$5 Chipotle at Grace and Laurel!

The grand opening for the new Chipotle at the intersection of Grace Street and Laurel Street is tomorrow, June 11th, BUT- if you go between 5:00 - 8:00 p.m. TODAY all burritos, tacos, salads, etc are $5 and Chipotle is donating the ENTIRE $5 of your purchase to benefit the Byrd House Market and Grace Arents' Community Garden at the William Byrd Community House in Oregon Hill. Why wouldn't you help the community and get a delicious Chipotle dinner for only $5! Hope to see you there!

Looking for a Good Blog to Read?

I had no idea how many people blog and it's pretty amazing. I have luckily stumbled on quite a few good ones, but one of my favorites is  good friend from camp, M.R. (Mary Rennie) Rowe's blog: "All Things Fabulous: A Daily Reminder of All the Good Things in Life". It's a fun blog with posts ranging from personal experiences, hot fashion, not so hot fashion, funny clips, reviews of movies, etc. Check IT out!

Jet Set!

This first month of summer has been a little more than lonely. While I have been BEYOND busy, I have absolutely missed the contact of my MANY friends traveling abroad. E-mail and facebook messages or posts just aren't the same as phone conversations. Thankfully, a few of my friends have blogs so I feel a little more in touch with them.


Martha, my best friend from high school is studying in Spain right now! She has a wonderful blog that I check daily. She has been so good about posting pictures and telling about her experiences. She seems to be having a wonderful time- but I am gonna be a little selfish and say that I'm excited for her return as I miss our late night chats!


Sarah Paxton, my lifelong friend has been in France all semester. She's studying in Lyon at a French University. Talk about Jet Setting- Sarah seems to have gone EVERYWHERE in Europe. SO jealous. Luckily, she's been taking lots of notes for me for my trip to France at the end of the summer. (Sarah is in the middle of the picture)


Carly Dierkes, the sweetest girl to ever attend Camp Alleghany has been studying in Spain this past semester. I have loved facebook stalking her, she's been so great about posting fun pictures! The above picture is of her modeling in a fashion show!! She's on the far left- isn't she beautiful?


And Emily, my dear roommate, is studying in Peru! I've been keeping up with her blog- it sounds like she's having an amazing time. I think I might be the most jealous of Emily, given all of the amazing Peruvian textiles she's seeing in addition to how breathtaking Peru is supposed to be. Right now she's hiking the Inca trail up to Machu Picchu! I've been thinking about her a lot these past couple days- I can only imagine how amazing this experince is! (Emily won't be posting pictures until she returns home since she doesn't have her computer with her- but this is a picture of the salt mines, a place she visited)


And I can't leave out Paul, my buddy! He returned from China a few weeks ago. I haven't had a chance to talk to him about his experience yet but the pictures seem pretty amazing.

Sheesh! I have so many friends in so many amazing places! It truly is a wonderful thing. I can't wait to join the jet setter club!

Im Back, Really.

Sorry I disappeared again for several days. I headed home for William's high school graduation and to help my Mom work on the new house. It was so wonderful to be home. I must admit that I was pretty nervous about heading home to a new home, but it turned out to be great. When I walked into the house on Thursday afternoon, my first reaction was "we're having a party HERE, TOMORROW?!" but of course, my Mom pulled it off and the party was great. The few changes my mom has made on the house have really made such a difference and I am now super excited to head home and hang-out there!

As for William's graduation. It was really weird to see him walk across the stage and realize that he actually graduated! I couldn't be more proud of him but I feel old. This last trip home was definitely one full of nostalgia but wonderful at the same time. I have a feeling I will be tearing up I-64 West this summer- there's nothing like being home with your family.

A few pictures of the new house and William's graduation...

The layout is really open, so when you first walk in, you walk in to the living room and eating area, with the dining room immediately to your left and the kitchen to the right of the dining room (its tough to explain) but above are pictures of the openness.

The dining room is on the above left and the breakfast/eating area is on the above right. The paint on the shelves wasn't dry yet- stuff has since been put on them. (All of the flowers are from William's graduation party)



























The back sitting room, which will soon have a nice flat screen tv!






























Our deck! Aren't the views beautiful? We had to take a picture!

And for William's GRADUATION!!

































Mom and Willie, and then the BEST brothers in the world and I.




































Dad and Willie and then Willie proudly showing off his diploma so that Jayne could take a cell phone picture and send it to everyone in the family.

For some reason, I have been having trouble with formatting on this post. Oh well. Needless to say, I had a wonderful weekend! yay!

Let the Training Begin!

Last spring, my friend Holly and I registered and trained for a half marathon- until I got hurt. It was a huge bummer because we got to 8 miles and then my left calf decided it wasn't having it. SO- here we are again, one year later, and have decided to give it a second shot. Holly's boyfriend Nathan is an Iron Man and knows his stuff so he's going to make us a legit training schedule. Today was my first day of training with running 1 mile. I know it seems like a ridiculously short distance but I am taking this in babysteps. No injuries for me this time. I'm both excited and anxious, we'll see how it goes! Holly and I plan to run in the Richmond Half Marathon in early November- something I have always wanted to do... maybe next year we'll do the Marathon, depending on how this goes of course!

Willie is Graduating!

I can hardly believe that my middle brother William is graduating on Saturday! I'm excited to head home and celebrate with him and my family. Next year he will be living at my Dad and Jayne's house attending J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College. I'n super excited to have him in Richmond, I look forward to many fun times!

I'm Back

So I took a few days off because this weekend was crazy with Jeb and Mosby and I took yesterday to recover. I had a wonderful week with my two sweet boys, but am in no way ready to be a mom- not at this point. Their dad got home late Sunday night. I had to babysit yesterday morning 9-12 for a sweet little boy, Jack. We spent some time at the pool which was so much fun. I then grocery shopped and headed home to plop on the couch before a run- turns out I was REALLY tired... I got comfy on the couch around 2:00 and woke up at 6:00 pm. WOAH!I had no intentions of a nap- but I'm pretty sure I needed it. I hopped up and showered for Evan and I's date night- which was perfect!We got 8 1/2, the best Italian take-out in Richmond and snuggled on the couch all night. It was perfect, I really missed him last week!

I woke up this morning feeling rested and excited about life! Yay!

A Trip to the Dollar Tree

One of my favorite pastimes is going to the Dollar Tree with my Grandparents- Whenever they used to come visit they would take us to the Dollar Tree and let us pick out one thing each. I always looked forward to these adventures and choosing my item was always a big decision.

Yesterday, I decided to take Jeb and Mosby there to see if it was as wonderful as I remember. Jeb worked his negotiation skills to get two toys instead of one- yeah, I'm a pushover. It was hysterical watching the two boys pick out their toys. Jeb had a particularly hard time, he kept going back and forth between snakes, a T-Rex, and the classic army men, but eventually chose two snakes. Mosby was delighted by anything he picked up, but a waterfilled glittery, pink, green, and blue baton captivated him. The baton and a green race car were Mosby's two choices. Mosby quickly forgot about the race car and is now officially obsessed with his baton. He calls the baton "water"- I guess because of the water that fills it, and gets very upset when he puts it down or drops it. It's pretty hilarious.

The Dollar Tree trips absolutely proved to be as wonderful as I remember if not more- I loved watching the boys think about what to choose in an aisle full of random, crappy toys. Jeb has been begging me all day today to go back again.

Some More Art

Since I have been hanging out with two awesome kids all week, I have been reminded by why I have used them as both inspiration and subject matter in some of my past pieces.

I made this piece second semester of freshman year (Spring 2007). The assignment was to make a survival kit. I interviewed 3 year olds and asked them if they were going to be stranded on an island and could only take two things, what would they take. The responses I got were: chicken and lots of papers, grapes and stuffed animals, a football and ice cream cones, popcorn and snugglies. I used the childrens' responses as inspiration to make the survival kits. I then hung the pieces on hooks that you would find in a preschool at a child's height. This piece was so much fun!


A close up.

I made this piece for my furniture design class in the Fall of 2008. The chair itself is a puzzle for children. It is made up of four parts (the seat, backrest, and two sides) that come apart. I am still very excited about this idea, however I feel as though it needs some tweaking.

*please excuse the quality of the phototgraphs!

Life

It seems as though eveytime I babysit overnight for Mosby and Jeb something goes wrong with my car. Yesterday, as I was driving to work, I noticed that my car suddenly got VERY loud- it sounded like a race car- I get to work and realize my entire muffler "system" is three inches from the ground. Great. So I panick all during work about where to take my car, how to get it there since I had to go pick the boys up from school right after work, etc. Thanks to some help from people at work, I figured it all out. When the evening came and it was time to execute my plan to get my car, I called the neighbor who said she'd come watch the boys while I did what I needed to do. She said she'd be over shortly- two and a half hours and several unanswered phone calls go by and the neighbor is no where to be found.Ugh. At this point, its too late for my work friends to help me out so my friend Ashley comes to the rescue. At 8:30 (the boys bed time) I load them up into my race car and drive 20 minutes to the mechanic in the middle of nowhere. Once we finally get there, I do what I have to do, transfer the boys carseats and head back home with Ashley. We take I-64 home, and of course, our exit ramp is CLOSED- forcing us to go way out of the way. We finally get home close to ten. The sweet boys never complained once and slept peacefully in the car- they deserve a pizza night tonight!It all worked out in the end but I still have yet to hear from the neighbor- lessoned learned, do NOT flake out on people.

Emily Wright

I'm going to try to write more about artists that interest me and I thought I would post about my roommate, Emily Wright, because I LOVE her work. Emily is a wonderful roommate and very talented jewelry and textile designer. It has been fun to be an insider and see how she has grown over the past two years both in her concept and design. She really blossomed this past semester when she learned how to enamel. Her work is colorful and so much fun- not to mention she has an amazing eye for color! Emily brings textiles into her work in unique ways, always giving her pieces a freshness.

Em is leaving for Peru tomorrow and will be gone for a month- so today, she started a blog to write about both her artwork and her travels. I am very curious to see how this experience affects her jewelry and textiles. You should absolutely check out her blog to read about her travels and look at other work she has done!

Here are a few of my favorites...


This one is my absolute FAVORITE- i want to steal it and wear it everyday!


This one is pretty great too- it can be worn two different ways!


Emily also makes smaller versions of this one for $100- if you're interested, you should absolutely check out her blog.

I. Am. So. Tired.

Sheesh! I have babysat over night before but for some reason these two boys are draining me! They have so much energy making this experience that much more fun, but I am exhausted! I'm looking forward to sleep.