Sweetie & Mushi
The girls came up this weekend so we could shop for bridesmaid dresses. Check out the dresses in my wedding blog — they were bought in record time, so we had time in the afternoon to play a bit in Alexandria.
After we picked up the dresses, I drove us down to Alexandria to check out the bridal shoes store there. We parked by the Torpedo Factory — a building full of art studios and galleries — which Andrew and I had never managed to get to while open. It was open, and we were at the main entrance (which Andrew and I hadn’t found before), so we decided to go in.
We saw Marcia Jestaedt’s studio. Andrew and I had seen one of her works at the Alexandria symphony last fall, where she had done a ceramic kimono called Birds in Space.
We also stopped in Matthew Harwood’s studio . He was trained as an architect, and uses that training in his work. He makes paneled watercolors which display the depth of his subject. The one he was working on when we stopped in was a perspective of New York from the Brooklyn Bridge. I stopped in because a Greek collonade with a star-streaked background caught my eye. If I was in any position to buy original art, I would have snatched it up.
Sweetie found something at Alicia Roman’s studio that she loved — a magnetic pendant that said “hurrah” in the middle and had magnetic beads that rolled around the inside.
After the Torpedo Factory, we walked down to the bridal shoe store, The Glass Slipper. Sigh. I just don’t like bridal shoes. They’re all so…so…so cheesy. My current plan is to get some cheap, white Keds and decorate them like I did my Teva’s for Mushi’s wedding. (Sadly I don’t have a picture of them, cuz they were way cool.)
By this time, we were just about ready for dinner, so we headed up to the Stardust Restaurant (that’s where the reception is going to be). We were fairly early (5:30-ish), so were the first in the restaurant (though there were a couple people at the bar already). We were seated next to the back fireplace, which was running, so felt quite cozy.
Our conversation ran from the weird to the bizarre to the embarrassing. And our waiter had impeccable timing — he always showed up just as we were saying something stupid. “No more Twinkies for me” (as he’s setting down the pesto with portabella mushroom and mozzarella). “Butt Man and his sidekick, the Boy Plunger.” “That’s when I started throwing up.”
The food was great, dessert even better, and the company divine.
We got home fairly early, watched Wonderfalls, and talked until 1 AM (someone forgot to remind us that we would lose an hour!).