Is the weekend already over? Waaaaah. I’m not ready for Monday!  After a long week and an even longer Friday (we traveled to and from Raleigh for work), I was so anticipating a wonderful weekend.  I feel like we crammed a lot in… but I am still not satisfied!  Ah well.  That’s the thing about weekends, right?  Never enough, but at least there’s always another one just around the corner!

Highlight of the weekend #1 – a trip to NoDa district

NoDa is an offbeat, young, and transitioning neighborhood of Charlotte.  It’s fun to walk around – I only wish there were more stores and shops.  There are, however, a ton of amazing restaurants.

We weren’t there for dinner.  We were there for POPSICLES!

King of Pops is a popsicle cart company in Charlotte, Athens, Atlanta, Charleston, Chattanooga, and Richmond (here’s their backstory – it’s pretty interesting). A guy I know opened the Charlotte stand this year, so I love to check their Facebook page, find out where the cart is located that day, and head on over for a icy cold treat.  King of Pops popsicles are really, really amazing and definitely worth the drive!

The family shared the Cucumber Mint (yum) and Raspberry Lime (double yum).  Henry was a big fan of the Raspberry Lime. 

I liked how you could see real mint leaves in the cucumber pop…. so delicious. 

Highlight of the weekend #2 – a trip to Cloister Honey with Queen City Blogs

QCB is a group of local bloggers that my brother-in-law Nick and I organized.  We’re just starting to real-life meet-ups.  It’s nice to get offline and interact with blog friends in person.

Some members of QCB took a tour of local honey maker Cloister Honey.  Cloister has some of the yummiest plain and whipped honey around – but it’s their ‘infused’ honeys that really knock it out of the park.  We’re talking gems like vanilla honey, bourbon honey, and ghost pepper honey.  Oh – and pumpkin spice honey!

Cloister is another inspiring small business story.  The wife bought her husband a bee hive as a Christmas gift – “I couldn’t think of anything else to buy him!” – and the hobby turned into a massive business.  They both quit their corporate jobs to devote themselves full-time to honey-making.  You can buy Cloister honey online, all over the region in stores like Whole Foods, and even as far away as Napa in fine wineries!

HONEY!  So much honey.  They have dozens upon dozens of hives in their backyard, on top of skyscrapers in Uptown, and in the mountains.

We watched them ‘extract’ the honey from the panels of honeycombs.  Twenty panels make a LOT of honey!

All in all – it was a great weekend.  It just felt too short!  Time does fly when you’re having fun…

Any small business owners (or patrons of small businesses) want to share other inspiring start-up stories?  Feel free to link to the online stores in the comments section, too!