A Year-Round Guide to Franklin and Nantahala

You can’t miss it — the little lavender building adorned with twinkly white lights: Take Heart boutique in Blowing Rock looks a bit like somebody’s garden cottage. Except it’s on

Rosemary and Goat Cheese Strata

You can’t miss it — the little lavender building adorned with twinkly white lights: Take Heart boutique in Blowing Rock looks a bit like somebody’s garden cottage. Except it’s on

Take Heart Boutique of Blowing Rock

Take Heart

You can’t miss it — the little lavender building adorned with twinkly white lights: Take Heart boutique in Blowing Rock looks a bit like somebody’s garden cottage. Except it’s on Main Street. “It kind of stands out,” owner Sheri Furman admits, laughing. But Furman had a good feeling about opening the boutique, and that sort of hunch is how she assembles stock, too. Each year, she asks a question that every new item has to answer. Say, “Is it comforting?” (The fuzzy sweaters, candles, and shea butter soap sure are.) Or, “Is it lovely?” (The heart-patterned stationery and that wooden sign paraphrasing Walt Whitman: “We were together. I forget the rest”? Certainly.) Couple this cozy curation with Furman’s bright and kindly spirit, and you can see why local customers are regulars at the shop and why tourists devotedly return — no matter how much time has gone by. “Blowing Rock is where people vacation,” Furman says. “You see people you haven’t seen in a year. So on a good day, it feels like a homecoming.”


Take Heart Boutique
1009 Main Street
Blowing Rock, NC 28605
(828) 295-3444

This story was published on Jan 30, 2018

Emma Laperruque

Emma Laperruque works as a food writer and recipe developer at Food 52 in New York City.