Category — Around Decatur/Atlanta

What a great day. Chinese New Year AND Valentine’s all in one day.

This morning our family did what any self-respecting Chinese – or part Chinese – group would do on Chinese New Year. We headed over to Oriental Pearl for some dim sum – nom, nom, nom.

You all know AsicanCajuns.com isn’t a streetwear blog, but Lar got up the guts to ask this fashionable young gentleman if she could take his picture.

And his hat totally completes the look:

Even with the proper Chinese New Year garb, no celebration would be complete without a dragon dance.

When Lar and I were young, our family would take us to Chinatown in D.C. for Chinese New Year. This year is the first time we celebrated the holiday in Atlanta. At first I was skeptical because there isn’t any Chinatown in Atlanta, but there are the suburbs of Doraville and Chamblee AND there’s always Buford Highway!

All in all, one of the best Chinese New Years I’ve had.

Now on to the Valentine’s Day bit. Hope you all are having a great day!

Cath and I spent all Saturday morning at the Boutique Sale in Decatur. Tons of our favorite local boutiques participated: Jac*, Rockit, Evolve Boutique, Boogaloos and Squash Blossom. However, our main purpose for attending the Sale was so say farewell to one of our favorite Decatur boutiques, Kaleidoscope. Remember that post where we got to play dress up? That was all Kaleidoscope owner Camille’s doing.

We love you ladies, and are so sorry to see one of the best retailers in Decatur close up shop.

Cath and I will still continue to shop at our other favorite local boutiques as much as possible. We both left the sale with armloads of gorgeous things from Evolve and Rockit (a necklace made from a sari, and a gorgeous leather belt— we’ll show them soon!). Still, I always feel a little helpless when one of our independent retailers shut down.

Do you guys try to support your local boutiques? Have independent shops/restaurants been hit hard in your city?

*We just heard that Jac is also closing its doors, but they will still sell items online. Huzzah!

If you haven’t donated any money to a fund for Haiti just yet, we have two perfect suggestions for you this week.

If you are a local, join us for Decatur For Haiti. A number of shops and restaurants around town are donating a percentage of their profits to the Red Cross. For a full list of participants, see TheDecaturMinute.com.

Not in the Decatur area tomorrow? There are of course a number of ways you can contribute, but I’ve just discovered that one of the charities Moxsie donates to is Wyclef Jean’s yele.org. Moxsie is an online shopping site for independent designer labels (at very reasonable prices) and they donate a percentage of every sale to a charity of your choice from their list. It’s one of the many reasons we love having them as an affiliate sponsor of AsianCajuns (in case you were wondering about that ad in our side bar ). So they support independent designers and donate to charity at the same time. Le swoon.

I will donate to YeleHati when I get this gorgeous purse:

Happy Monday, lovelies! We hope you have a marvelous week!

xoxo,

Lar

We know a lot of you aren’t interested in seeing photos of haggis or even hear us babble more about our love for rainy weather and kilts, but we thought you might like a little peak at our Rabbie Burns supper.

Above: Cath and I prepping the neeps (mashed turnips) and tatties (mashed potatoes) in our kitchen. We both had delusions of tartan that we had planned to wear, but realized we didn’t have the funds to spend money on a dress we would wear only once a year. Tartan isn’t the most flattering thing on us. We’re still working on getting our bfs into kilts though .

Our fridge fully stocked with one actual Scottish beer and some other Scottish-looking beers. We still have plenty left over. If you’re in our neck of the woods, stop on over for a tipple- we’d love to have you!

Cath made this awesome sketchbook when we lived in Scotland. It’s full of maps (Cath loves maps) and her awesome drawings which are very much like Eric Chase Anderson’s illustrations (brother to Wes Anderson).

We hope you guys had a wonderful weekend too- full of good food, good friends and rousing bag pipe music!

All photos but the beer photos by Troy Cono. Thanks, Troy, for the delicious meatloaf and the photography!

This Saturday from 3-7 p.m.head over to Barneys Co-op in Phipps Plaza to customize your jeans with Current Elliott.

The Current Elliott team will have a station set up where they will stud and customize your same day Current Elliott denim purchase (jeans, vest, jackets and dresses). Studding is free and you’ll get your choice of black, gold and silver studs.

Let us know if you get a pair customized – we’d love to see your creations!

Cath and I have repeatedly babbled alluded to our love of Scotland in previous posts. We don’t even have a drop of Scottish blood in us (Irish, English, French, Danish, German, Chinese but no Scottish). Our Scot-o-phile-ness stems from living/studying in Edinburgh and traveling around Scotland for six months back in 2004.

We haven’t been back for – eesh! – six years, but Cath and I always say we would move there in a heartbeat given the opportunity.

One way for us to maintain our connection to our Scottish “roots” is to celebrate Robert Burns Night every January 25. Who is/was Robert Burns, you ask?! Why he was the fellow who wrote “My love is like a red, red rose…” and “Auld Lang Syne”- so in a nutshell he is a famous Scottish poet from the 19th century.

And how does one celebrate Robert Burns Night? By drinking whiskey, eating haggis (it’s really good, I swear!) and attending a (digital) ceilidh (pronounced “kay-lee”). Here we are at the ceilidh doing a traditional Scottish jig in traditional Scottish tartan (click here to see us “dance”!):

Cheesy, we know. We thank you for sticking with us, lovely readers, through our fashion loves and more eccentric tastes.

A couple of days ago, Lar and I received an email about the soon-to-be-launched Scoutmob, “a curious guide to mobile deals for the Atlanta explorer.” Well, we love curious guides, we own mobiles AND consider ourselves Atlanta explorers (see?), so what’s not to love?

Scoutmob launches tomorrow (that’s Wednesday, which is in about an hour – eek!) for us Atlantans. All you have to do is enter your email here or download the free iphone app and you’ll get daily local deals sent to your phone. There’s also a promise of upcoming Scoutmob events and happenings so we’ll keep you posted.

As Lar mentioned here, I spent the past week freezing my butt off and having fun in the Northeast (Pennsylvania, New Jersey and NYC to be exact). New York was especially brutal. Thank goodness my cousin let me borrow her coat. My whimpy, good-enough-for-Atlanta-winter wool coat just didn’t cut it in 30mph winds.

Outfit details: Genn’s Gap coat (thanks Genn!), scarf was a gift from Italy, faux Channel bag from Baghaus and Lar’s Frye boots (thanks Lar!).

I was really looking forward to the warmer weather back home only to find out that it’s been equally as cold down south all week. It’s snowing in ATL at the moment, which just doesn’t seem right. To get my mind off this dreary, cold weather, I’ll focus on a couple of things that make me happy to be back home:

This Friday, Esperanza is hosting a showing of Eddie Murphy’s stand-up comedy movie Delirious. Tickets get you into the movie AND the open bar at Midtown Art Cinema (behind Trader Joe’s). While Lar and I aren’t huge Eddie Murphy fans, we are huge Esperanza fans – they support the Atlanta Zoo for goodness sakes!

Next month at Jeffrey Atlanta, Amy Flurry and Nikki Salk’s paper headpieces are going on display. I first heard about this on Refinery 29 and today it was featured Atlanta’s Daily Candy today. I can’t wait to go check it out. Jeffrey Atlanta is waaaay out of my price range, so Lar and I usually don’t venture over there, but I think this Paper Cut Project is about to change all that.

Photos courtesy of Refinery 29. Pretty nifty, no?

So all in all, despite the nasty weather, it’s great to be back home. I’d show you more outfit pics from my trip, but they all consist of this same coat, scarf and hat:

H&M hat and coat.

Some of you may have heard that we like (okay, love) Lady Gaga. For example here, here and here. And this past Monday night we got to see her live at the Fox Theater downtown – woot! Needless to say, the Haus of Gaga put on an amazing show.

Photo courtesy of the AJC.

I wasn’t crazy about the openers, but Gaga’s two-hour long show didn’t disappoint.

The outfit above was one of my favorites. To sum up her wardrobe: cone bras, sequins, light-up blazers, lots of skin, leotards and a giant feather collar. Her dancers were awesome and Lar and I loved her performance art videoes in between songs.

Me, Matt and Lar.

Lar and I forgot our camera so we didn’t take outfit photos, but rest assured we wore plenty of glitter and shiny bobbles. It was fun seeing other Lady Gaga fans all dressed up. We saw a couple of Bad Romance-inspired crown heads and two girls totally rocking the leotard with fishnets look.

Nate, Lar and Mike.

After the concert we headed over to Blakes in midtown and ended the night with a trip to Waffle House. All in all, a perfect Gaga-licious night.

(All other photos courtsey of Nate the Great)

So, my plan the next couple of days was to show you the awesome faux fur vest Cath made for me and the way my mom wrapped our Christmas prezies in Vogue patterns- all of which I still plan to do. BUT! Before any of that can happen, we must take a moment and give thanks to the designer purse gods and the fabulous people at Goodwill at North Lake for letting this precious gem slip through their fingers.

I give you my first designer bag (first designer anything) EVER. Welcome to my closet, Beautiful Bottega. Content warning: forthcoming purse porn:

For those of you interested in the back-story of how this amazing thing became mine for only $1.60, here goes it:

My mom and I were doing some thrift shopping to cure our cabin fever. First stop, Goodwill. I had an armload of jackets (a Chanel knock-off, a silk hot pink blazer, etc.) and books (can never have too many) and was tottering up to the cash register. Next to the register was the 50% off table (yes, it was on the freakin’ 50% off table!!!). If the wonderful people in line hadn’t been there, I would have checked out and never glanced to my right, where Bottega was sitting demurely on top of porcelain kitty figurines and 80s VHS work-out videos. I picked up the purse (it felt like butter!), and I was like “Mom, this looks so much like a Bottega Veneta bag.” Whilst saying “it’s a great knock-off,” I opened the flap and nearly lost it when I saw the label. My eyes grew to the size of serving platters and I started to hyperventilate – drawing attention from the other shoppers in my line. My mom kept mumbling “keep your cool, keep your cool.” I was sure the Goodwill police we’re closing in, ready to snatch my gem from my hands.

Luckily I made it safely undetected through the line. When the cashier said $1.60, my mouth fell open and I think I drooled for a solid 3 seconds before coming to my senses (there hadn’t been a price tag on the bag- I would have bought it for a 100 times that!).

I’ve been hyperventilating ever since.