Summer is officially here and man oh man do I feel it. All I’m in the mood for is long lazy afternoons, copious amounts of rosé and doing very little. Sadly, life is quite cooperating. I’ve actually been frantically running around all week – hence the light blog posts. Can you tell I feel guilty about that? But there are some exciting projects in the works. I can’t quite spill the beans yet, but if you check out Snapchat you might get a hint or two.

And if you checked out Snapchat you may have caught we did a break for it and are in wine country for the weekend. Sonoma is officially my happy place. I’ll be sharing sneak peeks on the Instagram all weekend – and while I’m reluctant to give up my hidden gems, I’ll be recapping this spot on the blog because it is just too good.

So I’m off to actually enjoy a little wine and pool time, but I didn’t want to leave you empty handed. I did manage to find five fabulous things you should check out this week.

My girl Cassandra launched her all-new site design and let me just say I’m suffering from some serious site envy! Congrats chica.

The off the shoulder trend. I’m this close to buying in. This top, this top, this top and this top are all calling to me. Do I do it??

Since I’m likely to indulge in too much wine this weekend, I will make up for by drinking these awesome veggie based…cocktails! Talk about having your (liquid) cake and eating it too!

If you didn’t spot our weekend house’s kitchen on Instagram today, then you might not understand why all I want to do is cook this weekend. But all I want to do is cook! I’m going to hit every wine country farmer’s market and I can and feast away on all of these recipes. You can drink more rosé that way.

Speaking of food, here’s a foodie’s guide to Seattle, my hometown (which I popped into for 24 hours this week and it did make me rather nostalgic.) I’m excited to be back up there for a week later this summer. I need a good dose of Northwesty-ness.

Next week I’ll be recapping my most recent foodie experience – my time at the Aspen Food & Wine Classic!

image via here

I hope you don’t mind, but before we get to our top 5 links of the week, I wanted to get into the business of blogging a bit. It can be a complicated thing. I mean, there’s now an entire cottage industry teaching people how to figure this blogging stuff out. It’s hard because the landscape is constantly changing. Case in point, the Insta-drama that went down this week. Can we have a little chat about it?

In case you missed the hoopla, let me quickly catch you up. Instagram – like Facebook and Pinterest before it – has announced it is going to move to an algorithmic feed, aka rather than publish an organic chronological feed, soon Instagram is going to serve you what the platform “thinks” you’d like to see based on your engagement patterns, any other data it collects on you and let’s be real – its advertising interests.

What does this really mean?

It means Instagram – like Facebook and Pinterest before it – is trying to implement a way to make money that will make shareholders happy. Over the weekend rumors swirled that this change was imminent, so on Monday feeds were blown up by brands and Instagrammers alike who were suggesting to turn on notifications to be alerted when someone they follow posts. Full disclosure, I was one of those bloggers who told my Instagram followers about the option of turning on notifications. Others got real feisty in their rejection of the turn on notifications idea.

But in reality, we have no idea how the change to the Instagram feed is going to affect anyone who uses the platform for their business – like many bloggers do – or anyone who just really loves Instagram. I think it might be an excellent idea to turn on notifications for the 10 or 20 accounts that you want to make sure you see but might not otherwise remember to check. I mean, I barely see my BFF’s posts on Facebook. And perhaps we’ll be pleasantly surprised when Instagram does change and we love every single thing in our feeds. If past experience with Facebook and Pinterest are any indication, somehow I doubt it, but we can hold out hope.

This is just a great reminder that you social media platforms are tools at a blogger’s disposal and it’s part of the job to learn how to adapt when they suddenly change on us. Those who do it well, succeed. For example, I don’t use Pinterest the way I used to because it’s no longer a place to discover inspiring things organically. But I’ve learned to adapt to make Pinterest useful for me personally and for Apartment 34. Once Instagram flips we’ll have to make similar adjustments. The same thing is eventually going to happen to the new bandwagon Snapchat. Is it a bummer? yes. But it’s one of the reasons I think this world of creating and sharing content (and ultimately ideas & a distinct point of view) never gets boring.

So that’s my two cents. Now back to our regularly scheduled Friday Five.

Our endless move has me dreaming of an escape. Cassandra’s guide to Marrakech has me seriously considering plane tickets!

Wedding season is around the corner and Kimberly’s insanely gorgeous Hawaiian wedding has me dreaming of getting married all over again. I mean, serious dress goals.

I’m counting down the seconds until I can cook in my new kitchen. I never thought I’d tire of Thai takeout, but oh have I ever. The first thing I’m going to do is whip up all the recipes in Camille’s spring cleanse. It’s high time I say so long to all those carbs!

Trying to handle a move with one kid is daunting. I can’t imagine running a household with five children. But this stylish mama is doing it gracefully and I’m equally intrigued by her perspective on decorating and parenting.

If only I could do my makeup with a baby sitting on my lap as well as this beauty blogger. Maybe if I watch her awesome tutorial 10 more times, I’ll finally get it. I’m certainly going to try.

Happy freakin’ weekend lovelies.

image via