october backlogs: the state fair

Remember that time we almost died trying to go to the state fair?

Well, luckily, this trip was nothing like that! :)

We were thrilled to be going back to North Carolina for the state fair -- and not only we were going back, but we were going back with friends who went every year! NC natives!
This was exciting on many levels, but mostly because they knew where all the best fair food was. And fair food is the reason for fairs.

But let's back up a little bit -- our day actually started downtown.
We were leaving around lunchtime for the fair, so we had some time to kill -- and some other friends of ours, Jon and Emilie, had asked if we wanted to meet at White Hart that morning for some coffee and a trip across the street to the farmer's market. We happily agreed.
Little did we know it was all one big clever ruse to get us to White Hart.

As you know, our friends Allison and Greg had moved back to Illinois after graduating law school...

We walked into the coffee shop, and around the corner I saw Emilie and Jon at a table.
As we rounded the corner I spotted another friend from church, so I went over and gave her hug and started chatting - out of the corner of my eye I saw Dusty go over to Jon and Emilie's table, and I felt eyes on me.
That's when I saw Greg and Allison next to them!
It took me a really, really long time to compute what exactly was happening. I don't even think I said goodbye or "excuse me" before walking away from the girl I was talking to, mid-sentence. It was a very strange experience. But...but..you're in Illinois! But you're gone! What is happening!

They had moved back. Without telling us, without telling anyone really!
Greg had taken a job about an hour outside of Lynchburg, and they were officially back in our lives!

(As I'm writing this, they're currently back in Illinois -- they were here for almost exactly 3 months before deciding they needed to be back home, for good. But more on that later!)

After such a crazy and exciting shock, we were off to North Carolina! We promised to help them unpack and move in during the week, and left downtown in very high spirits.
We carpooled to NC with Colin and Victoria, and headed over to the fair!
We got there right as the sun was setting, and prepared ourselves for a perfect evening of lights, sights, and all-you-can-eat goodies.
Just a little bit of a life lesson, though -- don't drink too much liquid, and go to the bathroom before you get into the fair. State Fair port-a-potties are the devil.

It was such a fun night!
Hot french fries with vinegar, bloomin' onions, mini donuts covered in cinnamon and sugar, corn on the cob, chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick, fried cookie dough, more hot french fries with vinegar (they were my favorite), games, fireworks.

Just so you know, I didn't eat all that food. It was a group activity.

We also got to meet Victoria's sister Shelby, who joined us, and it was so much fun!
We walked around, toured the various exhibits, and Colin and Victoria held up their tradition of getting a button made with their photo on it. Victoria and her family have been doing it for years! To get the buttons made you go into this weird little button-clad gypsy shack, and we were a little worried they'd be taken by the gypsy inside. We told them to yell if they were stolen, or turned into chickens.
Dusty and I went a little ways away and were able to get a photoshoot in, and we went on our merry way! (The gypsy made them a button, but nothing more).
Eventually the boys got sucked into the tricky games that bleed you dry of all your cash. Specifically the fishing pole/bottle game, if you know what I'm talking about. Most fair-goers do.
You hold a fishing-type pole with a ring on the end, and your goal is to drop the ring around the neck of the glass bottle and pull it precariously upwards. If you're able to get it standing up, you win!

We didn't win.

But, who cares?
(hint: the boys did).

Still, it was a perfect night. We enjoyed being childish with our skipping and singing and smiling from ear to ear. 

The night ended with a fireworks show, and we wearily said farewell to the fair and all its glorious haunts. We waved goodbye to the gypsy, shuffled our feet into the night. It had been such a cool evening, a little drizzly at times, but sweet and autumnish.

Once out in the parking lot, we realized that the fair's many pleasures end pretty abruptly once you're out of there. Suddenly you become afraid of being mugged or killed in the dark alleyways, where you're forced to park because of the immense crowds.
Luckily we had been able to park fairly close, so we gave Shelby a ride to her car - which was a wise choice, because it was the sketchiest little backyard parking spot ever, and I'm pretty sure I saw evil eyes in the bushes. Or it was the bloomin' onion talking.

We headed out and went to our shared hotel room at the Red Roof Inn.
Once we got ready for bed, Dusty looked at me, holding the souvenir cup we had bought with that look in his eyes. Dusty has a weakness for souvenir cups. I'm not really sure why, but he has to keep them. It's a compulsion, a weird kind of collection. I finally said no, no, no, we do NOT need that because we have 500 Dickie's cups that you also have to keep (even though I keep secretly throwing the old ones out.)
Dusty acquiesced, then turned to Colin and Victoria and asked if they'd want to keep it.
Colin said "Noooo," right as Victoria meekly said, "Yes!"
It was then, after a lot of laughter, that we started to realize that Dusty and Victoria are the same person, and Colin and I are the same person.

We chatted a little longer and drifted off to sleep, looking forward to the next morning when we'd be touring Colin and Victoria's college campus!

Chapel Hill is kind of magical.

We started out the morning by grabbing breakfast at a cute little waffle shop on their main street. It's a really big, lush, active campus with a great line of shops and restaurants. It was actually a really chilly day, so it felt great to slide into a booth and order some waffles and hot coffee.

All the leaves were mid-change, and the sun was shining. It was a beautiful fall day.

We ended up getting more coffee down the street at Caribou Coffee before continuing our luxurious tour of Colin and Victoria's yesteryear. 

I'm not sure you could get any more different than our college campus experience. The brick, the hundreds of giant trees, the green.
We walked along and they told us tales of their years there, roommate stories and the perilous experiences of waking up late to class and managing to somehow sprint there in one minute flat. 

College is such a magical time. What's weird about making friends here/as an adult is that often you miss some of the most bonding experiences that you're used to having together. Things like high school, college, or weddings -- most of our friends from home we've either known our whole lives, or met in college. We've been in/at their weddings. 

Because most our friends here are already married and (obviously) out of college, this was an extra-special experience to be able to have a glimpse of what their lives were like when they were just dating, going to college and making all these memories.

And, for what has become a very typical thing for the four of us, we decided to set up the camera on a nearby bench in order to take ridiculous pictures.

(It turns out we're really, really awful at trying to time jumping).

Hehe.

Once we had finished our tour, we hit the road to head back home.
We stopped by Southern Season and shopped around a bit, because it's a pretty fun specialty department store. We sampled some cheeses and I filled a candy bag with gummy frogs, because they're my favorite and I can never find them anywhere. I think I finished the entire bag by the time we made it back.

Needless to say, it was the beginning of many more fun trips with Colin and Victoria. Or, Colinoria. 
It was a great North Carolinian weekend.

macaron-making

What do you do when you have the kind of friend who welcomes you into her perfectly manicured home with fresh nutty muffins, peach lavender jam and frothy espresso?

Obviously, you beg her to let you come over all the time. 

You also ask her to teach you how to make French macarons, because who else in your life knows how to make such a thing?

My friend Victoria and I enlisted Stephanie's help to tackle our first batch of macarons, because I knew she had made them before and we were craving them!

Stephanie had made them for Allison's baby shower earlier this year. 

Victoria and I have both recently been to Paris, and when she went in July she brought me back a box of Laduree macarons to my absolute delight. 

Ever since then, we've had macarons on the brain.

When we walked in, as mentioned above, there were muffins and jam and espresso waiting for us. 

Victoria and I both agree that Stephanie's house is the model for what we'd like our houses to be (when we grow up!). We had so much fun. 

By the by, this jam is heaven. 

It's my new favorite thing. Stephanie made it, and with lavender being one of my all-time favorite flavors, it blew me away. To a very happy place. A lavender peach place. 

She even gave us both little jars of it to take home with us!! The other day I generously slathered the inside of a honey oat pita pocket and chowed down for a snack. I'm not even sure I needed the pita.

(Check out the recipe here! She simply switched the fruit for peaches, added 1 1/2 tsp of dried lavender, and 1 tsp of vanilla extract instead of the vanilla bean. It's super easy and tastes amazing!)

First things first: eggs must be room temperature!
The kind of expert tips I was eager to learn.

Welcome to the age of high-tech cooking.

How cute is her hair?

Suffice it to say I merely watched, took pictures and ate jam and drank coffee while the real work was being done. Score.

We were so excited when the first batch came out of the oven!
The other things we learned were that you will ruin it if you overmix or undermix the batter, you have to drop the pan repeatedly onto the counter to release all the air bubbles from the batter, you have to let the batter puddles sit for 20-30 minutes before baking, and the dye lightens up a lot in the baking process so always put extra.

While the cookies baked, we sat around the table with some French press coffee and chatted.
As you can see, we did some major damage to the jam and muffins.

 I don't think the day could have been any better!

The macaron-madness was settling in.

 Incidentally, we all wore buns that day. Maybe it's a French thing!

You can check out the recipe we used for the macarons here! Yum!


Earlier that week Victoria and I had attempted making crepes, and we watched Ever After. She had never seen it (travesty) so we had a blast doing our best to make a passable nutella-holder, which is all a crepe really is.
It was almost as much of a French week as our actual week in France! And I loved it.
August has been a wonderful month!

coffee shops

I feel like even coffee-haters love coffee shops.
There's something really delightful about the coffee shop atmosphere.
It's imaginative, acoustic, mellow, warm, and smells amazing.

(Also, a lot of coffee haters still love the smell of coffee. Explain that.)

To love Starbucks is a given. It's the classic go-to.
But every once in a while, there's a coffee shop that was made for you. A real local treasure, the kind of place you could snuggle up into all day long and be perfectly, incandescently happy.
A place like Central Perk from Friends. 
In moments like those, in places like that, you could actually imagine that you're living the romantic life.

Yes, I am going to go and be a painter in Paris.
Yes, I'm going to teach art history in Italy.
Yes, I'm going to travel the world with nothing but my love, my backpack, and my sketchbook.

That's why coffee shops are so powerful, so necessary for the soul that is ever-hungering for romance and adventure and delight.
Also, coffee shops are powerful because they have coffee.

One of the best parts about moving here for Dusty's law school is that this community of people really cares about us. I was able to get plugged into the "Law Wives", which has been an amazing group of support, but has also been the source of most of my closest friendships.
Another great part about moving here has been the opportunity of exploration in our new home town!
So many rocks unturned, so many restaurants untried.

On the first of this month, we had a Law Wife trip over to Appomattox!
One of the new wives, Jessica, works at a coffee shop on Main Street, called Baine's Books and Coffee.

Photo from: Mid-East-Music.com

It's kind of magical.

Several of us carpooled and went down there together, and had such a fun night.
Every Thursday is open mic night, so there was a gathering of people there to sing and play their instruments for the whole place.
It's definitely a folksy, blue grass vibe, and it was the most fantastic mixture of people and styles.

This band was "Kinfolk", which is a local folk band featuring one of our law wives, Lisa Vogel!
It was really fun seeing them perform!

At one point, a lady went up there and played some indescribable Elven instrument (Kanun? Autoharp?) and began to yodel.
How often can you say you saw an elf yodel?

As unique as it all was, it was so wonderful to be a part of this entirely different world of people and music.
It was such a warm and cozy night, surrounded by friends, food and amazing coffee!

They make their own whip cream for their coffee, and it was divine.

I loved seeing/hearing our friends perform!
Our friend Caroline sang and played her guitar, and even joined Kinfolk on the banjo later on!

Jessica played the piano and sang - some of my favorites, like Fields of Gold by Sting. She was absolutely amazing! She finished her set with a song she composed herself, which was stunning.
(Check out her page, here, and listen to some of her compositions!)

One of the best parts of Baine's is that it shelves so much of the innate history of Appomattox.
There are rows and rows of books on the Civil War and the American South, but they also dedicate a lot of space for other genres as well.
They house books, music, film, pottery, art, musical instruments and more.

You can tell when you walk in that you're entering into a community.

 I hope to go back soon!

 If you ever find yourself in Appomattox, don't forget to spend some time on Main Street :)

In love,
Cait