Jul 21 2010
Jul 20 2010
Saxapahaw General Store
This past Father’s Day, we took a family trip to Saxapahaw General Store. The drive was a short, pleasant roadtrip and was capped with a delicious lunch – I had a steak sandwich and above is a blueberry turnover we took back home to eat at our leisure. I highly recommend the drive if you are in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area. The convenience store/restaurant was recently written up in NY Magazine along with some of our other local favorite spots: Toast (the best sandwiches and lentil soup), Zely & Ritz & La Farm. Yay, local Triangle food!
Mar 30 2010
Oh, Savannah
Savannah has long been on my list of places to visit and this past week I had the opportunity to travel there. The trip didn’t disappoint, it was a lovely city and we spent our whole visit walking around. The weather was perfect, sunny and 75 everyday. March was a great time of year to go because of the temperature. I’d be afraid to go there anytime after May, here in Raleigh summers are so sweltering that I imagine Savannah’s summers to be at least as bad as here, if not worse. But last week was divine. The city is filled with parks every city block and we were fortunate to have picnics for almost every meal.
One of the highlights of the trip was sampling honey from the Savannah Bee Company, a great shop that sells local honey and merchandises it in everything imaginable a la Burt’s Bee’s. Their branding was great and they even had a children’s play area inside a “hive” that our daughter fell in love with.
Now we are back home and resuming our hectic lives. We are in the midst of putting our house on the market and it has consumed us. Hopefully I will be back to posting again soon, but until then, you can gaze upon these pictures and daydream of roadtrips to the South.
Mar 18 2010
Blog it Forward: What Inspires Me Most
A few months ago, Victoria at sfgirlbybay decided to create a collaborative project called blog it forward. Each blogger is assigned a day to answer the question “What inspires you the most?”. Today is my day to answer and tomorrow you can read another point of view at the freshly picked blog here.
The premise of this blog is to showcase what is inspiring me, so to highlight that is nothing new. However, what inspires me the most is a different thing entirely. I rarely divulge my innermost thoughts here (so personal) and instead focus on things that are easier to put out there: pretty pictures and colors and so-on.
I have a whole host of things that move me beyond words: the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, peonies, open windows and dinners with friends, poetry, records playing in the background, cooking and eating and making face concoctions from my garden, God, the smell of almond oil, the blur of color and light that happens when a camera is just out of focus, patterns in everyday objects, maidenhair ferns, porch swings, and on and on and on.
Mar 12 2010
Flickr Favorites
1. The Sky Remains I, 2. Untitled, 3. Untitled, 4. Untitled, 5. 16/365 | Cupcakes and high tides, 6. Spectrum, 7. Untitled, 8. yellow pom-pom, 9. Untitled, 10. Going To Montana (in a repeat), 11. trick to you; you do, 12. Untitled, 13. green, 14. 01650008, 15. Untitled, 16. We toast the fallow furrows that we sow., 17. Busy, 18. My brother and a horse, 19. Untitled, 20. I wanna change the world but I know I have to start with me., 21. November last year, 22. ., 23. Spread out!, 24. i…, 25. xoxo, 26. more banner, 27. A pendant I made, 28. Last Of The Butterflies….., 29. Winter Color, 30. Red Leaf Studios, 31. Untitled, 32. ., 33. {Silent Warrior}, 34. 深い森を通ってⅱ, 35. flutter, 36. IMG_0681
Mar 10 2010
Gina R. Alvarez
Installations and art by Gina R. Alvarez. Of her work she says “I am motivated to provoke an inability in viewers to name what they are seeing, hopefully creating something that is ultimately transcending of material, idea and form.”
Mar 09 2010
Hello!
For all you new readers, welcome, and thank you for visiting! This blog is where I chronicle the things that inspire me: color, patterns, photography, food, vintage finds, with a little of my own working designs and projects thrown in here in there. I try to post daily but you know, sometimes life gets in the way! Hope you enjoy. If you want to add me to your reader, you can add my RSS feed here. I’m also on twitter.
A little background: I am a product designer and artist and have been running my own business since 2004. In addition to my own shop, I produce The Rock & Shop Market, a hip, urban craft fair featuring live bands and emerging designers, and run indieNC, an online boutique featuring products from North Carolina designers. I am passionate about my business and about helping others reach their own goals. Before my business I was a web designer for ten years and co-produced and marketed a line of fashion products where I learned a lot about how to launch and sustain a product line.
Mar 09 2010
On Being a Mom/Entrepreneur
I recently wrote a business article for design*sponge about the balance between motherhood and business. You can read the piece here. Thank you, Grace for having me and to all the other business women who emailed me their own experiences! I’m passionate about the topic and hope to continue the dialogue on feminine modern with a series of question and answers from other entreprenur/moms. Do you want to be featured? Email me: michelle @ michelle-s dot com.
Images of my friend Regan taken by her talented husband, Geoff Wood.
