Visitors! Part 1.

My aunts and mother came to visit me in Richmond this past weekend. Mom has been lots of times but it was Auntie M and Aunt K’s first time. They stayed at the Crown Plaza in Shockoe Slip (it’s quite nice) and we spent Friday night, Saturday, and most of Sunday together. These ladies are fun, folks. They look almost like triplets and each one has a completely different personality.  They have raised 20 children between the 3 of them and know so much about so much. Topics of conversation covered over the weekend included: child birth, labor and delivery, AIDS, Paris, art and little known artists, churches, divorce,  racism, food, fashion, appropriate wedding attire, Osama Bin Laden and midwives.  I just love them.

The ladies.

Here’s a bit of what we did and few pictures.

1. Talked and talked and talked. They have endless amounts of stories and I never get tired of hearing them.

2. Saw the VMFA’s Picasso exhibit. Everyone enjoyed it. Even after seeing it 6 times, I am sad that the exhibit is now done. Over 200,000 people ended up coming to see his work. Did they count me once or six times? Naturally we had to visit the gift shop post-Picasso and had a grand time reading the children’s books and shopping (the aunts are fantastic shoppers). Sidenote: I learned Picasso was 5’3, like me.

3. We left the Picasso exhibit starving (despite eating breakfast, so weird) so as I had hoped to, we went to Sprout–a terrific little farm-friendly/totally local place in the Fan (a neighborhood in Richmond). We shared a mimosa and everyone got the veggie sausage sandwich. And it was good.

4. We shopped and shopped. We stuck to Carytown and the great shops and boutiques that it posts. We ended up having the most luck at Clementine, an upscale, trendy consignment shop. Collectively, we found a bunch of new tops and, the find of the day, a gorgeous summer Eddie Bauer for just $39!

Pearl, a summer trench coat, and gold jewelry: classy!

Other stores we visited included Hip to be Round, Eurotrash (DROOL. MEGA DROOL. Way too many beautiful things), and Bygones. Did we all try on 1920′s flapper dresses? Yes. Yes, we did.

Auntie M in a gorgeous, bead encrusted purple flapper dress. Check out the neck detailing.

I think every wardrobe needs one of these.

Going to post more but in separate posts. Thanks for reading.

Recap.

I have sort of been really really out of the fashion/style/ everything else loop due to some school projects and related deadlines etc. I haven’t even read The Sartorialist in like 3 days, that’s how disconnected I am. Don’t even get me started on my blogs stats- they are so bad I could weep. Yep, weeping.

I did however  hear that there was a great big magical wedding.

Wrong wedding. But look at the differences in gown choices/style...

I think Kate makes a stunning Dutchess.

And, on a completely different note, a couple nights ago while standing in the cold around 1:30 am during an apartment fire alarm (no it was not a drill. Thanks for not emptying your dryer lint neighbors), I learned that Osama Bin Laden had been assassinated.  Not sure if it’s worth noting but during this time I had a massive allergy fit which  always makes me a real princess to be around. Yeah, that probably didn’t add anything to the story.

Anyway, it has been both interesting  and disturbing to hear everyone’s reactions on Twitter etc. I find a lot of the reaction pretty annoying and people who are otherwise kind, civil, and compassionate (well, as far as I can tell on Facebook) sound like bloodthirsty guerrillas. Fascinating. And really disturbing.  I want to add that I certainly understand that this is a complicated issue. I don’t pretend to have the perfect reaction. I  can imagine it  brings many people a certain amount of relief knowing he is gone. I wonder if some of the victims and families of victims wish he could have been brought to justice and tried for his crimes…

did I just blog about the royal wedding and OBL’s death in the same post?