First blog | Introductions!
Kim Carter + Alicia Miller
HI! Welcome! We’re so glad you found us! We hope we can all become fast friends!
If you do not know us, we are Kim Carter and Alicia Miller. We’ve been best friends for 14 years and are now business partners of a boutique salon in Little Rock, Arkansas.
We met in November 2006, at a well-known salon in Little Rock’s Heights district. Alicia had just finished up her year-long apprenticeship under senior stylists and Kim had just moved home from a year-long apprenticeship in Manhattan. Our salon stations were right next to each other. In the beginning, it was just friendly banter and social niceties. In April 2007, we went to a product knowledge class in Kansas City. ROAD TRIP. We came back from that quick weekend class as forever friends.
14 years later, we’re now 2 marriages, a baby, 2 dogs and one divorce-experienced friends.
We’re big fans of travel, culture, entertaining and finding the pretty in everyday experiences. We love trying new face creams and body scrubs. We order all the random fashions from Amazon and every other little boutique store in between, but also have an almost indecent relationship with Golden Gooses (clears throat Alicia) and good denim (…Kim…!)
We believe in self-care, but also do not take ourselves too seriously. We’ll try just about anything if it offers even a tiny promise of a better anything.
We truly love to make people feel better about themselves (we’re hairstylists, it comes with the licensure.)
We’re the-glass-is-half-full type people and thrive on positivity and spreading it.
We love traveling so much that, in fact, our motto for years was “we work to travel.”
We can’t wait to wander through all the pretty things and share them with you.
Meet Kim:
Hello friends- I’m Kim Carter! I’m married to my husband of almost 9 years, Carl, and we have three super fantastic children. Luke (18), Chloe (16), and Collin (6). We also have the sweetest Goldendoodle, Lucy (Goosey.) I am originally from Tampa, Florida (Go Bucs!), but I moved to Central Arkansas in Fall 1994. It’s crazy for me to think that I’ve spent more than half of my life in Arkansas. This is my home. This is where I met my husband and have built my family and business. Through childhood and into my early adult years, I was convinced my life calling was to be a famous singer. My biggest setback was…me. I had very little self confidence that it held me back from truly trying to achieve it. I spent my high school and college years in theater, which was perfect for someone with a low self-esteem, because I didn’t have to act like me… I could be anyone else. In 2001, I moved back to Arkansas after working as a restaurant manager in Manhattan. I was supposed to be auditioning, but instead, I worked all of the time. Mostly because, well, it’s expensive to live in New York, but also, when you don’t audition, you don’t fail. I’m not saying I’m proud of this, but I am saying it’s taken many years to figure that whole statement out. Through a disheveled roundabout way, my next life adventure options were: Culinary school or Beauty school. At that time, beauty school was cheaper. Much cheaper. Hence, how I became a hairstylist. I’ll write a longer post later on how all roads led to where that all began.
I am definitely that cliche of “jack of all trades” — I love trying new things. All of the time. Mostly, cooking, baking, and photography are the big draws for me. I will not lie to you that I am great at any of these things, but I sure do love to try them.
One big difference between Alicia and me is that she LOVES shopping. In-store. Online. All of it. I do not. I love a good subscription box so that I don’t have to spend time looking for clothes or shoes and trying them on in badly-lit dressing rooms. I even love the kitchen-supply subscription boxes. But on the other side of that, I LOVE a good bargain. So while Alicia is more prone to the attraction of higher-end retail. I want to find the coupon code. I don’t even order pizza without looking for a coupon code. #kiddingnotkidding
We are alike in a lot of ways, but I think what makes up different is where our friendship thrives. We help each other see the other side and appreciate our differences.
I enjoy the home life and living in the comfortable walls of familiarity. But, I also do enjoy an occasional fancy night out and will always put on some heels for a good dinner. Foodies unite.
I really, really love taking photos and writing friendly reviews of local eateries in our hometown, but also throughout my travels. (About that culinary degree…)
Meet Alicia:
Hey guys, Lish here! First, I’ll start with my name. My name is Alicia, phonetically pronounced uh-lish-uh. Contrary to the popular spelling uh-leesh-uh. My family & close friends call me Lish, or Lisha, or Lishabrook if things are really serious! As you already know, I am a hairdresser & small business owner with my bestie, Kim. I also have spent the last 12 years working for an Italian haircare company as a trainer & guest artist. I’d like to go ahead & give them, most if not all, the credit for my love of a fancy dinner party and a pair of sparkly sneakers. (To my credit, I was all about a pair of Golden Goose before the US market was entirely over saturated & everyone made fun of me for buying overpriced dirty sneakers.) Cheers to the lovers of a good pair of overpriced shoes. Like everyone else 2020 has been, well to put it in PG-13 context, a series of seriously unfortunate events. I went through a divorce, had to move 3 times during Covid, had to temporarily close my business, and ending up renovating my first house. The absolute best part of 2020 was getting to move into my newly renovated historic home with my 7-year- old rescue lab, Florence & her ancient 17-year old feline sister, Ava. I’ve made this little dwelling everything my girly-heart has ever wanted. It’s full of pink & mauves, velvet & all the shiny pretty things.
