Guide to Downtown Des Moines Farmers' Market

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Guide to Downtown Des Moines Farmers' Market

Today I want to share with you one of my favorite things about our city - the Downtown Des Moines Farmers’ Market! 

From May until October, Court Avenue is closed down on Saturday mornings to make room for produce, flowers, and tons and tons of quality people-watching. It's hard to wake up early on a Saturday, but I never regret it and once I get downtown, I immediately feel a deep sense of pride for our city. We get to live here?!

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Bookmarked

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Bookmarked

A couple of years ago, right around Christmastime, I had a few days off from work and was mindlessly scrolling through Facebook. As much as I love social media, it tends to drain me if I'm on for too long. Raise your hand if you understand (I see that hand!)

But Facebook is also fun because you get into that habit of clicking around and magically finding out about something you didn't know anything about prior! On this day that happened: I discovered blogs. Unlike social media, blogs didn't drain me. If anything, I logged off feeling more inspired, which is something we look for online, but rarely end up finding.

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monthly distractions

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Where is this year going? I can't believe it's April next week. This month was good, though. I had a friend visit one morning and I made breakfast (#winningateverything), I took a trip to IKEA for apartment necessities, and now I'm re watching the first season of Fargo.

After the jump are some links I enjoyed this month. See you back here soon! 

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In the Village Dinner

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A few weeks ago, I co-hosted a popup dinner and it was magical. Nineteen guests joined us in the heart of the Historic East Village for a five course meal and endless conversation. Someday I'll do a post about how these pop-ups came to be, but for now take a look at some pictures from the evening's event.

The popup was hosted by Around the Table, a local creative collective that seeks to connect people through a shared culinary experience. Throughout the last few years, I've found that something special happens when you feed people a good meal and invite them into a beautiful experience. When I first started hosting these events, I noticed that people paid for a good meal, but that what kept them seated afterwards was the communal aspect that the meal fostered so well. 

While these events take lots of planning and the logistics can be difficult (I speak from personal experience when I say that hauling tables all the way down Grand Avenue is a chore) that frenzy tends to fade into the background once everyone is seated. Once we're around the table, everything just flows: conversation, laughter, and, yes, also wine.

I think that the popularity of social media has created a hunger in people for tangible experiences that occur offline and I think that these dinners fill that void nicely. I hope you're able to join us someday at one of our events. It's unforgettable and it makes the world feel a little bit smaller. 

Special to Liz Brown for the spectacular pictures, Mars for their barista and pour-overs, and Chrissy over at Domestica for allowing us to utilize her gorgeous retail space. 

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