and my little brother. A nice end cap to a pretty chill weekend. Yesterday Dustin and I started our Summer kickball season with our team “Community Bucket.” It was my first time playing kickball as an adult and I wasn’t half bad but still very much competitive! Hope everyone out there is having a swell start to the week!
For this edition of INSTA-FAVES I decided to go with my favorite selections from Madewell’s #TOTEWELL competition. When I looked back at all the entries I was really inspired! Sucks cause I had been thinking about buying one of their transport totes for so long and finally took the plunge after the competition but nonetheless, still enjoyed perusing the section of entries, here. Without even trying all my picks have similar vibes —
This last one is mine! Snapped this in downtown Roswell having dinner with my folks last weekend. I’ve already conditioned it with leather conditioner and it’s getting so soft, in love!
Hope you took a second to browse I SPY ATL, have a good week friends!
So this is what I’ve been hinting and getting at, I SPY ATL is live and has been going really REALLY well! My roommate Sarah and I started a few months back brainstorming, gathering content, designing the logos and with the help of our web development pal Natasha-who runs Nicely Built-we all created the website! I’ve taken some screen shots of my favorite parts of the site, let me explain!
The goal of this project is to “collect the unique and undiscovered parts of the city of Atlanta, and display them proudly for everyone to see. We embrace thoughtful narratives, uncovering the hidden, and taking the path less traveled. We aim to write about artists, musicians, creatives, problem-solvers, and everyone in between.” (via the site)
When you visit the ‘homepage’ it looks like below. Each story has a featured image and is tiled, similar to Pinterest. I like that when your cursor hovers over the image it shows “read more” above the photo. It’s sleek and user friendly.
The two main tabs our visitors will browse are the “view by spy type” and “neighborhoods.” We started with categories that first came to mind but will be expanding the range of categories as the site grows.
Above is what an individual post looks like, with the story’s body on the left and our IG feed on the right along with a “featured” post. We have the ability to have this on the homepage but we felt it was distracting and also ate up room for the other stories to be displayed.
One of my favorite things about the website and the idea is that we want the community to get involved and participate in the site. The “be a spy” tab is where they can do that with multiple options such as “i saw something” or “i am someone you should write about.”
Sarah put it best when she said:
I like to think of ourselves as the college radio version of Atlanta culture coverage: we don’t want anything corporatized, large-scale, mass produced. We want to cover the little guys, the new beginners, the small hustle. I’m excited about this; I hope you are too.
Read her take on the project here.
Thanks for reading and we hope you’ll visit I SPY ATL and follow along as we, and the city, showcase our favorite corners of Atlanta!
I Spy ATL can also be found on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook!
I had the delight of teaming up with a friend/musician/adorable free spirit Sydney Eloise Ward on a photoshoot last month for the newly launch site I SPY ATL (the side project I’ve been hinting at!) We asked Sydney some light-hearted questions you can read here.
Since I’ve been impatiently waiting to share these I’ll save the big run down of I Spy Atl for another post, promise! Here’s our shoot from a very sunny adventure at Arabia Mountain—
