bay area

A Beautiful and Versatile Wardrobe with The Reset

August 27, 2019 By Kat

I was wandering around the Valley Fair mall the other day, and my eyes did a double-take when I passed by the storefront of a new shop called The Reset. I hadn’t noticed it before, but the clothing in the window and the big signage about it being a woman-founded and Bay Area brand caught my eye. I went in to check it out.

First of all, the clothing and displays and design of the place is beautiful – in a very elevated, clean, and chic way. The color schemes are very harmonious and soothing.

For some background, the brand The Reset was founded by Maria Peevey. Her concept of a “Reset” is a way to take the stress out of dressing by having a good foundation to your wardrobe with these timeless pieces.

They can easily be mixed and matched with the rest of your closet and for whatever occasion is at hand. Plus, when you have good foundation pieces, you don’t need a huge wardrobe. With less choices, it’s easier to get dressed in the morning. This is essentially the idea behind a capsule wardrobe. I love the ethos behind the brand and how they want customers to feel effortless and confident in their style.

These outfits on display are so cute. Great for every day wear or when you want to look cute. Totally my style.

More great basics. I spy a leather jacket. 😉

They also have some cute loafers on display! (I keep using the word cute because that’s how I feel about everything in the store!) These shoes were created by a different female founder, Ana Del Bosque of the Bosque footwear brand. She was also there in the store that day!

What’s neat about these leather shoes is that they can be worn TWO ways – as a loafer or as a slide (if you collapse the heel). See below, as demonstrated by Elecia Tyson. She is a fashion stylist working at the store and was telling me about the shoes. My mind was blown when I saw both ways.

Here’s another close-up of the shoes.

At the front of the store, there’s also these bracelets with an empowering message! Yes!

Here’s a look inside the dressing room too. Nice that they offer some heels to try on the clothes with.

You know what else I found out? It was their first day open at the mall! How cool! They originally have a store in SF and they’re opening up some new ones too. See locations here.

Alright, hope you enjoyed this post! If you like the styles pictured here, you can check out The Reset online. Get $25 off with my referral link!

Similarly, Ana’s shoe line Bosque is available online as well. Hooray for local female-owned brands!

If you liked this post check out related articles:
Birdies: Cute & Comfortable Flats
Trying Out Rent the Runway
Rocksbox Jewelry Subscription Box
Fun Eyeglass Frames with SEE eyewear
Rothy’s: Shoes from Recycled Plastic Bottles
Style Makeover Videos By Me

My First Facial

August 1, 2019 By Kat

The best way to make your makeup look good (if you wear makeup), is to make sure your skin underneath is healthy and glowing and moisturized.

I admit that I haven’t taken the best care of my skin. Mostly it’s out of laziness. I don’t use those 10X mirrors up close every day. I usually just look into a big mirror over the sink, and think, “Psh, my skin is fine. I’m young!” Lol

But anyways, during a girls trip to Vegas last year, my friend Jean started talking about her elaborate Korean skincare process including facials and going to the Korean spas. Then I starting thinking, wow, I should really start taking better care of my skin and face. So immediately after I got back from my trip, I booked my first facial! Haha!

I did some Yelp searches and found Face-N-Body in downtown Mountain View. They offer services like facials, acne treatments, eyelash extensions, and more. I saw that they had great reviews, so I messaged them via Yelp for an appointment. The owner Sherin is very fast to respond and I immediately got an appointment!

Here is my “before” picture, before I got a facial.

Honestly, I was a little scared of getting a facial because I heard they can be quite painful when they’re popping your pimples. So that’s partially why I was never clamoring to go get a facial. But the reviews made it sound like a positive experience, so I decided to go for it!

Here’s Face-N-Body on Villa Street, a cross street of Castro Street in downtown Mountain View.

face-n-body mountain view — Walking up to Face-N-Body

When you walk in, you’re greeted with a friendly face and then I got introduced to Yang, an esthetician who was going to do my facial. She’s very sweet and also has great skin (of course!).

She led me down a hall of rooms and showed me to my room. The room has a relaxing vibe to it. There was a robe thing that I could change into and some cozy slippers to wear too.

Once you’re changed, you can lay down on this bed facing up.

Then Yang comes back in and starts the facial! She turns on this humidifier-thing to open up your pores (that makes the extraction less painful). I don’t really know how to describe the whole facial process, but she does a bunch of things to make your skin nice and clean and moisturized.

She does extractions to clean your clogged pores – if you have pimples or anything like that. It can hurt if you have a bunch of acne. Well sometimes it hurts, and sometimes it doesn’t. I think the way they do it is less painful compared to other facial places though.

Near the end, she’ll apply a mask as well depending on what your face needs. Then clean it off, apply moisturizer and sunscreen. Here’s the sunscreen she used.

She’s very knowledgeable as well, and answered all of my skincare questions! I felt like I learned a lot from her. Where else are you supposed to learn about how to take care of your skin?

She also made these observations on my skin:
– She does see sun spots
– My skin is on the dry side
– But overall she says it’s pretty good for my age. (Score! Haha!)

Anyhow, the whole thing was nice! It wasn’t as painful as I thought and I realized I need to moisturize a lot more and protect my skin from the sun! Here’s my “after” photo.

Right after my facial, inside
Outside

I saw my fiance after my facial and he thought my skin was looking really good. So then he decides to setup an appointment with Yang to get his first facial too. Haha, random!

Since my first facial last year, I have been back to Face-N-Body a bunch more times. I got the deal where if you pre-pay for a bulk of 4 or 5 sessions, you get a discounted price. So I’m still working through that package!

If my face looks red, it’s because of the extractions. But then the redness goes away and for the next few days afterwards, your skin feels amazing!!

Anyways, if you’ve never tried a facial before, I recommend trying it out sometime!

If you’re in the Mountain View area, you could try Face-N-Body because they’re great. Their clients have a wide age range from teens to adults to older folks. They’re not just for women, men go too. People go there for their acne, or to maintain their skin, or to prepare for a special occasion like their wedding so they have glowing skin for the big day!

If you enjoyed this article, you can check out my other posts on things to do in the Bay Area.

How to Create a Booth Display for Your Business

March 15, 2019 By Kat

Last month, I had the opportunity to showcase my personal styling business at the Four Chamber Business Expo in Palo Alto! The event was hosted by the Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, and Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce organizations. As a business owner, you can purchase an exhibitor table / booth at the expo, which is held during one evening.

I wanted to write this tutorial for those of you who may be wondering about this method of advertising and promotion. Sponsoring an event or purchasing an exhibitor table at a event can be a great way to spread awareness about your business and meet potential clients or collaborators in the community.

In this current age of digital advertising, I think there is still a lot of value in meeting people face-to-face and building a relationship on that foundation. It doesn’t necessarily scale as fast, but if you have the time and financial resources, it can be a marketing option to explore.

Last year, as my first year in my business, I had setup a booth at this event as a children’s book author to promote my first book.

Last year’s booth at the Four Chamber Expo

This year, I came back with a different career, haha! My booth was for my business as a personal stylist. I offer styling packages for helping clients upgrade their wardrobe with closet consultations and shopping trips.

This year’s booth at the Four Chamber Expo

Honestly, when you’re figuring out whether to invest in having a business booth, you first need to figure out whether the cost makes sense to you. Depending on the event, it can cost several hundred dollars and beyond (even thousands of dollars) to have a table at an event. For this event, it cost $200 for a 6′ table. You should weigh the cost of how many products / services you must sell in order for the cost of the booth to be worth it. It’s easier when you have higher-priced services like coaching or styling, as opposed to lower priced items like books. You’ll just have to sell a lot more books to be equivalent to the cost of selling a couple of the bigger service packages.

But of course, marketing can’t just be measured in short-term returns on your investment. There’s also the benefits of increased awareness and exposure, so people even begin to realize that you and your business exist. This is harder to measure and takes a lot of persistence and consistency – to keep showing up, so people can start to associate your business with solving a certain problem they may have in their life.

Part of maintaining that consistency is to collect business cards (brought a jar for that) and email addresses to build up your mailing list. Then you can continue to send out useful information to interested people.

Mailing List

To increase the incentive for people to sign up for my mailing list, I decided to do a giveaway. Chocolates and cookies are a popular giveaway, but may not help them remember the specifics of your business. On the other hand, schwag like pens or water bottles personalized with your business logo is useful, but can be pricey. At this point in my business, I’m not ready to buy branded schwag yet. I don’t even have a formal logo yet!

I wanted to go with something fashion-related, so I decided on lint rollers! They’re fairly inexpensive and I had seen them on sale at IKEA, so I went and picked up a huge pile of them! So if someone signed up for my mailing list, I’d give them a handy dandy lint roller. These were pretty popular, so in the future, if I had budget, I may get them personalized with my name as schwag.

Business Info Materials

The next thing I had to prepare was the actual handouts / materials with my business information and services. That included business cards. I used a template and same-day printed them with Office Depot.

I wanted to prepare a whole bunch of pretty materials and pamphlets on my process and services, but alas, I ran out of time. So at the minimum, have some handout about your services that people can take with them. I created a one-pager that listed the 3 different tiers of styling packages that I have, with pricing information and a special event discount for anyone who signed up that day.

If you want something a little fancier, you could use the free tool Canva to design brochures and flyers. They have great template designs. (I wrote a Canva tutorial for social media graphics earlier on my blog.)

Anyways, I came up with that handout, then rushed to Office Depot to get a stack of copies printed. Speaking of printing, if you’re going to do marketing for your small business, you’re probably going to have to print frequently. Luckily, the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce has a great partnership with Office Depot so members can get discounted pricing on printing. It saves a bunch of money!! Printing costs can add up!

Client Testimonials

Another thing that new customers love to see is your work in action, a.k.a. your portfolio. Since my work is very visual, and people would be passing by the booth fairly quickly, I decided to print out before/after photos of 3 of my clients.

Speaking of printing, in my experience, Office Depot does a great job with black & white copies (and they’re very fast with turnaround time). But their color copies don’t turn out as great. The color looks weird – too yellow or something. Hence I opt to go to FedEx for my color printing jobs, which is a little pricier, so I use it more sparingly.

By the way, it’s easier if you have the email addresses of Office Depot and FedEx on hand, so you can email them the files instead of bringing a USB there directly.

I sent them the copies and printed them. I trimmed them to fit my clear frames, which I had bought earlier at Michaels.

Before & after photos of my clients Ines, Paula, and Michael

I also included before/after photos of my own style transformation!

The photos were quite a hit, people liked seeing the transformations.

Payment Methods

Another thing I prepped for is to accept payments in-person. I use a Square payment reader with my phone. I setup the Square app with the items that are available for sale. Last year, it was the book (and I had to make sure the sales tax percentage was correct for the city I was doing the sale in). This year it was the styling packages with the discounts applied. I also tested out the reader with my own credit card to make sure the whole process would go smoothly and that the receipt looked the way I wanted.

This should be setup as early as possible. Last year, I panicked because I was going to use a PayPal reader but then my account wouldn’t activate, so I rushed to get a Square reader on the day of the event. Avoid those last-minute scares!

Decor of the Booth

The last part is the fun part of adding the decorative finishing touches onto the booth.

I had actually envisioned what the whole booth would look like as step 1 of this whole process. I sketched out what I wanted the booth to look like (see below). I thought about what props I already had from last time or around my home that I could reuse. It helped me to also think about what I needed to purchase/create.

A later, more refined sketch of my booth

Some decorative items I used were: some faux flowers in a vase, some twinkling lights, basket for the lint rollers, a vase for the business cards, a trinket tray for my business cards, Vogue magazines, velvet clothing hangers, candles, jewelry box holder, heels, fashion tape, and fashion books.

I also got a letter board from HomeGoods (where I got a lot of decor items for last year’s booth), where I could display my name and title. Otherwise I didn’t have a big sign with my business or name on it.

Get Yourself Ready

After all the work of running around and getting your booth ready, don’t forget to get yourself ready! I planned out my outfit ahead of time, did proper self-care and grooming, and allowed enough time to do my hair and makeup before the event. Since you’re representing your brand and your business, you want to look polished and professional – even if it’s been a frantic day, ha!

Extra Hands

If you’re a one-person business owner, try to find a friend or family member who can help you out at your booth. I asked Vince, my fiance, who I am grateful for. He helped me move and setup everything, as well as talk to people at the booth with me. It’s hard to handle all of that as one person! Let alone, sometimes you need to go to the bathroom and don’t want to leave everything unattended! Thanks babe!

Conclusion

To summarize, this is the process of how I designed and prepared my booth to promote my business at a local business expo. Overall, I thought it was great exposure for my business. I met many new contacts in the community, and have leads that I’m following up on now. It is a lot of work, so it’s not something I would do on a frequent basis, but it’s a good marketing tool to use every now and then. And once the primary legwork is done for setting up a booth, it’ll be easier for me to do the same setup for a booth at a different event.

I hope the article helped you understand what the experience is like and helps you decide whether you would want to do it in the future for your business! Again, in early stage businesses, it’s important to pay attention to costs (me learning from my mistakes) so be cognizant of how much you invest in the price of the booth and the materials so that you can get the most value from the experience!

Celebrate

After the event, we were exhausted and starving, so we went out for a little impromptu dinner date. Sushi, yum! Cheers to a successful event!

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this article, you can check out more tutorials on business topics on my blog.

Or you can sign up for my mailing list, where I share more behind-the-scenes of my life as an entrepreneur.

New Favorite Sandwich Place in Palo Alto – Driftwood Deli

February 18, 2019 By Kat

Apparently this place has been around for a long time, but this was our first time trying it! Their sandwiches are really good! It’s a bit hard to notice, but it’s next to the Creekside Inn on El Camino Real in Palo Alto, CA. Read on for a peek inside and to see what we ordered.

This is what you see when you walk in.

The staff is very friendly! And very patient while you try to choose among the many, many sandwich options lol. How to choose?!?

They said their most popular sandwiches are: #16 California Club, #29 Heaven on Earth, #23 Kevin’s, and #18 Turkey Pesto. They also do half sandwiches if you want to try different kinds.

Your meal’s not complete without a satisfying bag of chips! And boy, do they have chip options. Again, a very difficult decision lol.

Or if you have multiple people, you can opt for the bigger bags of chips and split it, which is what we decided to do.

If you need a drink or candy bar, they’ve got you covered.

After you’ve got all your food, you can sit at their cute little tables inside or outside. This guy had to get 2 sandwiches…

Ok here are the close up Instagram shots of the sandwiches you’ve been waiting for:

All of them were really good!!! My favorite was “The Customer’s Favorite!” That’s literally the name of it. They used to have it as the daily special, for a really long time (several months), and then they took it away, and customers kept asking for it, so they brought it back! It’s so good!!! *drool*

Other people in the community also agree that these sandwiches are the bomb.

We were SO stuffed from 3 sandwiches. I recommend going with 1 sandwich for each person, haha. Before I forget, they also have a cute coffee bar if you want that type of drink!

By the way, that’s Roberto in the picture. He’s a nice guy. Say hi to him if you see him there. He’s worked at the deli for 19 years! The owner of the shop is Steve, and he’s also around and friendly to talk to as well. Steve is in the video on the Yelp business page, which I watched before we walked in, so I recognized him, haha.

Anyways, back to the coffee bar. Here’s the menu of drinks available. And yes, they have ice cream too! From Dreyer’s.

Not done yet! They have breakfast sandwiches and salads too. I believe they have gluten-free options for bread as well. So there you go, they have everything!

This place has got a homey small-town feel to it, where they recognize the frequent customers by name. I like those types of places in the community. Sadly, they’re becoming rarer and rarer. So if you’re in the Palo Alto area near El Camino, stop by this place to support a small business!

Before we even finished our food, Vince said, “Let’s come back 38 more times!” Because we have 38 more specials on their board to try. LOL wow.

Thrift Shopping at thredUP IRL Stores

February 6, 2019 By Kat

In recent years, I’ve been hearing more and more about a company called thredUP which started as an online website for people to sell and buy secondhand clothing.

A couple years ago, I tried out Poshmark, which is another website to buy and sell fashion. I tried to sell a bunch of items, but had little luck – I sold one item. While buying things from Poshmark was tempting, I wasn’t sure of the quality of the items from the photos. It seemed like a lot of hassle to deal with an individual seller if I ended up not liking the item.

Meanwhile, I heard about how thredUP started opening up stores – called thredUP IRL (“in real life”). <~ Millennial talk lol. They had a pop up shop in Walnut Creek in the Bay Area, but that’s pretty far from me. Then another one popped up in Los Gatos and I was considering going there. But then one day, I was walking down the street in downtown Burlingame and saw that thredUP IRL had popped up there! I was excited to walk in and check it out.

It was a small store but the merchandise on display was very well done. The outfits they had picked out for the mannequins and on the wall were very cute and made me want the items!

Heart eyes for that black and pink Kate Spade purse!

So you basically browse the store and the racks, and then try stuff on! Everything has a thredUp tag on it with the discounted price. They have a range of brands available – from affordable ones (JCrew, H&M, Ann Taylor) to more designer brands. They have jackets, shirts, dresses, jeans, pants, shoes, and more. This store only had women’s clothing at the time that I went (in October 2018) but you can find the other types of stuff like kids clothing on their website: ThredUp.

I would also say that the quality of the items are pretty good. Many of the items look new or are in very good shape. thredUp is highly selective about what items they accept, which makes it easier for shoppers browsing their inventory.

Clothing is organized by color, type, and size

Once I picked out a couple items, I headed into the dressing room to try them on.

Right away, I loved this maroon faux leather jacket! It looks badass, especially with the quilting detail on the shoulders. It fit perfectly as well – snug!

The best part was that it was only $14.99! Yes! Thrifting for the win!

I didn’t have as much luck with the other items. They didn’t fit as well, so they were meh. I didn’t get them.

So in the end, I decided to take home the maroon jacket. Woohoo, what a deal!

I had a great experience at the thredUp store – the staff is very nice too! There are other discounts as well (see below). If you sign up for their mailing list, they’ll also email you when they have in-store sales.

After your visit, they may send you a survey about the in-store experience where you can also score some free $$ credit to use in the stores!

So the summary is if you’re looking for some trendy items at a lower price point, I highly recommend you check out thredUp online or in-person at their stores! Shopping secondhand is great for the environment as well!

Next up, I’m going to order a kit so I can send in some of the clothing I no longer wear and see if I can get cash/credit for them. Whatever they don’t accept will either get shipped back or you can choose to have them recycle it for you. I’ll let you know how it goes! 😉

Check it out for yourself – get $10 off on thredUp online with my referral code!

Or check out their store locations here. I’ve been to the Burlingame location and the Stoneridege Mall location in Pleasanton (pic below).

Happy shopping!

Interactive Sushi Experience at Kura Revolving Sushi Bar

January 20, 2019 By Kat

I had the chance to eat dinner at Kura Revolving Sushi Bar in Pleasanton with some friends, and it was so fun, I had to blog about it!

By the way, this is located near the Livermore Outlets by the way, if you’re in the area for some shopping, and still have money leftover. 😛

Eating at Kura Revolving Sushi Bar was an interactive experience, almost a game, and I loved it. Here are the basic instructions of how it works. Once you sit at the table, you can order items from a menu on a tablet at the end of table.

Then things start magically coming down the conveyer belt! You pick them up and enjoy your tasty food. They have so many menu items from sushi and hand rolls, to ramen!

The food comes in these little containers that pop open and you grab your plate.

Here are some snapshots of the food! I got a California roll of course. I know I’m so American.

So many choices on the menu!

I think the most thrilling part was ordering things from the tablet and eagerly anticipating them to come down the conveyer belt. Sometimes it’s a little too easy to order and you get carried away with too many orders in the queue!

Also because they’re geniuses, the restaurant also gamified the ordering/eating process. I believe the game part was called Bikkura-Pon. Every time you finish a plate, you discard it into a plate drop at the end of the table. The tablet keeps a count of how many plates you’ve put in there (so it can tally up the price of your meal – a set price multiplied by # of plates). BUT you also get rewarded the more plates you put in there.

After like 10 plates or so, there’s a fun little cartoon animation that plays on the tablet screen. And after 15 plates or so, there’s a little prize thing that drops from above. That was exciting! It was like automated, so it seemed like magic! And of course, it made us want to EAT MORE – in increments of 15 plates to be exact!

I captured a little video of it here: Bikkura-Pon Game Kura Sushi Bar

The prize that came out!

The anticipation…

A food keychain of a creamy tart..meh it’s alright. I don’t know who ended up keeping it. But the process was more fun than the end result. Ha!

Anyhow, we had a great time eating here! I would love to come back. Note that the line is really long, but I think they have an app where you can “get in line.”

And after you’re so bursting full, you can head several doors down to 85C Bakery for some dessert!!

Slowing Down to Speed Up

January 15, 2019 By Kat

I used to have a tendency to live life a million miles a minute. If there was a blank spot in my calendar, where I wasn’t physically meeting someone, I would fill it up with something else. I didn’t account for driving to/from places, and I didn’t account for being tired from going to an event or driving somewhere farther away. So I would pile in many things into my schedule for a single day, and when that day came, as I was rushing from place to place, I would get so tired and wonder why I agreed to all of those things in the first place.

For awhile now, I’ve been working on slowing down my life. Although my mind is very curious and wants to try and experience all these great things, it’s hard for my body to keep up. I realize that scheduling so many things into my calendar wasn’t giving me time to rest or even sit down and breathe. And I needed that alone time to process what just happened or to think about what I wanted to do next.

Having such a full schedule also robs us of the chance for spontaneity in life. On one hand, having a full day of plans already booked is great and time-efficient, but on the other hand, there’s something wonderfully glorious about a blank day with nothing on the calendar. I love those types of days because they are full of possibilities and full of surprises and joy.

I’m not saying that we should just slow down to a sloth’s pace and be couch potatoes for life. I just believe that slowing down to rest helps us get back out there and do our work at a much faster pace. By recharging (before we burn out), we can re-energize and be productive, and then go back to resting – like a sinusoidal curve.

When we slow down, we become more intentional with our time. We may realize that certain things cause us stress or anxiety, so we can adjust or remove those things from our schedule. Then we can have more energy for things that we want to focus on – for that particular time in our life. And the things we want to focus on will also change over time like a sinusoidal curve. There are seasons of life where we focus more heavily on career, then we focus more on health, then family/friends, then back to career, etc..

So in a world where “being busy” can sometimes be a status symbol, I am rejecting that notion. To me, not being busy is a luxury. We don’t need to fill up all our time with activities. We don’t have to be 100% productive all the time. We don’t have to do everything we’ve ever wanted to try in this immediate moment. Instead of cramming 10 things into 1 day, we could aim to do 3 things slowly and but enjoy them in the process.

What speed are you operating at these days?

It is a mistake to think that moving fast is the same as actually going somewhere.”
Steve Goodier

A Truly French Bakery Comes to the Bay Area – Maison Alyzeée

October 30, 2018 By Kat

My friend Pam recently came back from a month in France, and was raving about how this new bakery in downtown Mountain View was legit. She goes there for the baguettes and loves it. Apparently it’s the real deal! I was of course intrigued, so I had to visit this place for myself.

On a Tuesday morning, I stopped by Maison Alyzée and immediately fell in love with the charm of this bakery. I had the chance to speak with the owner, Laurent Pellet. He was so welcoming and open, and I got a peek behind-the scenes at the kitchen and got to meet the chefs as well. So cool!! The more I heard about their story and how they work and think, I was captivated by the amount of care and love that is put into this bakery.

Laurent opened this bakery because there wasn’t a truly French bakery that existed in the Bay Area. There were other really good bakeries, but not one that was *truly* French. The team believed that they could create something truly different. That is the mark of a team on a mission!!

The values that are important to Laurent are humility, respect, sharing, and quality. Sharing is important to him because back in France, a community of bakers is all about sharing. He also emphasizes humility because they are always striving to do better – to tweak and improve the product to be at its best for customers. They challenge themselves daily. Each day, they look at the product and think, “Do we need to improve this?” It’s possible that a pastry may change 1 week later.

When you visit this place, the ambience begins from the street when you walk up to the bakery (there is outdoor seating) to stepping into the cozy bakery and seeing all the beautiful pastries. There is a Parisian flair to the whole experience.

They even have their own signature loaf of bread – the one with the M on it, which is made up of different flours. Gotta try that one day! After I try their baguette. 🙂

Laurent wants this place to be like a second home for customers. Some customers already come every day! And he wants it to be a place for kids as well.

Speaking of feeling like a home, he introduced me to his wife who works there as well. Aren’t they adorable?

THE BEST INGREDIENTS

Their team is also very meticulous with their ingredients and test the products to make sure they’re up to their quality standard. They source their ingredients from local vendors and they use the best ingredients – French butter, the best chocolate, etc..

He showed me the selection of teas they have from France, and he even took out a humongous bag of tea which was so aromatic that I could smell it from an arms distance away, when the bag was still closed!

AN AMAZING TEAM

Laurent brought over 3 chefs from France – including a Michelin star pastry chef! There is Head Pastry Chef Jean-Victor Bellaye, Pastry Sous-Chef Xan Billiotte, and Pastry Sous-Chef Gerald Chahine. More details about them here.

Here’s a picture of Laurent (left) and Chef Jean-Victor (right).

Chef Jean-Victor also took the time to explain some of the pastries to me. And while we were talking, he pulled these pastries from out of the oven! They look delicious.

Overall, I had a fantastic first time at Maison Alyzée. I’m excited that they have come to downtown Mountain View. This place is only a couple of months old and already has strong reviews on Yelp.

By the way, here’s a picture of the croissant I had. It was so flaky and delicious. It was gone in no time.

Before

After

If you’re in downtown Mountain View, stop by this gem of a bakery!!

Maison Alyzeée
212 Castro Street
Mountain View, CA 94041

Thank you to Laurent and the whole team for being so welcoming. Wishing you the best!

Apple Hill Farms: Fresh Apples, Donuts, Cider, Pies, Caramel Apples, and More

September 18, 2018 By Kat

APPLE HILL

Visiting apple farms is a fun fall activity with friends or family!

Over Labor Day weekend, I visited Apple Hill for the first time and I highly recommend the experience. Apple Hill represents over 50 local farms – many of them are apple farms, but they also grow other fruits and veggies, Christmas trees, and flowers. Some are wineries as well. It’s also really crowded before Halloween because people are picking up pumpkins.

Visiting Apple Hill is a half-day to full-day activity. While you don’t pick your own apples, the main attraction is to see the farms and try all the delicious apple-themed food!

Apple Hill is located in Placerville, CA – about an hour away from Sacramento.

MAP OF FARMS

It’s nearly impossible to visit all the farms, so pick the top ones that you want to go to. Here’s the map. Some farms may not be on the map though. Depending on the crowds, there may be a lot of traffic or it may be hard to find parking. When we went on Monday morning (Labor Day), there wasn’t many crowds at all, so we luckily got to visit a bunch of farms.

FARMS WE VISITED

Here are the places we stopped at. I went with family who were familiar with the farms and the specialties at each farm.

High Hill Ranch – has a lake thing, lots of seating areas, food, and lot of independent vendors
Abel’s Apple Acres – Caramel apples and pastries and pies
Boa Vista Orchards – Ciders, pastries, pies, and a bomb apple fritter!
Larsen Apple Barn – Bought fresh apples here. They have a bake shop with food too.
Mill View Ranch – Cider donuts and hot apple cider
Delfino Farms – Apple pie is amazing

High Hill Ranch

Mill View Ranch

Sample ciders at Boa Vista

APPLE TREATS

I had no idea there were so many types of baked goods and things you could make with apples. There was apple cider and apple sauce of course. But there was also: apple butter, apple brownies, apple chips, carmellows, empanadas, fritters, cider donuts, apple donut ice cream sandwich, caramel apples, apple wine, cream cheese apple pie, and many other types of apple pies.

Caramel Apples at Abel’s Apple Acres

Bakery at High Hill Ranch

Apple Butter at High Hill Ranch (Available at other farms too)

Carmellows at High Hill Ranch (caramel wrapped around marshmallow)

Some farms also had a frozen food section where they had frozen pies or frozen apple turnovers or pastries that you could take home and bake. Ahh I wish I could have bought those, but I didn’t have a cooler to store them in. 🙁

Frozen treats at Abel’s Apple Acres

WHAT WE TRIED

The good thing about going in a group is that you can split some of these pastries. I definitely had too much sugar by the end of the morning. LoL

Cider donut at High Hill Ranch

Apple empanada at Abel’s Apple Acres

Apple fritter at Boa Vista

Apple Dream Salad at Larsen’s Bake Shop

Cider donuts and hot apple cider at Mill View Ranch

Apple pie at Delfino Farms – it’s a monster!

FRESH APPLES

You can also get fresh apples at these farms of course. Apples are great to bring home and share with people, whereas the pastries are hard to take home. We got the apples from the Larsen Apple Barn, where they have a cool conveyer belt and someone checking the apples. On the side of the barn, they also have bags of different types of apples you can buy. Crispy, crunchy, fresh apples at Larsen Apple Barn – YUM!

WHEN TO GO

You’ll have to check out the website to figure out when the farms are open, but it’s not open year-round. I think it’s mostly open from Labor Day weekend to Christmas Eve each year. Depending on the month you go in, different apple varieties will be in harvest as well. You can check the Harvest Calendar for your favorite type of apple.

Have fun exploring the apple farms!!

You may also want to check out:
Magical Bridge Playground
Interactive Sushi Experience
Meatball Mondays at Bucca di Beppo
What a Toddler Taught Me About Business

Gift Idea Under $30

July 12, 2018 By Kat

A hobby I’ve been playing around with is flower arranging. There’s something so beautiful about flowers and the process of arranging them is so creative and artistic. I feel like an imposter saying that it’s my hobby though because I’ve only done it once (ha!). But nevertheless, below is my first creation.

I had grand plans of doing custom flower arrangements for all the women in my life as celebrations came up – bridal showers, birthdays, etc.. I think it’s a thoughtful handmade gift – like an equivalent of baking something sweet for someone (except my baking skills are nonexistent).

I even bought another vase, but it just sat there for months with no flowers in it. (By the way, I got the vase at Michaels. I used the 40% off coupon of course.) For these special events that came up, I either got too busy or planned my time poorly. Hence I didn’t have time to pick up the flowers and do the whole artistic process of sticking in flowers, judging if I like it or not, and pulling it out, etc…

GRANDMA’S BIRTHDAY

For my grandma’s birthday recently, I decided I would make time for this! But by the time I left the house that morning, the flower shop I wanted to go to was already closed for the day. -_- So I decided to stop by Whole Foods.

FLOWERS FROM WHOLE FOODS

Oh my! I should have come here sooner! I’ve always seen the beautiful local flowers on display at Whole Foods but I didn’t look too closely at them because I figured they would be expensive like everything else in this “Whole Paycheck” store.

I did notice that they sold flowers in smaller quantity stems though. So I decided to pick out a couple types of flowers, and then go home and arrange it. They also have small bunches of mixed greenery that you can buy – they add lots of dimension to a bouquet!

It took me FOREVER to decide which colors and flowers to mix and match. (Can you tell I have an issue with indecision? hehe)

I liked some peach roses but they were wilting already, so I asked the lady who worked there if they had anymore.

She disappeared into the back and came back with a slightly different color they had: sage roses. I liked them! And they were very fresh!

FLOWER ARRANGEMENT

She handed them over to me to add to my existing flower selections, and I was about to go pay for them, when she said the glorious words, “Would you like me to arrange them for you here?” I was like “…really??”

I thought about all the time I would save by not needing to cut stems with stubborn scissors (meant for paper not flowers) and sweep the leaves off the floor at home if I did it myself. So I eagerly said YES!

But then I didn’t have an actual vase, and I wanted the flowers to last longer. So I told her I’d be right back, and I literally went home to grab my empty vase and came back.

By the time I returned, she had already trimmed all the stems and arranged it nicely into a bouquet bundled with a rubber band. She held it next to the vase to eyeball the height. Then she chopped off the stems in 1 fell swoop, with what I can only describe as a giant paper cutter for flower stems.

She plopped the flowers into the vase with water and even gave me a nice box for transporting it and some tissue paper and flower food. Oh and she spritzed the flowers with water for an extra oomph.

When I paid, it only came out to be $26.16 for the flowers!

I walked out of there so proud – for getting myself a great deal and saving time LoL! My grandma loved the flowers by the way. Hooray! So it wasn’t entirely homemade, but I was part of the creative process! 😉

Anyhow, just wanted to share this little tip in case you need a gift for a special someone in your life. Especially for people that already have everything they need. But I think most people would love flowers to brighten their space!