stockley gardens art show

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

It's funny looking at photos of the bright & beautiful fall weather we were enjoying just 8 days ago with our sweet friends. We popped over to the bi-annual Stockley Gardens Art Show before the Coulomb's left town - Soaking in the smell of kettle corn, wishing we had $500 to drop on paintings of bears & taking turns with the camera since there's actually no way to take a good photo of five with a 50mm lens. I know that there's usually photo-OVERLOAD when us five hang out, but they're just our sunshine! We love them! I don't even feel bad!

saturday best - AKA style

Things you need to know: 

-Sometime during sophomore year of college, Allison, Amelia & I started calling ourselves the AKA. It's been our standard photo pose ever since. (& over five years, that spans quite the spectrum of embarrassment, let me tell you.)

-It's only just now dawned on me how wonderfully coordinated we were, so that's nice & bff-y! 

-I'm not actually a towering giant. In fact, I stand at a very average 5'6.

-My friends are absolute dolls.

-If you look real hard, you can see the polo shirt tan line I've worked really hard on all summer at my outdoor work events.

-Allison's pants & Amelia's purse are the real show stoppers here.

-But isn't that also such a nice stucco wall?

We learned in my last post that local fashion weeks aren't really anything to write home about. But, by gum, it was fun to feel fancy with two beautiful ladies for the evening.

iphone does: virginia fashion week

 

Since a 5k got Jared & I up to Richmond to spend a weekend in the Coulomb's brand new house, it seemed fair to entice the Coulomb's to make a trip down to Norfolk to visit our new apartment by dangling a fashion show in front of Amelia's nose. Allison, Amelia & I got a little gussied up & headed over to the Virginia Fashion Week's Couture show. Drank a little wine, played with some  SPCA kittens (our city loves some SPCA), pretended like we were totally part of the fashion scene... You know. Fashion Week stuff.

I'm not going to lie, it was a little... local? I can't say disappointed, because I experience the Big 4 fashion weeks via bloggers, gossip columnists & my big imagination, so I don't have any real life experience to compare it to. But, we can at least say we went out, supported local models/designers/whoever was sponsoring the cash bar, & hey! PLAYED WITH KITTENS.

Thanks for the evening out, Norfolk!

the rest of richmond

how to break in a new house: let friends invade for 2 days pretty much IMMEDIATELY following purchase of new home, under the pretenses that there's a 5k to be run, but really... it's an excuse to party. have friends explore city surrounding new home to (once again) give their stamp of approval that your city is, in fact, wonderful. make really good food that makes the new house smell all sorts of delicious, but also go out to a fancy shmancy restaurant & drink celebratory/way too expensive drinks (toast to friendship & home-owning & caramel + lava salt gelato). break in front yard tree with impromptu bestie-photo sesh. imagine having future children recreate photos in front yard tree. (not pictured: stomp around house singing & banging on walls just to feel better about not having upstairs or downstairs neighbors to worry about.) finish with a super precious photo shoot with spouse to commemorate homeownership. decide that new house probably isn't completely broken in yet, & begin planning the next friend invasion.

sweet, sweet times in richmond.
we are so happy for our kindred spirits & their new adventure.

color run!

Amelia & I decided waaay earlier this year that running a 5k seemed like a really good goal to achieve, & that a 5k involving being pelted with colors seemed like the way to go. Amelia has long claimed rainbow as her favorite color, & I have long claimed running as the bane of my existence, so the obvious choice was skipping our way through a run that didn't involved being timed or you know, like, training & stuff. but we did it! we walked a little but we did it! & it was just happy & carefree & we high-fived people we didn't know A LOT. the color mosh pit at the end was definitely magical, although this is coming from someone who was smiling/laughing her way through every color station & ended up with brown teeth by the end of the race. This is the same runner who was coughing/sneezing/q-tipping color out of various orifices for the next 6 hours. Which is the same girl whose armpits & kneepits were stained navy blue for 48 hours. ... Who is the same blonde that rocked green, algae-like tips in her hair for the rest of the week. Totally. Worth. It.

& of course, where would we be without our biggest fans, who found us at the finish line sporting their Color Runner sweatbands, with added "Husband of A" flair. Husbands are cute. & please don't let it be lost on you that my race number ended in 143. Obviously a sign that I was the most in-love runner out there.

Obviously.