April’s my favorite month. Always has been. And yes, part of that is because it’s my birthday* month. But it’s also because April is just such a profoundly transitional time. Where I live (Minnesota), April can contain winter, spring, summer, snow, rain, sun, grass, tulips, ice skates and Rollerblades. It’s a little bit crazy, a little bit hectic, and a lot going on. To me April has the feel of a car engine starting up, or a runner taking off from the blocks. Everything starts coming at you, fast.
So I’m excited to share a little bit of what we have planned for Curbly and ManMade this month, because it’s shaping up to be, quite possibly, the busiest month ever.
First off, Chris Gardner (our Editor-in-Chief) will be flying into town from Portland, OR to hang out at Curbly HQ for a full week. We’re excited to host him and have the entire Curbly team together in one place. We’ll be working on a series of videos for our friends at DIYZÂ (a home-improvement instructional app that you should definitely check out).
So, practically speaking, that means for one week in April the Curbly office will be transformed into a workshop and video studio. We’ll be moving in power tools, workbenches, cameras, lighting equipment … the whole nine yards.
And that’s just one week! The other big project we have going on in April is with our long-time partners, Sherwin-Williams, and it’s going to be awesome. See, our office space is part of a building filled with local artists, and every year, many of them open up their studios as part of the St. Paul Art Crawl. So we’re going to join them!
Except there’s a twist. Instead of showing off our art, we’re going to team up with a local elementary school, and show off the kids’ art. We’re calling it the St. Paul Kids’ Art Crawl, and it’ll be on April 29th from 3pm to 7pm at Curbly HQ (2506 University Ave. W., St. Paul, MN, 55114).
In advance of the event, we’ll be heading over to St. Anthony Park Elementary School and wrangling up 100 kids, giving each of them a canvas, and asking them to paint something on the theme “Love Where You Live” (which happens to be our motto; check out the #curblylovewhereyoulive hashtag on Instagram!).
Coordinating that many little artists all at once might be a little … um … complicated, but the staff at the school have been great, and Alicia’s a former teacher so I think we can handle it.
The other fun part of that project will be a huge wall mural that M.E. and I are working on to spruce up the Curbly space for the event. We’ll turn the space from woodworking shop and video studio one week, to a full-blown art gallery the next. The mural’s going to be beautiful and colorful and fun, so I can’t wait to share it with you guys.
Whew. Still with me?
Ok, cool. ‘Cause we’re not done.
I told you: April.
So, the weekend before the Kids’ Art Crawl, Alicia and her business partner, Molly, will be opening up their third Niche pop-up shop. If you’ve followed along with Alicia’s blog posts about this amazing passion project, you know she has some huge plans for Niche this summer, including a season-long pop-up in a resort town in northern Minnesota (Nisswa). But as a little appetizer, Niche will be taking over Curbly HQ once again in April, temporarily replacing our desks with clothing racks and changing rooms, and bringing in several hundred women over the course of one weekend for a unique, transformational shopping experience.
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Wowza. So that’s a little glimpse into the biggest things we have scheduled for April here at Curbly. On top of that, I’ve been working hard on our simple editorial planning tool for bloggers, BlogCalendar (which you should totally try if you’re a blogger looking to improve the way you plan your content). M.E.’s working on a slew of great videos (like one I’m excited to watch, about how to propagate succulents). And our regular Curbly contributors have tons of great original content in the works, including:
- A DIY Modernist Flower Box (Lidy)
- Using Stain to Salvage an Ugly Leather Ottoman (Jennifer)
- 30-Minute Outdoor Chair Cushions (Holly)
And then there’s you! We’re looking for guest contributors to pitch us their great ideas. We want to feature original, creative writing and DIY projects. What does your home mean to you? What’s the best design decision you ever made? The worst? Pitch us your ideas here:
Thanks for reading, and let me know what your April calendar is looking like. What spring projects are you most excited about? I’ve love hear about them in the comments.
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* One more thing! I’ll be walking 35 mils on my 35 birthday, and raising money for a local women’s shelter. Check out the details here.
Cool