Spring Break: Washington D.C.

It's so cool to me how we all grow, change and develop as we get older.
For me, if someone had told me ten to fifteen years ago that I would be spending my Spring Break vacation learning and reading as much as possible in various museums, I would probably be shocked. I mean, after all, the  best way to spend Spring Break is climbing trees or digging ditches!
(I was a desert tom boy).
So anywho. Husband and I decided last minute that we would take the opportunity to head on over to D.C. again for our first weekend of Spring Break. I don't actually get a break from work, but we figured we could go from Saturday - Sunday and enjoy some nice weather and some good food.
Boy, did we dream small!
We decided to invite a couple that we know from law school, Heather and Chris. To our delight, they were completely stoked to make the trip with us. The trip quickly evolved into an almost four day affair, from Friday night to Tuesday morning! Heather and I took Monday off of work, and we extended our stay to leave at 6am on Tuesday morning to roll into work as late as possible. :)
But I'm getting ahead of myself.

FRIDAY


We loaded up the car after work, and met at Chris and Heather's. They had offered to drive, since they just got a new car and I think Chris was eager to drive it around -- this was amazing for us, since we still needed to replace our tires and were in need of an oil change. (Don't worry, our tires were finally replaced last week!).
We started to figure out pretty quickly that the four of us were compatible travelers. We had the same agendas, and the same love of food and coffee.
We arrived late Friday night and couldn't wait to explore on Saturday!

SATURDAY


We woke up and headed into the city, and started the morning off right -- Starbucks. :)

We then headed on to Au Bon Pain, which is a delicious breakfast place. Both Heather and I got a smoked salmon bagel sandwich, with herbed cream cheese and wasabi! One of the most interesting breakfast things I've ever tasted. Unfortunately, I got in trouble for taking pictures...you know how protective they can be about their bowls...so I didn't venture to take a picture of the breakfast. But it was yummy!

Our sight-seeing plans for the day started out with Ford's Theatre.
It was a heavy-hearted tour for me, walking through Abraham Lincoln's last moments. It was incredible to read about Booth, and how he had really thought he was doing the right thing by ridding the nation of its president. So much so, that he was shocked that people didn't name him a hero for his wicked deed.
Something that stuck in my mind was that Abraham and Mary had been holding hands, right up to the moment that he was shot. Mary had been worried about what her young guest would think about them holding hands, and Abraham replied (as his last words): "She won't think anything about it."

We then crossed the street to the house where Abraham was taken after he was shot. It was the place where he actually died.

<-- This was the front room, where Mary would often sit with her children in between tending to her husband, and waiting at his bedside. Still gives me chills to think about.
This next picture is the room where he died. This plaque states that "President Lincoln died in this room at 7:22am on April 15, 1865."













I thought this was beautiful.
This excerpt is from a poem Walt Whitman wrote right after Lincoln's assassination.

Moving back into present day, (which is almost impossible in DC!), we began walking toward the Capitol to take a tour. Simply walking around this city is mesmerizing. There's just way too much to see, and you just lose yourself in it.

Our tour of the Capitol was really fun, we were hoping for something a little more in depth but there were still some incredible details and the art and architecture was so beautiful. I had never been inside before. Unfortunately my camera died inside :( so I only got the first part.

It was an audio tour. :)

This room was pretty amazing. I could have stayed in there much longer! The art on the walls and the details going all the way up to the ceiling were incredible to look at. I got lost in there!

Another fantastic part of being in the city at this time of year was the cherry blossoms!!
We were a bit early for the official cherry blossom blooming festival, but they were definitely beginning to bloom, and were so gorgeous!

We then headed to two fantastic museums in China Town.

 Never a dull moment in China Town!

Our first stop was the Spy Museum.
My not-so-professional opinion? Fun, interesting, but not worth the $20 a person...
We just did the regular tour, and there was also an option to pay a little extra and do a very interactive spy type mission in a specialized room in the building; it sounded like a full-on set! But we were a little too tired for that. So maybe we would've liked that one better.
But our next stop, the Crime & Punishment museum, was fantastic! We had a blast.

This man was NOT being very helpful.

This was TED BUNDY'S car.
His actual car!
Talk about a weird thing to be standing near! Creepy. 

The museum started out with Medieval Torture and crimes of days long gone. It moved up through Piracy, and then to the days of Jesse James and other outlaws!

 It was also really interactive at each stage.
Dusty and I had a gun fight; we tied. :)
It reminded me of playing the gun arcade game in Disneyland!

They also had the story of Bonnie and Clyde, as well as the car they used in the original movie!
I gotta say, their story was quite upsetting to me.
They were brutally shot down without warning or attempted arrest while driving in their car, hundreds and hundreds of bullets...and Bonnie wasn't even wanted for anything, as there was no proof she had actually participated in any of the crimes. She had never even been known to carry a gun. Clyde was killed instantly in the shooting, but she was alive for a while.

Testing out his mug shot poses.

How to escape from jail!
(Chris crawled through from the other side and scared the bejeezus outta me!)

The crazy real gun simulator, where you have to open fire on an armed perp!

 The CSI center.

It was a great day!
I gotta say, I could barely walk at the end of it. :)
All this desk-job stuff is making me weak, I tell you!

SUNDAY


I was really anticipating this day.
We decided to make the drive out to Mount Vernon. It was such a beautiful day! Again, we started it out right, with some coffee...this is basically just how we roll.

Coffee in one hand, smoothie in the other. I think this may be the best smoothie I've ever had. It was blueberry based, with almonds and whey protein...oh my word, it was good. I want another one. One sip dirty chai, one sip smoothie...one sip dirty chai, one sip smoothie...

We all decided that we'd totally live there.

It was awesome to get to tour the house, and see what it must have been like to live there when it was in its prime. The house had almost gone to complete ruin, but was saved by an association of women who didn't want such a beautiful and historical property to go to waste. So while it wasn't entirely original, they really did their best to restore it to its original state. It was beautiful.

The water stretched out behind the house, and there were gardens and lots of animals!

Namely, sheep. I love sheep.

They also had the most adorable little piglet babies. Probably the cutest I've ever seen!
I wanted to take one home, except...in the case of pigs, the children always turn out just like their mother. Sigh.

We were also able to walk down to the place where both Washington and his wife were buried. That was a lovely, quiet place.
The whole experience was pretty surreal.

Walking through Mount Vernon's museum, I learned a lot about his life.
I had no idea that he died, essentially, of a cold. He had been working for 5 hours in the cold, wet sleet, and went on in to dinner without even changing out of his wet clothes. No one thought anything of it...especially Washington, who said "you know I never take anything for a cold. Let it go as it came."
He died only two days later.
If only they had access to antibiotics, they could have probably prevented his death. They speculate that he died of epiglottis, which slowly suffocated him.

We ended the night by driving back and heading into DC, and taking a night tour of the monuments!
It was a gorgeous evening. It was quiet, and the streets were relatively empty!
It was quite peaceful.

MONDAY


This was our day to head back. We had originally planned to take off around 7pm.
However, the more the day passed, the more we wanted to stay!
We were staying with some long-time friends of my husband's family, and they had been out of town for most of it. They had gotten home late Sunday night, so we really wanted a chance to see them before we came back. So that's when our plan evolved into staying one more night, so we could meet them for dinner and have some more city time!

Our morning began with (Starbucks, duh) the Supreme Court building.

Our lawyers!

Gorgeous day!

It was pretty cool to go and see the courtroom! Liberty's law school has a pretty spot-on replica, so it was pretty cool for the boys to see the real thing!

Meanwhile, us girls were just there to look pretty. :)

We then headed out to do a few key spots. For Dusty and I, it was the Natural History Museum!
Boy, we need to go and dedicate a whole day just to that place. It is insanely huge, and there is way too much information to gather in one run-by. We focused our small amount of time on the Ocean, Dinosaur, and Gem areas. :)

I had really wanted to see the Hope Diamond. People were crammed around this stone! I wish you could see the bright color, and the level of intense sparkle that it had...this picture doesn't nearly do it justice.

My favorite was probably the set of Emerald gems.
Holy moley, these things were fantastic.
I would legitimately wear this.














Heather and Chris had gone ahead to another museum, so Dusty and I took a deep breath and plopped down onto a bench along the mall. It was such a beautiful day. Dusty (because he's a gentlemen, and he's great) went over and grabbed two lemonades for us. I just sat there, watching squirrels jump from tree to tree. It was such a happy moment.

And lastly, for most definitely the highlight of our trip (for me at least!) we rented some Capital Bikeshare bikes and rode them all the way to Georgetown! It's such a cool system. There are bike docks all around the city, and you pay $7 to rent a bike for 24 hrs. Each time you take a bike out of a dock, you have 30 minutes of free riding time. As long as you place it in any dock around the city within 30 minutes, (and then check it out again by swiping your card), you can ride for free the rest of the day! We couldn't have asked for more beautiful weather, and the ride down there was lovely. A great trip.

Georgetown was a pretty fun place!
I love all the brick everywhere on the east coast. It's rather fabulous.
It was quaint, and there seemed to be a lot of cool (and expensive) stores and restaurants all around!
Despite the fact that we got bombarded by cusses and insults by some random guy (some of which were "You're lame! You're bland!" among other things...), we had a really nice time there!



We even got to go to Dean & Deluca :) which, as those of you that watch Felicity will understand, was pretty fun for us! It wasn't just a coffee shop though, it was a gorgeous food mart.

The coffee center :)

Our trip was fantastic.

Tuesday morning we awoke VERY early to get on the road, and we went back to normal life.

I miss the daily Starbucks, and definitely wish we could be back there enjoying the weather and the food and...well, even though our money ran out it was totally worth it.

I hope you've enjoy this long and hefty blog post -- there is more to come!

Stay tuned for an entirely FOOD dedicated D.C. post, detailing our most extravagant exploration of the finest and most delicious culinary finds in the D.C. area. :)

In love,

Cait

Spring a la Ruche

I love floral.
The only thing I may love more than floral is leopard, but that's mostly because of my childhood fashion, which I must say, was way ahead of its time. :)
I absolutely love the trends this Spring. As you may remember, I posted some of my newest loves from Ruche, which has become my hot spot for daydreams.
My beloved husband surprised me a few weeks ago by snatching up two of my favorites that were about to be sold out!
I'm absolutely in love with this dress.
1.) It's fantastically comfortable
2.) It's floral
3.) It's MINT.

I'm also so happy that I snatched up this pair of shoes from Target, which were on sale for $9 over Christmas break!
While it's starting to warm up around here, it was still a bit chilly in the mornings and evenings so I paired my dress and shoes with some brown tights.

Mint is probably my favorite thing about the trends this Spring. Ruche has capitalized on the Mint trend, and has some of the most adorable things. I love the color combination of this floral print!

All that to say, I'm absolutely thrilled I've found a boutique that I love. It has kind of re-inspired me to invest more in my wardrobe, and get the most out of what I already have!
I feel like it's really easy to fall into a rhythm of clothing laziness. After getting married and moving away, and settling into a rather stationary desk job, I haven't been putting a lot of effort into what I throw on in the morning. I usually gravitate to the same comfy pants and baggy cardigan. Sad, I know.
But with a budget in hand, and so many wonderful ideas, I love the feeling of saving up for something that I really want and looooving it when I'm finally able to get it. :)

Lastly, this pair of earrings is one of my favorites. I wear these all the time, and every time I reach for them I fall back in love with them. :)
They're from one of my favorite jewelry shops, Chelsea Girl Designs on etsy.
Her earrings are to die for. So vibrant and unique. While I love everything I've ever gotten from her, these pink droplet earrings are by far my favorite.

Yay for Spring!

And hop on over to Ruche -- they're having a sale until the 18th ;)

15% of all sale items with "SaleSale15" as the coupon code!

xoxo

In love,

Cait

rosemary

....bread. Mmmm, bread. Rosemary bread.

Oh, drat. I don't have any yeast!!

Muaha. Lucky for me, I am able to capitalize on both my hunger, laziness, and efficiency (and what they call the world wide web!).

May I present to you, a yeast-less and yet delicious (and ridiculously easy, therefore me likey), rosemary bread recipe!

Popeye and Olive-Oil

delicious Rosemary bread

I think Rosemary is one of the most delicious flavors in the world. 

In August, when we went to DC, we ate at this fabulous restaurant called Good Stuff Eatery that served Rosemary and Thyme french fries. I'm not sure I've ever had such a wonderful fry flavor combo. Totally at the top of my YUM list.

This recipe is so easy. Took me about 10 minutes to throw the ingredients together, and then 55 minutes to bake. And it is SO GOOD. 

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons dried rosemary
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 3/4 cup sweet white wine or apple juice
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350° F. Spray your chosen bread pan with cooking spray. I used a nice round pan, which worked great. 

2. In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients (flour, sugar, walnuts, baking powder, rosemary, and salt).

3. In a separate bowl, lightly whisk the eggs and add in the white wine and olive oil.

4. Slowly add the egg mixture to the bowl of dry ingredients, mixing well.

5. Pour the bread batter into your bread pan, and bake for 55 minutes, or until golden brown (and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean!). 

And you're done!

Delicious, seasoned and nutty bread for your next soup dinner, or afternoon snack, or even breakfast. :)

And all from things you (well, I) probably already had in your pantry!

It was nice to finish off the last of my cooking white wine, as well as the olive oil. I love being able to use up things in my pantry, and not let things go to waste :)

It was also game night last night.

We've been playing some fun word games online, and so both of us were hankering for some real-life Scrabble!

I used to be the word master in this marriage, but I think law school has really given Dusty the upper edge -- it was a really close game, the whole way through! Our finished board was nuts, with words like "bema" and "veeps". What in the world??

I still managed to snag the win, but my hubby had me on my toes :) we'll have the championships later, I'm sure.

I'm so happy it's Friday. This weekend will be a lot of fun, with a movie night tonight, another game night with some friends tomorrow, and church and relaxation on Sunday. :)

In love,

Cait

P.S. Oh -- and don't forget. There's a very special holiday coming up this month :) we've got festive salt shakers to prove it...