quick catchup

this past weekend, i made a very quick visit to northern virginia and dc to meet patrice's baby, virginia mae.  she is so precious, and it was really fun to spend time with them!  she and jeff are both so great with virginia and seem like naturals at the whole "doing life with a baby" thing.  hopefully, whenever billy and i have kids, we'll step into those roles as seamlessly as they have! 

on my way to patrice and jeff's, i stopped by felicity's house to deliver her long-overdue wedding gift, so it was great to see her new place and visit for a little while. 

precious baby virginia :)

that afternoon, patrice and i visited some antique shops in leesburg, which was so fun!  first, we hit up german favorite antiques, which is in the super cute downtown leesburg area.  we browsed around and saw lots of interesting things, but left empty-handed.  i was really hoping they would have some antique terrier decor, but i'll keep looking :)  next, we headed to the old lucketts store, which is a few miles outside of leesburg.  it was such a cute shop, and we loved lots of things they had.  and they also had some weird things, such as this cow-hair-covered dresser that patrice got a picture of :)  she and i both left with a little something - she got a really cute hook with a bird on the top to hang in virginia's room, and i got a wooden "c" that i am working on figuring out where to place in our house.  certain letters, such as c, don't stand up quite as easily on shelves as other letters, so i'm thinking about doing an arrangement of photos going up our staircase and including the c in that.  i have some leftover paint from my christmas frame project (which i still need to blog about), so i may paint the c.  i was originally going to hang it over our bed, either above or in between a couple of pictures we took in italy, but that idea got vetoed by my husband (who tends to have a better sense of space and color than i do).  i think the stairway photo arrangement will be great though, as i've been wanting to try that out for awhile!  so, getting back to my trip, we also checked out the beekeeper's cottage, which is right next to lucketts, before heading back.  it was really nice, with beautiful furniture, linens, accessories, etc. 

that night, we hung out at patrice and jeff's house, drinking mojito-ish drinks and eating fajitas, which she so smartly made in mass quantity to freeze for meals over the next few weeks (see her mass-quantity-cooking blog post here :) ). and we watched "the queen" before heading to bed.  it was an interesting movie, and i had no idea about the queen's not-so-great relationship with princess diana.  speaking of the royals, i am very excited about the royal wedding coming up in a month!!

did NOT expect to see this when i walked to my car sunday

the next morning, i woke up to a snow-dusted car and headed into dc for a walk and breakfast with ann, so that was really fun to catch up with her as well.  when i visit her, we usually stop by the dupont circle farmer's market, since it's a 2-minute walk from her apartment, so i picked up some fresh brussels sprouts there.  i'm excited to cook them this week - probably will roast them with a little olive oil and kosher salt - yum!  we visited for a couple of hours, so that was really nice!!

farmer's market in dupont circle

and, i was back in suffolk before 3, making it a very quick trip (about 30 hours, including 7+ in the car).  it was great to see my sweet friends but also nice to get back to my guys here :)