Grocery Shopping in Austin

I love grocery shopping. It is my favorite ever errand & much too enjoyable to even call an errand unless, rather than a solo outing, one or both of my children have managed to stow away & join me. Even shopping with the kids in tow is actually getting really fun these days. E is a champion cart pusher & Lila, like her mama, likes to read labels.

Austin is a great grocery town. I am working on a Whole Foods/Central Market comparative analysis (bar graphs! Venn diagrams!) Plus, my beloved Trader Joes is opening in Rollingwood in a hot minute. Of course there are farmers markets everywhere & even HEB beats the average grocery store in my former hometown.

Check out this story from Thrillist about the new Mueller HEB. It looks awesome enough to warrant a drive across town to check it out.

How about you? Do you enjoy grocery shopping? To me, a cart full of fresh, healthy foods is a cart full of inspiration & promise.

Beautiful cherries at a market in Paris

Chenonceau

I'm three posts in to an Austin-centric blog & here I am posting about...France. I can't help myself. Our family is just back from two lovely weeks in France & the trip was just as lovely as can be.

On the design front, the big winner of the trip was the chateau  Chenonceau. There was such a beautiful simplicity to it's design, especially when compared to other more ornate, castle-like chateaus. Chenonceau is known for being one of the first chateaus designed with pleasing aesthetics in mind, instead of protection. It was built for  Diane de Poitiers the king's mistress, who was later booted out by the king's wife, Catherine de Medici. The feminine influence is apparent here, this is no hunting lodge. The gallery, pictured below was so lovely & has inspired some ideas for my someday dining room re-do (stay tuned.)