Fat Tuesday is here…and like Fat Albert, a fat wallet, and Fat Bottomed Girls (the great song by Queen)…it’s something to celebrate. Fat Tuesday in French is Mardi Gras, a day with deep roots in the Christian religion. It’s become a day to overindulge and have some extravagant fun before the sober weeks of fasting that [...]

Full Article

We’ve sat through the Golden Globe’s and the Screen Actor’s Guild Award shows. This weekend we are gearing up for the Grammy’s. These are well-known award shows that are eagerly anticipated by many.
Every year in January and February, we at the Allen Tate Company, look forward to our own awards. Each year during this time, [...]

Full Article

I hail from Buffalo, N.Y. It’s famous for many things including the home of two U.S. Presidents, the inauguration of another and the host of a Pan Am Expo. However, if you poll the average person and ask them “What is Buffalo famous for,” you will likely hear one of the following: snow, the [...]

Full Article

This year 2012 is a Leap Year and we have one extra day this month to do something. Since doing something is the whole point of these monthly blog posts, we’ll take advantage of the extra day by adding an extra thing to do. It may be the shortest month, but it’s chock-full of activities [...]

Full Article

Sunday morning after church, my husband and I were completing a few errands on our way home. We stopped by Lowe’s Home Improvement to get some under-the-counter lights for my new kitchen (see blog on Sept. 1 with a photo of my new kitchen!).  We were standing in the light aisle and my husband heard [...]

Full Article

I’ve mentioned in several blog posts that I’m quite the explorer. Not the type of explorer who traverses the world (although I’d like to do more of that) mind you, but more of the explorer who looks for different things to do in his own backyard.
Take Randolph County for example. Formed in 1779 from Guilford [...]

Full Article

Last year, I was asked to chair the 2012 Cultural Vision Plan Process, the fourth such event of its kind. Every eight to ten years, the challenge is to assess the greater community agenda (themes, ideas, and issues) and determine how the cultural community at-large can facilitate movement and advancement of those community-wide opportunities.
In previous [...]

Full Article

Have you heard about Charlotte’s butterfly park?
No? Well, it is kind of a secret park in Charlotte’s Sedgefield neighborhood located just a few minutes from downtown Charlotte. If you ask people who live in the Sedgefield, Myers Park or Dilworth neighborhoods about parks and which they would recommend, most will mention Freedom or Latta Park. [...]

Full Article

Not too long ago, two of our outstanding leaders, were each recognized for their tremendous accomplishments.
On December 9, Allen Tate President/COO Pat Riley was named Realtor of the Year by the Charlotte Regional Realtor Association. Can you believe that this is the third time in his career that he has received this honor? Pat is [...]

Full Article

As a young child growing up near the Pennsylvania Turnpike (the nation’s first “modern” turnpike), I was convinced that my parents were paying “the troll” to enter its broad swath of concrete. I would duck onto the car’s floorboard in order to avoid laying eyes on the hideous, man-eating (but very short in stature) beast. [...]

Full Article