Category: Travel

Disneyland Summer 2018 | Blogging Besties Unite

Posted July 11, 2018 in Features, Travel / 4 Comments

If you’ve been around my blog for a while, you’ll know that Max and I make every effort to visit a Disney park at least once per year. Generally we go around Halloweentime (we love the decorations!) but when I heard that Lauren was going to be in SoCal this summer I could not pass up the opportunity to finally meet her in person, and I suggested that her and Chris meet us at the happiest place on earth since they’d never been! What ensued was basically one of the best days EVER. Day 0 Max and I drove down […]

YALLWEST Round 4: Senior Year

Posted May 9, 2018 in Book and Author Events, Features, Travel / 7 Comments

I’ve been blessed enough to be able to attend YALLWEST since its inaugural year in 2015, and returned again this month for its fourth year (“senior year,” if you will) in sunny Santa Monica. The festival was a bit more hectic that usual for me due to work commitments as it happened a bit later than it usually does, however we still ended up making it and catching up with our book squad from last year and having a fantastic time! Each year more and more publishers and vendors come out for the west coast event and it was great […]

Halloween Time at Disneyland | Farewell to Our Annual Passes

Posted November 6, 2017 in Features, Travel / 17 Comments

This fall Max and I took our annual fall trip to Disneyland to see the Halloween decorations. Traditionally, Halloweentime at Disneyland has been our favorite time to go since the park is decked out in holiday decor but kids are back in school so it’s generally much quieter than Christmastime. Unfortunately, that was NOT the case this year, as it was pretty insanely busy (we did go on a weekend, but still). Disneyland Resort has been doing a LOT to promote Halloweentime at the parks lately and it definitely shows with the increased number of guests, especially with all the […]

YallWest Round 3 | Everything is Better with a Book Squad

Posted May 15, 2017 in Book and Author Events, Features, Giveaways, Travel / 15 Comments

YallWest is my FAVORITE weekend of the year, combining books+friends+California (what more can you ask for?) Attending since its inaugural year in 2015, Max and I somehow managed to squeeze in a whirlwind trip admist a very busy work month for the both of us, and it’s safe to say that is was the BEST YallWest we’ve attended yet! As usual, we chose to drive because I’m not about my books getting smashed in the overhead bin of an airplane. So we headed out around 7am (we had intentions to leave at 5am…but you know how that goes). After a […]

Building My Hawaiian Vacation TBR Plan

Posted January 5, 2017 in Features, Travel / 14 Comments

Having a winter birthday means I have a lifelong complex about the cold. It always limited the birthday activities I could have (I’m still longing for all the pool parties I missed out on having), limited who could come (many people were away visiting family or on vacation), and my parties and celebrations were overshadowed by the holidays. I vowed to myself that ONE YEAR I would finally spend my birthday somewhere tropical, where I could lounge on the beach and enjoy the outdoors and perhaps have a cute birthday outfit that wasn’t obscured by a winter coat. Well my […]

Viva Las Vegas

Posted July 25, 2016 in Travel / 12 Comments

I’ve always thought of July as marking the midpoint of the summer season. Once the 4th hits, the summer is firmly in swing and warm days and hot evenings give me the travel bug. Every year I try to do a mid-summer vacation somewhere I’ve never been to or haven’t been to in a while. This year Max and I chose to head to Las Vegas for a quick mid-summer vacation. Day 1 We arrived in Vegas Tuesday afternoon and checked into the Bellagio, my favorite hotel to stay at on the Strip (it’s beautiful, classy, has great pools and […]

YALLWest Round 2: A Quintessentially California Tradition

Posted May 3, 2016 in Book and Author Events, Travel / 6 Comments

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that last year I attended the inaugural YALLWest, the exclusively YA California book festival that takes place in Santa Monica every spring (affectionately deemed “Bookchella” least year since it was the same weekend as Coachella). It was my first big “bookish” event with other bloggers, authors, and publishers and I had one of the best weekends of my life. Needless to say, I knew I would be attending the sophomore year of the festival, and found it to be just as amazing, with even more structure, organization, and additions […]

ALA San Francisco 2015 Recap & Giveaway!

Posted July 13, 2015 in Book and Author Events, Giveaways, Travel / 20 Comments

To kick off my two week vacation/hiatus, I attended ALA Annual this year, hosted in San Francisco the last week of June. I heard about ALA at the beginning of the year when my lovely friend Kay @ It’s A Book Life posted about attending ALA Midwinter, and on a whim looked up where the next one would be (never expecting it to be near me because a majority of bookish events seem to not happen on the West Coast). To my surprise and delight, I learned that in June ALA’s annual conference would be held in San Francisco, driving […]

Tinkerbell 10K Run at the Disneyland Resort

Posted May 14, 2015 in Travel / 6 Comments

Occasionally I like to feature other things on my blog aside from my bookish endeavors. If you’ve been reading for a while you probably know that I’m a huge Disney fan, so naturally I jumped at the opportunity to participate in Disneyland’s annual Tinkerbell Half Marathon weekend. My aunt and I headed down to compete in my first ever race, the Tinkerbell 10K on Saturday (she did the half marathon two years ago). The race started at 5:30am, and we started with the A group (runners are placed according to their average mile time). It started in downtown Disney […]

YALLWEST Tips, Tricks, & Giveaway

Posted April 24, 2015 in Travel / 4 Comments

Thinking about attending YALLWEST next year? Last week I posted all about my experience at the first ever YALLWEST, the companion festival to the east coast’s Yallfest. It was my first time going to a convention/festival as a blogger, and while I had a great time with a lot of fun surprises, I also did quite a bit of planning and preparing! After attending, I decided to compile a post with tips and tricks to make sure you get the most out of your YALLWEST (or any other bookish event, really) experience, as well as things I wished I had […]