 We are back this summer in Austin. And I want to start my summer in the city series inspired by Daniel Caroline. She does these videos in New York, just doing like fun things around the city in the summer, hence the name. I have been traveling a time recently, like I feel like ever since February, March. And I've honestly been a little bit out of the loop with like just things to do in Austin. There is just like so much to do here. Every week there's like five new restaurants. There's also a lot more to do in the summer because there's like swimming holes. There's lakes that you can swim in. There's like really good food to eat. And I want to take you guys along with me. I moved to Austin about four years ago. It was 2019 in June. So we had about a little over six months before COVID hit to like explore. When COVID hit it kind of put our exploring at a halt, but now it's just like just booming. But it's kind of like we're in a limbo right now because we want to like save money to possibly buy a house maybe this year or early next. So we're definitely not eating out as much as we like used to be. When we first moved here, I swear we were eating out all the fricking time. I'll be honest with you guys, like food is not very cheap here, but I still want to incorporate food here and there in this series. And yes, I am starting this like a little bit later in the summer, probably gonna be August soon. But the great thing about Austin is that summer is so much longer here because I swear only gets cold maybe in November. You're visiting Austin before November, maybe October. You can still do so much of this. Today I'm taking you guys to an Austin staples, especially in the summer months, but people still go here in the winter months, most likely because they're crazy because it's already so cold in the summer, but I can't even imagine the temperature in the winter. I'm taking you guys to Barton Springs pool. And like I said, it is so cold, but it's gonna feel really good because it's like 100 degrees here every day. That's just been normal for us. And I always get questions about like, how do you guys survive the heat? And honestly, I feel like I don't really like leave my house if I don't have to, unless I'm actually going swimming between the hours of like 11 and 6 p.m. I'll try to go on walks and like get my errands done in the morning, but luckily there are so many places to swim, like I said, so I'm excited. I'm gonna stop rambling and take you guys with me, just put on some super-goup sunscreen. Apparently in Barton Springs pool, which I've only been like maybe two or three times, usually I go to the spillway part, which I'll show you guys. That part's free, Barton Springs pool. You have to pay to get in, but you can't bring food, you can't bring drinks, you can't bring a cooler. So I'm probably gonna eat something here really quick and then we'll head out. Things you absolutely need for Barton Springs pool, sunscreen, towel, obviously, you can't bring like all of this. It's like prohibited items. So drinks, coolers, none of that, but I think you can just bring like water, like a Stanley Cup. So I brought mine and hat. Did I say sunscreen? That's probably the most important, but also like water shoes. I have Chocos, I have two pairs of Chocos and any water things you do in Austin, definitely recommend you investing in some water shoes because it's so much better to like not feel like the slimy stuff on the bottom of the lake and even just in Barton Springs pool, it's really, really slimy and slippery sometimes. So it can literally save your butt if you have them. But we are actually parked at my friend's house because she lives kind of like closer. We live in East Austin, she lives around like South Congress. So it's a little bit closer to West and we're just gonna Uber over to Barton Springs pool because parking over there can be such a bitch sometimes. It's $10 to get there. So it's definitely worth the time that you'll be spending just like circling around the parking lot. Also I forgot to mention that there is an app called ATX Swims that if you download it, you can actually buy the Barton Springs pool pass. I'm not really sure what line we're gonna be able to skip, but I'll keep you guys posted because I think this will be way more efficient than what we usually do. Thank you so much for, it's a line even start. All right, so on the other side of Barton Springs pool, there's Barton Springs spillway and you can actually bring your dogs here. And it's also free, so you don't have to pay for it. We set up shop on top of the hill and now we're all just getting sunscreen up. This is Skelf and Pyramus by Kula. And I'm always so scared about burning my scalp. And this, you just spray on it. Oh wow. And it's like, it won't make your hair greasy. It like is almost like- Like dry shampoo? Yeah, like kind of like dry shampoo. But it has SPF in it, so. Love it. Yeah. All my blonde girlies. Barton Springs pool is anywhere between 74 degrees and 68 degrees year round. So it is freezing in there. So we're trying to like get to the point where we want to die in this heat and then we'll jump in. Even just being so hot, it's still really freaking cold. So we got our noodles back here. Keanu brought this float that I actually gave her. It was like in my PR package, but I gave her that float. And apparently she can't use it because there's like leather things in there. So that kind of sucks. We're getting close, I'm getting hot. So we're about to go, go in the water. We went off the diving board and I just did a cannonball. I don't even think it was a cannonball honestly. I just jumped in. But Ryan did the dive. I tried to, I did more of a flip by accident. I don't remember the last time I was on a freaking diving board, like maybe at my old childhood home. You had some bouncy ones too. Yeah, I was. Oh wait, no, you had a bouncy one. But yours was not bouncy at all. No, it's not. We just got back home and I put this hair mask in my hair because I recently used it for the first time and it made my hair so freaking soft. Especially if you're in like lake water or anything like that, your hair can just be so gross after it. So I put this in my hair and I'm gonna have a little snack and then get in the shower. Ryan's eating the guac from last night that I made and everyone said they loved it so much. And I'm so proud of it. Look how good it looks. I have to post what it did look like before everyone took a bite, but it's so good. It has like pickled veggies. It was my first time pickling veggies. I'm so proud of that. And then corn. I mean, I know it's not hard, but I'm still excited. I should keep this on a neck that I should catch you. What'd you say? I should keep some of this like pre-made. Oh yeah, should we? Catching up on claim to fame. This is like one of my favorite shows right now. It's right before the bachelor and I actually like it better than the bachelor right now. But I decided to do my nails finally because I haven't done my nails in maybe a month, maybe two months. It feels like it's been like literally four months, but I've been just having my natural nails and they really have not gotten any stronger. So you know what? I am going to do my nails. And we're probably going to do the extensions too. But first I'm going to prep them. This stuff is really good. It's in a cute color, remember? My drill to prep them. And then I have all these like, no, bullshit. It's probably going to take forever. Look how freaking good the steak is. I usually use like minced garlic. That's pre-minced, but today we use fresh garlic and our kitchen is never freaking smelled better. It's 730 and I quickly just blow dried my hair and did some light makeup and have like a super simple outfit on. I honestly need to get some more going out tanks because the past few times I was like wanting to dress cute. I'm like, what the heck? I just don't have like nice tops. They're all so basic. Like I invested in the high quality basics, but they all look the same. So I'm like, oh my God, I need to invest in some like really cute. Just like, I don't know, girly tops. But tonight we're going basic. We have a skimmed's tank. I literally wear these all the time. I just got it in black, but I have two of the Heather grade ones. I think that might have been a mistake in my first order, but not complaining because like I said, they are on my body at all times, but the skirt is from Dish, which is my current obsession. I love their site. It's all like neutrals, very earthy tones. It is definitely pricey, but so worth the quality and everything I got. It was very consistently, really good, high quality stuff. And I'm probably just gonna bring this bag from Sezon. A little bucket bag. I'll probably have like one drink. So I think we're just gonna go drive over there because it's pretty close to East Austin, but it's not like towards the city. It's towards more East of Austin, more East of East Austin. So it's a little further out, but I'm really excited to check it out. So this place is called the sign bar. It has a ton of like vintage Austin signs and like some that are still in business, some that are closed down and it looks massive. So it makes sense that it's a little further out because I'm like, where did they get all this space to build this gigantic bar? That'll be really interesting to see. And I think it's an outdoor bar. So that's why I'm trying not to wear too many clothes. We're actually just catching up on the bachelor, but it just rained, but it's still so freaking hot out there and now it's gonna be even more humid. So, lovely. Anyways, I just wanted to catch you guys up. My nails are halfway done because I put the gel X like extensions on them. I did have a casualty, so we'll do this nail tomorrow, but they look pretty good for now. And hopefully no one like stares at my nails because then they'll be like, what the hell is wrong with them? I'm just gonna do the nail polish tomorrow. We just parked in the grab a lot. They have a ton of parking here and it looks so freaking cool, but it looks like an amusement park. Give me a amusement park guide. Mm-hmm. What'd you get? I got a spicy margarita. It is spicy, so we need to try it. Yeah, don't try it to me. Or maybe I got like a hint. I was like, whoa, okay. It's good, it's good. No, it's good though. It's good, it's strong and spicy. Yeah, it'll get ya. Are they like all the same bar and they just serve the same drink? We literally just went right to this bar and they have three majoring, then we didn't go for the other one across, but they have a lot, like you see all these little rooms and you burst it again. I'm like, I wanna walk around and see. I know, I do, it's also not that hot right now. It feels, I'm so glad you said eight o'clock because I'm already in the sun. It sounds, I'm like, okay. Wait, I just wanted to see the, like the actual like lit up. Yeah, I wanted to see the lit up but I also wanted to see them in the daytime. That was so cool. No, it's okay. I love this. I know, it's okay. It's also an exit. Happy Sunday, y'all. It is 9.15 a.m. And I just got to a photo studio because I am doing a branding session for my friend, Nagin. I'm photographing her and it's for her new business so I'm really, really excited for her. And just to be shooting in a studio again because I feel like it's been a while and branding sessions are one of my favorites. If I had to rank them, I would say like college grads, couples, branding sessions, maybe high school seniors. If you guys are new to my channel, I am a photographer here in Austin and I shoot everything except for weddings. I tried it and it just, my God, my morning voice, it just wasn't for me. So I'm sticking to what I know which is pretty much everything else. Her new business is actually for YouTube consulting. She is like a mastermind when it comes to thumbnails, SEO, literally anything like video ideas and all of that kind of stuff. So I will link her information down below like her website and the Instagram. When she told me that she was doing this like two months ago, I was like, wait, why have you not been doing that? Cause she's just so good at it. Anytime we get coffee, I just get so motivated when I leave the conversation with her. So I'm just really excited for her to kind of excel other people's YouTube channels. And so today I am actually having an audit with her after the session. So we kind of just like traded services. So I'll do her photos for free but basically she's going to do my audit for free. And what better timing because I just started vlogging again after like a month of not really posting on YouTube. So it would be really cool to see what she has to say. History was so much fun. I feel like it was the first Austin summer day that I have had in a while. Like, yeah, we've been on like boats and stuff but we did so many cool like Austin things and I'm just ready to be home for a while, not really travel a bunch more, hopefully throughout the year. I do have like one trip plan to see my friends in Florida. That's like later in August. It's just for a weekend. So nothing like too crazy. I think she's pulling up so I'll vlog in there. Hi, oh my God. I'm so excited. Do you want to pull up your Pinterest board? Wait, you look cute. Thanks. I did a hair mask last night. Megan got these really cool newspaper things. I love that. It's going to be so cool. Okay. I'm so excited. Let's do it. Good. Look at the mirror. It's kind of boring. I don't want to do that. It's going to be awesome. Yeah, there we go. See you in a minute. But I'm sure this is going to be great. You gotta have fun. We went over time. It's like 1046 and our session was supposed to end at 1030 but I think we got such good photos. Like I think they're going to be so freaking cool for our website. And I'm also excited to post on my Instagram. And I took like a lot of like iPhone videos and stuff. I'm trying to post more of my photography, TikTok. We'll see what I can come up with. Okay, we just got some merit and now we are doing our YouTube audit. Yes. So this is Sonali's YouTube audit. I reviewed everything on her channel. We did a super deep dive and I'm going to be going over everything that I found and some ideas that I have. So we're going to dive right in. How cool this is. I love her branding. This is for Joana's consulting and if you need a YouTube channel audit or you want to create a YouTube channel, let me know. Yes. London fog and it's actually still freaking good. Cheers. Yay. I picked up Ryan and we both haven't eaten anything today. It is 1 p.m. Yeah. I had a linen fog. It's an Earl Grey, iced Earl Grey with like, oh, milk. Not an Earl Grey. It's like a tea, I guess. It's like a chai, let's say a chai. But we're going to go to Sonotay and hopefully get some food. I was really craving something light like a chicken Caesar wrap. I'm praying that they have it here and that there's no way. I mean, it's 1 p.m. So like, I feel like people have eaten. So close at 1.30. Do they? Okay. All right, let's go. It's five o'clock, Ryan went to golf and I actually just finished up doing my nails and I think they turn out so freaking good, especially because I haven't done like gel X on me or even just gel on my nails in so long. So I was a little bit rusty, but I love the color I chose. This is the OPI color of Love is in the Bear and I love it because it's kind of a mix between funny bunny and bubble bath. It's just like the perfect, like milky pink, white situation. And I wanted to show you guys this ring because my friend Pia just came out with it. Although I think it might be sold out. I'm just trying to turn it. Give me a second. Okay. All right, here we go. It is a size eight. It's kind of squeezing my finger a little bit there, but it is such a stunning ring. It's from my friend Pia's collab with Every Jewels and it's literally what inspired me to paint my nails because they were just like so not cute with this ring and now they look so good and I can like flaunt this ring. And if you see this in my stories or TikToks, no, I'm not engaged. It's literally just this really cool vintage inspired ring. You know, when you can just feel mother nature just creeping into your body, I've been not in the best mood honestly. I feel like the last few days even though we've been having so much fun. I'll be real with you guys like my back is hurting so much. Like I feel like it needs to be popped. And I've noticed every time I feel that way I literally get my period like two days later. So we're just going through it right now, but it also is hurting because I literally cleaned up the entire apartment except for one room. Which I'm gonna get to in a second. I just did all my laundry. I could fluff the couch but I know we're gonna be sitting in it all night because I think we're gonna start summer return pretty season two. I cleared out everything from the kitchen, broke down PR boxes. I cleaned my bathroom. I kind of just like do my makeup in the guest bathroom over here. So I call it my bathroom. This room, it came, my office, my filming room, the guest room, literally everything else, but our bedroom needs a little bit of work. I just have some random clothes and honestly such a big pile of mail that I need to go through. And I feel like I need to declutter here. Cause I sometimes will get journals and be like, oh my God, yeah, I'm gonna journal and I'm gonna use these like pages and stuff. Nope, never touched it. So I'm like, okay, I think I need to get rid of it and I need to put this away. It's no more travel for me for a while. I'm really excited about these guys. I didn't buy too much on Prime Day but this is one of the things I got. Obviously as a photographer, YouTuber, you know, all of that, I need some backup SD cards. I have a bunch already but I just wanted to take advantage of the sale and these are the best I found. I just want to have an upload in Nagine's photos and I think they look so freaking cool. I'm so excited about these. Just added them and just go through them all. I am going to export them all as JPEGs so I can get them onto the gallery site for her to pick her favorites. Office is clean, I need to take out the trash and Ryan needs to put away his laundry and the place will be spotless guys. I'm so excited about this. Like I didn't even intend for it to be like a full Sunday reset but I am so, so happy. Like I literally lit a candle which I haven't done in so long. That's when you know it's like a really good reset and I thought I would cross something else off my to-do list. I actually just paid a bunch of like tags or what's it called toll tags. Well, basically I have the Texas tag and I still get like mail from like all these different like tolls. I guess they're like all separate. I literally don't know. One of them I literally thought was a scam cause I was like what even are you? Like it doesn't even say the full name of the abbreviation. It was like NDTA and I looked it up. It was North Texas tag, North Texas toll something. Anyways, I think it was real. It's just like all these websites are so outdated. This task is finally putting in some new pods for my click and grow. This thing is so cool. You can grow herbs in your kitchen without like any like sunlight. We now have sunlight, but honestly, I don't trust the sunlight because if you guys have watched the blogs for a while, you guys know the bougainvillea plant on our porch. It was like blooming really pretty flowers and like not many, but you know, a couple. And then one day it just like randomly just like all the flowers were off of it and it was like scorched to death. I'm not sure if I'm able to revive it. So I'm gonna try and like trying to water it every day especially now that I'm home which brings me to the click and grow. So it was producing so much like of the peppermint. Well, actually it didn't really work with mint. I don't know what was wrong with it. So we're gonna put it in different place because I'd rather have mint. Those producing so much of these that I had to like stop it and just kind of like cut it all down because I was gonna be gone for like a month or two during like November, December. I always go back home and like travel a bunch then. So I didn't really know what else to do. So I'm gonna restart it. There's two more pods in each of these which is great. And I'm really excited because I want to just have herbs in my kitchen again. Like it was so nice. And now I'm cooking more. I'm gonna be home more to actually use the herbs. So let's do this together. We have the contraption behind us. This thing is self watering. So I'll show you guys a close up. But one of these little pods in here and it just looks like that. So you just take it out, put this in. Pretty sure you, I think it's, I think, yeah. I think you used the full cap on it for the first, you know, time, like this little dome. I think when it grows, obviously you take off the dome and maybe this kind of forgot, honestly. I'm gonna stick that in here somewhere. This was basil, so the basil grew a lot last time. So put it on the end. And that's pretty much it. Like it is so easy. And then all you have to do is fill this part up with water. And you'll notice that it's full when this little contraption thing rises to the top. So I'll show you guys that. All right, last step is just to pour water in this little contraption. That's good enough. So when it's all the way up top, it's full and ready to go. You plug it in and the light is on and there's actually an attachment for when it grows bigger. You can take this top part off and just put the extension in there so that the light is still just tall enough. So I'm excited to see it all grow and I'll keep you guys updated on the vlogs, how long it all takes to grow. Just to prove to you guys that I actually did clean my office. But I think I'm gonna end the vlog here because the rest of the night, we're just gonna cook some pasta. I actually just had Ryan go to the store to grab me some bacon and the actual pasta because it's made with bucatini during carbonara. And there was like a phase that I had when I got back from Italy and literally made pasta carbonara like every week. And he got so sick of it but I haven't had it in so long. So I thought we would make it today. Earlier today, I showed you guys that I had a YouTube audit with Nagin and she like kind of went through things that I should work on. She went through my analytics and it was really cool to just like see it from someone else's perspective and it just gave me a lot of motivation. And I really wanna start posting on specific days and have a posting schedule because when I made one for myself, I honestly stuck to it like I would do it every Sunday. But honestly, I did not really love posting on Sundays because I like left it till the last minute and always ended up editing on Sundays when I should just like be out enjoying like the sun and not feeling guilty that I don't have to work, you know cause it's the weekend. So I think I'm gonna do Monday and Thursday posting day and we'll see if I can do two videos a week. But if I don't, I'll just probably post on Monday. And also if you guys are someone that watches my videos but doesn't subscribe, go ahead and click that subscribe button. You don't have to search my name or go through my Instagram or TikTok or anything like that. You can just see it in your subscription box and my videos will pop up. But I didn't wanna ask you guys if there's any content that you guys wanna see specifically because I'm always trying to get new ideas. I have a bunch written down from today. I kind of like stayed at the coffee shop later and brainstormed and tried to kind of map out a content calendar for the next two months. Definitely will change, but let me know if you guys wanna see anything specific and especially in this Austin series. I mean, they're just like regular vlogs but I'm definitely going to center it more around like doing Austin-y stuff. Like I said earlier in the video, I feel like I've taken like a hiatus of exploring myself. I wanna get back out there and show you guys everything that there is to love about Austin. If you guys don't already follow me on Instagram and TikTok, definitely go follow me over there. Especially if you're looking for Austin recommendations because I have so many Instagram highlights of like food, what to do, everything like that on my Instagram profile. And then I also have a Austin playlist on my TikTok. So I'll see you guys over there and subscribe and I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye.