Farewell to a Fabulous Faraway Friend.

I have an absolute talent for making fabulous friends that end up moving far away. I love having pals all over the map... but it's disappointing to find a friend that shares the same sense of adventure & humor, love of art, books, and vintage treasures... and then discover that they are preparing to journey to the other side of the country. Shelley & I worked together last spring, but somehow never talked... even though I admired her fashion sense & thought she seemed like a marvelous person. This year we ended up on the same team at work & as soon as we started conversing, I felt like we had always been friends! Instantaneous BFFs!

We decided to cram as many adventures as possible into the couple of weeks she had left in Virginia Beach before moving to South Dakota. I wrote about our amazing art adventure last week. We had a Friday without work & decided to go thrifting & antiquing together. We started out scouring Goodwill & CHKD.

Here are a few of our favorite finds! Oh, the things you find in thrift stores! 

Then we ventured out to two of my favorite antique shops in the area. I can literally spend hours basking in the beauty of gorgeous vintage items & terribly terrific trinkets that used to be treasured possessions... now just memories, sitting on a shelf & telling stories about someone else's past. 

I like to make up stories about the people I see in old photographs & wonder if any of the things that I own will end up on dusty shelves in antique shops when I'm gone. 

No antiquing adventure is complete without an awkward, cheesy mirror photo! 

My last hurrah before going back to work after a few days off was meeting Shelley at the Oceanfront & walking miles & miles... exploring a few local shops, sharing french fries, and soaking up the sunshine until I had killer blisters on my feet! (Of course we hit one more thrift shop before our hang out session was over too!)

We were both captivated by the colors of the currently abandoned amusement park & couldn't help snapping some shots of the retro ferris wheel before we left the beach.

In an attempt to cheer up before she departed, we met one more time for frozen yogurt & a therapeutic dose of nail polish shopping. 

I'm very thankful that I had the opportunity to cross paths with Shelley before she moved away & I'm looking forward to sharing stories & letters with my new pen pal in South Dakota! May your life always be filled with adventures & exploration, friend!