Look for less

Madewell  silk high tea top

Frenchi® Pintuck Blouse (Juniors)

Kate Spade FLORAL AUBREY WRAP DRESS

Nordstrom Rack Adrianna Papell Ruffle Trim Chiffon Dress 

Always be beautiful.

Before I start, I want to thank Lisa from Confession of  a Call Center Girl  for the shout out.  When I check on line today and first thing I notice is Laura, who has not comment before.  When you are a  blog that had hardly any followers, you notice a new face :-) I was further puzzled by  Laura's comment "I'm visiting you, becasue Lisa obviously thinks very highly of you." It is only till later when I visit Lisa's blog  that I realized that she had introduce her readers about my blog.  Thanks Lisa,  it is so sweet of you.  I had been doing this blog for a while although I am not always diligent in terms of updating.   Despite lack of followers or comments,  the few that does feel very close and personal to me.

Among the few who I felt close to in this blogging world is Cindi from Simply Cindi.  We came from a similar background. I like reading her blog because I can relate to a lot of things she said.  But I didn't know about that when I first visiting her blog.  What draws me first was her beautiful wedding photos.  They are stunning!  Now she is starting her own wedding photography business with her husband Chris.  They are great! I think a great photography is not only great because their fancy equipment or superb technical skill, but also a great eye for details.  They are able to find beauty from the most common subjects and capture that special moment that flees in a blink.  I think Chris and Cindi are that type of person.  You can just tell by the way they planned their wedding and the shots they have shown us so far.

Anway,  I was reading Cindi's blog on DSLR 101 the other day and find it very interesting.  I was inspired to do some experiment on my own according to her suggestion.  I borrow hubby's Nikon, and set the mode to manual.  ISO 800 because low light, Speed 1/60 and aperture F1.8 which is the max I think.  Here is the result.

The mistake of this experiment? I choose the wrong subject of study.  It actually doesn't matter how the photo turn out.  My daughter will always be beautiful to me so I can't really judge my experiment is successful or not.  Haha! We will just call that a success :-)

Valentine's day is coming up this Monday.  Do you have any special plans? Any special outfit to  celebrate?  Getting any fancy gift?  With kids around, it is kind of hard to do anything but hubby did made reservation for lunch at my new favorite sushi place. So sweet of him!   Of course, what would be Valentine's day without the chocolate, right? These dark chocolate covered almonds from Trade Joe's are divine!  I don't think there will be many left on Monday though. 

(Top: Antro Topsy Henley

Cardi: Lumière ruffle cardigan in papaya 

Bottom JCREW Cord Atlee skirt in brown 

Legging: Madewell Denim ) 

New camera and OOTD

I had been using my Canon Digital Elph for some years.  I like the fact that it is so small and light so I can carry it in the pocket with me.  I do however get annoyed at the long shutter delay at the low light conditions.  It would mean I miss the most exiting part of my children's action.  I also want a camera that has a wide angle as I take more group pictures than long shots.  I also know that I won't be changing lens since our family already have a Digital SLR and I really don't want to carry anything overly bulky or heavy.  The show down happens between Panasonic Lumix L5 and Cannon Powershot S95,  I had decided to pull the trigger on the Panasonic Lumix L5.    You can find a pretty good comparison between the two on  dpireview website.

I bought the camera from Amazon for $389.00.  It is probably not the best deal but then with deal, it is hard to know when the bottom is.  The camera arrived within two days.  I couldn't wait till Christmas to open it because there were Christmas performance to attend.  It did a pretty good job with the group picture.  I didn't cut anyone off from my daughter's classroom. I also don't have to back away when my daughter came in to close range to show me the card she made.

The camera came with a lot of bell and whistles and I have been playing with them without knowing what I was doing...  Some came out a bit weird like these OOTD photos. No, I did not photoshop them.  I think I had tune the white balancing parameter to some weird mode.  I kind of like this washout effect though. 

Dress: JCREW Plaid Shirt dress (Similar here)

Bottom Madewell Denim Legging. (Buy it here)

Sweater: JCREW Dulphine open cardigan (Buy it here)
Coat: Anthropologie Rutledge Sweatercoat
Belt: Gap
Boots: UGG australia.