The Zorb Experience, Exclusively in Tennessee!

Straight from New Zealand (who also gave us bungee jumping) this 30 seconds of fun is exactly what it looks like! It involves climbing into a giant inflatable ball and careening down a hill. You experience maximum G-force while rolling down a hill at speeds up to 25 mph. You can either ride strapped in or free in a shallow pool of water. There are currently only 10 locales worldwide. The first U.S. zorbing site opened this past fall in good ol' Pigeon Forge, TN, www.zorb.com/smoky. Road trip anybody? I thought this video sums it up well, sorry it's so long. It's worth checking out!

Who loves color? ME, me, mE

There is definitely a website for just about everything these days. I stumbled upon a website for COLOURlovers™! Yep for color lovers called COLOURlovers™. I haven't completely figured out what all it has to offer but it claims to be a design community resource that monitors and influences color trends. I guess you can create colors, put palettes together, and post your own patterns that can all be rated by either other users or maybe by the website's point system, not too sure. Color has always inspired me and I have been known for my obsession concerning it, whether it's from the paint on my wall to my collection of gel pens. Once, I chose a paint sample with 4 shades of purple on it and instead of picking one of the shades for my wall, I picked all four! With a quart of each, I divided the wall into four even parts horizontally and painted my walls just like the sample. Oh yea and I also read that it was nominated for the Community Website of 2007 webby award.

NoteWorthy Products - River Song Jewelry

I attended the New York International Gift Fair for the first time a few weeks ago and I have so much to share. But today I only want to recognize a company that had a flawless presentation and followup with me since market. I spent the majority of my time in the handmade section which mostly consists of jewelry. The first thing I liked about this company was the merchandising of their booth and their logo! Come to find out, their logo design was done by KittenChops which explains my appeal to the brand's identity. Zaara of KittenChops has designed things for Starbucks and HearMusic. HM was my favorite station on XMradio until it magically disappeared. (yea yea they moved to a station called SBUX XM Cafe but the format's just not the same) Anyway, when you're at market looking at products all day long it really takes something truly creative to catch your eye. I was so impressed with the way they displayed their jewelry, resting on branches and laid on trays made to look like they were laying on the floor of a forest.


You have to check out their website!

Music You Should Know or Remember:

Since I took such a long hiatus...again I'm sorry! I'm not going anywhere this time. hahah

You should know the band Ghostland Observatory! I saw them at Lollapalooza in Aug 2007 and they were easily one of my favorites! Their music immediately intrigued me because of it's beat driven electro punk sound. Check out their MySpace and listen cause I'm not going to try and be a critic here : ) I just think you should know them! Besides, they're going to be at Bonnaroo this year! Below is a video I came across on youtube that just happens to have one of their songs playing in the background. This is why youtube rocks and anyone can be noticed or admired by least a couple people somewhere in the world! I get a kick outta watching this video. I give him props for putting something like this up!

The Antique and Garden Show - Nashville, TN 2008

For the past seventeen years, the Antiques and Garden Show has utilized the Nashville convention to the fullest by bringing together nationally and internationally renowned experts and exhibitors in the fields of antiques, decorative arts and landscape design. The show offers 150 antique and horticultural vendors and many innovative landscaped gardens. They seriously build permanent looking garden scenes inspired by the year's theme that compete for awards. Not only is the the convention center full of lavish looking gardens, it is divided in half, a side for the antique dealers and the other for horticultural vendors. The supposed horticultural side has a variety of vendors ranging from dealers of original European posters, to a gourmet food company, Cherchies, to one of my favorites, a vendor of high quality reproduction prints, Gladstone Jones Prints. In addition, the horticultural side allows small boutique type stores to represent themselves, which is why I found myself packing up half the retail I manage (AshBlue) and living in the convention center for a week every February. This was our third year exhibiting at this show and we were very flattered when we were offered a new location. Our prior location was more central but this year we were honored to be the first space on the horticulture side. We were the first thing you see when you walked in, catching shoppers both before they had spent all their money or on their way out the door! We were a hit in our new spot! I don't think I've ever talked to that many people in such a short amount of time in my life. We saw a ton of our favorite customers as well as many new faces! Most importantly we got to tell the world that AshBlue is moving to another location, more about that later. Here some pictures of our beautiful booth!

I thought it was very important to somehow take and display the newly unveiled line of handmade traditional Indian tents we have started selling and renting. Here's a link to an article with more info specifically about the tents, click here!

Here are some more pics, just in case you want to just look at them...awwww

...and pls email me at marrah@ashblue.com if you have any questions!

I'm soooo sorry!!!

That's all I have to say right now. I look forward to posting blogs again! Stay tuned! : )