 Hey y'all, what's up? My name is Sonali, welcome to a new vlog. I'm back home in Georgia, and I've been here since this past Monday. I'm here for Thanksgiving, although it just passed. I was going to vlog this past week, but something in me was just like, I just really want to not touch the camera and possibly my computer for like a whole week. And so that was really nice and I'm very grateful that I was able to. But I did have a birthday. I turned 26 and I thought we could do a little get ready with me for the beginning of this vlog and kind of catch you guys up to date. I recently got the house slabs foundation during the support sale that just happened. And it is actually so worth the hype. I love the way it sits on my skin. So we're just gonna be applying kind of a thin layer of this. So I got home Monday. You guys don't know, I live in Austin, Texas, but I was raised in Roswell, Georgia. Pretty much my whole life. I was born in Jacksonville, Florida, but I moved to like Atlanta when I was three, I believe. So I don't really remember anything in Florida, but that's why I had to go back to Florida for college because my parents did the Florida prepaid college fund thing. Now my dad lives in Alfreda and my mom lives near like Stone Mountain, closer to Atlanta. So when I first got home, I went to my mom's and then I came to my dad's and then went back to my mom's for Thanksgiving and then came back to my dad's for Thanksgiving night. And then I celebrated my birthday with Ryan and well, what did we do yesterday? Oh, Ryan took me ziplining and I didn't even know this was like a thing here in Roswell, but it's at the Chattahoochee Center and it was actually so much fun. It went by so fast though. So that was kind of sad, but I wouldn't totally do it again. The first time I went ziplining was like in Helen, Georgia and it was honestly so fun. I feel like I celebrate my birthday for like two weeks because I always want to celebrate it with my Austin friends before I go home for Thanksgiving break and before everyone kind of goes home. And then I come home and I celebrate it with my mom. And then when we go to Thanksgiving, they always have a birthday cake for the November babies. And then I celebrate it with my dad. The HouseLabs Foundation was medium-cool and this is another new product. It is the Giorgio Armani Concealer. I've been loving this. I'm shade number six. This morning I woke up with a pimple in the middle of my eyebrows. It really freaking hurt, but I'm so grateful that it didn't come like any other day because in two days me and Ryan are going to New York City and I'm so freaking excited. I can't remember the last time I actually went to New York City. I think it was middle school that I went the last time, but my friend Laura, if you guys are OG YouTube watchers, she was my roommate for the first two years of college and she graduated I believe like a semester early. So 2018 December and I haven't seen her since then. And it makes me so sad, but honestly like every year after that, well the first year I was kind of broke so I couldn't really go to New York City. The second year COVID hit. And then third year COVID was still a thing. And I didn't really want to like spend all this money to go to New York City and not be able to do like the fun things because everything was like still shut down. And so it's finally happening and I cannot believe it. Using the dibs contour stick and the shade level up. I've always wanted to go to New York during Christmas time and we looked up when they're gonna light the Rockefeller tree. And I think it's happening on November 30th. So we plan to arrive in New York, November 29th, so we could just have like a day to like kind of get settled if you asked me five years ago like what my plan was for New York, I would have given you an hourly itinerary but I don't know why. I just feel like as I grow up, I don't really want to have like too many expectations because if I do, I'm such a planner that it kind of like derails me and I kind of get just really sad if you know something that I want to do doesn't happen. So this time I'm kind of going in with less expectations and I just have like a bunch of things like you know on a bucket list and I think I'm gonna FaceTime my friend Laura tomorrow and try to group them together because we're going for seven days even though like two of the days are travel days. But I feel like that's like a good amount of time to actually really explore every area leisurely because I feel like whenever I travel especially when we went to Italy, like it was so go, go, go because we are in a new city every other day so we didn't have time to waste. But this time I just wanted to have ample amount of time so we could like do it more chill. I feel like I've done like the basic touristy stuff so at least I don't have to do that and Ryan actually went more recently than I did. I think he went during spring break, one of his college years so maybe that wasn't that recent but definitely more recent than me. I'm planning on doing daily vlogs when I'm in New York. I love when I can look back on vlogs just like through my home videos and I'm just so grateful that I have all these memories online and just like on camera for me to see because honestly I'm 26, my memory is shit and I feel like if I don't have a picture or a video to show me what I did like I barely remember shit so very, very happy that I started vlogging at someone of an early age. Makeup's done and I wanted to share my newest obsession with you guys. I have not used, well actually I used heat once over here out of like three weeks but seriously I've been pretty much doing heatless hairstyles and these curls are from that little curling rod that you like sleep in. I am obsessed, it just gives you the best curls that actually like stay pretty much all day. I mean they fall a little bit but for the most part like they stay better than a curling iron or my Dyson Airwrap curls and I am just obsessed with it because I just feel like my hair is already so much healthier from just laying off heat for three weeks and I can't even imagine what it's gonna be like if I keep this up and like use it for multiple months on end which is the plan because I'm just really trying to grow out my hair make it as healthy as I can especially because I dyed my hair back to my natural color and I think I told you guys when I first dyed it back to black it's not really black it's like kind of a dark brown toner I'm guessing but it faded so quickly like it was pretty much super brown blonde on the ends within probably a month and I was like what the frick like I wanted to dye my hair so I didn't have to like keep going back to the salon but my hairstylist Mariana told me that you still have to like kind of train your hair to like hold the darkness if that makes sense so I can't remember how many times we toned it I think it might have been two or three times but the last time I saw her she was like oh my God your hair is so dark like it's holding so well and I was like thank the Lord like I don't have to dye my hair ever again hopefully maybe like one more time cause it'll probably grow out and you know fade a little bit but anyways I'm very happy with my dark hair and honestly I'm not really regretting my decision it's been kind of a long time since I did it but I'm really loving it I don't know if you guys can see that but it's like the leaves are truly falling I don't know how to do it somebody falling leaves I wonder if they're still gonna have deals I also wonder if the candles are on sale ooh hey I like that color better shut up this is so cute it's a little mushroom candle we're in J-crew now and look how frigging stunning this coat is I think everything's 50% off I'm very tempted ooh that would look good on you it's like snatched at the waist wait show it again cute is it white? it's like off-white? yeah it's size 10 that's the size 10? yeah they have a 14 they have a 14 what about that? oh you have a brown already yeah but this is different, you know? yeah it's okay maybe it's like something else needs to be underneath so like I can't I'm just gonna take a photo of my phone so I can see mm-hmm mom's trying on a coat now hey we're gonna go to a Christmas bar what's it called Nisha? I don't need to say it every time I don't know, stash and go? what is it called? no it's called Santa's Secret Stash I got a moth tail I asked for a festive moth tail I'm so excited to put it on awesome awesome, thank you and my mom got a hot toddy thank you so much take test, I'm a hot toddy well it is the next day and the day before we leave to New York which I honestly cannot wrap my head around just because I feel like I've been wanting to go to New York for years I think I've already mentioned this in some platform of mine but I just I don't know, doesn't feel real I'm gonna get to see one of my best friends from college and also just get in the Christmas spirit so freaking excited for that this morning I woke up pretty early because I wanted to film some more clips for a brand deal that I have with Amazon that I need to submit today I also started some laundry but now I'm going to get my nails done these nails I actually did myself I was just kind of sick of going into a nail salon paying so much money and like never liking it and obviously you see like all the flaws you know because you're looking at your nails every single day but if I'm paying so much like I really want them to be good and I just feel like they never really you know lived up to my expectations so I bought like a gel machine and tried to do it on my own of course it definitely takes practice and it was so hard because I don't know it just like looks so easy in the nail salon but then when you try to do it yourself it's not that easy but today I think I'm going to do gel x because all my nails are kind of different lengths this one's so short I think it broke and then this one's so long and I just want my nails to be like super nice for New York and I think I'm going to go with a french tip I am going to uh cala nail spa I think it's on one word parkway I could be totally butchering that but I got my headphones I feel like sometimes I forget those and then I'm just staring at like nothingness and I just found out that apparently my friends don't bring their headphones and they do sit in silence and I'm like that is so interesting I definitely thought like bringing headphones was like the normal thing to do but I feel like they were like wait you bring headphones anyways I gotta go look how freaking good they look I'm so happy I got gel x because I took a video where you could see the difference in the length of my nails and one of them was just so much shorter there's like two nails one on each hand that always breaks like always it's just the weakest nail it's just so annoying because then I have to spend extra money but I'm very very happy with my decision the base color is bubble bath and then obviously she just did white for the tips I'm currently trying to pack and honestly I was dreading it this whole time but I think it's definitely a little bit easier because I'm not like at home home like with all my stuff so I only brought like let's say one eighth of my closet here and so it's not like I can really like go search for more things to bring with me to New York and I'm also going back to Austin after I go to New York and then I'm going to come back here so I think I'm gonna just leave like a bunch of stuff here I put it in this drawer I have like some PJs also I got a fire stick for this TV in this room because I always like to cast my YouTube videos on a TV honestly I never watch it on my computer anymore so I didn't like know how to cast it just on the TV I'm not even sure if this is a smart TV so Ryan was like oh you should get a fire stick and it was literally 20 bucks and I set it up today and I'm just having a ball watching freaking YouTube while I pack and it's just very convenient honestly so I'm catching up on my subscription box because I literally have not been really watching YouTube since I've been home also feel like I'm getting a lot of questions on my phone case it is from Berga B-U-R-G-A and the style is the math exam I also have the laptop case and it's just like the cutest thing in the world I love this phone case and I'm very very happy that this pop socket thing is actually MagSafe so I can take this off when I want to do like mirror selfies or like you know mirror TikToks I guess and like I mean this isn't horrible because it's clear and you can still see the phone case so it doesn't really ruin it but when you take it off I just feel like cooler without it but like realistically I have to have a pop socket otherwise there's no way I'm holding my phone like I don't know it's just like too big because I have like the biggest phone but I literally I refuse to get like the mini version because I just like need to see everything so big honestly guys I feel like we need to talk I just feel so lazy when I come home and I never like really vlog or edit because I'm just like trying to soak up as much family time as I can like I had to edit yesterday or while I stopped edit because I didn't do it but my sister asked to hang out with me and I was like well of course I'm gonna go hang out with you and not sit at home and edit and I'm just trying to hang out with my dad as much as possible because he's going to travel in December so I'm coming back to his house because Ryan's pet sitting for them but he won't be here so I don't know if it's like an excuse or if I'm just like taking advantage of being lazy back at home but that is why like in December I wanted to go home to Austin for like a week because when I'm in Austin it's like work mode turned on and I need that obviously because I was trying to explain to someone the other day but basically like if I put in more effort the more money I kind of see come back to me because my job doesn't really have a cap necessarily especially when it comes to like affiliate links and all that but I just have not really been feeling like I want to do a gift guide this year and part of me is like okay you're literally just being lazy but then the other part of me is like okay well everyone's a tiktoker now and everyone's doing a gift guide like what makes mine so special why should I do a gift guide are people just going to overload mine because they're seeing all these other gift guides and so I feel like I'm just having a little bit of imposter syndrome lately which sucks because YouTube is like 100% my passion but like editing and stuff really is time consuming especially when the sunlight hours are so much shorter and obviously I want to take advantage when it's sunny and good lighting to actually film the content but then at night I want to like hang out with people and like you know be fun and be social and I also always feel like at this time of the year I just want it to be like the new year already so I can just like reset and like get back into my goals and all that kind of stuff but I obviously don't want to wish away this holiday season so I don't know that's kind of like a little update on how I'm feeling with my career and all that kind of stuff but I am really excited for photography because if you guys don't know I do influencing stuff and then photography I specialize in grad photos and graduation it's right around the corner it starts as early as February but like usually March so it's coming up my website launch date keeps getting pushed back and pushed back and pushed back and I feel bad because people are DMing me asking you know hey can we like find out about grad photos but I don't want to promo it until I get my website because I am going to have like a Google form and like I just want it all in one place kind of thing so looking forward to that but I really really hope it gets done soon I'm going to stop rambling and finish packing I also need to film a TikTok for pedal and pup they sent me over three holiday dresses and they're gorgeous this one gold dress I'm going to put it right here because I wore it for my birthday looks exactly like the dress I tried on in anthropology when I was back home last month for the Bali and that dress in anthropology was like 200 something dollars this one from pedal and pup is like under 100 and it has adjustable straps so it fits even better here's the first pedal and pup dress it is so fun with this freaking tool on ends I wish I had like a cute bell because I feel like that would be a really cute accessory I also have some earrings on from them here's the gold dress that I said was a dupe for the anthropology one it's so freaking pretty and I just feel like the pleats are so stunning perfect for any holiday party like I said I wore this for my birthday so also perfect for that here's the last dress and honestly this might be my favorite because it just makes me look so snatched at the waist and I also have this beautiful clutch from pedal and pup also and I just feel like I don't really have that many like nice purses like this even though I feel like I would like a strap honestly I didn't even open it I wonder if it like comes with a strap hell yeah that makes it 100 times better but this dress is also I think under 100 bucks and just so high quality super dark but we are going to dinner with my dad and I think we're going to a new restaurant in Buckhead try looking it up but I couldn't find it anywhere what? it's 11 it's Lebanese food but I was just on FaceTime with Lara for literally the longest time she planned out pretty much our whole New York trip I'm so excited to see her and obviously just explore New York and also eat good food because I'm a big foodie I spent so much time on FaceTime that I am now freaking out about like packing and stuff because Ryan said he probably wants to leave for the airport around 7.30 so all right that's our cue to go so good it was at this new restaurant in Buckhead apparently it hasn't even fully opened up yet but it's so so pretty inside but I just finished packing it is currently 10.53 the airport pretty early which honestly I picked the flight thinking like oh it's not a morning flight but it definitely is at 10.20 we depart so we'll probably board at like 9.00 something meaning we have to like leave here at 7.00 because we live like I would say 45 to an hour away from the airport we'd rather be safe than sorry and apparently there's been a couple delays with flying up north because of like the snow and stuff I don't think it's snowing in New York though hopefully not I'm not ready for that I mean I packed layers but not for snow I gave a couple of things to Ryan to put in his suitcase so I didn't have to like worry about like smushing my bags I forgot that I gave him one of my bags that I wanted to like carry as my purse tomorrow in the airport so I'm just gonna put like all my purse items in this like random tote travel hack travel with a tote bag because you never know like what you could use it for it could be a dirty shoe bag it could be like an actual tote bag if you need to carry more things that fit in your purse you know but it's just like nice to honestly have a tote bag especially if you're carrying around a big camera like I do always and you can just throw it in there and it's so easy to take it out I usually do that when I'm like vlogging in Austin that way I don't have to like you know put it in my purse or anything like that but I think I'm gonna end the vlog here I'm so excited to vlog in New York and experience Christmas in New York and see my friends that live there and just like reconnect with people it's gonna be seriously so amazing so if you guys are not already subscribed definitely go ahead and do so and also follow me on Instagram and TikTok because I'm gonna be blowing up all my platforms with so much New York City content so get ready and I'll see y'all in my next video bye