Long overdue post...

My dearest, most beloved, readers,

Please forgive my neglect. This post has been a long time coming, but since there was so much to say, I didn't know where to start! So a couple of weeks ago I took a trip to see my beautiful sister-in-law Sof. I'll call her Lady Sof! She lives in Charlotte, NC and works for a large corporate bank (I'll spare the corporate shout-out). She was a most gracious host, and greeted us with the most delicious welcome drink, one of my newest favorites:

Trader Joe's was by far one of the best discoveries. Unfortunately, we don't have any here in Miami....YET! I got the low-down from one of the employees there who told me they'd be coming into South Florida full force next year! We're talking 4-6 stores! Yay for Trader Joe's!!!! 

Moving along, I wanted to post some picture's of Sof's apartment!

The arrival:

Her Damask chairs are lovely, we'll see the accent repeated again...

Her house is actually an open floor-plan loft, HUGE kudos to her for the non-problematic layout. Very intuitive and the eye knows exactly where the spaces divide and flow..

I loved visiting because I got some great inspiration on what I want for my own new apartment :). Sof's style is a meeting of classic Ikea (if it can even be called classic) and rescued/revamped items. Apparently her whole gang has a penchant for dumpster diving! I'll introduce you to the whole gang shortly...

Meet Sof's Charlotte Crew! They were amazing... Cizzle was exceptional, actually. He was a great tour guide and even showed me around his apartment! (Sof hyped up my blog, wonderful sister that she is, to the point that people wanted me to look around! So flattered!)

Here's the gist of Cizzle and Papo's pad. Their man cave was actually very well decorated! Papo has artistic sensibilities! Here we are:

This is Cizzle:

Cizzle's {surprisingly} magnificent closet:

The next place I visited was the Smelly Cat Coffeehouse!

It was amazing! Super adorable decor and great coffee.

Sof and I sipping coffee:

We then visited one of the most adorable and clever little shops! Also in the NoDa district in Charlotte, called the Boulevard @ NoDa. I was able to purchase my first art piece for the apartment! The owner was just a doll!

Here go the other pictures:

The artist is actually Allison Wolf. Her work is amazing! Her work is light and airy and happy.

Super cute packaging for my purchase!

My new purchase at Sof's place....just testing! 

I was thrilled with the purchase!




Here's a picture of us at dinner:

For more pictures of our famous Pub Crawl, refer to the scrapblog below, or my facebook!

Isn't this gorgeous and whimsical?!?!? AND :::Drumroll::: it's public art!



And lastly, this was my farewell outfit....:)

Yours truly in ink,

Pao.