Adventures in New York. Winner tells All!

Our brand new friend Cynthia Crescenzo, winner of the Back Bay Shutter New York Weekend Sweepstakes has written a blog post about her weekend for her terrific knitting blog. (If you haven’t checked it out yet, get on over there at http://knittingcentral.com!) We’re glad you had fun, Cynthia! We wish you lived closer,  so you could teach us to knit. Here’s her post.

“Knit Watch”- Finally home from a great sweepsteaks weekend…

posted 2012 Mar by Knitting Central Blog

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We are not the type that usually fill out offers to win vacations. When we saw one from Back Bay Shutters, we knew it was a great company that offered high quality shutters and various window treatments because we have used their product, so we figured why not? And… we won!!

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The weekend started off at the Architectural Digest Home Design Show with a lecture run by Margaret Russell, editor in chief of Architectural Digest. Her guest speakers were Peter Estercen and Joshua Maque, two of her top photographers. Even though I don’t photograph interiors as my main focus, our photo shoots are often done inside and I knew I would learn a lot from the lecture. It was so informative. Not only did I learn a lot about interior shots, styling, lighting, etc, I learned a lot about Architectural Digest and how they have gotten to where they are today, in terms of what they feature and the direction they are hoping to move towards. It is one of the most collected magazines and the only “shelter” magazine that is on the stands monthly.

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Next stop– checking into the Gramercy Hotel for the weekend. We had a one bedroom suite. The picture above was the living room area. The hotel was beautiful. It was a great marriage of an old look with a new feel.

IMG_5415_large Loved the bathroom!

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The sweepstakes packaged continued with tickets to MOMA (the Museum of Modern Art) on Saturday. I really enjoyed the Cindy Sherman exhibit. We took advantage of being there and tried to see as many exhibits as we could. One of my favorites was Martha Rosler (above). It was a black and white photo study of alcohol and its effects, yet there weren’t any pictures of people in the study. It was all shot down in the Bowery and was quite powerful.

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We grabbed a quick lunch at the cafe and spent the rest of the day relaxing. We were supposed to have dinner at the very elegant restaurant, The Modern (which is also part of MOMA), but was able to change the date until our whole family could join us.

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Today was brunch at Maialino, connected to the Gramarcy Hotel. As much as we tried, we could not eat the entire gift amount Back Bay Shutters had included in the package. So, I will bring my family back for a brunch again very soon. The food was incredible and I highly recommend it.

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To top off this perfect weekend, we went back the Architectural Digest Home Design Show to walk the floor. It was so inspirational. The vignette above was created by Ralph Lauren Home. It was spectacular! The photo below was one of many companies that showed incredibly inventive and very beautiful ways to set a table.

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All in all, it was quite a magical weekend. If EVER you see those sweepstakes offers and you trust the company sponsoring it, go for it and fill it out. You never know where it may take you. Thank you Back Bay Shutters for a very, very special experience…

Ok, back to work and catching up on my knitting tomorrow….