Maui Vacation

Since it is past Labor Day, I thought it was well overdue to share some Maui photos.I loved this island so much, I made an accompanying map for my favorite island.

We stayed at this wonderful AirBnB. It had a great view from the lanai.

I was smitten with this hand-painted, shaved ice food truck.

Ali'i Kula Lavender There is a tour, but we skipped it and relaxed just walking around the farm and taking in the views of Maui. We hoofed it over to the gift shop and devoured the lavender flavored lemonade, iced tea and scone. They have complimentary lavender-flavored honey and jam that we squeezed on our toasted scone. So delicious!

Surfing Goat Dairy We went on the $12/person tour, fed some goats, tried some tasty flavors of goat cheese, and checked out the milking area. We purchased chocolate truffles made with goat milk.

Tsaka Guri Guri. I wouldn't go out of the way for it, BUT, it's right near the airport. So, we stopped by before we dropped of our rental and then to the airport , so it wasn't too out of the way since we were over there. Guri Guri is refreshing (worth a try to at least taste it) and really cheap (like under $4 for both of us).

Sam Sato's The place is a bit harried. Our waitress was quick and efficient with our order. It's not about the ambiance, rather just a quick in and out noodle place. Perfect for what we wanted -- food! We really enjoyed the dry noodles, saimin, chow fun, and bbq sticks. We were so sad because they were out of manju that day. :(

Pipiwai Trail in Haleakala National Park My favorite part of Maui. It's a 4 mi round trip hike through a bamboo forest. The sound of the bamboo hitting one another is worth the trip alone. Mother nature gives you an extra present at the end of it with the breathtaking Waimoku Falls. A tip: this is at the very end of the Road to Hana. We left around noon to start the Road to Hana (stopping at 2 places along the way). We wished we left earlier, like 10am, because we were driving the curves after dark and in the rain. Needles to say, it was extremely nerve racking and gave me a stress headache.

I became obsessed with rainbows on this trip. I especially loved this hand-drawn shaved ice painting. :)

This was actually in Oahu, but here I am showing my niece how I draw in my sketchbook.

Thanks Hawaii. We miss you Maui !

Our Wedding Details

My fiance and I got hitched this June. Hooray!With limited time and energy between a job and freelance work, I focused on projects that I knew I could handle. I needed to avoid a total bridal meltdown! Some of those projects were our invite, our wedding favors (which also served as our table assignments), as well as signage for the event.

For our invitation, I illustrated the front, the inside map, as well as the assets used throughout the invite. My fiance worked on the inside typography and layout. We decided on a limited color palette of black and yellow to ensure a minimal use of ink. We printed the invitation suite on our own and wanted to avoid buying tons of ink cartridges. Plus the color palette kinda screamed "NYC" to me. Taxis, stoplights, black and white cookies, oh my!

Oh, here's a fun gif of our invite. :)

With the signage, I used the same illustration from the invite and added directional information for the venue.

For the table assignments, it was important to me that they were both functional for the event, but also useful after the wedding. So, I decided on illustrating notepads that would have the table assignments written on them, but could also be used afterwards for list making or note taking. I had a lot of fun illustrating this whimsical NYC scene.

To complete this favor, I bought some adorable pencils from Knot & Bow that were engraved with adorable food pairings. Mac & Cheese, Meat & Potatoes, Pancakes & Syrup!

New York City is bracing for mega blizzard 2015 to strike tonight, so I finally had a minute to play catchup with my blog. Please stay safe wherever you may be. And thank you for reading about our wedding details. I hope to share some photos from the wedding in the next few weeks. Take care!