A Celebration

Arranging flowers for a funeral or memorial is always a bit somber. Today, we worked our craft for the memorial of dear friend's mother, Penny McAllister. Like mother, like daughter(s) - the McAllister women are always upbeat and enthusiastic. We hope the flowers reflected Penny's spunk and creativity and we are keeping our thoughts with the family.

On a sunnier note, we met with our representatives from Thibaut this morning. They showed us some of the most fun new wall paper and fabric designs for summer. One looks like it might be a perfect fit for the home office we started working on yesterday. It's so new, there aren't even images of it up on the Thibaut Web site, yet. We also saw Thibaut's new sister line, Anna French and are smitten! Wall coverings with flair and gorgeous fabrics with lots of color. We've included fun metallic paper above called Spot. We think Penny might have been a fan.

Suzie's Office

A full morning of billing, clean-up, fabric orders, inventory, etc.

Our afternoon was brightened when Suzie, one of our best friends/clients, popped in to get some ideas for her home office. We poured over some black and white prints and pulled some accessories from around the shop. Shown above is a print from the Studio Bon collection called Scallop – one of the top contenders for her window treatments. We're thinking about painting the walls a buttery yellow and pulling in some charcoal and coral tones. As Matt would say, “Yummy!”

Easter Weekend

The image above (and many others on our blog) are compliments of our artist in residence, Ms. Dabbs Anderson. More on Dabbs later...

We received an early morning delivery of flowers for a few arrangements we're sending out for Easter. After processing the lilies and roses, we locked up and headed over to Christ Episcopal Church downtown for the Good Friday service, then lunch at one of our favorite spots, Hooligan's (mmmmm mint tea, gyros, and fries – oh my). We knocked out the Easter arrangements, delivered them and called it a day around 4 p.m. A friend was in town from NY for the weekend, so we spent the late afternoon on her loggia with wine from Spirits (right now we're hooked on Independent Cellars Chardonnay) and cheese (Belle Chevre with Hewett's Farm Honey). What a way to jump start outdoor entertaining!  Happy Easter Weekend!

Lunch on the River with Game Day Tents

We met with the team behind Game Day Tents at Cypress Inn to brainstorm on some ideas for the fall and wedding season. To our delight, we learned that they are expanding their event rental inventory and have tents, seating, staging, bar tables, industrial fans (for the summer soirées), space heaters (for those few chilly evenings in Alabama), and much much more. They also shared that they are working with Cypress Inn on a tented outdoor entertainment space that you can rent for parties and weddings (it will be located on the left side of the image above, next to the restaurant). There are lots more details to come, but it's an awesome resource for a few weddings and events we have on the horizon.

*As a side note, we love to work with local vendors , because more times than not, they have a level of personable sensitivity that you just don't get from big chains – especially when it comes to rental companies!