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coming at you from Boston, MA! + big mycyberspace updates

Howdy from Boston! 🤠

This is actually my first time in Boston ever. In fact, this is the most north/east I’ve ever been in the US!

I planned to watch Legally Blonde on the plane — one of my favorite movies! Elle is one of my favorite characters and one I relate to a lot. Funny enough, her sorority in the movie was based on the one I was in in college! Packing for Boston, Elle sure was on my mind!

Legally Blonde is almost always on the plane, but this time, it was not. Instead, I watched Julia (they have the full seasons!), and it felt like kismet. I never put two and two together, but Boston was where it all began for her! This made it especially fun to watch and get excited for the trip! Julia Child is another woman who has always inspired me a lot.

It was neat to see places that still exist today!

One of the biggest highlights was visiting Union Oyster House, rumored to be the oldest restaurant in the United States. This was also seen in the show and is known to be one of Julia’s favorite restaurants! It was truly a crazy feeling to enjoy some of her favorite dishes at places she loved. I also bought the Union Oyster House cookbook at their gift shop and am excited to try some of these dishes chez moi!

I’m also looking to try all the quintessential Boston dishes and cuisine: from Parker House rolls to clam chowder to Boston baked beans and, of course, Boston Cream Pie!

Funny enough, the bowl of clam chowder at Union Oyster House was my very first bowl of clam chowder… and was better than I could have ever imagined!

The hospitality in Boston is seriously top-notch. Some of the restaurants have been the best I have ever experienced—from the cuisine to the staff. There is so much enthusiasm for hospitality here, and I can’t get enough. It’s some of the best I’ve ever experienced in the United States.

One of the standout dishes I’ve had here was the beef tenderloin flatbread by Mistral. It’s completely out of this world good. Think a cracker-thin flatbread crust topped with mashed potatoes and caramelized onion, thinly sliced, perfectly tender beef tenderloin, and drizzled with white truffle oil. Their vegetable risotto was also next level—a perfect symphony of simplicity, richness, and flavor.

We also LOVE Saltie Girl. It’s almost embarrassing how many times we’ve been. I feel like every day, we look at each other and say, “Want to go to Saltie Girl again?” The oysters here are incredible, especially with their shallot mignonette and housemade hot sauce (which has enough heat for this Texan!!! I’d buy it by the bottle if I could).

Saltie Girl is also home to one of the most incredible Lobster Rolls. Served hot and tossed in beurre blanc, this was one of the most rich dishes I have ever had. Again, so simple yet so rich and flavorful! My husband brilliantly paired it with a Trefethen Chardonnay. With its light oak, the buttery puff pastry notes paired beautifully with it.

Another place I absolutely love here is LA Burdick, a chocolatier with some of the most amazing chocolates! I got an iced caramel latte made with their homemade caramel. What was interesting was how unsweet it was! Instead, it amplified the coffee and milk flavor. I want to try this at home!

They also have the cutest chocolate mice and penguins that we got a ton of! I highly recc if you are in Back Bay. They also have locations in New York and Chicago! I also wish we had more places like this in Texas. I love Epicure Cafe in River Oaks but would love to find a 100% dessert and coffee-focused place like LA Burdick.

I am really loving Boston, and already looking forward to visiting more. My husband often goes, so I will happily join him more and more

On another note, I will be changing things up here a bit a lot. For transparency, things will evolve into a paid model. I touched on it a bit here (which is similar to future personal paid posts).

Now that my sites are rolling out, those are my #1 focus and where I live online. It’s actually bittersweet since this was the plan all along. And it’s been fun to blog here! But it was never my end destination, which makes it so bittersweet. This was like my rental apartment while my forever home was being built.

My sites originally had personal blogs, but now they no longer ever will. I also spent some time offline publicly, so mycyberspace is a place to get to know the human behind the brands while I was offline. And for funsies, here is my intro post to mycyberspace!

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Besides the few posts that have always been paid access, I will keep everything published heretofore paywall open for all. After almost a full year of 99% complementary content, it’s a good taste of who I am, what inspires me, and what you can expect through membership.

And in the upcoming weeks, I will have plenty of complimentary online destinations to visit.

I’ve overshared so much for free on various websites and platforms for over a decade now; it’s nice to lock things off behind a paywall for exclusive access.

Also, I see a lot of fluffy substacks charging more than mine for posts that are just affiliate links. If people are willing to pay to be aff-linked, I honestly have zero issues putting my hard work, time, business/creative advice, and personal posts behind a paywall.

I’d say if you want to follow me personally, then follow me on Instagram. But honestly, my websites are far more personal than anything you’ll ever see from me on a “personal” social media profile. The sites I created make it obvious who I am and what I’m about.

If you want to support me, share and support my sites, work, and business, not a company I personally hate. Not to mention, my sites (and myself, very much) care about YOU, the user.

And for those wondering why I’m even on said platform, the answer is here (last few sentences). Also mentioned here, I’ve found so much more privacy being “online” vs. being offline. It will never cease to amaze me that people would rather go crazy stalking searching and gossiping about what I might be up to instead of having a bona fide relationship with me. But go off (and look within).

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Of course, not everything will be paid access!

And there will still be complementary posts!

Not every post will be paid! But most posts will have a paid aspect rather than 100% paid if that makes sense.

In fact, this OG paid personal post is a good example. ⬇️

Also, speaking of The Menu, this is a great read (spoilers!) about the Sommelier (obvs my fav character in the movie). I also had a laugh at this… because, yes, as ridiculous as this is, these are 100% words I’ve used on the floor. I love being a somm, but there definitely is a hint of absurdity to it all.

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I will share more about my creative process, personal things, pages from my journal, how I use and prompt AI, and more. These valuable, personal, and private things deserve to be behind a paywall.

I will also start sharing my cooking and recipes. Cooking is very personal for me, and I will have a free destination for my formal recipes on other websites; it just won’t be here. These recipes differ from the official Texaspacific ones. Texaspacific is a formal place for my recipes (which also means formal photography/video), where my “casual cooking at home” will be here.

It’s through these recipes that the formal ones come from. Think impromptu iphone snaps versus treating it like a formal cookbook. If you see something from an Instagram story, here is where you’ll find the recipe. It’s a much more casual place for it vs Texaspacific’s [complementary] formality.

It’s also a place where I can share my meal plans, shopping lists, cooking journals, and more. So much of it, before it ever gets online in a formal manner, starts simply from my journals and kitchen. It’s also a very personal process for me. I cook ~90% at home for almost every meal when I'm not traveling.

I’m also working on self-publishing a cookbook (hopefully plural!), so I figure paid access could be a fun peek into that process as we get into it.

Plaza will also have a big presence here with drops, discount codes, personal sourcing and shopping, early shopping before things hit the website, etc.

I also intend for the paid access to be a place for creatives. Basically, it’s paying me to help you with your process. It’s a place where I can have private chats and host intimate Q&As to build not just a brand but your brand. In fact, going paywall actually allows me to open up subscriber-only chats for this purpose. I can also include more digital downloads and other goodies.

Going forward, posts like this will be behind a paywall. That makes sense; it’s a 20-minute article with lots of valuable information, including my AI prompts, if you can read between the lines. The big difference with future paid posts like this, I will provide more specific information on my AI prompts. ⬇️

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If you want to start your own online brand, it’s a place where you can personally engage with me as if you’ve hired me as a digital media consultant. I am working on the schedule for that now as we speak.

…and I can assure you that at $7.77 a month or $77.77 a year, it’s THE lowest price anyone could ever dream of getting me… by a long shot lol.

However, if people spend their hard-earned money on me, I need to have a strict schedule here (which I don’t at ALL right now 🥲) so they get their money’s worth. Sooooo, FYI until I announce the formal schedule… I don’t have one yet but it’s in process.

But this is all rolling out sooner rather than later, perhaps even before the formal post. So, if you see a few truncated posts with an “upgrade to pay,” it’s no error on my end. :-)

And on that note… this is a good place to end things. Have a marvelous weekend!! xx sSs

(there’s nothing behind this paywall btw, just linking for funsies)