Sweet Home Alabama

Last week I was in Alabama visiting my mom for a few days.  We ate at all of my favorite places and found new places to clothes shop.   Then I ended the week with a visit to Auburn and my sorority's 90th anniversary.  I had a ball!!!!   What fun to re-connect with gals that I hadn't seen in WAY too long.  The wonderful thing is that we picked up our conversations as if we had just talked last week.   Staying up until one in the morning took it's toll---but was worth every new wrinkle.  Of course, we had our fair share of wine which didn't help the head all that much.

Anyway, one of my friends has a daughter who has started a hand-crafted pillow company, Jane Sweet Jane.  These pillows are hand painted and stenciled by Jane Randall Jackson. 

They are cute and rustic.  The showroom/workroom is really fun too.  She has loads of fun designs, fabrics and sizes.  She also does custom orders which can include a monogram!

 

Their newest endeavor is this rustic log lamp----how awesome is that!

So, give my friend's website and facebook page a gander.  You can give her a big War Eagle from me!

SoapMaiden

Last month our web developer extraordinare, Kevin, from KR Graphix, did us a great service by introducing us to the Soap Maiden. She has an incredible line of soaps and lotions and potions that we have gone crazy over! You can tell that she loves what she does by the meticulous and appealing product she puts out. All of us shop gals have snapped up her all natural bars that are cured for 4 weeks! 

The Soap Maiden was telling me about how she has taken time to perfect her recipes, and how her chemistry classes really ending up paying off.  Frankly, I'm just jealous of her kitchen! Our personal favorites, are the Lemon-Lemongrass soap, and Peppermint & Cocoa lipbalm. It goes on so smoothly and smells delicious. The Soap Maiden is debuting new products with us every couple of weeks and just brought by a new selection of hand and foot balm and a clay face mask.

We love supporting local artisans with handmade product that is actually good for you. What we love even more is a product that looks, feels and smells good enough to give to your friends.  The Soap Maiden says around the holidays she's going to be putting together gift baskets that will include a smattering of some of her great product. Perfect for people you really love and people you are just getting to know! Bath and BodyWorks better watch out, the Soap Maiden is on the block!

Simple Pleasures

It's going to be another rainy Saturday.  The upside to all this foul weather is that the plants and flowers (yes, mushrooms included) are still beautiful. When I was letting my dogs out before work this morning I noticed that each of my roses had some beautiful blooms so I decided to bring some into the house.



It's amazing the joy that can be found in the simple things, like fresh flowers from your yard. I guess the adage of "stopping to smell the roses," really hit home this morning. It's so easy to want more and bigger and better, but sometimes simple is just perfect. 

Lost and found

Allison has coerced me into doing today's blog.  This is Karan, and I am not blog literate.  Allison is sitting next to me telling me where to click.  However, I read A LOT of blogs!  

We had a couple in earlier this year on their way back to New Jersey from Florida.  The wife pleaded with her husband to leave I-95 and go east to Newport News, Virginia.  The husband granted her wish----wow!

Seems that when they were in Florida for the season, they were at the library and ran across an old issue of Southern Living magazine.  It just happened to be the February 2010 issue which just happens to be the one that featured our shop.  She was obviously taken with what she saw, thus the 85 mile side trip out of the way.  

They were both so nice and made several purchases.  We look forward to their next visit when they head back south for the winter.

You just never know what you can find in an old magazine.  Maybe that's why I tend to hoard them!

For those of you who haven't seen the article, you can read it here.

To be mentioned in Southern Living was an incredible thrill.  From date of contact to date of publication was almost two years.   They sent a photographer who spent almost an entire day taking photos of everything----entire spaces to small vignettes to Lucy.   What fun it was! 

Tropical Rainforest

So to say we've had a lot of rain recently is a bit of an understatement. Over the summer in general, it seems like afternoon thunderstorms are the norm. This past week has been especially, hot, humid and wet.  We've had such bad storms and they have caused flash flooding and a lot of headaches.  A friend of mine who works for the city said their computers showed the amount of rainfall to be so torrential, it only happens once every couple hundred years. Most everyone has a story of flooded basements, cars, garages and yards.

 

Thanks to Sandy Joyce and Wendy Salas for the photos!

All the rain has given us some pretty interesting fungus. For instance, in my yard there is proof that God has sense of humor...

  Yes, these are phallic mushrooms. The only redemption, they are a really vividly cool, white to orange ombre. Not really the most clear picture from my phone, but you get the idea.

I pin, you pin

We love Pinterest. Plain and simple. It's a great way to keep all those nifty web finds organized, and Lord knows we are always in pursuit of ways to stay better organized. It's also a great way to get input. My sister-in-law, Liz and I swap design ideas all the time on Pinterest. I even started a group board for my favorite pinners and tastemakers to weigh on my impending living room re-do.

Our extraordinary web guy, Kevin, fixed it so that you can follow our shop Pinboard by heading to the homepage and clicking the Pinterest icon.  We are hoping to be doing more blogging, more pinning, more photographing and more connecting with our friends, readers and clientele, so hop on over and follow us!

French beds

We just got these GORGEOUS, French style twin beds into the shop on Saturday. 

Can't you just imagine some beautiful linens on these? Some fluffy down pillows?  Curling up with a book?  

                                   

We always love anything by Leotine Linens. How could you not love the beautiful color choices and the big, fat monograms? Maybe it's all the rain we've had in the past 48 hours but we definitely have snuggling up in bed on the brain today.

Shop till you drop

People often ask me where I like to shop, the honest truth is that aside from Trader Joe's and Care a Lot, I never have time to shop. In theory, I'm like many of you who like the hunt. Whether it's yard sales, antique shops, consignment shops, gift shops or the curb, I've always got my eyes peeled for a "great" piece.  That means something different to everyone, but to me, it means something that I can get for a good price, that I really love, or something I can get for next to nothing that I can transform into something I love. The problem is that taking time to shop around for myself gets pushed to the bottom of the list of priorities. That's one reason I think I had such a great time in Ohio - we went ALL over town and then some to the kind of places I love to shop.

  We went to IKEA on our trip - and while I really love an organized space, I'm not that great at creating one for myself. When I walk into those cubes that say, "this is my 325sq foot home" and everything just makes sense, I get inspired. I tend to enjoy things that are attractive over functional, IKEA does a good job of blending those.  My big purchase was more down pillow forms to replace the ones that were destroyed (you can read about that here) and some shelves to make more room in my kitchen cabinets.

                                               

Then we were off to the Ballard Design/Frontgate/Grandin Road outlet. I was very excited because I love to sit down with my Ballard catalog as soon as the new one comes and I thought for sure there would be some steals that I just HAD to have.

Of course there were things I liked - but nothing fit my frame of "good price, love it, or dirt cheap & can transform it."  Mom got this great chandelier in cream for her bedroom so it was not a wasted trip. We then headed over to Anthropologie, which I like to peruse because I think their displays are fabulous. I usually can't fit into any of their clothes, or afford their accessories, but I love it nonetheless.
  
After a lunch at Trio, where we had delicious "big salads" we stopped at Duck Creek Antique Mall.  Our friend from home Ricki used to live in Cincy and said Duck Creek is a must.

We poked around Duck Creek for an hour and unfortunately ran out of time to fully explore both floors.  They close at 5 and we can really empathize with employees that are ready to hit the road after a long day. Mom scored a pair of perfectly crusty green shutters for her screened porch, and I found vintage bamboo wine rack that I quite liked. 
Serious shopping isn't for the faint, we covered more turf afterwards but had to check out Cincinnati's legendary ice cream shop Graeters in between stops.

Graeters has some of the best ice cream I've ever tasted. Hands down. They have amazing flavors like Coconut Chocolate Chip, Mocha Toffee Chip, Buckeye Blitz, Black Raspberry Chip, Strawberry Cheesecake, just to name a few.  We become Graeters experts by the end of our jaunt to Ohio.  We may or may not have gotten some pints and had Graeters pack them in dry ice to bring home to our husbands and shop girls. 
 Some other highlights of our trip:

               Giggi, Karan and Dede - checking out the furniture at Home Emporium

We checked out Miller's in Lebanon, Ohio and were not disappointed.  We all found at least one thing to buy and most of the booths were having 20% off sales. 

 

 Karan's original still life she snagged for $30

 Dede's painting of France she snagged for cheap

My bambooed corner shelf that I snagged for REAL cheap

Dede's car loaded down with purchases

We had a ball.  Stay tuned to see where our goodies landed when we got home!

The Lady of Cincinnati

I mentioned in my previous post that Mom and I were headed to Cincinnati to see our good friend Gary.  We decided that the waning days of summer was really the only time left to get out of our oyster and head to up to see "Giggi" and get inspired after a long summer. Giggi is a decorator in her own right and was Mom's very first flower partner over 25 years ago. She's since moved to Ohio but visits often because her sister and our good friend and shop gal, Hazel, live right across the street.
 It was my first trip to see her beautiful home in Amberley. She and her husband Mark, made us feel perfectly at home.  Giggi has impeccable taste. She toted us around to all of her favorite haunts and in the evening we had wine on her back terrace. 

 

Pinot G debriefing

We ooohed and ahhhed all over Giggi and Mark's lovely home. Between her period antiques, silver and chinoserie and his collection of engravings and lithographs and rugs, I spent a lot of time just wandering around admiring things. We took a couple snaps of some her interiors to show off, but then got pretty involved in our wine drinking and looking out for the wildlife that live, quite literally in the backyard.

 A view from Giggi's "Ya Ya Room"

Corner chair covered in the Union Jack

Can I live in this bathroom?

Like, I said there are plenty of beautiful rooms and vignettes in Giggi's house to take pictures of, but we got a little involved in wine drinking and looking for deer. Giggi and Mark's house backs up to French Park and they always have deer destroying all of their plants, frolicking in the backyard. Plus, the weather was so nice and cool in Cincy, no one really felt like going inside. 

We've just gotten a truckload of furniture in at the shop, so I'll have to stop here for now, but be looking for more pics and finds from our trip in the next post.

  

 

On the Road

Sometimes you just need to get away.  Mom and I decided on a whim to take a little "Lady Trip" to see our sistah, Gigi, all the way up in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Gigi is an expatriated North Carolinian and decorator extraordinaire (more on that later).  We decided that since our route took us directly by the famed Greenbrier Resort, we just had to stop by and see Dorothy Draper and Carlton Varney's handiwork.  We have a friend who recently was married at the Greenbrier and have been salivating over pictures ever since.  Arriving in the rain did not diminish the impressive facade of the mountain resort.

                     

The plan was to go in and check out some of the Greenbrier, our friend Renee told us "Go check out the bathrooms!!" After all the Diet Coke we had between Newport News and White Sulpher Springs, bathrooms were definitely on our minds. We valeted the van (how posh!) and headed on in.

 Everything about the Greenbrier is bright and mostly everything about the Greenbrier is over the top. From a design perspective there were quite a few things we really, REALLY, liked, admittedly though, there were a few things that left us scratching our heads.

 This shot is heading down to the lower level

We adored these doors

And the shell pediments

 And pretty much all the mirrors

 The list could go on and on and so could the pictures. This was one of those time that I wish I had taken a photography class. Maybe this winter?

Anyway, we decided to have lunch before we hit the road for Cincinnati again. If you ask me a Southern Caprese Salad and French Onion soup at the Greenbrier will beat Wendy's any day.  Stay tuned for the next leg of our trip!

Sometimes you just have to laugh

I know that I'm not the only one who counts Steel Magnolias as one of their favorite movies.  Dolly Parton as Truvy, with her big hair, jumped into my head when I came home from work the other day to utter destruction in my living room.  She said something to the effect of "You just have to laugh---you'd cry your eyes out if you didn't."

I was rushing home from work to beat the thunderstorms coming rapidly across the river because our dog, Bauer, is terrified of storms.  We bought him this thing called a Thundershirt to lessen the panting, shaking and general terror that besets him when foul weather is within a 30 mile radius.  It might not be a big deal except for the fact that he weighs 100 pounds and nothing can be accomplished with a 100 pound dog trying to hide under/on top of/around you.
Anyway, I got home just as the rain way about to start falling and lugged in some cat litter I bought from the store and when I opened my door, this is what I was greeted by...

Down feathers everywhere.  My two new, silk down pillows look like they errupted all over my living room. My two other dogs, who are still puppies and learning all the rules, decided that ripping apart my pillows would be more fun than playing with the countless toys from the pet store.  So I sat down and waited for my husband to come home so he could really enjoy the full spectrum of disaster the puppies rained down in our living room.
You can see a still terrified Bauer, (in his Thundershirt no less) on my lap and the cat litter bag I dropped in shock as I was coming through the door.

                                                                  The culprits

I guess the point is, althought it was a huge mess, and they were new down pillows (with silk covers from Rooms, Blooms & More) and it took 2 hours to vaccuum and sweep it all up, I can get more pillows from the shop. We have a great new line of burlap pillows that would probably be a lot less fun for the mutts to chew up.  No matter how we plan for things to look nice and just right - sometimes the unexpected happens.   It seems to be the same way here at the shop.   As soon as we get everything set, a huge load of furniture comes in or a bunch of pieces sell and we are left with a big 'ol mess to sort out. 

Luckily, it's usually much more fun than vaccuuming up down feathers and as with anything, the attitude you have about it makes all of the difference in the world.

The Story of Mrs. X

We thought we would kick off our blog, dear reader, with a story of how a little paint, 2 pairs of hands, and some determination can really transform a space.  We are going to tell you the story of Mrs. X.

Mrs. X works hard and plays hard, but had been ignoring the sad state of deterioration going on right under her nose.  She lives in an old house (94 years to be exact) and had an epiphany about the state of her guest room on a rainy night not too long ago.

In her day job, Mrs. X, helps people make their homes look wonderful, yet in her own living space things were getting pretty blah.  The room was always piled with junk treasures and a random collection of furniture and accessories and nothing to tie them together.

 

 Mrs. X got into the habit of just closing the door to this room and saying she would worry about it later.  It wasn't until she repainted her old vanity to put into her room that she really looked at the sad state of affairs. Something had to be done.

We always like to say that a fresh coat of paint is like a truckload of mulch, it covers a multitude of sins.  So armed with her trusty and talented sidekick, Mrs. X headed off to get paint for the ceiling, walls and trim.  Standing in front of all those 2 x 2 inches of color choices can be a daunting task! Luckily, Mrs. X's trusted sidekick happens to be an interior decorator extraordinaire.

Trusty sidekick - oh, let's call her "Karan."  Anyway, "Karan" gave the advice that she gives all of her clients when picking out paint colors Go with your gut.  You can be bold with color and still have a great looking room. Take your paint chips outside and look at them.  Unless your house is installed with florescent lights, your color choice is going to look different outside in the sunlight or regular home lighting than it will in the store. 

Armed with their supplies, the ladies got to work prepping the walls, trim and baseboards.

Who knew Kate Spade made safety glasses? 

Mrs. X and Karan spent 2 days painting, cleaning and re-decorating the room. Their results were excellent, the room was in desperate need of freshing up.  The trim and doors all got a fresh coat of Benjamin Moore's - White Dove. 

Hopefully you can tell that the door frame on the left and top has been painted!  A rather dramatic before and after if you ask us.

 After everything was painted and placed, the ladies re-arranged the bookshelves, made the bed, and set the vanity.

Mrs. X couldn't have been happier with her tidy, relaxed guest room. It was still filled with the items and colors she loved, but the room was now purposeful and polished.The paint had not dried before she began contemplating who she could get to be the inaugural guests to stay in the newly revamped room.

Mrs. X says there are a few finishing touches that she's planning on adding and she promises to keep us posted!