NOFOmation
Early Summer 2017
NOFOmation is our monthly newsletter written to keep NOFOlks up to date on new products and current events at NOFO!
Nofopoly @ NOFO
This Summer, we're playing Nofopoly! You collect $1 in Funny Money for every $20 you spend in our gift shop.
Instead of buying Reading Railroad or Park Place, you can choose anything in the store. It's much more fun than purchasing pretend property, but if you don't use the money before the expiration date, you're bankrupt!
The first game begins June 1st. Best of luck!
All a'Twitter
Follow us on Twitter, and take advantage of our flash sales and special deals that are only offered to our followers!
Don't miss out - follow us at @NofoPig.
Clear the Air
Start your Summer off by cleansing and clearing stagnant and negative energy from yourself and your space.
Our energy cleansing kit contains a bundle of white sage, smudge sticks, Palo Santo sacred wood sticks, matches, a quartz crystal, and instructions. You'll feel brighter, lighter, and open to all that Summer offers!
If you're just not into rituals, pick up the Energy Cleansing Candle and burn negativity away. Both the kit and the candle are beautifully labeled for gift giving. Great for dorm rooms & new homes!
Plant Lover - Plant Killer
If you love plants but tend to kill them, then gardening with succulents, cacti, airplants, and moss is perfect for you. Two North Carolina design studios are producing amazing little landscapes that are aesthetically pleasing and easy to keep alive.
Seana and Yair Rodriguez are the artisans behind Durham's Tierra Sol Studio. Seana creates the small batch ceramic bowls to house their live plants as well as ceramic cacti for their whimsical permanent gardens. These former plant killers did years of research and experimenting before offering their handsome contemporary terrariums for sale.
Brandon McKinney and Thurston Pope are partners at Wilmington's Coastal Succulents. Both traveled West during their UNC-W days, were intrigued with Pacific coast gardening, and wanted to fuse it with nautical elements found on the Atlantic shore.
They also spent time experimenting and researching soils, plants, light & water requirements before introducing their container gardens and terrariums.
Take advantage of these folks and their research. Buy yourself a small garden! Follow their instructions and enjoy your plants for many years. You won't have to consider it a death sentence for the one you choose!
Cooked Up Another Book
We miss having author Mary Kay Andrews living in Raleigh. She's such fun and interesting to be around, and we always enjoyed having her visit NOFO.
Mary Kay is The New York Times best-selling author of 24 novels. She just cooked up and released her first cookbook, The Beach House Cookbook, full of fresh, casual menu ideas and recipes for entertaining friends and family.
We also have several of Mary Kay's beach novels back in for you to read on the porch, at the beach, or by the pool!
Hustle Over
We are pleased to have t-shirts from visual artist Gabriel Eng-Goetz of Runaway. Gabriel's downtown Durham store is a center for concerts, filmmaking, art exhibitions and general hustle.
The three designs we chose represent the NC coast, Raleigh, and our beautiful state. Hustle over and get one now!
Wear Your Vegetables
Nothing's better for you than eating foods fresh from the garden. Now, with the Cottage Greenhouse, you can restore dry Winter skin with ingredients using fresh vegetables.
Margot Elena has chosen these botanical plant infusions for their therapeutic properties and benefits. Choose beautifully packaged body creams, scrubs, soaps and body wash in carrot & neroli, sugar beet & blossom, or cucumber & honey.
Each product is up to 98% natural. Use it and you'll be feeling fresh from the farm all Summer.
Mint for Sharing
A Potty Mint sounds like something one should chew as a punishment for talking "dirty." But these mints are meant to be placed in the toilet after the flush. They are the first dissolvable air freshener tablets on the market, and they're available in two fragrances.
Sharing a bathroom can be unnerving. These air freshener tablets can be used at home, work or while traveling. Keep some mints in your wallet or purse and be ready when you have to share.
Fidget Fixing Fad
It's trendy to be a fidgeter. If you are one, you get to have a treasure trove of toys to help you overcome the affliction.
First, there was the cube, then the ever-popular spinner. The spinner now comes in a multitude of patterns and colors. We have glow-in-the-dark spinners and ones with flashing LED lights.
The fidget affliction can become the fidget toy addiction.
You Knead This
Relieve stress naturally and get back to center with Pinch Me Therapy Dough. This soft, pliable dough, infused with calming aromatherapy scents, will help you relax, rebalance, and refocus. All you have to do is massage the dough between your fingers.
You'll want a jar at home to help you cope with the nightly news and one for your desk at work. One of our customers uses it to help her with her fear of flying. Another keeps a jar in his car because he's teaching his son to drive.
How many jars do you need?
Pep In Your Step
In Summer, our toes show and our feet break free of socks and shoes. Get them barefoot ready with our Rosemary & Mint Foot Treatments.
Restore those winter-weary feet with Pumice Foot Scrub with volcanic stone and essential oils. Add the Rescue Foot Cream with beeswax and jojoba to soften and refresh. The pep will be back in your step in next to no time!
Oops I'm a Baker
Jennings Wright did not actually set out to be a baker in Beaufort, NC. She and her husband bought a small hotel in Nicaragua where she baked for their guests. After becoming ill and returning to the States, Jennings began selling her rolls, muffins, and granola at Carteret County pop-ups and Farmers Markets and later opened The Accidental Bakery.
We carry Jennings' delicious granolas. Choose a jar full or a single serve pack.
Heat in a Shaker
When Benny Tuorto moved to Raleigh he discovered a plethora of locally grown peppers, and he decided to learn all about them. Feeling that the hot sauces on the market simply masked the flavor of the food, he set about to find a new way to bring fresh chilis to the dining table.
Vesta, the only dry hot sauce on the market, is Benny's way of bringing the subtle hum of hot to the scorching sting of the Ghost Pepper to a table shaker. Choose HOT, very HOT, or Ghost.
Our Favorite Kitchen Tool
We've carried a fish spatula at NOFO for years, because it's one of our most favorite kitchen tools. We especially like to use it for whipping up eggs and then for scrambling them.
Evidently, the name fish spatula makes folks think it's only a tool for preparing seafood, because we often find ourselves explaining its use.
One customer called it a "whipper flipper", which certainly better explains its use for whipping, turning, flipping, and lifting food.
We feel vindicated after reading Vivian Howard's Deep Run Roots chapter on kitchen tools: "I got a gift from Heaven when I used my first stainless steel fish spatula. It's the last spatula, except for a small offset spatula, I'll ever need."
So there! (Drop the mic)
Girls are Da Bomb
Back in 2012, two sisters, ages 10 and 11, decided to make their own bath bombs. As they were always disappointed when the fizzing ceased and the fun was over, they hid a small keeper toy in each bomb.
They named their company Da Bomb and continued to make the fizzies themselves until the demand for their product exploded nationwide.
Their story is as interesting as their bombs. Choose beach, bug, galaxy, ninja, treasure, earth, or hero. The girls and their fizzers are da domb indeed.
Old is New Again
Long before thermoses and travel mugs had to be cute, there was Stanley. In 1913, William Stanley invented the all-steel vacuum insulated technology called thermalware. It amazed folks with its ability to keep cold beverages cold and hot ones hot.
Stanley made his products for the true outdoorsman and the working man who took his lunch and coffee to work with him. Stanley products were built for a lifetime and made to meet the toughest demands.
Today, 104 years later, Stanley is producing thermal products for the drinking man. Choose a thermal growler, pints with bottle opener lids, flasks, mugs, and a thermal cocktail shaker with 4 cups so that you can craft cocktails in the great outdoors.
Pop's Sicle
Did you ever wonder why we call the frozen treat on a wooden stick a popsicle? Seems that on a wintry night in 1923, James Epperson of New Jersey was showing friends how he had made "instant lemonade" from a powder while working at an amusement park in California.
He left the mix on the windowsill that night and went to bed. The next morning, he found it frozen with his stirring spoon still in it. Epperson removed it from the glass, licked it and liked it.
He patented it a year later as the "Epsicle." His children soon called it "Pop's Sicle", which led to Epperson's frozen suckers to be known as popsicles. They were soon sold at baseball games and outdoor concerts nationwide, and the rest is history.
The Pleasantest Thing
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote "How do you like to go up in a swing, up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing ever a child can do!"
Swinging is indeed a pleasant pastime and we have the loveliest swing seat waiting for a tree and a child. Etched into the wood is "And I think to myself, what a wonderful world."
For the more adventuresome, we have the surfer swing, made in South Carolina; and the winner of awards from The Fabulous, Family Choice and The Astra Best Toy.
Called a Swurfer, it's made for surfing the air. It brings new meaning to "up in the sky so blue."
The Mothers of Invention
Keeping a toddler soothed and entertained can be a problem, especially if you're out-and-about. Two very clever mothers came up with solutions.
One sewed fabric over a square of crinkle paper. It's small enough for tiny hands to grasp, won't tear like paper, is machine washable, and easily fits in your new purse.
Another mom, frustrated with picking up lost teething toys and changing wet baby shirts, invented Neckerchews. This absorbent bib snaps in the back and has a rubber teether built into the tip.
Whose Toes Are Those?
Although babies are born with feet attached to their legs at the ankles, it seems they are always surprised when they first discover them.
They'll be even more amazed with their feet if they're covered in colorful animal socks that make rattling noises as they kick. Choose bunnies, a pig, a frog, a puppy or pom poms, and provide instant entertainment for your baby.
Aw Shucks
An oyster knife is an important tool for a man to have, and some men are very particular about the knife they use.
Many love the look, the heft, and the design of the Carolina Shucker forged in North Carolina from old railroad ties. Some prefer the more traditional knife with a rounded handle and a steel blade like our Coastal and Charleston shuckers.
These men love having their shuckers monogrammed so they can easily identify their knife at the end of the roast.
The One & Only
Carolina Farmhouse Dairy is located in Bahama, just north of Durham. It is a first generation family farm and is North Carolina's first farmstead yogurt dairy farm. The farm is operated by Cindy Hamrich and her three sons.
Their organic cream-topped yogurt is made from the milk of the farm's friendly herd of Jersey cows and organic fruit from local farmers We love having Cindy's yogurt and smoothies at NOFO.
Gone Fishing
Whether you go fishing at Milburnie Fish Club, Kerr Lake, the Neuse River, or the great Atlantic Ocean, you'll want to eat your catch. That requires a good knife. Our fish filet knives are not only beautiful, they're designed and hand made for a single purpose - to perfectly filet a fish. Use the standard knife in your kitchen or at the dock sink. Take the folding filet knife with you to use on the riverbank or on the boat.