Others

Coffee Tour | Melbourne, AU

11.10.14
Today, we are taking a little coffee tour to Melbourne, Australia through Agia Sidi’s eyes. I’ve been following Agia on Instagram for a while now and he was gracious enough to share some of his photos with us. Melbourne is on top of my wanderlust list and I hope to visit one day. It seems like you can’t really run out of great coffee spots in Melbourne but what really strikes me is the interior café/store designs in this fast growing city. I’ve read that best store (culinary & café) designers are in Australia and they weren’t kidding. Here are just a ‘few’ spots from Agia’s feed that I’m putting on this mini virtual tour. Be sure to follow Agia @agiasidi if you planning a trip to Melbourne cuz he’s got it all covered with hot spots to hit when you are in town. I can not wait to pay my visit! (Scroll over the pictures to see the names of places).

I asked Agia what does he do differently to come up with these great captures and he said “I do it the old fashion way: always find the light, and don’t be ashamed to take your food pic standing up!”. Sounds simple and easy? If you take pictures at spots regularly, I think you would know that they are the two hardest things to achieve but will always results in fantastic pictures. Thanks for sharing it with us, Agia!
+ All Photography by Agia Sidi @agiasidi Instagram Feed.
Travel

A Day Trip to Healdsburg, CA

11.04.14
One of the best things about living in Bay Area is to be able to drive an hour or two away and feel like you’re at different place. Napa/Sonoma, Lake Tahoe, Monterey, Half Moon Bay, just to name a few. This past weekend, we decided to drive up to Healdsburg, CA (in Sonoma County) and visit just few places that has been on my spotted list for awhile. It took about hour and half from Oakland. I’m glad we were able to get out and explore different town and not stay at home feeling like you are rottening glued to screen all day. I realized I should do this more often with my family, it’s nice to have the weekends open so we can spend some time together as a family and enjoy outdoors, good food, of course. 

It was obvious, Fall came to SHED at Healdsburg. This James Beard Design award winning, a beautiful open space with dining, flowers, home goods, groceries and café is a dream space. This place reminded me a lot of London Plane in Pineer Square in Seattle, WA. It makes me so happy just dreaming about having my own space like this someday. Ok, maybe not to this extent. I think I’ll be happy if I had a nice well lit space where I can have my design studio, a coffee bar, flower shop and a test kitchen. Oh why not, Never stop dreaming…

All of us enjoyed the food we ordered there. You can order food to take-out or dine-in, we decided to dine-in because we were hungry! We ordered some pizza, pork belly sandwich, beer on tap, sparkly lemonade. Boys really like this prosciutto and salami cold cut platter with bread and olive oil. YUM!

Popped into Flying Goat Coffee Roasters for some afternoon Capp.

We stopped by at this cute ice cream & pie bar, Noble Folk. You can choose a pie and ice cream flavors to make your own a la mode pairing. I picked Chocolate Baked Pumpkin Pie with Salted Caramel to take care of my sweet tooth!

I’m so glad that we were able to get out and get fresh air and feel like we’ve visted somewhere new. Just within this one block radius square (park in the middle) seem to have enough to check out filled with galleries, bookstore, boutiques and cafés and markets. We want to go back in the Spring/Summer time and have a mini picnic!
Have you visited or live near Healdsburg, CA? What are some of your favorite spots and things do there? 
All Photography by Selina @skycreatives using iPhone 4S + Nikon D3100.