Kayla knows more than anyone I've ever met about having fun close to home and on a budget. She and baby D (face hidden for legal reasons) spirited me away to the Copper Creek Birds and Blooms Festival on Saturday. We dipped candles, won free rain barrels, and generally had a ball.

The event is located at the Old Russell County Courthouse, which I'd driven past approximately a million times without stopping. Although small, the historic area is well worth a visit if you're already in the area.

Our tour guide explained that the courthouse (active in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) was important for land disputes, with criminal cases being tried down the road in Abingdon. Still, criminals were often brought to this courthouse, where they were held for the day in the basement cell then housed by the judge's family at night. Gives a whole new meaning to taking your work home with you....

(The second picture in this post, I know, isn't particularly historic even though it graces one of the upstairs walls in the courthouse. But I'm including the print for my mother since the shepherdess reminds me of the paintings hanging in her mother's upstairs hallway when I was a child.)