April 2021

The siren song of the open road can be heard as soon as the weather warms up. Spring is the perfect time to get in the car, wind the windows down, open the sunroof or lower the top of the convertible, cue up the road trip playlist, and hit the highway. It’s a low-cost way…

 Is it obvious to say the pandemic exerted a range of unforeseen societal impacts? In hindsight, the fact that many turned to home improvement projects as a way to cope or simply fill the hours does not seem all that irrational or unexpected. For many homeowners, the result of having so much downtime was that…

Approximately 70% of the material dumped in landfills could be recycled or composted. We throw away a lot of things that could have another useful life, but aside from that lost potential, why is recycling so important, not only to environmentalists but also to local governments?   Recycling conserves resources and prevents pollution. It also…

Wrightsville Beach native Miller Diggs grew up enjoying the waves and sand of the island. While the water and beach have remained beautiful, Diggs noticed the amount of plastic and trash increasing in his hometown, and he wanted to do something about it. New Hanover County operates a recycling collection center at the Wrightsville Beach…

With so much time at home, the pandemic has turned many dubious, novice home cooks into battle-hardened chefs and some even into experts in particular cooking disciplines. From baking bread to sous vide prime rib, one positive outcome of the lockdowns is the resurgence of home cookery.  That extends from the kitchen to the garden.…

Thom Filicia, a reality TV personality and interior design icon whose clients include celebrities Jennifer Lopez and Tina Fey as well as W Hotels and Delta Air Lines, headlines a star-studded lineup for this year’s Design NC event benefiting the Cameron Art Museum. Modernism to Maximalism: Form and Function Re-imagined will be a two-day virtual…

Our earliest painting memories often involve watercolor, with sets containing blue, red, yellow, every color of the rainbow, plus a few sheets of paper and various brushes. It was a creative entrance for any young mind. Be it messily mixing the colors with water, or the delight of letting paint stream down and burst on…

For over 20 years Wrightsville Beach Magazine has featured Azalea week events and photos of girls in period dresses in its April issue. This feature and others were created for publication last April but was held when the 2020 Azalea Festival was canceled with the intention to publish it in 2021. No one could have…

When we hear the phrase “island hopping,” we tend to think there must be some sort of boat involved. Perhaps a cruise ship or locally, we might imagine cruising from island to island in a simple watercraft like a jon boat or a Carolina Skiff. But in this case, there is no boat. There are…

There’s been much discussion this past year about dresses.  Seven years ago, a trip to Hillsborough for a grouping of magazine features (search our archives for “Under the Hillsborough Sun,” May 2014) started me reading about the dressmaker of first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, the wife of one of my three favorite presidents. Just west…