The temperature this past week has been almost 80 degrees everyday. Doesn’t Mother Nature know it is fall? Speaking of Mother Nature, do we really need a hurricane this weekend? Oh well, at least the warm weather gave us one last opportuntiy to enjoy the felling of summer and to reminisce about one of my favorite late summertime meals.
Friday Favorites: On the Menu – Soft Shell Crabs.
One of my favorite meals as summer draws to a close is definitely soft-shell crabs! Living in the heart of the Chesapeake Bay region gives us access to some amazing seafood! One of our favorite restaurants, Woodberry kitchen, makes one of the best soft-shell crab dishes, but being a chef at heart, I recently decided to try making my own with fresh crabs from our local market. If you are lucky, you might be able to pick up a few soft shell crabs for another week or two but get them quickly before they are gone.
Ok, Ok… I know it might seem crazy to eat a sandwich with claws hanging out from the bun, but trust me, the crispy fried flavor of a soft-shell crab is AMAZING. Add some lettuce, tomato and a slice of pancetta and you are looking at a 5 star sandwich! If you are lucky enough to find a few crabs this weekend at the market or grocery store, hold onto them until Tuesday, when we will be sharing how I made this tasty little sandwich.
Until then. What is your favorite crab inspired dish?
Happy Friday and cheers to the start of the weekend! One of our favorite ways to spend Friday evening is to turn the lights down, the sound up, and cuddle tight while watching a new movie. And that brings us to this week’s Friday Favorites.
Friday Favorites – Date Night – Cuddling and a movie:
As the sun starts to set a little earlier and the air begins to dip into the 40’s and 50’s in the evenings, there is nothing better than renting a movie from Redbox (We have 3 within walking distance to our house!!! Ok we may be a little spoiled living in the city), squeezing each other tight under our cozy Pottery Barn blanket, and enjoying a relaxing evening on the couch. I prefer action movies but Liz usually wins out with the latest romantic comedy, even though she always falls asleep on my arm within the first 10 minutes! Hey, a happy wife = a happy life!
To celebrate another great week of an AMAZING life, we will be giving away a gift card to Redbox to help you have your very own date night! Just tell us your favorite movie below and be sure to like us on Facebook. We will randomly choose a winner next Monday! Have a great weekend!
This month, we will be out and about a lot! Life is taking us on an adventure and we could not be more excited to be able to share these adventures with you all!
This past weekend, we found ourselves on a road trip to North Carolina and back, with a detour in Charlottesville, VA. As we made our way to NC, we made the conscious decision not to rush. We always find ourselves with a schedule packed full and when traveling, we always have it in our heads to just get there! As much as we were super excited to get to NC to visit with my cousins on Friday!!!, we realized that life is all about the adventure and sometimes we just need to slow down!
Soon enough we found ourselves in Durham, NC surrounded by some of our favorite people ever! ;) Our cousins (Tony, Mike, and Matt- all three that live in NC!!! WAHOOO!), Brooke (the ever fabulous Brooke of Brooke and Tony! ;) ) and Michael’s super fun girlfriend Jessie! We enjoyed an evening full of southern food… including fried pickles… and cupcakes too! Awesome.
Recently, we have found ourselves getting super excited about the thought of repurposing old things to make them new again! So, we woke up on Saturday morning and Brooke and Tony took us on an antiques store adventure! Every once in awhile we have found ourselves in antique stores oooing and awwing over the fun little treasures we see. But, to be totally honest with you, most of the time they just overwhelm us! ;) Until Brooke and Tony took us to one of their secret finds in the Raleigh area, Revival Antiques. Before we even stepped foot in the store I was drooling over the piece of furniture I saw through the window. That should have been my first sign to stay outside, right?! ;) But life is all about the adventure! And thinking about how we would get said piece of furniture in our car to take back with us is just a fun challenge among the adventure! ;) Unfortunately, we found way too many things in that store that we wanted to bring home with us…. including a whole warehouse of unfinished old furniture that was just looking for a little TLC! Fortunately though, it did revitalize our faith in antique stores and made us realize that we just have to find the store that fits our rustic chic style!
After a few stops along the way, we made our way to Winston Salem for Darcy and Patrick’s engagement session! More on that goodness to come tomorrow!! ;) But they shared Wake Forest with us and we always love exploring college campuses- especially when they have a resemblance of Bucknell! ;)
On Sunday, we started our day off with a fabulous home-cooked breakfast by Tony and Ryan! As you may have seen on Instagram, I am afraid that I almost lost my role as Ryan’s sous chef! Tony is all about the idea of measuring the pancake batter out to make sure all of the pancakes are the same size and shape!! :( Ugghh… ;) Seriously, I was very close to losing my job! ;) After a super tasty breakfast, and granola bars in hand (thanks Brooke!), we were on the road again. Destination Charlottesville, VA!
Ohh my goodness I had no idea what amazingness was ahead! We actually never made it into Charlottesville itself… but we wandered our way through the back roads stopping at little farms along the way to our final destination Veritas Vineyard & Winery! Our couple, Amanda and Bobby, shared their excitement for this amazing place, but nothing prepared me for it! I seriously think I found my new favorite place ever! It kind of ranks up there with Disney World- and that takes a lot! :)
We will be sharing Amanda and Bobby’s incredible engagement session with you all soon!!! But in the meantime… we just have to share this picture of the chandelier in their special event space. Rustic Chic at its finest! But that is like the thing that I like the least about that place! ;) haha! (Does that tell you anything?!?! IT IS AMAZING!) Lets just say- we walked in and it screams LOVE! I will leave it at that until we share Amanda and Bobby’s Engagement Session! You won’t want to miss it!
In the meantime… if you know anyone who wants to get married at a Vineyard or just wants to have photos taken of a fun adventure at one of the most magical places ever… please call us! We would love any excuse that takes us back to Veritas Vineyard & Winery!
Or on that note… we would love any excuse that takes us on a fabulous journey to explore new fabulous places!!! So grateful for the opportunity! Next up… New England! ;)
We LOVE to travel and our October is probably one of our craziest travel months this year. We have already been to the Eastern Shore for an extended weekend wedding (more to come on this later today), we are currently preparing to head down to North Carolina and Virginia for two fun engagement sessions, and then later this month we head up to New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut! With all of our recent travel, we have had to become pretty adept at working from road. Or as I like to call it “our mobile office.” Which brings us to this week’s installment of Friday Favorites.
Friday Favorites – Out and About – Kelly Moore Thirst Relief Bag:
We are out and about a lot so having a mobile office is a must. The Kelly Moore Thirst Relief Bag makes it easy for us to do just that. Wether its sitting in the airport, at a coffee shop, or in our car, it is essential that we have everything we need to edit photos, write blog posts, and run our business. With the Kelly Moore Thirst Relief Bag we can fit our iPad, 15” Macbook Pro, 2 portable hard drives, Food and Wine Magazine, iPhones and several Lara Bars inside with ease.
Not only is this bag super practical, but the proceeds from sales of the bag helps provide a lifetime of clean drinking water for up to four people via Thirst Relief International. Get your very own bag here and save four lives!
At times we felt like we were in the middle of nowhere… but strangely had a comfortable feeling of home. As we drove down the dirt road that our phones guided us down, we drove straight towards a farm. Like, a legit farm, that looked like it was producing all of the milk or all of the grain for the whole Eastern Shore. We looked at each other and started to worry that we definitely were on a private road leading to this farm. But, we kept going because that is what our phones told us to do. As we got closer and realized that in fact the road took us directly through the farm, two dogs and a friendly gentleman came out to greet us! The old man looking like he had been working on the farm for 70 years straight without a break gave us a friendly wave and went about his day.
The fears of being shot at because we were trespassing quickly went away and we started to feel like we were right at home again! ;) Everywhere we turned was a beautiful picture worthy scene. I found myself pointing and just stopping in my tracks to take it all in!
We were on the Eastern Shore last week for an AMAZING wedding weekend! While we were there (in between Molly & Adil’s wedding weekend activities) we definitely took some time to soak it all in. Between driving through the rolling fields in farm country, to strolling through the gorgeous downtown of small town Easton, to taking in the beautiful beautiful beautiful waterfront views in Oxford and enjoying an absolutely perfect sunset picnic… we had quite an AMAZING few days on The Eastern Shore! As we enjoyed a pumpkin spice latte (that was totally worth a thousand bucks) at a cute coffee shop in Easton, we dreamed of a future that would continue to leave us surrounded everyday with moments of awe in the company of amazing people!
We look forward to many many more adventures to the Eastern Shore in our near future! (More to share soon from last weekend, but we could not end this post without a HUGE thanks to Molly & Adil and their amazing families who made us feel like family! and to Ann and Gary, our hosts, for making us feel at home!) We are so grateful!
