Weekend Basics

My daughter, Stephanie, turned 21 yesterday — where has the time gone?

She told us for her birthday, she'd love us to come see her at JMU and take her out for brunch, so that's exactly what we did. My parents, Mary and Brandon all hopped in the car and drove through the VA mountains on such a pretty day until we made it to Stephanie's apartment in Harrisonburg. Her roomates and friends had decorated the space the night before for her birthday.

We took her out for brunch and she decided on a single mimosa to go with her meal:

A couple family shots:

Then we walked through the historic part of Harrisonburg for a little bit — and stopped to write on the chalkboard:

After taking her back to her apartment, we hopped back in the car and headed back to Richmond. It's still hard to believe Stephanie is 21, and I couldn't be a prouder dad.

In related good news, Brandon was accepted to JMU and has decided it's going to be the university for him! So, we'll be making even more trips up to see them both of them. There goes that proud dad thing again.

Early Saturday morning we did get up and out early to take advantage of the start of the "picking season." We hit up a couple estate sales and a church sale where we scored some fun vintage finds we'll share on the blog later this week — here's a little preview:

We also pulled out the crowbar and a few cans of spray paint for a new DIY project we've had in the works for a few weeks:

Mary claimed the yellow spray paint spatters on her nails looked like a happy accident in the nail art department. Hazard of the job.

We're looking forward to sharing more details about this project early next week. Until then, check out this shot of Mary I snuck in while she was getting the shot:

Kinda funny seeing the other side of the camera, yes?

On the food front, we kept things light since we had so many things going on this weekend. That didn't stop me from whipping together a fresh spring salad with roasted chickpeas and shaved asparagus:

Look for the recipe publishing this week in a guest post for Lot 18.

We also squeezed in time to watch Zero Dark Thirty (finally!) and the long anticipated return of Mad Men's Season 6. Did you watch too? What did you think?