Charlotte, NC

Daniel and I took a day trip to Charlotte, NC. last weekend. Our main reason for going was to get desks for ourselves at the IKEA there, but we managed to make a couple of other stops as well.

My favorite place was Amelie's French Bakery. I read about it on DesignSponge's city guide for Charlotte and had to go. Their city guides are really useful, esp. if you are just stopping in a place for a little while but want to check out the local scene too.

We picked up some pastries to go and enjoyed some of the best espresso I've ever had before we hit the road for home.

See that smile?

The decor was amazing. I could literally spend hours in there.

Autumn is upon us here in the mountains. I will have some new photos to share soon. I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend.

September Art Shows!

Art on the Square
Sept. 10, 2011
Downtown Athens, AL.
(click the link for more details)

The Monte Sano Art Show
Sept. 17, 2011 (yes I noticed the typo on their banner)
Monte Sano Mountain in Huntsville, AL.
(click the link above for more information)

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I hope you can come to at least one of these awesome shows to stop by and see me! Both of these shows are juried, and have an amazing amount of talent on display. I am so proud to be part of them again this year!

A Perfect Circle Recap (my reason for lack of posting)

My apologies for the lack of posting lately.

I spent the whole of last week distracted by the A Perfect Circle concert that we attended in Atlanta on Wednesday. The first half of the week was in anticipation of the event, and the latter half was spent recovering from the trip.

Atlanta is supposed to be a 4 hour trip for us, but lets just say the traffic gods had other plans. The trip was well worth it over all, but exhausting nonetheless.

Daniel and I met one of our very best friends and her boyfriend in Atlanta for the show. A Perfect Circle performed at The Tabernacle, which is an old church turned music venue. It is, by far, the best venue I have ever been to! There is not a bad seat in the house. I highly recommend anyone within a days drive to Atlanta see a show there. You won't regret it.

We stayed at the Hampton Inn downtown, which is literally right around the corner from the Tabernacle. I was expecting to have to walk a few blocks based on the map of downtown that we had, but I could literally see the Tabernacle from our hotel window. I took some photos with my phone, but wouldn't you know that they won't upload properly to my computer! Drat. I can highly recommend the hotel as well. It's pricey, but on the reasonable end of anything you can find downtown. The staff was super friendly, the other hotel guests were happy, and they have a continental breakfast that includes a waffle maker! That waffle was as big as my plate...I could only eat half! So yeah.

Ok, back to the concert. The performance was amazing. I am a huge Maynard fan, as anyone who knows me at all will tell you. I've seen Tool in concert twice, and was thrilled to see APC. My only complaint (as are the complaints of many who saw them tour this time around) was that the set list included all of eMotive, which is my least favorite album by them. I could get into the reasons why I am not a huge fan of eMotive, but I'll spare you the details. I'm not here to write a full concert review anyway. Overall, I am happy with the experience, and they DID play some other songs off their other albums, and one brand spankin' new song debuted on this tour, called By and Down. A recording of it can be found here, if you are interested in hearing it. I can't wait for a studio version of it to come out!

I hope everyone's week is off to an awesome start. Expect more posts from me on a more regular basis, as I've some things to share with you!