beauty soup | the upper west side

One of my favorite things to do on the weekends is wander around the upper west side and pretend that I live in one of those big, beautiful brownstones. As far as neighborhoods go, the upper west side is definitely my favorite hood in Manhattan. (My other favorite is the west village, but it would take some serious smooth talking to convince J to ever move down there. He can only handle so much cuteness.) The upper west side is pretty dreamy. The streets are wide and whimsical and so charming that it kind of makes your head spin (or is that just me?). No matter what season it is, the trees always overhang into the road so you feel like you're walking into a magical tree tunnel and after awhile, you're like, what movie am I in right now? (Just trust me) Oh, what I would do to wake up in the morning and have a cup of coffee at one of those big bay windows. And the stairs! The stairs. When I have stairs leading up to my front door, that's when I'll know I've made it in this world.

For the record, J thinks this new habit of mine is real creepy.
What I call 'admiring', he calls 'stalking'. (Tomāto tomäto, you know?) He digs the upper west side just as much as I do, but sometimes I get carried away while I'm window-shopping for my next dream home. Look at those windows! Can you imagine what it must look like inside? Look at the details! Ooh, look at the white one! LOOK AT THE WREATH ON THE DOOR! LOOK AT EVERYTHING! I WANT IT ALL!

He's made a point of walking 20ft behind me at all times in case one of the actual residents happens to notice that I've been circling their apartment all afternoon.

While I'm wandering/stalking, I like to channel my favorite New York City goddesses, Kathleen Kelly and Holly Golightly. Not surprisingly, this song is always playing in my head whenever I turn down West 69th, secretly hoping to stumble upon The Shop Around The Corner. There's something very romantic and old-New-York about the upper west side. It makes you want to play the saxophone and go on evening walks and drink red wine every night.

You know what I mean?

This post is part of the Beauty Soup project.

beauty soup (n) | a melting pot for all things worth admiring

beauty soup | instagram-ers you should know

I admit it. I'm an Instagram junkie.

If my eyeballs happen to be glued to my phone, chances are I'm not checking texts or emails or the weather (the forecast for the next few weeks is going to be the same, anyways: It's f-ing cold out, Heather). 99% of the time I'm scrolling through Instagram.

When I first started using Instagram (back in the olden days, circa 2011), I didn't realize that other people could actually see my photos. Heh. I just thought it was some weird photo app with lots of cool filters. Little did I know, I was clogging up all of my friends' Feed with 15 posts of the same photo in "Rise", "Walden" and "Lo-Fi". Sorry, friends! 

I'm constantly amazed by what people have transformed Instagram into - how they've been able to mold it (from "some weird photo app") into a platform for beauty and art and creativity. Unfortunately, my Instagram account isn't as sophisticated and elegant as these ladies (I'm working on it! I swear!). Mine is mostly decorated with pictures of bagels and snow and - most recently - a close-up of the beautiful box of Girl Scout Thin Mints that my mom just mailed me (bless that woman!).

So for today's installment of Beauty Soup, behold! Four of my favorite Instagram artístas.

01. Local Milk / 02. Molly Yeh / 03. Alice Gao / 04. Katelyn Sabatine

* This post is part of the Beauty Soup collection. Click here to find out more. 

beauty soup | for gals-on-the-go

Ta da! Say hello to Beauty Soup, my latest and greatest invention.

I'm no beauty expert, so don't get any wild ideas. I really don't know what makeup you "should" be wearing, how to properly apply liquid eyeliner, or what it means when women get their eyebrows "threaded". (What is that?!) Instead, Beauty Soup is one big melting pot for all things beautiful in life (cue the harps, please). Here you will find bits & pieces of beauty, found in the day-to-day. Products, people, places, you name it.

First up, I thought I'd share my "beauty" regimen with you (if you can even call it that).