Posts Tagged ‘Asheville bed and breakfast’

We won the prize

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Elizabeth and Roland Tita

Once in awhile, someone organizing a raffle or offering a promotion will find Inn on Main Street bed and breakfast online and fall in love with our Grandma’s House image.

That’s what happened when D’Jella Gray of WQMG radio station in Winston-Salem called last year to ask us to participate in the Kit-Kat contest, an on-air promotion that included a romantic trip to Asheville (and Weaverville, of course), and the Blue Ridge Mountains. We were honored that she chose us.

Turns out that the winner of the gift certificate, Tyisha Williams, had a friend who she said needed the trip more than she did. Because of Tyisha’s generosity, we got the sweetest folks staying with us, a couple who had sacrificed a lot for their family over the past year and indeed needed a romantic break.

Elizabeth and Roland Tita celebrated their fourth anniversary with us, enjoying a couples massage, an hour soak in a hot mineral bath, and a visit to the Biltmore Estate, all part of our Soaking Soulmates special. We wish them all the best, and thank D’Jella, WQMG and Tyisha for making it all happen.

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Posted in Asheville, Asheville bed and breakfast, Biltmore Estate, Inn on Main Street, Specials, bed and breakfast, gift certificate | No Comments »

Our B&B’s moment of fame

Friday, June 18th, 2010

Life at a bed and breakfast isn’t exactly the celebrity spotlight, though on occasion we are interviewed for stories or rub elbows with those who rub elbows with the rich and famous. When publicity calls, we like to answer.

Go magazine, the in-flight magazine for AirTran Airways, is doing an article for the July edition on Asheville, and wants to give our huge bed and breakfast community some recognition in the article. Their representative called me to see if we had any photos of Inn on Main Street bed and breakfast guests enjoying the atmosphere at a local B&B. I sent out a message to all the members of the Asheville Bed and Breakfast Association to see if they could pitch in, then went looking through my own files. Unfortunately, dozens of photos of happy guests disappeared into the void when our computer crashed earlier this year.

Lucky for us, we had a lovely couple staying with us at the time, Bette and Tom Werlin of Houston. They are great sports and agreed to let us shoot them (they aren’t THAT great of sports; we shot them with a camera) for the article. We’re hoping they and we will share a month of celebrity if the photo appears in the magazine. In the meantime, their looks  are too good to waste, so here’s their photo, taken as Nancy poured their juice:

We are hoping the AirTran article succeeds in bringing more folks from Texas and elsewhere to Weaverville and Asheville. So much of what has been written about our area is so two-dimensional, focusing only on the Biltmore Estate and Grove Park Inn. Both are treasures that help make our area exceptional, of course, but the culture, diversity and natural beauty of our area don’t seem to get their due. And, of course, nether does the fact that the Asheville area is a B&B destination. If you want to understand the complexity of what our region offers, and you want an inside track on the best things to see and do, it helps to stay with someone who is a part of the community.

Many of our guests are good sports, and many have become friends. We look forward to meeting many more as nice as the Werlins.

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Posted in Asheville, Asheville bed and breakfast, Biltmore Estate, Inn on Main Street, Our Weaverville, bed and breakfast | 2 Comments »

Bed and breakfast cookbook is on the menu

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

We at Inn on Main Street in Weaverville and our comrades in the Asheville Bed and Breakfast Association are gathering the final ingredients for our first Asheville Bed and Breakfast Association cookbook. It’s going to have more than 200 recipes, and retail for $15 to $18.

As you might expect, many are breakfast recipes, but we’ve also added several supper entrees and side dishes, salads and appetizers. We’re particularly happy that several recipes address folks with special diets. Though most of our guests are very happy with what we serve and how we serve it, we have a few who are vegan, diabetic, gluten- or lactose-intolerant, or allergic to a common item. In those cases, we try to adapt what everyone else is having to meet that person’s restrictions. Usually it’s a matter of mixing all the muffin batter, for example, except the eggs and buttermilk, then scoop out enough for a couple muffins to be made with soy milk for a vegan. As an example (and one that won’t be in the cookbook), check out our sweet potato muffin recipe below.

Sweet Potato Muffins

Ingredients:

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 egg

1 cup buttermilk

1 cup brown sugar

1 medium to large sweet potato, peeled and grated

1 tsp each baking soda, baking powder and vanilla

3 tbsp molasses

1/2 tsp each ground cloves and nutmeg

1/2 tsp ginger

2-1/2 cups white flour

For vegans, substitute soy milk for buttermilk and an egg. For diabetics, leave out brown sugar and molasses. For gluten free, substitute brown rice flour for white flour.

Mix oil, sugar, egg and buttermilk with grated sweet potato. Add remaining ingredients and mix just enough to reach a uniform consistency, which should be midway between pancake and cookie batter. Overmixing makes the muffins tough. Spray oil into a 12-muffin pan, and spoon batter up to top of cups. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes, or until tops brown slightly. Makes 12 muffins.

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Posted in Asheville Dining, Asheville bed and breakfast, Inn on Main Street, bed and breakfast, recipe, special diets | No Comments »

New face on an Asheville Bed and Breakfast

Monday, March 1st, 2010

The newly remodeled Ayers bathroom

Tourism is suffering in Asheville.

A rockslide cut off much of the traffic from the west. Winter keeps slamming us with record colds, then blizzards, then blizzards again. The economy just doesn’t seem to get past the sputter start.

Here at Inn on Main Street, we believe that if you are going be wringing your hands with worry, you might as well be holding a paint brush while you do it. We’ve taken advantage of guestless times to repair, repaint, upgrade and in the case of one bath, remodel, so the going is smooth when guests return.

We were particularly happy to be able to update the Ayers bath, which had an 1980s look that inspired the wrong sort of nostalgia. The Ayers is our largest room, and the most popular with long-term guests and girlfriend getaway groups. It begs for an elegance and comfort level that was lacking. We re-tiled, tore down dated wallpaper, repainted in a chocolate-and-cream combination, installed a new vanity and replaced the cute (but non-functional) antique commode chair with a dressing bench. We’re very happy with how it turned out.

We replaced the wicker setee in the Robinson room with a couple comfy armchairs. The wicker was cute, but not as conducive to watching TV or a fire in the fireplace. That room and others also got some fresh paint.

Nancy won’t let us rest on our laurels. Tomorrow we begin painting the kitchen. I groan to think of moving our huge pine cupboard so we can paint behind it, but it will all be worthwhile in a few days.

When our guests ask if we got a nice rest in during the off season, we’ll just smile and nod. It’s another idyllic period in the life of an innkeeper.

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Posted in Asheville, Asheville bed and breakfast, Inn on Main Street, Innkeeping, Women travel, bed and breakfast, girlfriend getaway | No Comments »

Summer baseball is coming to Asheville

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

Baseball and Asheville are a good team. When the tourists come to Asheville, the Asheville Tourists begin another season of Minor League Baseball.

There is something innocent and essentially American about watching a minor league game. Boys barely out of school play for the love of the game and a shot at the Show, rather than for millions of dollars. Teddy the Tourist, a huge bear-suited mascot, hugs kids, dances on the dugout and flips token prizes into the bleachers. On Thirsty Thursdays, our favorite day, record crowds turn out for the double bill of a great game and a dollar draft beer.

At Inn on Main Street we’re helping to share that experience by offering a pair of Tourists tickets as an incentive to book a third night.  The offer is good any time the Tourists are playing at home, except Fourth of July, or with any extended-stay special. You can, however, combine it with our rafting or spa specials.

Come root for the home-away-from-home team and enjoy a fun stay at our bed and breakfast.

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Posted in Asheville bed and breakfast, Innkeeping, Specials, travel blogs | No Comments »

Asheville is for lovers

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

Something about frigid weather brings out the passion in some folks. While many of our Asheville bed and breakfast visitors wait for warm days and bursts of flowers, the hard-core romantics come when the ground is frozen and the fireplace is blazing. The biggest attraction is the one they’re with. Valentine’s Day may be quaint memory for many of us who relate it to paper valentines and grade-school crushes. But serious lovers come in from the cold this time of year, wanting the best of everything for those they love. We do our best to help them out, but ultimately they become the main attraction for each other. As usual, we had a full house this Valentine’s Day, with all ages of lovers represented. We could truly feel the love.

The attraction of a bed and breakfast over a hotel couldn’t be expressed better than by a travel blogger we came across today. In a blog called Travel Spain Barcelona, the writer offers his advice on bed and breakfasts in Asheville with an entry titled Stay at a Bed and Breakfast: Asheville, NC . It’s the perfect read for those who have never visited a B&B and don’t really understand why they’re different from hotels. The level of personal attention makes all the difference.

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Posted in Asheville bed and breakfast, Innkeeping, Romance, travel blogs | No Comments »