Weekend Basics

Not sure about you, but it's been a pretty dreary string of days here in Richmond — lots of cloud cover, rain and general bleakness:

 

Days like these make us want to hibernate at home under the throw blankets, which we did a great deal of over the weekend — Sunday Football and The Walking Dead anyone? You know who was right there to keep us company and show us how it's done best:

Outside of lazing it up, we did make it out to the West End for a little shopping and eats.

While in Pottery Barn, Mary explained that snapping pics of things she liked helped her remember what to look up online once back home. Am I the only husband who's wife snaps "inspiration" pics while out shopping?

...or daydreams about the day I'll have a leather chair to watch the game in? No shame.

One of my quirks is thinking about food — all the time. Since we were in the West End, I knew it would be the perfect opportunity to stop in for the Duck Hot Pot at Peter Chang's:

Peter Chang's is one of our favorite spots to eat lunch, but we're rarely on that side of town, so it was a good fix and timely given the cooler, wet weather. The hot pots come out steaming, spicy and sizzling — see it in action here!

In the project department, we've been working to test and shoot a Halloween cocktail for an upcoming collaboration we're excited to share more about soon:

And I was able to finally expose the full brick chimney in Brandon's room — we're looking like this right now:

It's good progress and we're looking forward to sharing the full project post in our eHow series later this month.

We also dropped in on a surprise going away party for our friend who is moving to Hawaii for the year — we hung out in the back room at Pearl's Raw Bar, where by the looks of the EAT marquee sign, they must have know I was coming, ha:

One of the parting gifts was this VA Home pillow we all signed:

Mary and I thought this was such a clever gift idea and didn't think to ask where it was purchased, but found a similar home state style here. While searching, we also came across this creative pillow idea for similar adventurers. It reminded us of when Mary ventured out almost 8 years ago, moving to NYC and just how far we've come since. Sometimes it's those big life adventures that make such an impact moving forward.

To close out the weekend, we watched the season premiere of The Walking Dead. I happily place blame on my son, Brandon, for getting us hooked on watching this show. We'd caught up to the current season, so had fun watching the newest episode last night while texting B at JMU — how many other Dads do you know that use snapchat to communicate with their kids (and have such controlled writing skills, ha)?

It was a fun way to close out the weekend and an interesting reminder of how accustomed we've become to being able to watch TV series on our own time. It wasn't until we caught up to the current season that we'll have to wait week by week to see the next episode. Are you a fan?