While in Raleigh, NC, we stocked up on city things that we miss living out in the country at HQ. Top on our list: art museums and well curated shops.

The former:

This is Cloud Chamber for Trees and Sky (from the outside) by Chris Drury, our favorite piece at the North Carolina Museum of Art (in their Museum Park). You go inside, and close the door behind you. The walls and floor are painted white, the ceiling is wood, except for one small hole in the center that opens onto the sky above. It’s dark, but your eyes adjust, and you begin to see on the walls and floor around you the image of the treetops outside, swaying in the breeze. You’re sitting inside a pinhole camera.

I assure you, it is mind-blowingly cool. Even if you aren’t as into the physics of light as I am. We’re totally going to have to build ourselves one at HQ.

The latter:

This is the Curatory, the shop attached to the Raleigh Denim Workshop. Awesome company. Awesome jeans. Awesome shop of beautiful things other than jeans. It is places like this that make us wish we had lots more money; there are so many people making beautiful things that we’d love to support (not to mention take their products home to live with us forever).

We’ve since left Raleigh and made it to Florida. And it is perfect here, warm and sunny and green, and just the break we’ve needed from Iowa winter. Speaking of which, HQ is reportedly getting 7 to 11 inches of snow today without us.