A Weekend With the Girls

My favorite people were in town to visit us this weekend! 😀

From left to right, those are my friends KJ, EmPri, and Becca! I’ve known these ladies since age 12 (they’ve known each other even longer!) and there’s no one I’d rather be hanging out with. 🙂 We all went to junior high school and high school together in Atlanta, and after all these years it just so happens that the three of them found themselves in D.C. and here I am in Virginia! Which is great because we’re all close enough for awesome weekend visits like this one (and you may remember this one, or this one, or this one). I started Saturday morning off making everyone a nice hefty breakfast of whole wheat buttermilk waffles, cheese grits, kielbasa sausage, and mixed berries.

Then we headed out on the town visiting some of the best establishments the ‘Burg has to offer, which included a local beer tasting…

…a stop at an awesome little Spanish foods store…

(this stop was near and dear to EmPri’s heart because she lived in Spain and really misses it!)

…and of COURSE lunch at The Cheese Shop. Obligatory. No need to ask why.

I reunited myself with my favorite beverage (I stopped buying cases of this stuff for home because they’re so pricy, I’ve switched to plain sparkling water but it’s nowhere near as good :P)…

…and others of us had more adult beverages.

After a day full of action we headed back home and I got started on dinner for everyone. Becca even took pictures of me while cooking–now there’s a perspective that you guys never get to see!

On the dinner menu was Chicken with Wine Sauce (a recipe from Jason’s mom…SO GOOD):

Roasted carrots:

Santa Monica Salad (I copied that amazing salad I had at Eppie’s in Charlottesville…spinach, corn, tomatoes, dates, goat cheese, champagne vinaigrette):

And we also enjoyed a loaf of fresh bread that I picked up at the Spanish store.

It was a pretty good dinner if I do say so myself! I ate my fill for sure.

And the next morning I made us all breakfast again (can you tell that I kinda like cooking for people a little bit? no? can’t tell?)! On the menu this time was a spinach, sun-dried tomato, and smoked cheddar frittata (variation of my recipe here), buttermilk biscuits, and mango and greek yogurt parfaits.

With tummies full from breakfast, us girls left the Lawfully Wedded Husband at home to enjoy his crime shows and headed to the outlet mall! Not sure if I’ve mentioned it before but I literally live next door to a huge outlet mall, which is both an amazing and awful thing as I’m sure you can imagine. But for company it’s always great because everybody loves a good deal and it’s so convenient to have the mall so close. My budget doesn’t really allow me to do any shopping right now, but the girls definitely got some great deals and did some good damage. 😉

The most exciting part of the day was definitely the Kate Spade store, which involved a calculated pre-visit yesterday and then an intense decision-making visit today. Emily has been considering one of thier bags for a long time, but of course the investment can’t be taken lightly. It was a tough one.

But she made a great decision and got the beautiful bag of her dreams for a steal!

Jason totally despises shopping so it’s fun to be around girls for a change who understand how fun it really is!

See how much fun Becca had???

And of course shopping works up a good apetite so we went straight to lunch at Aroma’s afterward.

And apparently I’ve taken a liking to portraiture. I had way too much fun taking pictures of these ladies. I never really take pictures of people, just food…but I should start taking more! We may or may not have had a few amatuer fashion shoots. I have pretty friends, they need their pictures taken!

They may all kill me for posting so many pictures of them. You may kill me too because right now you’re thinking “I’m not seeing a recipe in here…just beautiful women.” Well no need to complain, recipes will be forthwith as usual. But I like to share the life in between the recipes, too. And I had a “Life is great!” weekend with my best girlfriends which I am happy to remember through these pictures.

Thanks for reading!

-Lauren (aka fashion/portrait photographer…I’ll start at $500 an hour…call me)