birmingham fashion week 2015

i was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to attend birmingham fashion week 2015! started in 2011, birmingham fashion week has grown into a fixture in the community for creativity, opportunity and a showcase of talent. so yes, birmingham has a fashion week, and yes, it is fabulous!

i attended on thursday and saturday nights and was so, so impressed. above are some of my favorite looks from thursday night's rising/emerging design stars, who are talented highschool/college students showcasing their work. on saturday night, alabama grad shan latris was crowed the winner of the emerging design stars, which made me so happy to see. there were tons of alabama students showcasing their work - but pssst, don't tell anyone, but my favorite emerging design star collection was from kayla sherman of auburn.

i also felt like this was the sort of occasion that required a selfie stick. i've recently been gifted one of these things and y'know, they aren't half bad. everyone stares when you use it, but i feel like they'll be fairly commonplace before long - whether the world likes it or not. i felt silly. but uh, hey, it's a nice selfie, i guess. not exactly an item i'll be toting around on the daily, but... you never know.

on saturday night, after shows from tribe kelley and fab'rik, the show i looked forward to most was heidi elnora, and it did not disappoint! what started as a soft, gentle bridal medley set to violin exploded into a rock n' roll party with guns n' roses and fist pumping in wedding gowns. the finale brought a beautiful gold gown and stunning gold foil makeup - a definite photoworthy moment for everyone in the crowd.

 

after the show, heidi expressed her gratitude and talked about her small town upbringing. it was inspiring to see how far she has come and what her brand has grown into! in case you didn't know, heidi has her own show in tlc, bride by design, and has enjoyed great success. it's awesome to have her representing alabama in the fashion world.

i had a wonderful time at fashion week - i can't wait to go again!

 

5 birmingham favorites

well hello! april has been a quiet month for this blog (more on that in my next post on wednesday) but i'm happy to say things are starting to settle down and i'll be back to regular posting very soon!

having lived in birmingham for almost 2 years, i've got my go-to spots. i could endlessly list our james beard award winning eateries, trendy coffee shops and beautiful outdoor spots, but i figured i'd list the five places i actually frequent on a nearly weekly basis. i have so many favorites that i adore, but these are the places that i find myself most often (and picking just five was really, really difficult!)

01. railroad park - now this is a given, but if you aren't spending time at railroad park, what are you doing? my favorite thing is to take a blanket and picnic to railroad around sunset (and maybe some wine? shhh....) and enjoy the weather.

02. collins bar - kinda don't know what i'd do without this place. our cocktail scene is just getting started, and collins is boldly blazing a popular path. stop in and let the bartenders know what your favorite spirits are, and they'll whip you up something custom. there is no menu!

03. melt - what started as a grilled cheese food truck has now blossomed into a brick & mortar restaurant in the heart of avondale. i'm at melt way too freaking much. their cocktails are divine and the seasonal menu is always rotating with fresh ingredients. my favorite? the buffalo chicken melt and a matilda loaded cocktail. matilda is the name of the food truck!

04. moss rock nature preserve - aside from ruffner and oak mountain, moss rock is my favorite for a simple hike on a breezy day. the entire trail is covered so you can stay cool in the shade, and the boulders in boulder field are beautiful! i love the creek and waterfalls along the trail. this is definitely worth the drive down to hoover.

05. o'henry's coffee - do you realize how hard this is for me? picking a coffee shop? i love all birmingham coffee offerings, but o'henry's has my heart. it was one of the first coffee shops i started frequenting here in town. the o'henry's in highland park opened just as i moved to the area. additionally, i founded birmingham bloggers with beth and molly at o'henry's, hold nearly all of my meetings there, and have ruled their cold brewed iced coffee the best in town.

birmingham folks, what are your top 5 local favorites?

moving time!

i ventured down to perdido key, florida this past weekend with some dear friends for a relaxing time at the beach. i got burnt (pale girl problems), enjoyed my bushwacker at flora-bama, and relished the beach i miss so, so much. and now, i'm settling into some time in birmingham after a crazy summer of working long hours and traveling across the country.

and to top it all off: i'm moving this week! i've lived in a beautiful, historic home in highland park for a year, and i am so grateful for that opportunity. that little house holds so many dear memories for me, and i'm sad to leave it - even if it is 3 flights of stairs to the front door (which makes moving a blast, lemme tell ya)!

i'm not going far. i'm staying in highland park, actually, and moving into a 2 bedroom apartment. less space to clean, cozy rooms, woohoo! it's going to be a long weekend of hauling furniture down the hill, but i'm ecstatic. i'll be back to regular blogging as soon as i'm settled in! i can't wait for a fresh start.

good happenings in birmingham - early june

for the next two weekends, there's a lot going on in birmingham! if you're looking for food, live music and beer, stick around for some awesome events we've got heading our way. here's some details:

• this weekend is slice fest, a music/food festival in lakeview n its third year. the festival ins june 7th and is just like a giant block party! i'll be attending & i can't wait. there's going to be pizza (of course), awesome music & good times. visit the slice fest website for more information, or follow slice on twitter - @slicebirmingham!
• one more event coming to birmingham this weekend is, of course, magic city brewfest! this is a great event promoting all of our lovely birmingham breweries, as well as breweries from around the state. in fact, the lovely beers of fairhope brewing company (my hometown ♥) will be there as well. magic city brewfest kicks off tonight at 7pm, and june 7th at 4pm.
• next weekend, june 14th, is rewind fest! this is an awesome event taking place at oak mountain amphitheater, a beautiful venue down in pelham. the entire festival is made up of tribute bands. OH MY GOSH. the red not chilli peppers, slave against the machine, almost kiss? sign me up y'all. it doesn't get better than that. i can't wait! for more information, check out the rewind fest website, or follow them on twitter - @rewindfest!

will any birmingham bloggers be covering or attending these events? let me know & i'll see you there!

swoozie's housewarming event!

hey y'all! i just wanted to invite all those in the birmingham area to swoozie's at the summit this satruday, may 3rd from 11am-2pm for some great deals at their housewarming event! swoozie's recently switched locations and wants to hook everybody up with some great prizes, discounts and more! be sure to stop by & say hello, and stock up on cute swoozie's stuff. what more can you ask for, right? i love swoozie's... and i try to limit my visits because i want to buy everything, so it doesn't get better than discounted stuff!

if you're a birmingham bloggers member & you attend, post your haul or review & use the hashtags #bhambloggers & #soswoozies!

birmingham spotlight: icebox coffee

disclosure: icebox coffee provided me with some of their delicious coffee in hopes that i choose to review it on floral frocks. i am not being compensated for this review aside from the coffee itself. i only write about or recommend products i enjoy and feel my readers would enjoy as well. and uh, as you'll see in this review, i am totally obsessed with this stuff.

am i a coffee snob? i wouldn't say so. but in recent years i've become more aware of different types of coffee and what i prefer. i enjoy my cream and coffee syrups - i'm not a straight up sugar kinda gal. i also consistently prefer iced coffee over hot coffee. hot coffee is for when you're in a rush. iced coffee is for a spring evening on the porch.

i was browsing the pepper place market website when i came across a company called icebox coffee. y'all, my heart skipped a beat! i immediately stalked their website and social media and decided i need to get my hands on this stuff, one way or another.

icebox coffee can be enjoyed hot or cold, and is created via the delicious cold brew method. coffee grounds are steeped in water overnight and then strained to yield beautiful, rich and perfectly smooth coffee that is to die for! i took one sip of this stuff, set down my cup and said, "wow, that's deadly." now there is ok coffee, there is acceptable coffee, but icebox falls into the "damn good" category. i mixed it up with some caramel syrup and cream and it tasted like a milkshake - smooth, full of flavor and rich in just the right ways.

started by bebe goodrich, a new orleans native with extensive cold brewing history and experience, icebox coffee has brought authentic cold brew flavor to the birmingham area since 2012. and man oh man, is it good. i had the pleasure of speaking with bebe on the phone and getting to know more about the business and how she got started, and the story is truly fascinating. icebox coffee grew from her garage to a full fledged brewing operation happening in downtown birmingham. thanks to its popularity, icebox coffee has expanded and can be purchased in alabama, tennessee, texas, georgia, virginia, north and south carolina, and online!

with birmingham bloggers taking off, i've really become focused on local businesses and how to best utilize BB to interact with all things birmingham. supporting the incredible startups and resources we have right here in town has become a passion of mine, and icebox coffee is a perfect example of a local business that is well on its way to the top.

i'm off to purchase the 32 ounce new orleans blend because i've already polished off the 16 ounce bottle. oops. hello, new addiction.

y'all check out icebox coffee at www.iceboxcoffee.com, and give them a follow on twitter! also, check out the list of vendors at pepper place market, you never know what you'll find. go birmingham!

birmingham diaries: oak mountain state park

happy march! FINALLY it's spring! even though i've lived in birmingham since july 2013, i'm still discovering new things in this area. though i've tried many of the restaurants on my list, there are still plenty of things undiscovered!

this weekend, i ventured to oak mountain state park with my friend mike. oak mountain is about 15 miles south of birmingham, and alabama's largest state park. we had planned to hike all afternoon, and the weather was perfect - in the 60's, a little cloudy.

we started on the green trail. this trail connected to the white trail, which led to peavine falls. don't be fooled. this was no easy hike! we aren't expert outdoorspeople by any means, but the inclines on this hike were rough (my glutes were thanking me on sunday!). we couldn't have picked a more perfect day or time to go.

i love discovering all that birmingham has to offer. i will definitely be back to oak mountain for more hiking, as well as paddleboats & kayaks in summer! can't wait!

birmingham snowpocalypse

on twitter tuesday, i wished for snow.

what a misguided wish that was. the forecast called for a "dusting". well, lemme tell you, we got a little more than a dusting.

i left work around 11:30 - like most everyone else in the entire city, because that's when it really started coming down - and found myself in 2.5 hours worth of traffic just to go the 0.9 miles to my house. it was a nightmare. but not nearly nightmarish enough compared to the trials of my friends and coworkers, who spent the night in their offices and sat in their cars on I-65 until they were rescued by four wheelers at 4am.

i ended up parking my car downtown and walking home. my car is still downtown because the roads to my house are iced and blocked with abandoned vehicles. i am hoping that once everything melts i can get my car back!

this has little to do with our inability to drive in snow & ice  - it's more so about our lack of prepardeness and infastructure to handle this sort of event. we have no trucks to salt the roads. we have no snow plows. so here we are with in complete and total disarray from just a few inches.

in the past few days, i've seen more stories of kindness than i have in a long time. like the doctor who walked six miles in the snow to perform brain surgery, the teachers sheltering the kids stuck in schools overnight, or the countless good samaritans helping people out and feeding them in the cold. so while the city shuts down in snow, you can't kill the southern hospitality. birmingham is a great place to be!

i believe in birmingham

i believe in birmingham.

for those of you unfamiliar with this southern city, it might seem weird to bold that and put it out there like some grandiose statement of truth. but i mean it that way, and i'll tell you why.

as it has been documented, birmingham has a self esteem problem. and rightly so. without delving too far into the past and the politics, this city has struggled with an identity and a purpose. while other southern cities like atlanta and nashville grew into prosperous cultural hubs, birmingham stayed behind, reluctant, timid. how long can birmingham cling to this?

growing up on the coast, i was told tales of the big, bad, scary birmingham. and while my family relished in passing through so they could stop at the summit to shop, we never ventured downtown for any activities. all i ever heard about was how unsafe it was, how i absolutely had to live "over the mountain" in vestavia, hoover or homewood if i didn't want to be burglarized, how there was "nothing to do".

then, i actually moved here. not over the mountain, not locked away in a castle, but right downtown, a mile from five points, in the hustle and bustle of it all, in a little historic home that i immediately fell in love with.

the truth? i was terrified. i didn't sleep for the first week. i didn't go anywhere except for work, and i definitely didn't venture anywhere if the sun was going down.

after the intital shock wore off, i began to slowly, but surely, explore. and i was amazed. i still am. foodie me ventured to all the hot, happening food spots - right in southside & five points! frank stitt's culinary wonders delighted me. i ate out on the patio and listened to live music at slice. i crawled through the caverns of blue monkey and had specialty cocktails. i stared in amazement at the beer list at j. clyde's. i played trivia at black market. i looked around lakeview and was vaguely reminded of the bar scene in tuscaloosa. i became a regular at rojo.

i took a walk around highland park, just as the leaves were falling. and it reminded me of fairhope. people were walking, playing with their dogs. i checked out the new region's field and watched a baron's game, then walked over to good people brewery afterwards.

i went to trucks by the tracks at the new railroad park and watched as birmingham's food trucks lined up to serve hundreds of people. the lines were so long i couldn't even get any food, but it was a beautiful day. people swarmed the park in droves with their families, listening to live music.

where was this big, bad scary birmingham i thought i knew all about? surely, not here. there were fashion bloggers taking outfit photos on the sidewalks, craft beers brewing in the distance, music acts frequenting venues new and old, and specialty eateries popping up on every street corner alongside the booming food truck endeavors.

i'm not denying statistics. i'm not saying there aren't problems to be addressed. i'm not saying birmingham is perfect. and hey, call me naive because i've only lived here since july 2013. what i'm saying is that things are changing - i can feel it. people are returning to downtown. i can't tell you how many young people i've met who are new graduates with jobs that chose to live on this side of the mountain as opposed to in the suburbs. trendy restaurants are opening. parks are being built. the rotary trail is happening! the breweries are prospering and bringing money to both the state and the city.

i believe that if we as a community continue to put positive energy, events and businesses into this city, we will evolve. we can be the next nashville. the potential is there. and it's happening, i assure you of this. 2013 was a monumental year for this city, and continuing the trend is crucial. stop with the self esteem problem, stop saying "never", and make this a place YOU want to live.

believe in birmingham.

photo diary: late september

happy october! woo! my birthday is on the 13th, halloween is my favorite holiday, and if we're lucky enough, alabama gets a little chilly. and i know everyone says october is their favorite, but i feel like i've got some bonafide reasons there.

i spent the 23rd-27th of september in nashville for work & stopped by tory burch at green hills to get myself an early birthday present. if you follow me on instagram, you know what it is! when i got back in town on friday, my parents came up from fairhope to join my brother and i at the alabama vs. ole miss game in tuscaloosa. i love games, but... i think i'm good on alabama football for a little while (try going there for 4 years, ok, it gets exhausting!). on sunday, we ventured to whole foods and railroad park for the second annual trucks by the tracks, which was an awesome food truck event. after a mimosa, my weekend was kind of drawing to a close - i started feeling sick, like baaaad cold sick.

so now i'm battling sickness, grinding away at work and planning some neat things for the next few weeks.

sidenote: are you a woman blogger in alabama? why haven't you joined alabama women bloggers yet?! it's a great way to get involved, and we're hoping to set up an alabama women bloggers conference soon!

moving to birmingham {part 1}

yes, its true! i've moved from tuscaloosa to birmingham - a mere 45 minute drive, but two totally different worlds! while i loved my tuscaloosa apartment, my lease was ending, and i got a job opportunity in birmingham. making the 100 mile round trip daily was beginning to take a toll, so i decided to take the plunge and move. so far, i'm incredibly happy that i did! i've been so busy in the past few weeks, but now my schedule will hopefully even out now that i don't have a 2 hour drive to make daily.

over the course of the past few days, i've purchased furniture, done a lot of packing and unpacking and organizing. all of my things are moved, but i've still got furniture to set up, details to work out and an endless "to buy" list. i'd like to document the evolution of my place, so i'm going to post some photos of how it looks today versus in a week or two.

i don't have a couch yet, but i have the living room all planned out in my mind. the makeshift chairs really bring the room together, right? i scored this wonderful rug from target and the side table is from ikea (tv stand + coffee table are getting put together tonight!). my bedroom is pretty much complete, though i'm thinking of adding a rug. and of course, i had to pick up a few cute plants for the front porch: sweet mint, calladiums and begonias!

stay tuned for more!