Sockerbit Swedish Candy Shop

We are in the West Village. I really feel one of these days, when that lottery ticket comes in, my apartment will be in this area of the city. We are back to Christopher Street, and the amazing place called Sockerbit, a must stop shop........Are these windows not fabulous???  

I was so excited to walk in this shop, I mean, who would not be ?? 

the inside is very clean, all white and really very crisp looking  

I don't know how I walked out of here just buying some candy because everything was just so unique and original. 

Here is some info on the shop from their website: 

Our mission and desire is to share the Scandinavian candy culture and the amazing selection of "smågodis", which translates into little candies.

For any Scandinavian person (Swedish, Danish, Finnish or Norwegian) smågodis is part of their everyday life; and most of the Swedes grew up with the tradition of "lördagsgodis", meaning Saturday sweets. Every Saturday children are allowed to buy their favorite smågodis as a weekend treat and it is usually the highlight of the week.

The idea of composing your own candy bag is a dream come true to everyone. Sometimes we feel like something sour and sweet at the same time... and sometimes we need chocolate but mixed with some fruity surprises...it all depends on how we feel, our mood, the weather...you could say that each person's candy bag reflects the state of mind of that person.

We wanted to create a clean space where the center of attraction would be the sweets; their colors and shapes. Also a wide open space so people can enjoy the sweet atmosphere when you walk inside a Sockerbit store. In short we like to keep things sweet, simple and Scandinavian!

Sockerbit, literally means "sugar cube" and it is also the name of the one of our candies, a white-cubed marshmallow, which is also the original inspiration for our design.

Another trait of these tasty candies is that Scandinavian candy is made with high quality ingredients; free of transfats, colors from nature, free of genetically modified ingredients (GMO). All things combined make these candies delicious.

                                            

                                                     The packaging is really oh so fun, isn't it ?
    

                       all candy are in bins that you can take how much you want yourself  

                                        Greven chocolates from the palace, on the right  

this is their fudge and it is so darn good you cannot even imagine  

more funky licorice flavored with....what else....rubarb  

authentic swedish fish in 2 flavors  

If you are in this area, please give these folks a visit. It is fun for grown-ups, as well as kids, and also has some lovely gift items too if you need some to bring home to family and friends. 

Be sure to enter to win this great soy candle HERE 

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Metropolitan Museum of Art Announces Record Attendance

Thomas P. Campbell, Direct and CEO of The Met 

(New York, July 28, 2015)—Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today that a record 6.3 million people—from the five boroughs of New York City, the local tri-state area, across the United States, and around the world—visited the Museum during the fiscal year that ended on June 30 (FY15). This is the highest visitorship since the Met began tracking admission statistics more than 40 years ago, and it is the fourth year in a row that attendance exceeded six million. The total includes visitors both at the main building on Fifth Avenue and at The Cloisters museum and gardens, the branch of the Metropolitan Museum in upper Manhattan devoted to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages.

Mr. Campbell said: “This year’s record-breaking numbers demonstrate the ongoing enthusiasm for the Met’s exhibitions, collections, and programs. For the second full year, we have been open seven days a week to the public, and last September we unveiled our welcoming new Fifth Avenue plaza. In the galleries, we continue to present a spectrum of exhibitions, from small focused installations to major international loan shows like the current China: Through the Looking Glass. And several months from now we will launch our expanded modern and contemporary art programming at The Met Breuer. These and many other new projects carry forward our mission to collect, study, preserve, and make accessible to our visitors the full sweep of art history, from ancient times to the present.”

The Met continues to be a popular destination for local visitors and it is also New York’s most visited tourist attraction for domestic as well as international audiences. Visitors from the five boroughs of New York City comprised 26% of the Museum’s visitorship for FY15, while New York City and tri-state visitors together comprised 41% of the total. International visitors from 189 countries visited the main building and The Cloisters in FY15, accounting for 38% of the annual visitorship.

 Exhibitions 
Exhibition attendance was strong over the course of the year, with 20 of the exhibitions that opened during FY15 receiving more than 100,000 visitors, including Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection (316,095); Thomas Hart Benton’s America Today Mural Rediscovered(281,687); Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire (187,417); Thomas Struth: Photographs (183,061); and Kimono: A Modern History (170,214).

Also contributing to the high attendance in FY15 were the final weeks of last summer’s popular exhibitions The Roof Garden Commission: Dan Graham with Günther Vogt (which closed November 2, 2014, and drew 559,876 visitors) and Charles James: Beyond Fashion (which closed August 10, 2014, and attracted 505,307 people), as well as the early weeks of the spring Costume Institute exhibition China: Through the Looking Glass, which opened on May 4, 2015, and had 358,381 visitors as of June 30. China: Through the Looking Glass remains on view through the early weeks of FY16 and its closing date was recently extended to September 7, 2015. (It has had more than 535,000 visitors to date.)

Education and Public Programs 
The Met’s broad range of live arts, educational, and public programming continued to be robust throughout the year, serving visitors of all ages, from novices to experts, including students, teachers, families, visitors with disabilities, scholars, artists, and others from around the world. In FY15, the Met served a total of 216,352 students and teachers on 5,943 school group visits. More than 136,000 of the students were from public, private, and parochial schools across New York City’s five boroughs; and over 76,000 of these were from public schools, an increase of more than 34% compared to last year.  The Met’s educator programs on integrating art into classroom teaching were attended by a total of 3,777 participants in FY15. 


Digital Visitorship 
The Met continues to extend its reach through digital channels. The Metropolitan Museum’swebsite ended FY15 with a total of 32 million visits. The Met app, launched in September 2014 on iPhone and iPad, was used more than one million times in its first nine months. The Museum’s Facebook account had more than 1.3 million followers (with a reach of 48.5 million people) in FY15, and its Twitter feed had 982,000 followers (with tweets receiving 148.5 million impressions). The Met’s Webby Award-winning Instagram account had 637,000 followers at the end of FY15, more than three times that of the previous year.

The Met’s digital audience is increasingly global. International users are up to 36% on the website, 50% on Instagram, 54% on Twitter, and 70% on Facebook. The Museum launched its presence on Weibo, one of China’ largest social media networks, in December 2013, and in FY15, it had 10 million impressions.

Credits 
China: Through the Looking Glass: Made possible by Yahoo. Additional support provided by Condé Nast and several Chinese donors. Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection: Supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Thomas Hart Benton’sAmerica Today Mural Rediscovered: Gift of mural and exhibition made possible by AXA.Thomas Struth: Photographs: Made possible by Vivian and James Zelter. Kimono: A Modern History: Made possible by The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation Fund. The Roof Garden Commission: Dan Graham with Günther Vogt: Supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Additional support provided by Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky. Charles James: Beyond Fashion: Made possible by AERIN. Additional support provided by Condé Nast. 

The Met app is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

About The Metropolitan Museum of Art 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world’s leading art museums, with a collection spanning more than 5,000 years of world culture, from prehistory to the present. It presents dozens of exhibitions each year, and thousands of events and programs including films, talks, performance, guided tours, and family programs. A center for art appreciation, scholarship, research, and conservation, the Met also maintains a vibrant program of publishing scholarly and popular catalogues, and utilizes new technologies to enhance the visitor experience and extend the reach and accessibility of its offerings globally.In addition to its main building at Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, the Met is launching its modern and contemporary art-themed programming at The Met Breuer in spring 2016, and continues to present exhibitions as well as works from the Met’s collection of medieval art and architecture at The Cloisters museum and gardens, its branch in upper Manhattan.

Don't forget to enter the giveaway for a lovely soy NYC candle HERE! 

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Instagram July 2015 with Some Tips

We are back visiting one of my favorite social media apps, Instagram! This app has been so amazing since it's beginning and when Facebook purchased it in 2012 for 1 billion, folks were shaking their heads. With the company now worth somewhere around 35 billion, I think they made the right choice. 

While my other favorite social media platform, Twitter, seems to be stalling, Instagram is growing by leaps and bounds. I think everyone loves photography, and I think it's so cool to see photos someone is taking in Paris while I am in Pennsylvania! I also find lots of cool thing to purchase on Instagram from folks I follow and trust their recommendations. 

There are 300M monthly active users on Instagram, 70% are folks outside the USA, 30B plus photos shared, 2.5B likes daily, 70M average photos per day - Taken from Instagram press page 

My photos on my stream are very varied. I do not follow a theme as I know many say you should, but I like to show my interests and they are quite diverse. I find to gain follows on the site, you need to comment yourself, engage in others, take part in a project like the #1day12pics where you meet folks with the same interest as yourself. Hashtags are also very important in your photos, so people can find what you are showing in your stream. Emma Davies has a great article HERE on how to increase your Instagram following. I really enjoy her tips on her site, gives you many great ideas to grow your blog following.

If you are on Instagram, please leave your link in the comments so I can give you a follow. Hope you are following me as well, and enjoying my crazy interests! I apologize for the food photos in advance, I know they can bring hunger pains!!

Don't forget to enter the giveaway for a lovely soy NYC candle HERE! 

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Royce Chocolates

Royce Chocolate is a Japanese confectioner which began in 1983. They opened their first store in New York City in 2012 on Madison Avenue. I came across the shop by just walking around Bryant Park, where they have another location. I was very impressed with their selection, very different, and a pure treat for the chocolate lover.  

I found the packaging to be very neat, and the flavor selection even more so. Chocolate Wafers and I have been best friends ever since Kit Kat was invented! 

Chocolate covered potato chips. Need I say more? 

Samples. Who doesn't love samples in a chocolate shop? 

This is the kind of shop I love to find because you will not find them in your hometown. Unless you live in a big city, California or New Jersey, where some other shops are located. I love bringing back items that are so unique to family and good friends. 

They had many vintage items that were used to make chocolate which I really loved seeing in person. 

Soft marshmallows coated with creamy white chocolate are on that top shelf. The bottom has some very cool maccha green tea candy. Unique right? 

This is the maccha green tea candy, which I did try, and found to be very tasty. 

Their roasted almond selection had me drooling right in the shop! 

Black chocolate? Yes indeed, the darkest purest chocolate at 80 to 90 percent cacao. 

All ROYCE’ chocolates are produced in Hokkaido, Japan. The factory maintains the most innovative and progressive production systems to ensure the highest quality standards. Our uncompromising values embody everything we do – from quality ingredients to inventive new packaging. ROYCE’ has a reputation of excellence and this is shown in our passion for chocolate and our commitment to our customers.

You can check out their locations HERE on their website in New York City as they have 3 total.

Has anyone out there tried Royce Chocolates? How did you like it and what was your favorite?

Don't forget to enter the giveaway for a lovely soy NYC candle HERE! 

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