Better than Pottery Barn

Ever since my polymer clay business in high school, I’ve loved Old Time Pottery. I used to buy bulk glass vases and laminate slices of polymer patterns to them and sell them at a boutique. Now I live in Nashville, the home base for Old Time Pottery, and it’s glorious. Imagine Pier 1, World Market, and Garden Ridge all in one huge wal-mart size warehouse. Yeah. Pretty much heaven.Especially great for centerpiece type items. I’m looking heavily at those brown squares right up there. They’re only... [Read the full story]

Location, Location, Locationhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Special Wedding Agent Jamie and I made a very quick scouting trip to Missouri this weekend. It was originally going to be a dress shopping extravaganza, but since I walked in and bought my dress off the rack last weekend, we were free to do other fun stuff. Of course, Jason wasn’t there, so we weren’t making major decisions, but I really just needed to see the place in person. This is Summit Lake Winery just outside Jefferson City, Missouri, which is the state capitol. It sits high on a hill overlooking the... [Read the full story]

This preachy moment…

Brought to you by:I’m obsessed with this book. I go to bed saying “I freaking love this book. Oh, man. I’m already too late in planting peas for the season. I wonder where I can get organic tomato seeds” And then…”Oh, yeah, I have a 75% shade yard. MAN!” It’s the most well written, food loving, life enhancing book I’ve read. I already really loved Barbara Kingsolver–I practically wanted to crawl into the Poisonwood Bible–but this book is a REAL book about... [Read the full story]

This is why I travel

I love to go and see. You can’t make up stuff like this Flamenco performance. I spent a little time last weekend working on a small watercolor. I always take my little watercolor kit and pad of Arches paper with me when I travel, just like I did when I spent a summer in Florence, Italy 8 (wow I’m old) years ago. On that trip, we spent the mornings in museums and churches, the hot part of the day in our cool apartment eating cherries and bread and cheese, and the afternoons sitting on the edge of a bridge painting.... [Read the full story]

Seville III: day trip to the Alhambra

The most exotic and mysterious location to date in my world travels is hands down the Alhambra in Granada. It was a three hour bus ride on the second day of our trip at 7am. Yikes. I pondered whether the bus driver would believe I was carsick and let me out to take photos of the rolling hills and olive groves of the Southern Spain country side. I love a good road trip, although it was killing me not to be able to capture the experience of watching the sunrise and the steam billowing around the silvery green leaves of the... [Read the full story]

Part II: Shopping! in Sevilla

Despite the fact that for every Euro we spent, we spend $1.50, we still managed to do a little shopping. My favorites were what Lauren calls the Gypsy Market–across the river and a good 3 mile walk from our neck of the woods. But well worth the walk. There were real live gypsies selling cloves of garlic. I bought a pair of sunglasses for 5 Euro, Lauren bought her standard bi-weekly flowers from her favorite vendor (you must get there before the good ones are gone. I thought of you guys when going through the fabric... [Read the full story]