We know the feeling, you want to get your special someone something this Valentine’s Day, but as it’s fast approaching the supermarkets seem to be jam packed with cheesy V-day gifts that speak little from the heart. To help you tug on your loved ones heart strings, we have researched four delightful websites that will assist you in buying unique gifts or creating something on your own for your significant other this Valentines Day.

1. Uncommon Goods has accumulated quite an assortment of unique products.  You can find everything from mushroom kits to eco picnic baskets. Maybe your girlfriend is a strange health nut;) You’re sure to find something for any type of person.  This site is dedicated to gifts, so you can search by holiday, gender, and category. This would be a great place to look for those difficult to shoo shop for and who don’t have this amazing footed bowl.

We also like the Wooden iPhone Case for $44

2. Etsy is a super sweet website that most of you know which specializes in selling all things handmade and vintage. If you don’t have the time to create but still want something unique, then we recommend Etsy for quick and easy Valentines Day shopping. There is a whole tab dedicated to the holiday, including handpicked items that are sure to charm.

Pick up this Walnut Wooden iPad Stand for only $20! Great for those that have aquired iPads over the holidays.

3. Best Friends For Frosting is a lovely little website that features hundreds of adorable homemade recipes from the best baking blogs around the world. We know techies have a soft spot for sugar, so treat yours to something homemade. Recipes are conveniently categorized under tabs like Holidays, Desserts,Themes and DIY, so you’re sure to find exactly what you’re looking for in a matter of moments. A number of recipes also consider those who are vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free, making it easier for everyone to enjoy your homemade sweet treats.

Try whipping up a batch of these Conversation Heart Valentine Sugar Cookies.

Still haven’t found the right gift? This next one should help you out…

4. Svpply We aren’t quite sure how to say it yet either, but that’s a “v” not a “u”. It’s kinda like a Pinterest, but for shopping only.  You can follow your favorite people and stores, save stuff that you want to buy later, and find great online products.  Back to the point of this post; Valentines Day- you can set search specifications to find exactly what you want to find for that special someone!

Our favorite find was this geeky Unlock Doormat from blessthisstuff for $59:

5. Rent the Runway is your go to online resource for your V-day attire this season. I’m sure many of you have heard by now, but you can rent a top-tier designer dress for a fraction of the retail price. Since formal dresses rarely get much wear anyway, this is a great way to wow your man on less-than-royal budget for just a night.

We hope these ideas inspire you to find that perfect gift this Valentines Day! If you know of any great websites or V-day inspired recipes feel free to share here or find ABCey on Twitter.

Looking to travel this spring? Hunting through different travel sites for convenient hotels and cheap flights can give you a headache. Event planners are on the move, whether it’s for conventions, galas, or fun. This is why we tried Wanderfly, a travel recommendation engine that goes beyond flights and hotels.  Users tailor the settings to fit their budgets and interests, and the site uses your social networks and other travel search engines to give suggestions.

ABCey is planning an event in Washington, D.C. this spring for a company attending the International Trademark Association’s Annual Meeting, so we decided to let Wanderfly help with our travel itinerary.

We set the specifications for San Francisco to Washington DC, $600 per person, early May, and for 4 days. The coolest part of this site is that you can add your interests.  For this trip we decided that our interests were: landmarks (can’t miss those in DC), food (event planners have to eat), and outdoors (May is lovely).  When we hit the “Get Going” button, we were transported to the front steps of the White House…well, not really, but it gave us everything that we needed to get there.

The first thing we did is check out the flight and hotel options.  Wanderfly uses content from travel sites such as Orbitz, Hotels.com, Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp, and Mashable.  We found flight options and hotels with reviews and tips right on the page. The activities suggestions are really what makes the service unique.  For us, it recommended highly reviewed restuarants, hiking trails, and all of the important monuments. If you log into Facebook through the site, it accesses your network’s knowledge and allows you to post a question asking for advice.  

Interested yet? Even if you don’t know where you want to go on vacation, Wanderfly will make recomendations for you based on your interests and budget.  We suggest that you try them out! It is free and easy to plan vacations, even if they’re imaginary. Have you ever used Wanderfly? What travel services do you generally use? Let us know in the comments or find us on Twitter!

We are pretty excited over here about Rent the Runway. RTR allows you to rent designer dresses for a fraction of the cost without having to leave your living room! I have heard about this company from a few different sources now,  and think this is something we will use for our upcoming events. Dressing up all the time can get expensive! I also love this concept for Bridesmaids, because it’s not fair to have your best friends spend $300+ on a dress that they’ll never wear again.

Many of us out there also can’t really afford a $3,350 Missoni dress, so why not rent it for $250 since you’ll likely only wear it once anyways? Or, a Nicole Miller frock that retails at $600 but you can rent for $75. They have an amazing selection of dresses available and have a great review section to help with your decision. You can also request two sizes without paying an additional fee. The price includes dry cleaning and shipping, and insurance is added on top of it for a minimal fee. The website is super organized and they have filters which will allow you to search dresses based on size, event, or availability. I don’t know why, but it still feels like throwing money away. It’s probably more sensible to buy a $300-$500 dollar dress that is timeless and that you can wear over and over. But then again, we ladies always want something new and exciting!

RTR also has a great line of handbags and jewelry to accompany your hot new dress. After reading many Yelp reviews, people seem very happy overall with their choices. However, there seem to be quite a few customer service complaints. It looks like they’re making a valid effort to improve this as they continue to grow. It will be interesting to see if they team up with PrimeSense 3D, which will be revealed this week at CES 2012. It uses Microsoft’s Kinect technology to scan a user’s height and waist size. Users will soon be able to virtually try on clothes from partner retailers to get a true sense of how their potential purchases will fit. Cool!

Congrats RTR- looks like a huge hit and we’re excited to try the service the next time we need to get super dolled up!

We were so excited to hear about the Makerie and just had to post about it. As an event planner, I love to express my creativity and continue to learn new crafts whether for an upcoming event or just for fun. This cozy mountain retreat held at Chautauqua in Boulder, Co is for skilled crafters, and also for those who have never sewed a button back onto their shirt before! The founders of the Makerie believe that each and every one of us is creative (even if super deep down) and they want to help encourage and nurture our creative juices! They have a variety of classes and workshops offered by skilled teachers, but also provide wake-up yoga and hiking along with local, healthy organic fare. I have always wanted to be 10 years old again just so I could go back to summer camp, and now we can. Who doesn’t want to feel like a kid again?

Guests stay in Chautauqua’s cozy cottages surrounded by meadows and mountains, each with a unique history and historic charm. The cottages range in size from 1-3 bedrooms, and have a fully equipped kitchen and screened-in front porch. To register, click here!

Here are some of the amazing workshops that are offered at the Makerie:

Bloom True! Brave Intuitive Painting (Two-Day Session)

Crochetologie

Fabulous Food Styling & Food Photography

Lovely Letters Pressed

Oliver + S Sleepover Pajamas

Painting with Stitches

Your Life in Pictures

There are more like this that seem to be popping up all over the place. We have also just learned about Teahouse Studio in Berkeley, CA which offers workshops and classes on paintings, graphic design, and writing at an artists studio. Also Ace Camps in Vancouver, BC hosts weekend and weeklong creative retreats with art, photography, food and journaling. We love this idea and think it’s a great way to escape and find your inner creative self. Have you been to something like this before or would you consider going? We love to hear your thoughts and feedback is always welcomed. Leave us a comment here or send a message to events@abcey.com.

We’re slightly overwhelmed with the amount of Social Gifting startup sites that have popped up this holiday season encouraging us to outsource our decisions, but still think this whole movement is great. Many of you may have already heard of Wantful, a startup founded by serial entrepreneur John Poisson,  which aims to revamp the gift-giving process. This is a site that takes the experience of a high-end shop, and makes it fun and affordable for you and your gift recipients. It has a super simple design, and lets you log in with Facebook so that it can pull in all of your friend’s birthdays. These companies are offering to save customers from the task of choosing items themselves. They hire editors from the retail world, personal shoppers charged with sifting through hundreds of options, surfacing only the very best products and doing the dirty research.

It’s part personalized pop-up shop, and part gift certificate. The site helps the gifter put together a custom catalog of 16 items that all fall within a certain price point, then delivers the book either electronically or as a physical copy to the receiver, then ships the chosen product. By marrying tech and tradition, the service seeks to relieve shoppers from the burden of having to choose exactly what to buy that special someone, while preserving the sense that thought and care went into picking a present.

Wantful is also different in its affinity for paper and the postal service. They realize that an email can’t replicate the fun of unwrapping a gift so Wantful will print and ship a customized book that showcases the possible presents the gift giver has selected for a $5 fee. Not bad! Wantful is backed by a few tech industry heavyweights such as Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley, Path CEO Dave Morin and One Kings Lane co-founder Alison Pincus. The site doesn’t rely solely on fancy algorithms but moreso on old-fashioned means such as good taste and wrapping paper to deliver a personal, and memorable touch to help it’s user select gifts.

We love this idea and think it could be fun to experiment with this holiday season. It will be interesting to see how the etiquette of sending a Wantful will evolve once the novelty wears off. Will it be seen as little more than a souped-up gift certificate? Which of the new social gifting sites are your favorite so far? Gift Side Story, Trunk Club, Givvy, Quarterly…the list goes on!

There sure are an amazing amount of social and curated gifting sites popping up this season! It’s clearly a great idea, so it will be interesting to see which ones succeed and which ones don’t. Quarterly is a new way to connect with the people you follow and find interesting. We spend so much of our lives connecting with people online that we forget the value of authentic interactions that happen in the real world. This new service from the former editor of Good Magazine let’s you subscribe to tastemakers like Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic or Scott Belsky of Behance, every three months you get a gift curated by the person you’ve chosen to subscribe to. You can receive physical items in the mail from influential contributors and cultural icons of your choice.

What kind of stuff will you get? Quarterly says that you’ll see a blend of original, exclusive, and consumer items that are timeless, practical, exciting, and fly under the radar. The idea is not to fill up your house with clutter, and they are mindful of the waste that we all generate each day. They also recognize that consumption isn’t inherently bad, but just a matter of making smarter choices about the things we surround ourselves with.

Quarterly users can subscribe to as many contributors as they like. Support for multiple subscriptions was by their most requested feature ever since the launch, and it’s now being offered. We’re thinking this is pretty awesome. What you are getting is an experience, just like getting a letter in the mail from a good friend. Instead, you’re getting a gift from someone super cool that you admire! Super!

Will you be testing out Quarterly this holiday season?

Christmas and Hannukkah are just around the corner, so it is time to start preparing! Here are some creative and fun photography tips that we hope you’ll enjoy.

1. Prepare: Making a List, Checking it Twice

• Make sure you are prepared to capture the moments of this holiday.

• Check that you have everything and find some good places to take some shots

• Pack the camera

• Make sure the batteries are charged and you have extra memory cards

• Put someone on ‘photos’.  Make sure someone is taking charge and photographing the whole event!

• Consider the light in the room that you’ll be photographing in. Is there enough light? Will you need a flash?
• Are the backgrounds too cluttered and distracting?

2. Get Your White Balance In Check: Pay attention to what type of light you’re shooting in and set your white balance accordingly.  If you have a camera that shoots in RAW, however, you can change it later.

3. Set Up a DIY ‘Photo Booth’: Time to be creative and set up a photo booth station where the party is.  An idea would be to photograph everyone as they come in and then leave a tripod set up with a self-timer on the camera for people to take pictures of themselves during the party.  As the party goes on, the photos get crazier!

4. Capture the Preparation Stages:

• The meal or party is the best part of the day, but there are other photographic opportunities; mainly the preparation stages of the day.

• Food preparation

• Putting up decorations

• Wrapping gifts

• Kids throwing a tantrum while getting dressed in their Christmas outfits

• Setting the table

5. Before and After Shots: Take pictures of the place before the party starts and after it has finished. It will show you what a success it truly was!

6. Time-lapse Christmas Series: A creative idea would be to set up a web cam on the table looking down the Christmas tree. Set the camera to go off every 5 minutes over the day and you will end up with one of the most wonderful series of shots. Of course can be applied to a Hannukkah bush as well;)

7. Christmas Lights: This can be tricky so read up on it!

8. Find a Point of Interest- but just per shot: Work hard to de-clutter your images

9. Fresh Group Photos: Take the group photo before the day gets started and when everyone looks their best.

10. Opening Gifts- Shoot in Continuous Mode: Opening gifts bring a wide array of emotions, facial expressions and excitement, so be ready to capture all of them! You will find a lot of really exciting, memorable photos.

11. Fill Your Frame: Fill your frame with your subject either by using your zoom or getting up closer to the subjec

Together with the convenience of digital cameras and advances in offset publishing, and fun new apps, this holiday season we will surely be seeing lots of digitally printed holiday cards. While we know this is more convenient for many reasons, there is still something to be said about handwritten cards. Digital images are great, but they don’t capture the feeling you get when you hold a real photo in your hands.

If you are interested in going digital, and saving time with address labels, stamps, etc…be sure to try Sincerely Ink or Postcard On The Run. Both of these apps will let you design your card and then they will send it out for you.”Just snap, tap, and send.” If you have some spare time, and want to go traditional, we’ve got a few recommendations for you this season. California Home + Design shares some of their favorite finds from local San Francisco stationery makers.

Greetings from San Fran: Wish your friends and family happy holidays from The City by the Bay! The cards can also be printed as customized photo cards. Greetings from San Francisco Cards ($16 for 6 at Hello! Lucky)

Say it in Black and White: Keep it simple with these bold holiday cards from San Francisco’s In Haus Press.The Merriest Holiday Cards: ($18 for 6 at In Haus Press, Etsy)

Merry Mistletoe: San Francisco’s famed Yellow Owl Press offers an unexpected take on the traditional holiday card this year. Botanical prints of seasonal plants are surprisingly festive and sophisticated.Botantical Card ($4 each at Yellow Owl Press)

Merry and Modern: If cutesy holiday cards aren’t your thing, consider these from the SFMOMA Museum Store. The red hue on the featured Mark Rothko’s 1967 says “Holiday” but is still sophisticated. Mark Rothko Holiday Card ($16 for 12 at SFMOMA Museum Store)

Doe a Deer: This unique card is merry, without being over-the-top. It comes from one of our favorite purveyors of fine stationery, Austin Press–who, despite their name are based here in SF. So hop to it and send it to everyone on your list. Holiday Doe Visiting Card (price upon request at Austin Press).

Shutterfly and Moo will also let you design your holiday card, but they won’t mail them for you. This year you will have no excuses! Will you be going Traditional or Digital?

We recently saw the launch of a new lifestyle brand, HelloBrit.com which aims to find helpful, yet creative new ways for busy people to live more simply, beautifully and imaginatively. Brit Morin (wife to Dave Morin, the founder of Path) has been working in the tech world for several years now and was a former Apple and Google employee. She is already being touted as the Martha Stewart of Silicon Valley and has recently been featured in The LA Times, Huffington Post, and TechCrunch. Brit gives new ideas and tips to live a more simple and creative life whether it be through technology, food, style, health that she either created or curated from scouring the web, something that is becoming very popular! Brit says “The ideas should come to you, and they should come through a channel whose expertise and taste you trust.”

Her site is looking like a cross between Real Simple and Wired Magazines with videos showing you how to make Christmas tree cheese appetizers, how to use electrical tape to make candy cane cups, DIY Holiday welcome mats, wearable dinner party napkins, and more. She recently featured a great gift guide for the holidays and showcases 20 of her favorite products and apps. Thanks Brit!

The brand’s first offering is a wedding app called Weduary, which was inspired by the process that Morin and her husband used in planning their own ”Pixel Cowboy”- themed wedding this summer. This will be a new service for brides and grooms, and will hopefully make for a more interesting experience for guests online and off. Make sure to sign up on the website to be notified when the new site arrives! There will be some other apps launched in the future which will likely be centered around ways to be creative around the home and novel ways to perform everyday activities like cooking, decorating and shopping.

We hope you enjoy and use Hello Brit for a little inspiration into your own creativity! We know that at ABCey, we will be keeping up Brit’s innovative ideas and using them for inspiration of our own, especially this holiday season.

We were really excited to hear that the AC World Series, Louis Vuitton Cup America’s Cup Challenger Series and the 34th America’s Cup Finals will be sailed in our hometown, San Francisco, Calif. in 2012 and 2013! This is the oldest trophy in modern sport and continues to build upon its rich heritage of leading-edge innovation with an event that is designed to showcase the best sailors in the world on the fastest boats. This will be the first time in 18 years that this worldwide event will be held in the United States. There will be approximately 45 race days, so that means that SF will be experiencing more days of competition than any other international sporting events ever held in this city. Arriving for the first time in the summer of 2012, the sailing will start with two back to back events, the first from the 11th to 19th of August and the second beginning a week later, running from the 27th August through the 2nd September.

The upcoming America’s Cup events in Newport, Rhode Island, San Francisco and San Diego, California are predicted to create thousands of jobs and over $1 billion in economic impact over the next two years. For the first time in history, the America’s Cup will be able to be seen from shore, creating tremendous public access for spectators as well as drawing large spectator crowds to benefit the port cities hosting America’s Cup events. The City of SF estimates over 300,000 visitors on peak viewing days and no tickets are necessary.   Additionally, the America’s Cup is predicted to deliver an estimated over $1 billion economic impact to the San Francisco Bay area, with more than 8,500 jobs that will be created due to the America’s Cup.

ABCey Events is looking forward to working on some of the many events that will be surrounding the actual races. If your company is involved and is interested in some outside event planning or production help, you know who to call!

Rough America’s Cup race day numbers & dates:
AC World Series 2012-2013 Race 1 (Aug. 2012):  7 race days
AC World Series 2012-2013 Race 2 (Sept. 2012:  7 race days
AC Opening events (7/4-7/7 2013):  3 race days
Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series 2013 (7/13-9/1):  32 race days over 51 days
America’s Cup Finals (9/7-9/22 2013):  9 race days over 16 days