A happy Reveler in full headdress

Asheville got a jump on Fat Tuesday yesterday with a fabulous Mardis Gras Parade featuring wild glittery, feathery costumes, funky floats and a real Royal Wedding! King Hobbit and Queen Tamra, the king and queen of the procession actually did get married at a ceremony at Pack’s Tavern right before the parade and rode in full glory atop a wedding cake float through the streets of Asheville. A chilly drizzle didn’t put a damper on the party. Spirits were high and the colorful crazy costumes really highlighted how creative folks in Asheville are.

The King and Queen on their wedding float kiss to the crowd's delight

Many revelers formed “krewes” ahead of time along themes that inspired their costumes and several “krewes” participated, with everything from the Gypsy Bar Krewe and the Oo La La’s Bawdy Bridesmaids to the Wicked Geishas. The word krewe (pronounced “crew”) dates to the early 19^th century according to the organizers’ website and has become the most common term for a New Orleans Carnival organization.

The Asheville Mardis Grasis an annual event hosted by an all volunteer “social aid and pleasure club”. Their aim is to be the southeast’s premier costuming event and they are well on their way. Several thousand spectators lined the parade route and the exuberance was contagious! The music and dancing wound from Wall Street to Battery Park, up Haywood and down Page Ave back to Battery Park and afterwards ended at the Pack Tavern for the Mardis Gras Ball featuring music by Snake Oil Medicine Show.

All sort of costumed people and creative props gathered to join the parade

Asheville definitely knows how to have good clean, irreverent fun! Join us next year for Mardis Gras in the Mountains!

See our gallery for more photos.

Bougainvillea surrounded our little deck

Staying at B&Bs over the years was a key factor in our deciding to become innkeepers, but we also love going to the Caribbean for a winter break. Hotels and time-shares are the norm on island vacations and something a little different takes time and a little research to discover. We just returned from a relaxing, idyllic trip to St. Martin and we found a place this year that offered the more personal touch we look forward to in our B&B stays. Françoise and Yves Hamel-Camaïeu live on the French side of the island in the Cul de Sac, a remote corner of the island. After winding your way up and down hills and around corners, with glimpses of mountains plunging to the ocean between roofs, you come to their home at the end of the road.

The Bay at the French Cul de Sac

They rent only one studio out of their house and you are greeted at the gate by their dog “Moose” and Moses the cat. Françoise leads you to around the side of the house to your private little deck surrounded by a white picket fence and dripping with Bougainvillea. The newly renovated apartment is ultra modern inside and dotted with bright, bold island oil paintings. The couple frame art and run a gallery in Marigot. Although breakfast is not included, like it is at a bed and breakfast, Françoise did leave us a fresh baguette, with little ramequins of apple butter and jam, 2 eggs and some slices of watermelon for our first breakfast on the island. Breakfast on the deck every morning was a delight. A little pot of sugar hanging from a tree drew bright yellow sugar birds to our breakfast nook every day. The little birds were busy constructing a nest of island cotton and twigs in the Bougainvillea above the clothes line. Only the beach could lure us away from our little retreat! That, and the wonderful French restaurants. Next year we hope to spend more time with our charming hosts!

A Sugar bird and friend visit us for breakfast

*A Better Way to Stay is the Professional Association of Innkeepers International campaign to educate the public about the benefits of staying at B&Bs and inns when traveling for pleasure or for business.

The Biltmore Winter Garden will house an orchid display this winter

Enjoy the majestic serenity of the Biltmore Estate now that the holiday crowds are gone! Get 2 tickets for $84.00- a savings of $15 from our regular ticket price. Tickets are good for 2 people for 2 consecutive days at the Biltmore Estate, Antler Village and The Biltmore Winery. During the winter season only admission includes a free audio tour to enrich your experience with historical detail and fascinating family stories. And don’t miss the Orchid Room in the Biltmore’s Conservatory! Our Wintertime Biltmore Special is effective January 2^nd through March 31^st, 2012.

Book this package with your room reservation >>

Includes a romantic dinner at a local restaurant

Get away to the peaceful tranquility our beautiful mountain oasis this winter and soak up the romance at our quaint historic inn.  Relax in front of a gas fireplace or enjoy a warm Jacuzzi with a glass of bubbly. Visit the historic Biltmore Estate and dine at one of our excellent local independent restaurants. This package includes 2 tickets to the Biltmore Estate and Winery with a complementary audio tour; a gift certificate for dinner at your choice of local restaurants; a fresh bouquet of flowers along with chocolate truffles and a sparkling beverage awaiting you in your room. This package can be added to a reservation in any of our rooms for $210.00

Book this package with your room reservation >>

Sisters McMullen Wedding Cupcakes

We’ve just had our first Christmastime Wedding at the inn! It was a lovely event and we’re so proud that the newlyweds, Sherry and Richard chose A Bed of Roses for such an important occasion. For three days we became their family headquarters as they prepared for the special day. Although they live in Texas, they have family in Asheville so their days were filled with visiting and soaking up the local holiday attractions with their family and friends, from the Spa at the Grove Park Inn to the Christmas decorations at the Biltmore Estate. The Red Stag Grill was the setting for the wedding party dinner the night before. Located in the Grand Bohemian Hotel, just outside the entrance to the Biltmore Estate, the Red Stag is a wonderful choice. The design of the grand lobby and restaurant is meant to emulate how the Biltmores might have appointed their family hunting lodge. The morning of the wedding was busy with spa appointments at the Grove Park Inn, where the international gingerbread competition winners are still displayed, and hair appointments. The inn was all decorated for the holidays and we rearranged furniture, sparkling poinsettias and flowers to ready a space in front of the fireplace for the ceremony. The dining room was laid out with a red holiday tablecloth topped in lace on which Everyday Gourmet spread a beautiful array of food in preparation for the reception.

Exchanging of the wedding rings

Suddenly it was time for the ceremony! The bride descended the garlanded front staircase from the Turret Suite in a sleeveless white satin gown with train and a bouquet of red roses as cameras flashed. The wedding party was in red and black for the holidays. The bride took her place next to a tuxedoed Richard and Rev. Suzy Green began the ceremony with heartfelt readings and lovely vows. They included a wonderful Celtic tradition in the ceremony called handfasting, that involved tying the bride and grooms hands together with a white satin ribbons. After the ceremony, with the formal photographs all taken the celebration began! In another sweet twist, the bride and groom chose a tiered stand of delicious McMullen Sisters cupcakes instead of a traditional wedding cake (see photo top left), but that didn’t stop them from keeping to tradition and feeding each other cupcakes!

We feel so honored to have been a small part of this wonderful family’s special occasion.

A Family Christmas Wedding

Sasha loves to sit under the tree

Last year was our first Christmas at the inn and it was a White Christmas straight out of the storybooks. The snow was gently falling all Christmas day. We had closed the inn and moved into the Revell Room, our favorite, with the cats until Monday. Snug in the house making Beef Wellington (for the first time) for Christmas dinner, we relished that quiet peaceful time. For me, Christmastime has always been special and magic. I love the decorations and the lights, the sparkle and the lush opulence of Christmas. I get to be creative, adding ribbons and lights and greens to every nook I can find. Every year comes out a little bit different. This year we found great new garlands from Balsam Hill to drape outside along the porch and the balcony as well as inside up the stairway.

The decorated foyer

My sisters helped me decorate the tree with ornaments Bill and I have collected over the years. Some I had even before meeting Bill, like the Byzantine Star that tops the tree, and they all have special memories attached. I enjoy finding that special gift that’s perfect for a friend or family member, but it’s not about presents for me. It’s all about creating the magic of the holiday in our home and in our hearts.

Asheville has so many magical things to do over the holidays too. We spent the afternoon touring the National Gingerbread Competition winners displayed at the Grove Park Inn. The Montford Players are performing A Christmas Carol, and last weekend Biltmore Village hosted a Dickens Festival with performers roaming the historic streets and shopkeepers dressed in Victorian garb. The Biltmore Candlelight Evenings are a special treat that we got to enjoy last Christmas. Seeing the magnificent estate filled with ornately decorated trees, totally decked out for the holidays, by candlelight and accompanied by live celestial music is dazzling and entrancing.

This year, instead of closing the inn, we’re sharing our snug Christmastime Getaway with a house full of guests! We’re having a Christmas Wedding at A Bed of Roses! We’re all very excited. What could be more magical and romantic than a Christmas Wedding!

Our front window decorated with stars

Visit our photo gallery for more photographs of A Bed of Roses in her full holiday regalia.

Ceramic Sculpture by Jenny Mastin

Asheville is a mecca for artists and creatives of all types and the River Arts District  (RAD) is the place to find them. RAD is a hotbed of creative activity with at least 150 artists living and working just 5 minutes from downtown Asheville. Warehouses and historic buildings along the French Broad River have been converted to studios and galleries intermingled with restaurants and cafés and even a microbrewery! This weekend is a rare opportunity to see the artists at work. All 150+ studios are open to the public at the same time! It only happens twice a year and lots of artists’ demonstrations and festivities are expected, including hands-on activities. You’ll get a chance to talk to the artists and see a huge variety of art with everything from sculpture, ceramics, textiles, glasswork, jewelry and furniture to paintings in every medium you can imagine.

Constance Williams doing encaustic painting at Curve Gallery

The event is free and so is parking. A free trolley is available as well that you can hop on at any of it’s 8 stops. An information booth will be set up at the five-points intersection across from the Clingman Café. This is the perfect time to find that holiday gift that is one of a kind and will come with the story of how you met the artist who created it! Take a break from shopping and have lunch at 12 Bones Smokehouse on Saturday- another rare opportunity since the studio stroll weekends are the only 2 times a year that 12 Bones opens on Saturday!

Directions:

From Downtown Asheville-

• Take Patton Avenue West
• Merge right into traffic circle to cross Patton and take a left onto Clingman Ave.
• Turn left to stay on Clingman Ave. until you reach the 5 points intersection.

From Biltmore Village-

• Take Biltmore Avenue North
• Left on Meadow Road
• Meadow will turn into Lyman which runs into the 5 points intersection

From North-

• Take 19/23 South to Patton Avenue.
• Turn right onto Clingman Ave.

From South-

• Take I-26 West to I-240
• Take Exit 1C, Amboy Rd.
• Turn left onto Lyman Street

From East-

• Take I-240 West to Exit 4-C, Montford Ave
• Turn right on Montford Ave.
• Turn left on Hill Street (before the visitors center)
• Take a left on Riverside Drive

From West-

• Take I240 East to Exit 4-B, Patton Ave
• Turn right onto Clingman Ave.

The rolling hills of the Riverside Cemetery

In the heart of the Montford Historic District is 87 acres of rolling hills and parkland dotted with monuments to Asheville’s most illustrious residents.  What more fitting place to take a walk on this Halloween weekend than a cemetery! This easy hike through the tombstones is anything but scary, though! The hillsides are filled with beautiful trees and shrubs, lovely views and grave markers and mausoleums that are beautiful and fascinating sculptures as well as tributes to the dead. The historic Riverside Cemetery was established in the summer of 1885 and remains an active cemetery run by the city of Asheville since the 1950s.

The list of notable residents of the cemetery is long and includes famous authors Thomas Wolfe and William Sydney Porter, known by his pen name O. Henry, as well as a bodyguard to Abraham Lincoln, James H. Posey and Queen Carson, Asheville’s first female public school principal. They share the lovely shaded hills with Confederate generals and prominent citizens. Oliver Davis Revell, the entrepreneur who built the Queen Anne Victorian that is now A Bed of Roses B&B, occupies a prominent spot accompanied by his wife the former Caroline Gray.

Even though the cemetery was started in the Victorian period, the oldest tombstone is dated 1814 and marks the grave of John Lyon, a famous English botanist who lived here for many years and collected rare plants to ship to English gardens. His grave was moved three times until finding it’s final resting place in Riverside Cemetery. Several other graves were removed from previous burial grounds and reinterred at Riverside.

The stained glass inside a mausoleum

On a recent beautiful fall day I took a walk there with my camera. The photos can be seen in our photo gallery. I’ve always been particularly fascinated with mausoleums and there are several impressive ones at Riverside. Peering through their gates you can see the intricate stained glass windows designed to be illuminated from the outside and viewed only by the mausoleum’s inhabitants.

Detail of a carving on a mausoleum door

The door of one notable mausoleum is a striking and elegant sculpture in itself. The Green mausoleum, made entirely of marble is the work of a craftsman involved in the construction of the Biltmore Estate. A stone carver for the Biltmore, Fred Miles, carved the Buchanan family’s angel from limestone left over from the construction of the Biltmore Estate.

Audio tours of the historic cemetery are available on CD at the Asheville Visitors center or the Pack Place Information Desk on Pack Square. Asheville Historic Tours has also released an iPhone ap to allow visitors to tour the cemetery guided by their iPhones! It is available at the App Store or iTunes. The virtual tour can also be downloaded as an MP3 file at www.history-at-hand.com.

Sister Sin from the Zoom Tour

In Asheville you’re likely to see bumper stickers that quote philosophers and literary figures. A recent citing: “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. Voltaire”

In Asheville, a trip to the local grocery store includes buskers serenading you and chair massages, along with the ubiquitous organic offerings.

In Asheville, a car trip downtown may involve trying not to hit a nun in drag weaving through traffic on a souped up bicycle. Meet Sister Sin, a character on the Zoom Tour.

Speaking of sin… In Asheville, our local public radio station gives T shirts to donors emblazoned with “Welcome to Asheville, Cesspool of Sin” for donating to the station. A NC Senator opposed to gay marriage dubbed Asheville a “cesspool of sin” and Ashevilleans embrace it! They even got the host of NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me to do the promo.

Guitarist "Statue" may come to life!

In Asheville, lunch at an outdoor café may involve viewing the white guitarist statue, periodically “come to life” and play his guitar for a moment, only to freeze again into a statue mid tune. Variations on this theme abound. Watch for the peasant girl statue holding a planter, the drummer girl statue and even a junior duo flower girl statue.

In Asheville, getting to the top floor of the 8 story Westall Building involves going next door to the Jackson Building, Western North Carolina’s first skyscraper, to use their elevator! The slender neogothic Jackson Building opened in 1924 and was built on an amazingly small 27 by 60 foot lot. The same architect stuffed the Spanish Revival Westall Building on the even smaller lot next door in 1925, but had no room for an elevator.

The Friday Night Drum Circle

In Asheville, a summer Friday evening kicks off the weekend with the pulse of 100 or more drums that you can literally feel throughout downtown. Bring a drum and join this quirky, fun tradition in Pritchard Park.

In Asheville, one of the most traveled corners in downtown is home to, no, not yet another Starbucks, but a wig store! Multicolored wigs adorn dozens of mannequin heads in the storefront windows in a dazzling display.

In Asheville, there are no McDonald’s downtown. Chains of all kinds are discouraged. But the neighborhood of Biltmore Village has the most unusual McDonald’s you’re likely to see. No golden arches here. The village elders ensured that the architecture of the fast food restaurant fit in totally with the historic, bricked pathways and tree-lined streets. They even have a player grand piano and fireplaces!

In Asheville, on a stroll through the city’s historic Montford district you are likely to come across some interesting yard décor. One stately home sports an ever changing installation of Barbie dolls in varying poses and in and out of costume. Another porch hosts a giant polar bear.  And is that a giant turtle on their roof?

That’s our home- not the one with the turtle. I mean Asheville! We love it!

Simply Delicious Baked Grapefruit

We’ve gotten two requests from guests this week for this recipe and it is so simple that I’m almost embarrassed to share it.  This is for Bonnie and Nevada. I hope you enjoy making it at home!

I love grapefruit just as they are with no adornment at all, but to make them even better, I like to bake them with a little brown sugar and top with a dab of homemade cranberry sauce. It’s simple yet elegant. Here’s how.

• Preheat the oven to 350°.
• Line a metal baking pan with aluminum foil.
• Cut two grapefruit in half crosswise and trim the bottoms to make sure they sit flat and level in the pan.
• Section the grapefruit with a sharp knife. I highly recommend a two sided grapefruit knife. The double blade on one end cuts both sides of the membrane in one motion, then the scoop blade cuts the back and bottom for easy eating.
• Top each grapefruit half with 1 Tbs of brown sugar.
• For each half cut 1 pat of butter in half and place on top.
• Bake for 30 minutes.
• Remove to individual plates and fill the center hole with just enough homemade cranberry sauce to cover it.

Serves 4.  See recipes below for cranberry sauce.

Handy grapefruit knife with two blades

Two Cranberry Sauce Recipes- the Long and the Short Versions

I keep a jar of this cranberry sauce in my fridge, since we make this dish so often. I’ve never tried freezing it, but I can’t see why not!

The Long Elaborate Version:

• 1 cup Ruby Port
• 2 cinnamon sticks, broken in half
• 1 cup dried cranberries
• 1 12 oz bag fresh cranberries
• 3/4 cup water
• 1/3 cut sugar
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• orange zest to taste

1. Bring port and cinnamon sticks to a boil in a medium saucepan. Reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes.
2. Add dried cranberries and simmer 3 more minutes.
3. Add fresh cranberries, water and sugar and bring to a boil, stirring.
4. Reduce heat, cover and simmer stirring often for about 20 minutes, until sauce is thickened and berries have collapsed.
5. Discard cinnamon sticks and refrigerate.

The Short and Easy Version:

• Take 1 can whole cranberries
• Mix with a dash of ground cloves, ground nutmeg and ground cinnamon.
• Microwave on high for 2 minutes
• Refrigerate