Novarotti

Follow Friday -- Pure Style Home

2011-08-26T15:13:00.007-05:00

Since it's Friday afternoon, my boss is out of town, and I just can't make myself do anymore work, and I don't have anything personally exciting to write about, I thought I would take a cue from Twitter and do a 'Follow Friday' post to spotlight blogs that I love. I am constantly reading all kinds of blogs. They are a fun way to get through the day, stay in touch with friends that live away, get design ideas, and escape at least mentally from your desk for a while.One of my all-time favorite blogs is Lauren Lies s' Pure Style Home. I came across Lauren's blog through another blog I read (Brooke Giannetti's Velvet & Linen), and I just fell in love with her approach to design right off the bat. I think Lauren is around my age and I think we would have been friends had she gone to Ole Miss. I really love her laid back, practical, yet always thoughtful and beautiful approach to home design. Lauren and her husband bought an eye-sore fixer-upper a few years ago, and it's has been fun to watch them turn it into a true gem through her blog.

Another thing that makes Pure Style Home so fun to read is that everything Lauren does seems totally doable on a normal budget. I've gotten a lot of ideas for our house from her blog, hopefully y'all will, too!
Enjoy and have a great weekend!

**got all images from Pure Style Home

The Pierotti American History Tour

2011-08-22T16:39:00.005-05:00

Ronald and I are just back from a wonderful vacation in DC. We had so much fun and saw (almost) everything we wanted to see and ate and ate and ate and ate! The one thing we didn't do was take a lot of pictures. Of course we have the few obligatory awkward solo pics (excuse the bad hair and sunglasses!), but nothing too great.

Between Saturday and Wednesday, we went to the Corcoran Gallery, Ford's Theater, the National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn, the Holocaust Museum, the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, WW2 Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, National Archives, Smithsonian American History Museum, the White House, Georgetown, and many other places!

We ate American at Old Ebbitt Grill, Mexican at Oyamel, Spanish at Jaleo, American again at Cedar, Italian at Al Tiramisu, and French/Belgian at Marcel's for my birthday. Marcel's was the most wonderful dining experience we've ever had! The food was absolutely out of this world.
Jaleo was delicious as well and I've been DYING to go there since I saw the chef Jose Andres beat Bobby Flay on Iron Chef!

Ronald's favorite part of the trip was seeing Leonardo's Ginevra de Benci at the National Gallery. He loved it! My favorite part (besides all of the delicious food!) was the Holocaust Museum--what an incredible and even life-changing experience! I really thing everyone should go see this place.
We had so much fun this year, and we're already planning Novarotti vacation 2K12!

p.s. On a side note, we saw 2 famous people on this trip: Kelly from Destiny's Child at the bar on top of the W Hotel and Keith Urban in the Memphis airport!

Back from the Dead

2011-08-08T16:59:00.007-05:00

Whoa! It's been a long time since I posted on here! Here's just a little bit of what I've been up to since May...
First off, in May I went to New York for a curator's conference and saw the Alexander McQueen exhibition at the Met--absolutely incredible! If you weren't one of the almost 600,000 people who saw this show, you should totally buy the catalogue. It is gorgeous and a work of art in itself. I also got to see my good friend Victoria Romeo from grad school and eat a delicious dinner with her at a wonderful Greek restaurant whose name escapes me. Victoria, if you read this, can you tell me the name of that place?
In early June, I traveled to Paris again to help pack up the Forain exhibition at the Petit Palais and bring it to Memphis. It was a lot of work, but while I was there I got to eat delicious food (the picture below was from Gioia--a hip Italian restaurant near the Louvre), see amazing exhibitions (the Manet retrospective at the Musee d'Orsay was really so great), and spend time with some wonderful people--the Forain family!
Back in the United States, I got busy bringing Jean-Louis Forain: La Comedie parisienne to life in the galleries of the Dixon. This show was so much fun to install and incredible to witness the transformation of our galleries. It looks absolutely beautiful and we opened everything with a trip to Graceland on Thursday, June 24 for our French guests. This was my very first trip to Graceland and it was so much fun! Our tour guide couldn't have been more fun, and I got to meet Priscilla! She was so nice and welcomed our group to Graceland--what a way to experience the place for the first time! I would post pictures of that, but I think you have to get permission from EP Enterprises to do that...
Anyway, we opened Forain with a big preview gala on June 25, followed by an all-member opening reception on the 26th. Unfortunately, Ronald wasn't able to celebrate this with me--I missed having him there! I only have a couple of pictures from both days--so sad because they really were a lot of fun.

Emily and me at the gala. Emily does all the PR at the Dixon and did a great job!

me with Florence Valdes-Forain, great-granddaughter of Jean-Louis Forain and curator of this exhibition.

Since Forain opened, I feel like I am starting to get my life back! Ronald and I have been busy keeping our yard alive and doing smaller projects around the house, including buying new lighting for our living room and dining room and a buffet for the dining room. It's been a lot of fun, and I will post pictures of that soon.
Again, sorry for the long absence in the blogworld. If anyone wants to come check out Jean-Louis Forain: La Comedie parisienne, it's open through October 9 at the Dixon and we're doing a shared ticket with the Brooks for their Impressionist exhibition, which features several paintings from the Dixon's permanent collection. Please let me know if you're coming!

Pillow Project

2011-05-05T14:00:00.005-05:00

Princess Lizzie von Lichtenstein (just back from the Royal Wedding) is showing off one of the new pillows we have in our den thanks to mom, known to Lizzie as Mimi. These pillows started their life out as cute fringed napkins on the sale table at Anthropologie, which I snapped up at a whopping $3 a piece the weekend after Christmas. Mom sewed them together and added some cute buttons at the trim. They look great in the den and go perfectly with the rest of the room, which has come a long way from the knotty wood paneling that it was when we first bought the house. Thanks so much, Mimi!

Novarotti Landscaping Co., Part 2

2011-04-26T09:25:00.007-05:00

Spring has been insanely active in the Novarotti garden! Ronald and I (well, really mostly Ronald) has been so busy getting our yard in perfect condition. Last year, we spent most of the year undoing a lot of the previous owner's "landscaping." This year, we are trying to get the place more to our liking and really get it looking good!
So, to refresh your memory, here is what the house looked like when we bought it in March 2010:

I call this look that the previous owner embraced minimalist to be nice. There was absolutely nothing but a ton of rocks! In fact, the trees that are in the picture of the front of the house weren't even there when we moved in. We think she took them with her!

So even though I don't have a good picture of the front of the house, here is where we are now:
The azaleas in the front yard have grown so much from the cheap, tiny bushes they were last year. We love the coralish orange color of the blooms, and since Ronald planted a TON of grass seed earlier this year, all of the holes that were in the yard have started to fill in and they are looking great!

The backyard has really come a long way in a year as well. We had a stump that was just sitting there removed, we got rid of the THOUSANDS of rocks that were used in place of landscaping on the whole west half of the yard, and we've cleaned up the beds surrounding the patio, in addition to countless other ventures. Ronald has the grass looking so good, too!
The beds surrounding the patio have turned into my little kitchen garden, and I've got all kinds of yummy herbs growing. And we just planted a little cherry tree at the corner of the patio that we hope in about 10 years will give us some shade from the afternoon sun!

The latest major undertaking in the yard has been redoing the beds along the driveway. The before picture is almost too embarrassing to post, but here it is:
Again, the previous owner LOVED rocks, and the whole bed was full of them! The nandinas were there when we moved in, and I never liked them. Finally, Ronald and I decided that it was time to tackle this area, and we spent all day one Sunday moving rocks from the bed to the street. We are so happy with how the bed turned out--it makes me so much happier every time I pull in and out of the driveway.
It may not look like much, but it's a HUGE difference. We got rid of the nandinas and planted two tiny hydrangeas in addition to the hydrangea that we planted last year. We're hoping that they will grow pretty quickly to fill up the bed.
On Good Friday, Ronald had the day off and tackled the bed on the other side of the driveway. It has been kind of a barren wasteland for a while since we took the previous owner's raggedy bushes out. Our wonderful new neighbors put up a new fence, and it kind of pushed us to make the beds look nicer. Here's the before:So Ronald planted some tiny white gardenias there and we love it! Again, we went with the smallest, cheapest version of the plants we wanted, knowing we will be there long enough to see them get big. These tiny plants are definitely powerful though--they smell heavenly!
We are going to keep working throughout the rest of the spring to get our yard in tip top shape before the summer comes. Stay tuned for more pictures!

Happy Easter!

2011-04-25T16:46:00.002-05:00

Noni and Christian

We had such a fun Easter this year! The weather was great and we really enjoyed all of the time we got to spend with both of our families--and all of the delicious food we ate! Here are some pictures from Aunt Becky's house. Thanks for having us!

Alida and Billy--the birthday boy! I can't believe he actually made a normal face in a picture!

Ronald reeeeeeeeeeeally looks like he's having fun!

Wildflower Plant Sale

2011-04-08T12:15:00.004-05:00

The Dixon is having their annual Wildflower Plant Sale this weekend! It has already been a huge success! So much good stuff to choose from, and everyone that works in the gardens is on hand to give advice about where and when everything should be planted. Please remember that the proceeds from this sale go to right back to the Dixon's gardens, helping to make it the most beautiful spot in the city of Memphis.
I got some purple coneflowers yesterday at the members' preview sale. I can't wait to plant them and will post pictures of their progress.

Also, for the launch of the museum's new website, www.dixon.org, their is now a Dixon blog. You blog-readers can check it out at http://dixongalleryandgardens.blogspot.com/. I will be contributing to this blog about once a month, I think. Happy reading and thank you for your support!

In the Bedroom

2011-03-30T14:26:00.003-05:00

Although we were VERY lazy this past Saturday morning, things got pretty busy at Novarotti central on Sunday. Ronald and I decided to do something we've been wanting to do for a long time--hang curtains in our bedroom! We have done so much to our bedroom since we moved in. If you see the picture below, the room is sporting some LOVELY ash lavender walls that the previous owner seemed to just LOVE, and the lace curtains that I think graced every window in the house. So I think this picture was taken about a year ago when we moved in to the house.

And here is what we have now! As you can see, Lizzie loves it and claims this room as hers, not ours!
We have changed so much on our shoestring budget--I'm really so proud of ourselves! It is so much more 'us' now. The room is actually pretty weird in terms of layout--there are three windows in the room on three separate walls, so there was really no chance of achieving any kind of symmetry in the room.
I think we started with the lamps and lampshades--those are both from Target and were probably on some kind of sale there. We got the duvet cover and pillowcases next--those are all from Anthropologie. The duvet cover was on a freak sale for only $29.99, the euro shams were also on sale for $29.99 and the regular shams were only $14.99. I mean, I think it was the best day of my life when I bought those--so proud of myself!
After we got back from Rome, Ronald took another week off of work and painted the bedroom. Goodbye ash lavender, hello soothing green! It's Moss Mist by Pratt & Lambert. I think he also touched up the trim at that point.

We did have to replace the fan after the old one fell off of the ceiling in the middle of the night--scared the BEJESUS out of us! We got that at Home Depot for under $100 and it was a lifesaver this past summer.
The rug came from Pottery Barn, it was like $150 total I think on sale, that came while I was in Taiwan and Ronald sent me a picture of it while I was there. It made me feel comforted while I was so far away from home!
The empty frames on the wall are old Dixon discards--totally free and something different until we can afford 'real' art!
As for the curtains, they are from Target and were only $9 a panel! We knew we only wanted white cotton curtains, and these did the trick perfectly. The curtain rods are also from Target and were really cheap as well.
Like I said, we still have a few things left to do, but we are so much happier in this room than we were when we moved in. Looking for a reading chair to put in front of the 3rd window. In the past few months, I have become obsessed with Sarah's House on HGTV and have gotten so many ideas from her high-low style (mostly the 'low' for us!).
p.s. Please don't think that I always have flowers in our bedroom. I stole those from the arrangements at Artini at the Dixon last weekend!

Tulip heaven!

2011-03-23T14:14:00.004-05:00

This year, 100,000 bulbs will be sprouting up at the Dixon and it has already started! Since Spring came extra-early this year, many of our tulips have sprouted up and everything is looking gorgeous. I'm told that this weekend is going to be the peak time for the tulips, so please be sure to stop by and take in the beauty! Added bonus: we're free from 10-12 on Saturdays!

Here is a photo that was taken yesterday morning as the sun was coming up in the cutting garden--ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS!!!
The flowers in the formal gardens are absolutely breathtaking as well, and the daffodils still have a few days left in them. Come by asap!

An Italian-American in Paris

2011-03-16T14:12:00.004-05:00

After some encouragement from my friends last night, Novarotti is back! And we actually have something to write about!

I was lucky enough to get to go to Paris last week for the opening of Jean-Louis Forain: La Comedie Parisienne at the Petit Palais. Jean-Louis Forain was a member of the Impressionist circle, a follower of Degas, and the great recorder of Parisian life in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Dixon is collaborating with the Petit Palais on this exhibition (it will open at the Dixon June 26), so we took a group of about 35 of our greatest supporters with us and celebrated the opening of this wonderful and fascinating exhibition with the Forain family!

Exterior of Versailles--it was the most beautiful day when we went there. I wished Lizzie could have been with me, she would have loved prancing around there!

The Hall of Mirrors at Versailles was just as awesome as I thought it would be! There were sooo many people there that day, though!

Of course, I loved visiting Notre-Dame, it was the only cloudy morning we had on the whole trip!

Florence Valdes-Forain took us through her great-grandfather (Jean-Louis Forain)'s house, where her parents now live. Florence and her husband, Antoine, and their family were kind enough to host the entire Dixon group for dinner at their house, which was originally the stables at the Forain house.

I think this picture shows how absolutely gorgeous the weather was the entire time I was there. It was some kind of a freak miracle! I seriously had the best time in Paris, can't wait to go back!
And finally, here is a little teaser for the Forain exhibition coming this summer. This is our most well-known Forain pastel, Woman Breathing in Flowers. Mark your calendars--it opens June 26!

Novarotti hiatus

2011-02-15T15:53:00.001-06:00

Novarotti has been on a bit of a hiatus because life at Novarotti central has been pretty boring! Here's a little picture of Lizzie to whet your beak until things get more interesting...

Novarese Family Christmas picture!

2010-12-20T09:31:00.003-06:00

I think it turned out pretty good this year, even though everyone was making fun me the whole time!

Thanksgiving and Lizzie at the Holidays

2010-12-13T12:06:00.004-06:00

Thanksgiving at our house was a lot of fun! I think we counted 30 people over at our house for the big meal. All of the food was so delicious and it was great having both of our families together. Unfortunately, no one took any pictures! The only picture I took was of the table before the madness began:Soon after Thanksgiving ended, we began getting excited for Christmas, and that includes Lizzie too! Her Christmas sweater came in and she LOVES it! We took a bunch of pictures of her in it because we knew inevitably, it would get chewed up.
This last one is her 'official' picture of 2010! Merry Christmas!!!

Noni turned 90!

2010-11-30T16:03:00.006-06:00

The day I got back from Taipei was Noni's 90th birthday party! Wow! I was exhausted but the party was a lot of fun. Can you believe Noni is 90???!?! This might sound funny but she really doesn't look a day over 70 to me! Here are some pictures from the party:

The birthday girl poses with her cake!
Noni with her friend and soon-to-be-90-year-old Uncle Angelo.

Stephanie, Noni, Mom, and Tish
Gina, Santina, me (in my new dress from Taipei!), Leah, and Alida
We're a pretty cute group of girls!

Noni's party was a blast and I know how surprised she was! She is such a special person to so many people, and it was great to see so many people coming over to celebrate her life! Thanks to Dad for the pictures. It was such a fun day!

Taipei in a Day

2010-11-30T12:46:00.000-06:00

As many of you know by now, I recently took a quick trip to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, for work. I am finally getting around to uploading some pictures. I am hopefully getting them in order, but I have been having some trouble with blogger.

Also, if you're interested, I will be giving a Munch and Learn next Wednesday, December 8th on my trip to Taipei and to New York earlier this fall. I will be going into much more detail there.

Our first stop on the trip was to Anchorage, Alaska. Can you tell how cold I am?

In Taipei, this is at the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art. Kinda freaky but a totally cool museum!

This is Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world! You may not be able to see it in this picture, but the top of it actually is much higher than you can see. This is an incredible building and an amazing feat of engineering and architecture!

Taipei and Taiwan have a very tropical climate. Although Taipei is a HUGE city, there are forests (kind of like rainforests I assume) surrounding the city. The mountains were huge and completely gorgeous! I love this picture!

More to come!

New York Art Trip

2010-11-05T15:25:00.005-05:00

A couple of weeks ago (sorry! I know this is late!) I took a quick trip up to New York to visit my friends from graduate school, Victoria and Errin. Victoria was nice enough to let us stay at her house in Hoboken, which it turns out is the cutest town! We went to just about every museum you can go to in the span of three days. I wish I had taken more pictures, but I just totally dropped the ball on that.

This is a picture from the terrace of the Met, where artists Doug and Mike Starn have installed what they call a 'Bamboo Garden.' It is GORGEOUS and so neat. It was packed with people which was very exciting in a way. I actually really enjoyed it--it's like being in the middle of a crazy bird's nest.

The rest of these pictures are from the Cloisters, which is a branch of the Met with the most beautiful views of the Hudson River. The Cloisters is actually a medieval cloister that has been transplanted to New York from France. It was one of the most enjoyable museum experiences I have ever had! I LOVED these wavy-lined columns--so much inspiration!

The views of the river were really beautiful! The leaves were in the middle of changing and it was a great time to be there!

LOVED this statue of a saint!

The 3 musketeers, as our professors at Vandy called us, back together again at the Cloisters!
It was such a great trip--can't wait to get together again next year!

Huntsville

2010-10-07T14:01:00.005-05:00

I had so much fun in Huntsville this past weekend with all of my friends from camp. I also got to tour the Huntsville Museum of Art, which was really a great place.
Margo was so sweet to let us all stay at her house and I loved meeting her sweet baby James and of course, seeing Chico, quite possibly the cutest and sweetest Chihuahua I've ever met.
Saturday night we had a semi-cookout by Margo's fire pit with that old camp classic, beef stew. Only this time, it was not from Sysco and didn't make us sick! We even played destinos! So much fun! Emma and Sara, we really missed you!

It was a blast getting to see everyone and catch up--can't wait to do it again next year in St. Louis when we will be celebrating Kathleen's bundle of joy!

Julie's Journeys is Back!!!

2010-10-05T11:11:00.001-05:00

...and it's never been cheesier! This time I take a stroll around the gardens to show off our beautiful sculpture as well as the Dixon's residence.

Don't laugh too hard!

the September Birthday Bash!

2010-09-28T14:46:00.004-05:00

In honor of Ronald's birthday today, I am finally putting up pictures from the September birthday bash a couple of weeks ago. Uncle Phillip had a great fish fry for the September birthday people, himself, Stephanie, and Ronald!
Happy birthday, everyone!

Beautiful Day at the Dixon!

2010-08-26T15:00:00.005-05:00

Can you believe this weather?!?!? I'm loving it! And since I just got a brand-spanking new camera, I thought today would be the perfect opportunity to take some pictures around the Dixon Gardens. The Cutting Garden is so beautiful right now, despite all the heat we've had!

I love the Ceres statue, the Gardens staff always plants the prettiest things around it!

The fountain in the cutting garden always has a bunch of pretty lilies and lily pads in it. Right now, there are tons of baby frogs sunning themselves on the lily pads--it's so cute!

The formal gardens are usually my favorite part of the Dixon's gardens; it's so quiet and shady and peaceful over there and the design is always stunning! They were designed by Hugo Dixon.

Hope you've enjoyed this little tour of the gardens, stop by and see them for yourself during this wonderful cool spell we're having!

A great birthday and wallpaper fun!

2010-08-25T13:05:00.006-05:00

Thanks to everyone for the sweet birthday wishes and great presents--it was really a great day! Ronald got me a new digital camera, so I was so excited to start taking pictures with it.

We had been wanting to do something fun in our drab entry hall from the moment we bought the house. For the longest time, I knew that this wallpaper from Anthropologie was the one.

It's called Topsy-Turvy. It is traditional but fun and kind of crazy at the same time--just like me and Ronald! Well, it turns out that $148 is just too much to pay for a roll of wallpaper, especially when we were going to end up needing seven rolls! So Ron and I got real and went to Seabrook, and we are really happy with the paper we chose (only $27 per roll--now that's more like it!) and how it ended up looking on our walls.
So here is what our entry hall looked like before:

Drab, boring, with the previous owner's fave paint, ash lavender.

And now, here is the new and improved entry hall!

Larry Brown, who installed the wallpaper and does a lot of our painting, etc at the Dixon, did a GREAT job with this paper! It really looks perfect! At Ronald's request (or should I say demand!), I painted the trim an extra white shade of white (only took me 4 coats!!!), and I painted the area under the chair rail the same Raffia Cream color that is in our den and kitchen since we already had an extra bucket of it!

We're planning on putting a mirror above the console table, but we'll probably leave the other walls blank for a while since the paper is pretty busy.

Lizzie just loves the new design in the entry hall and she likes to look out the front door and guard the house by growling and people and cars that go by.

Art on Tap time!

2010-08-12T09:49:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone! If you live in Memphis and are on Facebook, I'm sure you got my invitation for Art on Tap, the Dixon's biggest fundraiser. This year it's on September 10 from 6-9pm and it's going to be so much fun. Your ticket gets you unlimited beer tastings, a souvenir glass, unlimited food sampling from the delicious food vendors we have this year, a fun band, and of course all the art you can handle!
Tickets are $40 for Dixon members, $50 for non-members, and FREE for Young at Art members. If you're interested in joining Young at Art, it's $150 for a dual membership for the year, so that's only $50 more than 2 tickets to Art on Tap! It's a great value for the money.
If you want tickets or have any questions, go to www.dixon.org or call (901) 761-5250 or just email or call me.
Hope to see you there!

Watch out, Hollywood!

2010-07-27T13:13:00.005-05:00

Last week, I was on the local Fox station morning news advertising the exhibitions we have up at the Dixon. We've got some great exhibitions up right now, all of which focus on female artists. Come by the Dixon any time and check them out!

Here is the link to the YouTube video--don't make too much fun of me! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA-rrb7UPDs

Happy Birthday, Dad!

2010-07-14T08:33:00.002-05:00

Many of you know my dad, so you know how lucky I am! My dad has always been my friend, he does so much for me! He brings me lunch to work once a week, he takes me to get coffee, among many other more major things! Have a great day, Dad! Enjoy your last year of your 50s!

Chair re-do

2010-07-14T08:19:00.006-05:00

I am so excited about these chairs we just got back from the upholsterer. Ronald's grandmother gave them to us when we moved into our new house. The actual chairs are great, in really good condition and perfect for the living room. We just wanted to update the fabric a little bit. Here's what they looked like before:

And here's the after! We had them upholstered by Kenneth Cubbins--thanks, Claude for the tip! We are really happy with them and feel like they can work in any room in our house. Got the fabric at Broom Corn.

As you can see, Lizzie loves the new chairs! She was busy sniffing them out last night.
We've also been doing a lot to our dining room and our bedroom and our yard, too. More on that later.