Category — General AsianCajuns Info

Cath and I are sooo excited! We get to be part of The Society Stylist’s Little Black Dress Experiment! What is that? Well, check out Valerie Elizabeth’s Dress Diaries from last August here. She wore the same Ann Taylor LBD 31 different ways during the month of August.

This year, Valerie Elizabeth and her crew have asked 31 fashion bloggers from around the nation to be part of her experiment. A different blogger wears the Ann Taylor black dress each day during the month of August.

We’re not sure which day Cath and I will be posting in August, but we’ll make sure it will be up on AsianCajuns as well as the Society Stylist. Anddd…. there will be a way for you guys to enter your own LBD photos and win some goodies! Details forthcoming.

Happy Monday! We hope you all had a lovely weekend and that this day slips by painlessly.

Thank you all for the sweet comments! Cath and I are safely moved (to our separate apartments), and my pneumonia is slowly but surely ebbing away. Our new branding is still in the works- just a few more tweaks from my code monkey and you’ll see our new site- woohoo!

In the meantime, this has been the AsianCajun world the last two weeks:

We live and die by Scoutmob’s daily local deals (non-locals, Scoutmob is going nationwide- check it out here). Today they featured our favorite jewelry designer June Shin, and she and the witty Scoutmobbers gave a nod to the AsianCajuns. Huzzah!

Saturday: the day of moving. We had six of the most wonderful people help us move- and they got it done in less than seven hours. They even did acrobatics for us (i.e. my bf and friends struggling to take down our long curtains, while I helpfully… take photos):

We’ve been trapped under boxes for the last week, so Cath and I have yet to see the latest S&TC movie. In the meantime we’ve talked about how SJP looks absolutely ravishing in her Halston Heritage- and we wish to gawd we could afford it (and travel to Abu Dhabi).

We’ve been listening to NPR’s The Moth Radio Hour. Our favorite so far? Vogue editor Joan Juliet Buck’s ghost story about her haunted Left Bank palace of an apartment. That’s her below wearing Yves Saint Laurent in the 80s. I’m against smoking, but I kind of want to just so I can keep one hand gloved. Listen to her story here.

This is not super-new news, but we are tres excited that Madewell is finally available on line. Bits and pieces taunted us at Shopbop, but now everything is available without schlepping to the mall. I’m also pleased as punch that they are little more diverse in their model selection. Even though we are supposedly living through an age of salads and melting-pots, the fashion industry (and many others) are still predominantly bland and un-melted.

And last, but not least… the most exciting news for me this past weekend… my bf bought me my first piece of art! As much as I really like shoes and clothes and food, I would give a lot of that up for real art. I am definitely not in the financial position to start collecting- or so I thought (leather platforms and fancy mac & cheese I can afford), but this weekend we stopped by the Decatur Fine Arts Exhibition. I’d been eying this painting for months (I’m the chair person for the show, so I got a little preview), and at $125, my bf swept me off my feet.

What do you guys think? She’s by Mary Pousner, and it’s entitled My Sweet Aberration.

I love her expression and the eyes in the sweet potato (or watermelon).

Is that enough babbling for one night? I hope you guys had a wonderful weekend! I feel like summer has really started. What have you guys been up to? What are your summer plans?! Do tell (I have to live semi-vicariously through you all until my pneumonia is all gone- drat you, lungs!).

Hiya Lovely Readers! Huge apologies for being so MIA lately (especially, me). Cath has had to soldier on without me these last two weeks because I’ve been battling pneumonia. I think I’m finally reaching the very end of it- just in time for us to move apartments!

Cath and I live together now, but we’ll actually be going our separate ways for the first time in 7 years! We’ll still live about a five minute drive away from each other, but it’s kind of a big change for both of us.

And speaking of changes… I’ve rebranded AsianCajuns (again!). It’s kind of what I do for a living, and an itch that had to be scratched. So in the coming weeks you’ll see a new logo, new business cards, and… a new website! The logo (see above) is a little more exciting (I over did it with the minimal helvetica-look for the past few years), but the new site will still be streamlined and clean… and hopefully an even better platform from which we can launch all kinds of AsianCajun goodness.

Thank you for your patience, wonderful readers! We’ll come back, guns blazing, come June. In the meantime, we’ll be pushing heavy boxes around and trying not to wheeze too much. Wish us luck- and let us know how you’re doing! We’ll be in touch soon!

(Below is sneak peek at the back of the new AC bizcards- let us know what you think).

Happy Friday, Everyone!

Cath is heading home from the beach (I haven’t seen her in 5 days- boohiss), just in time for a glorious weekend! Meanwhile, back in the AsianCajun apartment, I’m trying to convince myself that I’m not too sick to enjoy the weekend. I had to leave work early, and I feel like any sort of movement requires far too much effort- except for blogging!

So, I’ve been thinking about glasses and style a lot lately.

Glasses and I are not friends. I hate having something hanging off my face, digging into my ears, and limiting my peripheral vision. I’ve been a glasses wearer since I was nine, and a contact wearer since I was ten.

One frustrating side to living in Atlanta is the pollen and its miserable cohort, allergies. Apart from feeling groggy and sick, I also can’t wear my contacts for most of the spring and part of summer. If you run into me while I’m wearing my glasses out in public, you will also see a thought bubble above my head that says “ARGHHH…” or “&^%$” because I can’t see as well in these damn things.

Also, on top of it all, my glasses don’t go with a lot of my outfits.

Now I know most of you probably think that’s a fairly ridiculous (superfluous, frivolous) statement, but I swear I’m not talking about trends (in fact, hipster glasses are still enjoying their day in the sun) or even fashion. Glasses, as a practical accessory, change the entire look of what you wear. I even alter my make-up (more dramatic) when I wear glasses, as the reflective lenses tend to wash me out.

I know there is the sexy-librarian look, but how many of us love to prance around in heels and pencil skirts every day of the week? There is also the indie-hipster look, but I’m getting long-in-tooth to pull that off (if I wanted to)…

I needed inspiration and found it on Garance Dore (the top photo in this post is her’s too- gorgeous stuff!):

For these four-eyed beauties, accessories are simple or non-existent, and outfits are fairly monotone. So I’m keeping that in mind when I shove my glasses on my face and walk into my closet every morning (grumble, grumble).

Inspiration is always good, even if I still want to run off and get lasik right this minute (Money Fairy, where are you?).

Fellow glasses-wearers, how do things change for you when you put your specs?

Non-glasses-wearers, what is it like to wake up and see crisp lines and shapes?!

BLOG NOTE: Cath and I seem to be having some difficulty with blogger. Our old AsianCajuns site won’t load and we have no access to our emails! Once Cath is back in town, we will confab and see what we can do. We’ll let you know if our email changes. We are planning on new stuff for the site, so stay tuned!

It’s been a stressful couple of weeks at work for both Cath and I. We come home late and a bit grumpy; grumpy we don’t have time to catch up with our girls for frozen yogurt, grumpy we can’t see our men folk as much as we like, and especially grumpy that we don’t have much energy for blogging.

Well, this work week is more of the same but we had a much needed break this past weekend visiting one of my besties in Charleston!

(That’s my bestie to the left looking like a GQ model. That’s me on the right looking like an over zealous talk show host interviewing a GQ model).

Now normally I don’t like to have facebook-y photos of us up on the blog. We really have no desire to bore our readers with our social going-ons that we might find exciting, but you all might find repetitive (smily group photo #547, etc.). All that said, this is the stuff that keeps me from becoming Jack Nicholson in The Shining (all work and no play… le scary).

Any other Charleston fans out there? Outside of our beloved Decatur/ATL, Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans are our favorite dirty south locations to be in. We spent the weekend drinking margaritas, eating delicious food, watching Alice and Wonderland, going to a drag show, and driving around downtown Charleston with the sunroof open and Lady Gaga on the radio…ooo-la, ooo la la!

We hope you all had equally wonderful weekends, and are successfully avoiding Julius’ Caesar’s darkest day. Come March 15, I’m keeping my head down… or heading back to Charleston.

Five years ago Lar and I studied abroad in Edinburgh for six months after spending four months in Murcia, Spain. Spain was good, Scotland was amazing. After six months we didn’t want to leave and all of our close friends know that if you get us started talking about Scotland, we won’t ever stop. We love everything and anything Scottish – even haggis.

So my boyfriend was super excited to show me this commercial for Johnnie Walker whiskey because it’s pretty much as Scottish as it gets – it’s about Scottish whiskey, set in the Highlands and starring Robert Carlyle (any Hamish MacBeth fans out there? woot, woot!). Even if you’re not a Scottish-ophile, you need to watch this video. It’s brilliant and five and half minutes of one single shot.

Who else thinks Carlyle’s outfit is perfection? Classic, rugged and those hats are fantastic!

Want to see what Lar and I looked like five years ago? Here are a couple of photos from our time in Scotland.

Me and Lar with a friend in the highlands on an unusually sunny day.

Wearing University of Edinburgh sweatshirts on the beach in June.

Exploring one of the many, many castles we visited.

Even in the spring and summer months we had to embrace layering. Lar was all about her puffy vests and hoodies.

A big thank you to Julia at Moxsie! She let us know that Moxsie’s CEO recently alluded to us AsianCajuns in an interview with WWD:

“You have to look at it as a changing landscape. Five years ago, two sisters in Atlanta wouldn’t have a blog that 150 people comment on. These are all new things.”

Read the full article here.

“Two sisters in Atlanta” – that’s us! Okay, okay. I know it’s not a direct reference to AsianCajuns, but Lar and I are still chuffed!

Welcome to our new home. We had a good two years and 600+ posts with blogger and decided it was time to make some changes. We want our blog to be easier on the eyes and better edited (design-wise and content-wise). There will be a few growing pains, no doubt, but stick with us. Let us know what you like and dislike, and what else you would like to see. You, lovely reader, make it a true pleasure to blog. The network of wonderful people we’ve met through AsianCajuns has astounded us, and made us wish flights were cheaper (or that teleportation device actually worked) so we could meet you all and spend a weekend in your locales.

xoxo,

Lar & Cath
(The AsianCajuns) 

ps-If you ever want to reminisce, our AsianCajuns.blogspot.com is still up here.