Summertime, when the livin is easy

My hubby and I spontaneously went down to Cape Cod on Thursday (or The Cape, if you're from Massachusetts) to spend the day at the beach. We are both big beach people. He likes to swim, play paddle ball, go on rafts, nap and/or read. I like all of the above minus his dedication to swimming (he does it for exercise and swims a bunch; I like to play in the water or float) plus walking/people watching.

The night before, we packed the car and picked a beach: Coast Guard Beach in Eastham -- a new place to us. We had a great day of reading (I'm reading The Bee Season by Myra Goldberg and he's reading Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer.

The day was lovely though the water was a bit colder than I like or expect from the Cape and the waves/undertow were a bit too strong. But it was lovely to sit, relax, and be away from it all.



This photo shows the view to our right. To our left, the beach is rammed with people.














After the beach, we drove to our favorite Cape coffee & sweets shop, The Hot Chocolate Sparrow in Orleans. Great coffee drinks, deserts, and chocolates.

Next, as we needed to make our 4 hour round-trip drive feel fully worthwhile, we went to Chatham for dinner. Chatham is special to us not only because it is lovely, but also because it is where we spent our honeymoon last August. LOVE!

We wandered around through some pretty shops including this one that had 3 or 4 rooms of antiques. The room below was my favorite as it is filled with lovely feminine things from the 1920s-40s including a few great lingerie pieces that you can see in the background here:






Now I am all for name dropping, but the prices here were nearing exorbitant even for a tourist trap plus one of the ladies was less than nice so I'm withholding them name. If you want to know, just email me.















Before heading home, we had dinner at The Chatham Squire. My husband loves food about as much as I love vintage, so he HAD to eat here. He doesn't like his food portentous just good (and lots of it), so the Squire is right down his alley. We went here once on our honeymoon and he ate just about everything possible included my prime rib end cut. It was all very, very hearty and good. This time around, things weren't as delicious but we plan to return to give it another try when were on our real vacation in August.

Lastly, I'll include "the best" of our outfit pics. Seriously, I think I'm going to have make him look at some blogs with me so he can get an idea of what an outfit post should look like. I, too, should considering staging photos rather than just looking like this (beach hair/ocean hair a la no shower, GREAT tan lines, and my necklaces spare chain is showing). But, we are TRYING:




-Necklace from Antique Alley in New Hampshire.

-Dress H&M last year (it's so cute and I wear it often so I'm sure there will be a better shot of it in the future).