Tha Weekend

That was mostly my weekend in outfit photos. I love when the weekend comes. It’s when I REALLY get to express myself in clothing, because the rest of the week I’m in pencil skirts and blouses (NOT. FUCKING. ME). I can’t wear two-tone wedge booties, bright lipstick, breton stripes, NEON, and collar cuffs while at my 9 to 5 government job. Kind of reminds me of how life was in middle and highschool, when I wore a uniform to my all-girls Catholic school, of white polo + blackwatch plaid kilt. And then got to have so so much fun on the weekends dressing myself for errands, dinners, hanging out with friends, shopping etc. Not much is different these days.

This weekend, was, again, one of those weekends for the record books. It’s so easy to enjoy life in summer. How can any other season COMPETE. How can anything, even the hum and buzz and excitement of the holidays, compete with warm breezes, outdoor meals, outdoor activities, fizzy drinks in colorful tumblers with big ice cubes, fresh farmer’s market fruit and just general water-based produce (juicy watermelon, blood red tomatoes, crisp lettuce MMMMMM), the spontaneity that necessarily comes with warm weather……walking out your front door and almost LITERALLY seeing where the wind takes you…a walk around the block, a stroll to the nearby park, down the street to get iced coffee and wander into storefronts for some AC, to your friend’s rooftop pool…it’s so easy to just get so much JOY out of life in the summer.

When do you ever do ANYTHING spontaneous in the winter???? When do you walk out your front door and like, decide to jaunt down to the corner store for a carton of homemade salted caramel ice cream, or just lazily walk around. YOU DON’T. BECAUSE THE SECOND YOU WALK OUT YOUR FRONT DOOR, YOU ARE FUCKING MISERABLE and literally your only goal in life is to get somewhere, ANYWHERE, than outdoors. Everything about the winter is about being outside for the shortest amount of time possible. Like when you’re going out to dinner with friends, or on a date, and you’re in a dress, and you’re shivering and squealing for the full ten feet from the front door to the car which feels like one thousand feet, and then you get in and you’re hyperventilating and shivering and just BEGGING the heat to start fast enough, and you’re cursing everything and all you want is fleece-lined pajamas and a blanket. That shit is DEPRESSING.

And you’re paler, uglier, less in shape, getting less melatonin, are less happy. Summer = happiness wherever you are. Winter, by definition, makes you want to stay inside in the dark and like, watch movies and gain 10 pounds.  You walk out the front door and your body does the thinking– it’s like– PLEASE, DEAR GOD, RUN, RUN TO A CAR, RUN BACK INSIDE, GO ANYWHERE BUT THIS MISERABLE FREEZING HELL. How does anyone ever tolerate the winter? How? If you like winter, I judge you. Because you need to get your head checked. One day I am moving to California, where summer is eternal, and i will be free of the murderess winter for the rest of my years on earth and will forever question the sanity of all humans who don’t do the same. THERE IS NOTHING. BETTER. THAN. SUMMER. NOTHING. NOTHING ON EARTH. SUMMER IS MY REASON FOR LIVING.

That being said, beCAUSE summer is so natural; so easy; lends itself so beautifully to the art of lazy wandering–which is perfectly wonderful and beautiful in its own right– because of that, I’ve come to realize that summer DEMANDS some initiative. Because it takes no trying at all to pass an entire summer doing nothing but sitting in the sun reading and taking lazy 5 hour walks through our neighborhood. Again, it’s not that there is anything wrong with that per SE, but I love doing things. I made it a goal of mine, on New Years Eve of this year, to do more. I simply wanted to DO MORE STUFF in my city. Get out there, try all those restaurants and coffee shops and dessert spots I hear about on twitter that my friends rave about, try new types of food (Ethiopian), do new activities that I never do, just literally get OFF my lazy summer butt and make a plan and get across town to that restaurant on H street, or down the road in Columbia Heights, or even to little spots in Alexandria or Bethesda, and just…try them all. Take day trips to nearby hiking trails or wineries, or historic sites like Monticello, or museums I haven’t hit up, or pop-up shops, or go to comedy shows, or photographic exhibits, or art galleries, try more food trucks, etc.

To that end, this weekend included: a make-up workshop, a PLAY at the roundhouse theater in Bethesda, and a full afternoon of renting bikes and biking on the Crescent trail from Georgetown to Bethesda and back! WHAT?! MAKE-UP WORKSHOP, PLAY, AND BIKE RENTING?! Let me tell you how that differs from a usual weekend. A usual weekend is………………………………….food, drinks, sun, pool, friends. This weekend involved FRIENDS FOOD AND SUN OBVIOUSLY, but actually involved FUN, DIFFERENT, ACTIVITIES. Things outside the box! Lessons! Culture! Sport! And, crossing off TWO places from our “Ultimate DC List” (the list of places to visit/things to do in DC while we’re here, before we move to LA and never come back).

It was fantastic. Now I will run down.

Friday evening, Alex and I met up with my friend Laura and her bf for sangria and tapas at Estadio. (Check one thing off the list!).

She so pretttaaayyy.

Quick review of Estadio: uhhhhhhh don’t have the words. Just don’t have the words. My new joint. All I ever want is to spend every Friday night at a cozy corner table at Estadio eating the best cheeses and Spanish specialties (Tortilla and patatas bravas! reminds me so much of Barcelona). More importantly: best white sangria I’ve ever had.

Then we walked down the road to have beers at Standard Biergarten, which SHOCKINGLY, I’d never been to. (Check two off the list!).

Then: bedtime.

(see me right there in the striped top and jean shorts putting on my eye shadow?! Yeahh bitch.)

Saturday I woke up bright and early for a 3 hour make-up workshop with two of my besties! It was taught by a friend of mine that I got to know through the blogger scene here in DC, who is a professional make-up artist for Mac and has her own business giving lessons and doing applications. She came to my house in February for a photoshoot that was being held here–a local vintage clothing business did their Valentines day shoot in my apartment–and she did the make-up for the models and I was SALIVATING the whole time, because of how unfathomably hot she made everyone look. I was like..”life goal: make enough money to have Ana do my makeup every day of my life forever.” Then…..one day 5 months later, I saw something on facebook about how she was partnering up with the vintage clothing business to start doing make-up workshops! –”How to Achieve a Flawless Face.” –

It was the basics, like….how to do eyeshadow and blending, a simple cat eye, bronzer and blush contouring, how to use concealer, etc. A.k.a. everything I don’t know. My friends from home are the same way…none of us know SHIT about make-up. Of all of us I probably knew the most which is comical because I know nothing. None of us are or were those girls that can do like, smokey eyes with 3 shades of smokey shadow, PROBABLY because we spent 10 years in all girls school where you looked like a butch nun every day and it was fine, because the only people who saw you were the butch nuns. And other girls. So,  I signed up immediately and sent the info to my friends because I knew they’d be so game for sitting at a table together on a Saturday morning trying to learn how to apply liquid eyeliner. I knew it would just be a really fun and USEFUL experience, and that there would be a lot of joking and laughing. I saw exactly how it would unfold before it ever unfolded: Beautiful, chic, PERFECTLY made-up Ana, sweetly and patiently moving through her lessons; me and Ellie and Cait watching with sheer panic; making fun of ourselves as we tried to replicate what she was doing on our own selves, desperately trying to mimic her expert moves with the utmost concentration and then fucking it all to hell when our self-inflicted cat-eye made us look like a tranny instead of the way the model looked; and thusly turning into 3 year olds with puppy voices asking Ana to come help us… “wait…Ana…I don’t know what shade to use, wait, HOW DO YOU DO THAT FLICK with the brush, wait….why does my concealer make me look like a fugly ghost. Fml.”

It was exactly that. Except that we surprised ourselves with what we were able to do and how much we learned about “how to get a flawless face” hah!, and it was SO MUCH FUN. Ana is a BOSS! It was held at the La Petite Marmoset showroom so we were surrounded by pretty vintage clothes too : ).

This was after the work-shop, in full ‘flawless face’ effect. I mean that was literally the name of the workshop. Obviously all week before and after, me and my friends were like “COUNTDOWN– 48 HOURS UNTIL WE ACHIEVE A FLAWLESS FACE” and “shit your face is looking really flawless right now.”

When it was over, the 3 of us and my boyfriend went to Sundevich for the bombest freshest sandwiches in all of DC. I got the Capri– tomato, basil, mozzarella and housemade pesto– OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG. GET THAT SHIT. IF YOU LIVE IN DC, PLEASE, go to Sundevich every day because otherwise you are just acting a fool. It is in my top 5 of favorite places in this city right now.

Then the boy departed and the girls stopped at Peregrine for an iced coffee and chocolate chip cookie for me, a little browsing at Miss Pixies next door, and then to Violet (the best/cutest boutique ever). Then, after a little downtime (aka folding laundry), Alex and I went to a PLAY in Bethesda!!

It was called Double Indemnity and was based off of a film noir movie from like the ’40′s. I have a secret to tell all of you: The RoundHouse Theater in Bethesda has TEN DOLLAR tickets for anyone under 30. As soon as Alex told me that (he surprised me with the play tickets and the idea), I said “oh, well that MUST be because they are trying to encourage a younger hipper audience in.” And WHEN WE WALKED IN, WE LAUGHED, OUT LOUD, BECAUSE EVERY. SINGLE. HUMAN. THERE. WAS 70. OR. OVER. It was literally ALL retired couples. Because WHAT ELSE do rich retired couples in Bethesda do but…………….go to a play on Saturday night. Retired couples– so classic. I am NOT kidding you. Alex and I were the only people without white or silver hair, or no hair at all. It was classic. But the thing is…it was SO fun. It was so so so fun, the play was amazing, the lead was amazing, we felt so good doing something just…more cultured than going to a bar, and it’s just FUN to get dressed up and go out with your boyfriend to a theater house to see a play on a warm summer night. I wore this Wren dress I got on mega-sale at Style Etoile for my birthday– they have the BEST sales. I am madly, madly, madly, madly in love with it.

It is so well made. The slouches and wrinkles hit in all the right places to just crazy flatter your body, and it’s just such a sexy fit, with the sleeves but the short length and tiny little modern thigh slit. Perfect summer date dress with funky booties and some silver jewelry.

After the play we met up with some friends for late night sushi at Raku in Dupont, a quick stop into a hookah bar on 18th, and then headed to bed.

Sunday, we woke up, and had brunch at Matchbook, which normally we’ve only ever eaten dinner/lunch at, but did a little research and the brunch sounded AMAZING.

I will let these HOUSE MADE, MOTHER FUCKING CINNAMON ROLLS WITH CREAM CHEESE FROSTING SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

After that, we drove straight to Fletcher’s Boat House in Palisades and rented beach cruiser bikes for $7 dollars an hour!!!! And they were cute, vintage, turquoise and powder blue beach cruisers!! And it felt like SUMMER nights.

(fugliest picture everrrrr but only one that shows the cute bike).

It was the best idea E.V.E.R. (Alex’s) and I probably could write 4000000 pages on this blog about how wonderfully refreshing and exhilarating and fun it was. Because it felt like VACATION. There is a distinct feeling that you feel when you’re on vacation. And distinct smells and senses and little experiences that come with it. The smell of the nearby water…. something that feels briny and salty that kind of sticks on your skin, the scenery, and just that FEELING, like when you take a random Wednesday off from school when you were younger, or from work for no reason, you aren’t sick, you feel kind of like you’re getting away with something life changing and momentous and you go do fun things and every little detail of the day feels more special than it would without the promise that a cheated day of vacation carries with it, and you feel like you could spend the rest of your LIFE in that exact moment if it just kept on going indefinitely forever, and if, without you giving it to permission to, your brain betrays you and wanders to what your office looks like or what it would feel like if you were sitting in geometry class or the feeling of your alarm cock going off for work, you  literally have a visceral reaction to it because the present moment of freedom is so perfect– that FEELING.

The whole experience and afternoon was WROUGHT with that feeling. Me, Alex, my best friend since the age of 3, and our friend Bernardo, just……..cruised in the wind and sun for 3 hours. Beeping our little bike bells for no reason, chatting, racing, exploring, making inside jokes about the various characters on the trail, and just……………losing ourselves in the moment. Nowhere to be, no stopping point, just riding. There really is something distinctly and simply exhilarating about riding a BEACH CRUISER– not a fancy bike. These bikes were seriously just brightly colored cruising bikes from the 1950′s with no frills. That alone made it feel like vacation. And the trail was SO pretty, so so so so so so pretty, so interesting, so many different little spots with different charms, from industrial bridges, to brick bridges, to campfire spots, to streams, to heavily wooded areas, to sunny clearings.

The bikes gave you that perfect breezy speed- like we saw a bunch of people walking the trail and it looked so pedestrian (no pun intended) and muggy and miserable, to be on foot, as we passed by them with the breeze on our faces and our little two-wheel machines speeding us along to new scenery. It felt so freeeeeee to be on the bike. And I’m not a biker. I don’t bike to work or go biking, ever. It was exercise, and at points on the trail we had to work hard, but it was mostly just freeing and calming and lovely. It was EXACTLY like that scene in Wedding Crashers. Where the “summertime” Mungo Jerrry song is playing. Probably about AS quintessential “summer” as a human could get. And it was just, incredible, that this beautiful beautiful beautiful escape is right in the dead middle this city of ours. I mean I’ve DONE the crescent trail before, but when I was younger, and only a tiny portion of it in Bethesda. We rode all the way to Bethesda and then back down to Georgetown, where we parked the bikes and got snacks and took this lovely photo  : )

After 3.5 hours of biking, we stopped by Smucker Farms (indoor farmer’s market, essentially) on 14th and Yes Organic Market across the street (so awesome to live so close to those two), and got all the fixings for the perfect summer salad.

And some farm fresh organic chocolate milk!! Obvs.

Our salad ended up looking like this: (organic lettuce + tomatoes + avocado + baby carrots + edamame + red onion + cucumber with nothing but lemon juice and olive oil for dressing + toasted pine nuts):

We took it to the AMAZING roof of our apartment building and invited my dad over and had an amazing little summer dinner up there. The boys had chicken apple sausage with their salads too.

Adding the toasted pine nuts to the mix:

Pouring the bubbly:

The insane view up there:

Toasting some more:

I can’t believe how beautiful the view of Meridian Hill Park and the rest of DC is from our building. On Sundays at the park, there is a drum circle, so we could hear the pounding of the drums while we ate and it was super cool.

Look at that beautiful shot of DC at night! We see the Washington Monument and Capitol up there, and the National Cathedral and Catholic University Basilica, and it all really never gets old.

And then we had dessert. There PROBABLY are few things better than fresh chocolate milk from a nearby farm, and watermelon. Seee ya, summer.

P.S. I love my colorful summery tye-dye bowls from Urban Outfitters, they were 3 dollars each and are so adorbs for summer.

It was a MEMORABLE weekend and now all we ever want to do are MORE MORE MORE MORE activities, more plays, more bike rentals, more excursions, more of it all. You gotta live.

And I’m pretty sure we’re bike people now.