Monday, September 23, 2013

{Local Love}: Cooper Young Festival 2013.

September is the best month ever. My birthday, college football, Cooper Young festival.. seriously, the.best.ever. I've blogged about the CY Fest a few times before (2012, 2011, 2010) but basically there's this awesome Midtown neighborhood, Cooper Young, named for the main intersection. It is super hipster cool with restaurants, shops, and houses with tons of character. Once a year they block off the streets and have a huge street festival.

This year was particularly good with more vendors than ever. I feel like each year the quality of products sold gets better too. We ended up having to go at 12:30pm, which is prime CY time so it was ridiculously crowded - the morning is the best for shopping but oh well.

One of my favorite parts of CY is sharing the best booths on the ole b-log. Here are my picks:

These applique shirts, onesies, tea towels, and sweatshirts from The Chester Drawer were precious. Their etsy is thechesterdrawer.

Next up were these beautiful frames by Brittany's Frames. These type of frames were one of the most prolific things at the festival but Brittany's were by far the cutest and well made. Her email is mystang15@aol.com.


I loved the art at ARCH'd by Kristin Archer. I ended up getting a piece from them as a birthday gift from my bff Brie. There were so many fun things in this booth! Here's her etsy site:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/kristenarcher


My next choice was an artist without business cards so I don't know her name.. which isn't helpful. Except I did find her work in More Than Words in Germantown, so there's that. I loved her table trays - she also had pretty lazy susan trays as well.


Here is some of her art. There was a long and narrow three cotton piece that a girl bought right before me - it would have been mine in an instant if I had gotten to it first because I have a spot that could be filled with that size, color, and I am really digging cotton...


As we walked further we found my favorite booth to visit year after year, Kristi Bauer's art booth. We have a big painting of hers above our mantle that my mom got for us as a housewarming/birthday gift in 2009. We had been looking for something to put in the corner of the living room and it turns out Kristi had just the thing!


We bought that cute little guy but I lusted after two of her bigger pieces - the landscape behind the pear painting and the landscape hanging up. Kristi is very talented. She also owns Pinot's Palette in Sanderlin, which you should totally check out! Kristi's email is sanderlin@pinotspalette.com


We also went into Dorothy Collier's booth. I love her art - blogged about it here. I fell in love with the cotton field painting (I guess cotton is my thing this year).


One of my last favorites was a little more cutsey than artsy - but I loved it just the same. June Bug Design makes personalized family art as well as fun pieces like the one below. How great would this be in a kid's room? June Bug Designs is on facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/june.bug.designs1


After several hours of walking around we headed home. I admired my Memphis art birthday present:


And was so excited to put up our new Kristi Bauer tree painting - here it is compared to the one we already had. What a match!


Hope you found some pieces of inspiration in these various local artists from the Cooper Young Festival! Now we start the countdown to the next CY Fest, in about a year...

In arts and crafts,


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Saturday, September 7, 2013

{Go There}: Wiseacre Brewing Company.

Broad Avenue has been going through a revitalization that makes me all kinds of happy. It is right by our house and has a lot of potential (not to mention Broadway Pizza - delicious). So finally we're seeing some fruit of the revitalization process - Five in One Social Club, Muddy's Bakeshop kitchen, and now Wiseacre Brewery.

Wiseacre Brewery opened Aug 30 so this weekend Jake and I started our Friday night by going over there to check out their tap room. You can check out a cool tour in the Memphis Flyer here.

The brewery at Wiseacre is pumping out kegs of beer for several Midtown restaurants - Chiwawa and Slider Inn both have it on tap according to their twitter feeds, among others. In addition, I've read they are canning their beer instead of bottling, so I imagine you'll see that on shelves soon.

Besides the brewery, there's the tap room, which is where we went. Wiseacre is down from 3 Angels Diner, across from Hollywood Feed, almost to the train tracks. The tap room is around in the back. There's a great deck that will surely be packed once it cools down. There was a huge parking lot and they had one food truck but I hope others catch on because I could see that being a really cool feature for the post-drinks crowd.


The tap room has no food (hence the food truck greatness) and is credit/debit card only - no cash. This works well because they have ipad registers right at the bar, making it super quick and easy. 

Friday they had two beers on tap, the Ananda, an India Pale Ale, and the Tiny Bomb, a pilsner. 


Here's the tap room - it has some communal tables, a side room, and some high tops:


It isn't super huge so I can imagine it will get packed at times.

There's a glass wall that allows you to see into the production facility - where the magic happens:


Overall it had a really cool vibe, the beer was good, and I am excited that something like this has come to Memphis - it felt very urban.

Another cool thing: the artwork was done by a White Station alum, Rachel Briggs! Go Spartans!!


With that, I suggest you go there.

Wiseacre Brewing Company
2783 Broad Avenue
Memphis, TN 38117

In all things Midtown,


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Wednesday, September 4, 2013

{I'm Loving...}: Dorothy Art.

Back in the spring I was casually scrolling through instagram tags (a pasttime of mine) and was on the #choose901 tag to see if there were any fun Memphis things to add and I saw a portrait of my church, Calvary Episcopal. I was instantly in love and followed the user to see what the art was - turns out it was Dorothy Collier's Dorothy Art.

I immediately went to her etsy shop and ordered my own version of Calvary:



Dorothy does lots of different art pieces, including commissioned churches of all sizes using wedding programs or hymns in the background. She also specializes in a "southern" focus - here are my favorites:



I was so pleased with our portrait of Calvary that I decided to surprise my best friend with her own Calvary as she prepares to marry her sweetheart on September 21. Here's Elise with her Dorothy Art:


 Not only are Dorothy's art pieces beautiful but she is an absolute pleasure to work with! She's delightful and goes out of her way for her custom pieces. Dorothy's art can be found several places across town, including at Gild the Lily and Sheffield's Antiques. Dorothy is also featured on Front Porch Art, a fabulous website featuring Memphis artists.

So right now, Dorothy Art is what I'm loving. Go check it out yourself!

In art and culture,



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