My Month in Film | July 2017

Overall July has been a pretty amazing month. The month started with a pretty incredible post-graduation trip to Mexico, which was all-in-all the most relaxing vacation I've been on. The rest of the month was pretty exciting too with finishing moving back to San Francisco and getting settled back into city life. I feel like this month flew by and before we know it it's going to be fall.

Walking around downtown with a friend I saw this tiny old building sandwiched between two big buildings, I don't know why it caught my eye so much but I absolutely loved it.

The Castro theatre is one of the best (if not the best) movie theatre in San Francisco. They regularly screen old movies and do sing-a-longs, which people get really involved in. I'm definitely looking forward to going to their screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show around Halloween this year.

Went over to Golden Gate Park with my boyfriend and sister and snapped a shot of Donut World, which is a kind of grimy (but not gross) and super cheap donut shop nestled right in the inner Sunset. It's places like these that remind me that while San Francisco has changed a lot while I've been in college, there are little corners of the city that hopefully will never change.

Went up to the observation deck at the DeYoung Museum after seeing the Summer of Love exhibit. I would definitely recommend seeing the exhibit if you'll be in San Francisco during the summer and it's definitely worth making a trip up to the observation deck afterwards to get some pretty incredible 365 views of the city. 

Wandering around Green Apple Books in the Inner Sunset with my new and beloved leather jacket from Madewell.

Walked down Dolores Street to meet some friends at Dolores Park. I love walking down Dolores during the summer because its one of the few parts of San Francisco where it actually feels like a quintessential California summer with the palm trees and sunshine. 

A gorgeously sunny day at Dolores Park. 

Laying on the grass in Dolores park wearing a very typical "me" outfit: Ray Bans, leather jacket, white tshirt, and Levis. 

I feel like July has been the month of taking walks. Where I went to school there weren't many places to just go and take a nice walk, but now that I'm back in a city where there are tons of great places to take walks I've been taking full advantage of it. This particular walk was out at Land's End on a clear enough day to see the Golden Gate Bridge. 

One of my favorite coffee shops is the Mill, a place where I have been spending a lot of time this month brainstorming content for the blog.

Had a really fun day with one of my best friends wandering around North Beach. All of the juxtaposing architecture is one of my favorite aspects of that neighborhood. 

We also wandered over to Jackson Square, which is right next to North Beach, and is easily one of my favorite neighborhoods. It is one of the oldest neighborhoods in San Francisco and because of it has some really amazing brick buildings that remind me of the West Village in New York. 

All of this foggy weather is making me very excited for Autumn and Winter, especially autumnal clothing.

A Blog Update & Rejig

As of this August I will have been blogging on this site for four years. I started this blog the summer before I left for college, mainly out of boredom since all my friends were on semesters and had left for college a month before I was set to leave. Over those four years this blog has been a space for me discuss whatever I am most interested in at the moment, which has primarily been focused around beauty and makeup. The past few months, as I've been leaving college and moving back to San Francisco, I have realized how much time I want to dedicate to this blog, and now that I am no longer in school I will have more time to do so.

With that said, I have realized that having almost four years of content (albeit sporadic) on this blog has made it feel cluttered and far from focused or streamlined. Overall, the majority of the content on this blog doesn't reflect what I want this space to be anymore. I wrote a post a little over a month ago about how my beauty philosophy has changed, and how I don't get as excited about makeup or beauty nearly as much as I did when I started writing this blog. That's not to say I'm not interested in beauty anymore, its just not my sole interest that I want to discuss on this blog any more. Being in my early twenties and living in San Francisco opens a lot of doors in terms of the type of content I can provide for my readers. I am the most interested in fashion I have been in a few years and have been more and more antsy to share that passion on this space. I also want to show you San Francisco and all of the things I enjoy doing here as a local, which is something I've already started to do with my month in film series. And then there's moving, which I feel like can provide a lot of lifestyle and interiors related content. There will still be beauty content here and there but it will most likely consist of things I'm loving at the moment rather than single product reviews or makeup looks I enjoy wearing. There will be more of a focus on how fashion, lifestyle, interiors, and beauty intertwine with my everyday life, which is inline with the name that I've had for this blog from day one. 

Overall I've come to the conclusion that I need to start fresh on this space so I can really make this feel like my blog again and not like 19 year-old Hannah's blog. I've always valued the advice that you should write a blog that you would want to read, and when I go through my blog archive I don't want to read a lot of the posts I read two or three years ago. That's not to say I hate the old posts on my blog, because I definitely don't. If anything it's more that I don't feel like that content represents where I'm at as a 20-something or what I want this blog to be going forward as I aim to grow it and produce more and higher quality content. I have therefore decided to make the content basically up until the beginning of 2017 private, so I won't be deleting it, it just won't be available to see any more. Who knows, maybe in a few years I'll want that content to be visible again, in which case I will make it view-able to the public again. 

Going along with this whole theme of refreshing this blog I have also moved my blog over from Blogger to Squarespace because I thought it was time for a change in the look of my blog. My blog is still quite minimal looking, but hopefully looks more streamlined and I think is more representative of my personal style at the moment. In the upcoming months I'm going to continue to work on the design of my blog in order to make it the best-looking site it can be (albeit with my limited web design skills). 

I hope that you guys will stick with me through this transition and I am so excited to channel all of my excitement and inspiration towards this blog to make it what I really want it to be both for me and my audience. 

My Favorite SPFs For The Face

Being a redhead the one thing I've had engrained in me ever since I was little was to wear sunscreen every single day. When I was younger I was much more resistant to wearing sunscreen, not because I was delusional enough to believe that I was going to ever get tan as a result of not using the stuff, but rather because I hated how it felt. To be fair, childhood was over a decade away and SPFs have come a long way since then. While I've always been pretty good about wearing sunscreen when I've been in situations with prolonged sun exposure, I have been less vigilant about wearing sunscreen on a daily basis. That changed this year however.

This sudden change in consistent SPF usage is down to two factors: 1) as I'm getting older (I'm 22 and I'm not at all complaining that I'm old yet) I've started to really realize the benefit in using preventative skin care to at least partially slow down the aging process and SPF is the best thing you can do not only from a health standpoint for you skin but from a cosmetic one as well and 2) I have found two SPFs that I genuinely enjoy using on a daily basis.

Neutrogena has always been my go-to when it comes to SPF. They were the first drugstore brand, to my knowledge at least, to spearhead a truly comfortable formula for SPF. My favorite in the range for an everyday facial SPF is the Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Liquid Sunscreen SPF 70. Even though this stuff is pretty heavy duty when it comes to the actual SPF, the formula is incredibly lightweight and works very well under makeup as it isn't greasy at all. I prefer to use this either when I'm expecting to be out in the sun longer (because of the high SPF) or when my skin is feeling a bit dry because although I don't find the formula to be greasy it does add a bit more moisture than my everyday moisturizer would.

Me being the Glossier fan girl that I am immediately bought the Glossier Invisible Shield as soon as it was available for purchase. Whereas the Neutrogena is more of a traditional sunscreen (albeit a really good one), the Glossier is an invisible gel formula. The SPF is 35, which is perfect for everyday use and has broad spectrum protection (as does the Neutrogena). While I don't think is the best choice if you're going to be out in the sun for an extended period of time, I love to use it almost every single day when I'm in and out of the sun or in my car (because you can still get sun damage through car windows). This formula is an absolute dream under makeup because it sinks into the skin and feels like nothing! The formula, being clear and a chemical sunscreen, lends itself to working on darker skin tones as well because it does not have a white or ashy cast that physical sunscreens can leave behind.

Here's to sun protection!

The Travel Makeup Bag | The Mexico Edition

About two weeks ago my boyfriend and I jetted off to Mexico for a week-long post-graduation trip. We had the best time laying by the pool, sipping on piña coladas, and reading books. It might sound a bit dull to some, but I think we both needed a week of solid R&R after the craziness of graduation and moving. I had originally planned for this post to go up pre-vacation but I decided to delay it till after we got back because I wanted to let you know how much of the makeup I ended up packing actually went to use (spoiler alert most of it didn't). 

As for base products I kept it extremely minimal since I knew I'd be in the water for about 50% of the time and the other 40% I'd be spending lathering sunscreen on my face. I also lucked out because my skin was on its best behavior so it didn't need much in the way of coverage. I ended up packing the Glossier Perfecting Skin Tint to even out my skin if I felt I needed it, but honestly did not use it once, since as I mentioned my skin looked pretty good and even the whole time. I packed my trusty Glossier Boy Brow to set and give my brows some color, which I did end up using a fair few of the days if I remembered to do my brows. The base product I used the most was the NARS Soft Matte Complete concealer to cover any small blemishes or under eye circles, which were lingering from the prior weeks of getting very little sleep. The L'Oreal True Match Powder really only got used when we went out to dinner, because I was putting on too much SPF during the day to justify needing to wear powder. Eye products are the category where I always overdue to because I always think I need options, in reality I don't. I did use my Fairydrops Scandal Queen Mascara almost every single day because it is super waterproof and looks incredibly natural when applied in light layers. I packed the It Cosmetics Tightline Mascara because I had originally thought we weren't going to be in the water as much as we ended up being and wanted something that wasn't waterproof and is very natural looking. I think this mascara ended up getting used once or twice. In terms of eyeshadows I brought the By Terry Ombre Blackstar in Bronze Moon, my MAC eyeshadow duo with Grain and Sable, and theCharlotte Tilbury Eyes to Mesmerize in Bette. I ended up only using the Ombre Blackstar one night when we went to an especially fancy dinner and the Charlotte Tilbury cream shadow for another dinner out. I also brought my favorite NARS Pro Prime Smudgeproof Eyeshadow Base for whenever I did wear eyeshadow and the MAC Groundbreaker Eyeliner as my sole eyeliner for the trip.

I ended up getting some use out of my Glossier Cloud Paint in Beam and Glossier Haloscope Highlighter in Quartz whenever I wore more makeup than just mascara. This combination of cheek products is something I'd definitely recommend for a beach trip because they just make your skin look so glowy and healthy. I'm a bit the same with eyeshadow as I am with lip products when it comes to packing, because I always end up bringing unnecessary options when I end up almost never using lip products. I brought the Glossier Generation G's in Zip and Crush, which I imagined using for a brighter lip had I decided to wear less eye makeup for the nicer dinners we went to, but alas I opted for the eyeshadow in the end.

My Month in Film | June 2017

It's safe to say that this past June was one of the most hectic months in my life to date. Between finals, graduation, graduation parties, moving back home to San Francisco, job interviews, and unpacking I have been thoroughly overwhelmed. That being said, June was also packed with some really fun and exciting moments, some of which I have captured for this month's month in film post. 

At the very beginning of the month a few friends and I went wine tasting for the day. We were lucky enough to go to college near an amazing wine region and spent the day trying to understand wine all while having moments of laughing so hard we were near tears. Easily one of the best days spent before graduation.

Took a trip out to Montaña de Oro, a state park in California, with some of the best views of the ocean. 

Gave my boyfriend a photography lesson at Montaña de Oro and he insisted on taking a few pictures of me. I could not stop laughing through the process. 

One of the best things about coming home has been being reunited with my cat Bailey. She has been so needy ever since I got back and will hardly leave me alone, to the point where she follows me around the house and insists on sleeping right next to me every night.

Spent the day out wandering around the city with my best friend in San Francisco. It was so fun to have no plans and just walk around the city with no particular destination in mind. 

I've been so happy to be back in a big city again. There's just so much more to do here and so many different kinds of people. I missed San Francisco so much. 

A wander through the Ferry Building despite it being a current tourist haven at the moment.

An incredibly dorky picture next to the Bay Bridge, you'd think I was a tourist from this shot ;)

My favorite skyline ever...