Vineyard Vines Kentucky Derby 144 Tee Shirt Collection
Celebrate Kentucky Derby 144 in preppy style!
Can y'all believe that Derby is just around the corner? The 144th running of the Kentucky Derby is less than six weeks away! While I'm in disbelief that 2018 is rolling by so quickly, I never miss an opportunity to talk about the Derby!
Vineyard Vines has, once again, rolled out an awesome line of Derby-themed accessories to help get you in the mood for race day. Here are a few of my favorites!
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Men's Tees
Go Big Blueberry-Lemon Brie En Croute!
An elegant and easy game-day appetizer
Brie en Croute with Fond Originals Blueberry Lemon Jam. Stoneware & Co Hot Brown Plate, Pomegranate Inc UK Collage napkins.
If y'all are like me, you're counting the minutes until tonight's UK basketball game. It's the best time of the year and the 'Cats have been playing so well. You need a snack that's a little more sophisticated than hot wings or chips and dip. Well, here's the perfect treat -- it's quick and easy and so, so delicious!
You only need three ingredients: a wheel of brie, a sheet of puff pastry, and a jar of Fond Originals Blueberry Lemon Jam. Y'all, this stuff is so, so good. When Chef Madeline Dee, owner and executive chef at Fond, offered to send me a jar to try, I was so excited! Chef Madeline's tiny Frankfort Avenue bistro is already booked until after Derby! She must be doing something right! Just cover the brie in the jam, add to a defrosted sheet of puff pastry, and bake at 425 until golden brown. It's the perfect accompaniment to your March Madness enjoyment!
#herkentuckycares
Charity-based Social Media Initiative launches in Kentucky!
Social media is an odd phenomenon, y'all. Sometimes it makes us smile and sometimes it makes us roll our eyes. And, sometimes, it can be used to effectuate change.
In the nearly six and a half years I've been writing HerKentucky.com, I've been amazed by how truly lovely HerKentucky readers and social media fans are! So, I've teamed with a group of Kentucky-based businesspeople to say thanks to some of y'all when you're "caught in the act" of doing a good deed. We call it #herkentuckycares!
Here's what #herkentuckycares is all about:
- While, most of the time, many of us try to be humble with our good works, this January, I'm asking you all to broadcast them to your social media!
- Starting today, Monday, January 8th, think of some of the ways you'd like to help your community. Your local homeless shelter could use coats, scarves, and new, unopened packages of underwear and socks. Your hometown animal shelter could use food, toys, towels, bedding, and bleach. Your local food bank could use healthy food. And a charity of your choice can always use a financial donation.
- Please take a photo of your good deed -- or of a friend or family member caught in the act of doing good -- and upload it to Instagram or Facebook with the hashtag #herkentuckycares.
- By submitting the #herkentuckycares hashtag, you're eligible for random drawings for gift cards to Target, Starbucks, Heine Brothers, and Salsaritas provided by Kentucky-based businesses who want to help pay it forward!
- The contest begins today, January 8th, and will last through Friday, February 2nd!
Please share the word with your friends, and let's start a good deed social media revolution in Kentucky this winter!
Thanks so much to Louisville Salsarita's, Jennifer Stetzler Interiors, Yoga Instructor Ryan Bratcher, Realtor Kacy Noltemeyer, Liz Toombs of Polka Dots and Rosebuds Interiors, Jennifer Stetzler Interiors, and Realtor Russell Smith for their generous contributions!!
National Coffee Day!
Louisville's best cups of coffee!
Today is National Coffee Day! I have to say that, at HerKentucky Headquarters, Coffee Day is a whole lot like that tagline for Shark Week; we live every day like it's coffee day.
Because we put down a whole lot of java at my house, I wanted to pay tribute to my very favorite cups in Louisville.
Of course, there's Please & Thank You. Strong lattes and some the best baked goods in town.
And then there's Sunergos, the beans that fuel my own French presses. I'm partial to the Mexico Chiapas blend.
And, of course, there's my neighborhood Starbucks, which serves as my office away from home, my cappuccino connection, and generally the place that keeps me caffeinated!
Happy Coffee Day, y'all. Today and every day. Who keeps you caffeinated?
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats at Forecastle Festival
When the 2017 Forecastle Festival schedule was released, Bob and I were excited to get the chance to see Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats here in Louisville. The Saturday afternoon show was just perfect -- great weather, a great crowd, and a really solid set.
If you've listened to any of Nathaniel Rateliff's music, you know it was a high-energy set, with influences ranging from roots/Americana to gospel to blues and soul. At times, there's some good old jam band mixed in with a little Bell Bottom Blues-era Clapton. I'm not a music writer, but I know it was a great set. Rateliff had a great rapport with the audience while playing a tight, fun set. His best-known tracks, Look It Here and S.O.B., were the big crowd-pleasers of the hour-long set, and I found myself wishing I could follow the band on down to Birmingham for the Sloss Festival the following night. I guess that's how music festival habits get formed.
Fred Noe and Bruce Russell at Forecastle Bourbon Lodge
Forecastle Festival Fireside Chat features Bourbon Family Icons Fred Noe and Bruce Russell.
This weekend's Forecastle Festival was so fun, y'all. In addition to the musical lineup, the Bourbon Lodge featured some rockstars of the spirits industry. On Saturday, Bob and I took in the Bourbon Family Icons Fireside Charm, which was moderated by author Fred Minnick, and which featured Fred Noe, the great-grandson of Jim Beam and the current Master Distiller at his family's whiskey company, as well as Bruce Russell, the grandson of legendary Wild Turkey Master Distiller Jimmy Russell.
Now, I've spent the majority of the last year interviewing and researching folks in the bourbon industry for my book. I still get extremely starstruck when I'm in the room with Mr. Noe or Bill Samuels Jr of Maker's Mark and I know it would be the same if I had the opportunity to meet Jimmy Russell. These old-school bourbon guys -- the ones who don't try to speak corporate lingo and for whom the family bourbon label is a source of heritage and pride -- well, they're just the best of Kentucky.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the bourbon industry is, as Mr. Noe mentioned during the Fireside Chat, that many of the historical bourbon producing families are friends. In fact, many times during this session, Mr. Noe referenced his own friendship with Bruce Russell's father, Eddie. Both men referenced drinking the other's whiskeys. It's one of my favorite aspects I've seen in researching the bourbon industry: there really is a camaraderie and a sense that it's better if they all succeed.
Oh, and one more fun fact from the Fireside Chat: Mr. Noe name-checked his buddy Bobby Ritchie, better known to the rest of us as Jim Beam aficionado Kid Rock. It was at once surreal and hilarious.
Here's to a great experience in the Forecastle Bourbon Lodge. I can't wait to check out next year's lineup!
The Diaper Fairy Emily Weixler McCay's Forecastle Goals
Louisville entrepreneur Emily Weixler McCay set the local festival season as a cancer recovery goal.
I'm so excited for Forecastle Festival this weekend! I'm also extremely honored to bring you this story about hope, happiness, and healing today. Emily Weixler McCay is known around Louisville for her beautiful smile, her love of spreading glitter, and her Highlands-based business, The Diaper Fairy Cottage. Emily, a wife, mother, DONA trained doula, and entrepreneur, was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia last fall; she set "attend Louisville's Music Festival season" as a healing goal. I felt so humbled that Emily agreed to share her story with HerKentucky readers, and I look forward to seeing her (and all of y'all!) at Forecastle!
Emily Weixler McCay, photo by Sarah Schweizer Hester of SSH Photography.
Louisville folks know you as the Glitter Fairy. Can you please tell me a little bit about your business, The Diaper Fairy, and about your penchant for spreading glitter and happiness wherever you go?
Seven years ago, I opened a modern cloth diaper delivery service, The Diaper Fairy, to fill an unmet need for Kentuckiana families. Our specialty door-to-door laundry service offers the opportunity to set dirty diapers out on the front porch with the promise that we will come by and replace them with cleans. How cool is that? A Diaper Fairy lands on your porch and takes the dirty work out of choosing cloth diapers. Let’s face it, what we do isn't glamorous and we’ve always been in on the joke that we’re #1 in a #2 business. So, if we can throw some glitter and fun at the dirty work of parenting, my Flock of Fairies and I are all for it!
Around 4 years ago, we saw an opportunity to fill another niche and expanded again into a brick and mortar boutique, The Diaper Fairy Cottage (because every Fairy needs a Cottage). Our goal is to provide parenting items and resources that could be hard to find locally. Our boutique offers much more than diapers. We’ve focused on natural parenting gifts and gear, classes and private consultations on topics such as breastfeeding and baby-wearing, and we’ve built a vibrant and inclusive parenting community that meet for toddler crafts hours and new baby support groups.
You’ve been through so much in the past year or so. Can you please tell me a little bit about your diagnosis, treatment and your wonderfully positive outlook?
Last year on Halloween, after being fatigued and anemic for several weeks, blood work and a bone marrow biopsy uncovered an underlying blood marrow failure cancer called Myelodysplastic Syndrome. I was quickly referred to Siteman Cancer Center in St. Louis, MO and by my first consultation, just 11 days later, my aggressive cancer had progressed to Acute Myeloid Leukemia. I was basically admitted on-site and underwent two back-to-back rounds of induction chemotherapy to try and get me in remission.
I was hospitalized for a solid seven weeks in St. Louis during the process which is incredibly isolating and hard. I relied on daily meditation, an escape into the music playlists that my husband would make for me, and constant walks up and down the hallway. I found strength and support in focusing on the pictures and cards that plastered the walls of my hospital room and would take time to sit in windows streaming with sunshine to help keep my inner light lit.
The induction chemo worked for just a few weeks and my cancer quickly returned as soon as my bone marrow attempted recovery. My doctors had to move up a timeline for my stem cell transplant because I was so ill. My brother was identified as the fastest, closest match and he donated his stem cells in early February with another month long hospital stay. To (over)simplify an explanation of how a stem cell transplant works, his cells were transfused in, they engrafted into my bone marrow, and started to grow new healthy blood for me. I’m now 100% my brother’s blood inside and right now, I’m 100% leukemia-free. He has literally saved my life.
Early on in my diagnosis, my husband and I made the decision to share the news and my journey through a group we call “Emily Conquers Leukemia”. The group now nicknames themselves “ECL Nation” and it’s filled with friends, family, and colleagues that are nationwide! I have been so fortunate to have an incredible amount of support through my treatment. I have often said, I have felt like we have a network of hands under us, holding me and my family up as we CONQUER this. I’ve had people thank me for staying visible during these past nine months and honestly, I don’t know how else I would have done it.
Maybe the silver lining in this terrible strike of lightning is for us all to recognize it’s about living a life of intention and loving those around you. A life of gratitude. The reality could be that life is quality over quantity. None of us are promised tomorrow.
The journey hasn’t been easy, at all. But I do credit having a “Good Vibes Only” outlook for helping me reach each daily milestone of survival. I have learned so much through this process. I very much take it one day at at time. There were days where I have had to take it one hour at a time. I now move at a slower pace and I don’t multi-task nearly as much. I find it easier to stay present and be in the moment.
Emily's "Festival Season" kimono, custom-made by Louisville designer Gunnar Deatherage. Photo by Sarah Schweizer Hester of SSH Photography.
I know Festival Season has been a huge milestone in your recovery. Can you please tell me about how you set Forecastle as a goal for yourself and your physicians?
Live music has always been a very important part of my life and has fed my soul for years! In fact, before my diagnosis, my husband and I were planning to attend My Morning Jacket’s “One Big Holiday”, a destination music festival in Mexico in February…But as it turned out, my stem cell transplant timeline settled in during the *exact* dates of the tropical festival. (We’ve often joked that I attended “One Big Transplant” instead!) I knew I’d be just under 6 months out from my stem cell transplant when music festival season was underway, and Forecastle specifically. I’ve always loved our hometown, yet national, music festival and we’ve been honored to be vendors the past couple of years.
While being a vendor wasn’t going to be an option for us this year, Forecastle and AC Entertainment made it clear that if my health allowed it, they would welcome us as guests. As soon as I heard that, I prepped my transplant team for making it a recovery milestone. My health and endurance has continued to improve since my move back home in early May, and so my transplant team approved me to go! This year will be a little more chill for us as I’ll need to make sure to stay super hydrated, take breaks from the heat and sun, and I honestly can’t give out a lot of hugs because I’m still immunocompromised. Still, to be here, meeting this milestone, feeling healthy and normal, feels AMAZING.
Finally, can you tell me a little about the Parent Comfort Tent?
Yes! As it turned out, while we aren’t vendors this year, a last minute opportunity presented itself to host the Parent Comfort Tent again this year. The space is located at the back of the festival grounds, where it’s quieter, on Kentucky Landing’s Buy Local Boulevard. The Parent Comfort Tent gives space for parents to comfortably feed a baby, change a diaper, or pump milk if they are away from their nursling. The booth features fans to cool the private tent, comfortable chairs for feeding, extension cords for breast pumps, and a diaper changing table for the littles. We are also providing breast milk storage bags, disposable breast pads, diaper wipes and diaper cream. The space will be available all three days of the Festival and will be open until 9pm each night. We hope knowing this tent is a comfortable option for families means more parents will attend Forecastle and enjoy the festival. Because, honestly, couldn’t we all use a little more music and celebration in our lives?
Thanks so much to Emily for sharing this journey with HerKentucky! Wishing you continued healing and happiness, Emily!