Adrienne Royer’s love affair with politics started in first grade. The class was learning about the 1988 Bush/Dukakis race when six-year-old Royer thought, “This is so cool. We get to pick our leaders!” She wore pro-life buttons in elementary school and a handmade T-shirt that said, “A person is a person no matter how small!” A right-leaning political junkie was born.

In college, Royer traded in her puffy paint for a blog. She started her first site, Girl From the South, as a way to keep in touch with family and friends back in Tennessee. Two years ago, she decided to delve into politics. “Cosmopolitan Conservative sounded like a fun name,” she says. “I knew it worked when I told a liberal former colleague at happy hour one night, and he burst out laughing.”

Royer writes to a mainly conservative audience but sometimes receives e-mails from liberals who keep up with her writing. She tends toward topics such as feminism and gender politics—from a conservative perspective, of course—and writes about everyone from Sarah Palin to Michelle Obama.

We caught up with the 28-year-old to talk shop about elections and politicos. But we couldn’t resist some lighthearted questions, too: A GOP cocktail? Olympic sports for members of Congress? Best and worst dressed Republicans? Read on for her answers.

Capital Spice wasn’t Mike and Elizabeth Bober’s first name choice for their dining-and-cooking blog. They wanted to use Hill’s Kitchen, an ode to their neighborhood, but when the blog launched in 2008, the name had just been claimed by a local kitchen-supply store. “It’s become one of our favorite shops,” says Mike.

Nearly two years later, they’ve cultivated a following among Washingtonians who, like themselves, love to eat and cook, enjoy exploring Washington’s dining scene, and aren’t afraid to try new things. They write about everything from news and gossip about local chefs to their favorite recipes. They also post restaurant reviews, but they adhere to a simple rule: “If we don’t have primarily positive things to say about a restaurant experience, we don’t write about it,” says Mike. Why? Because restaurants have off nights. And since the Bobers don’t have a bottomless dining budget, they have to chalk up bad experiences to anomalies. Says Mike: “We don’t think it’s fair to slam a place on the basis of one meal.”

We caught up with the almost-trio—their first child is due in June—to check in on Washington’s dining scene and find out what they’ve been cooking at home lately. Read on for the Bobers’ favorite cheap eats and chefs, what they drink to keep warm in winter, and what they’re looking forward to, food-wise, for spring.

Here’s something you don’t run across every day: neighborhood bloggers who don’t actually live in the neighborhood they blog about. Foggy Bottom bloggers Kat and Jared live in Arlington and Columbia Heights, respectively.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t have ties to the neighborhood. Both work in Foggy Bottom, and both attended George Washington University as undergrads. Says Jared: “I still feel very much a FoBoian.”

You might be wondering about their blog’s name, FoBoBlo. It’s a riff on an informal nickname residents used for a grocer on F Street: FoBoGro. “As soon as Kat said FoBoBlo, we knew we found our name,” says Jared.

Geared toward GW students and neighborhood residents, the site’s content runs the gamut from restaurant reviews to recaps of GW sports games. Regular features include Humpday Sales, a Wednesday roundup of Craigslist finds, and Friday Wat, an open thread where readers post funny videos.

We caught up with Kat and Jared to find out what’s new in their neck of the woods. Read on for their picks on everything from favorite lunch spots to happy hours.

In its first incarnation, District Cut, a local men’s-fashion blog, was launched as a high-school project. Blogger A.—he keeps his full name and face off the Internet—was one of its founders. “We were the guys in the class who decided to take the easy route by doing a blog,” he says. “It became something I loved to do.”

The group cultivated a regular following, and after the project ended, A. decided to keep the site going. He relaunched it under the name kidGQ, a nod to the publication he saw his father read when he was growing up and one he describes as “Vogue for men.” Unfortunately, GQ publisher Condé Nast wasn’t amused; the magazine powerhouse sent a cease-and-desist order, forcing A. to come up with a new name. That’s how District Cut was born.

“When I talked to other bloggers about the legal issue, they told me it meant that I was doing something right and getting noticed,” says the 19-year-old Catholic University student. “Now I take it as sort of a rite of initiation.”

A. fills his site with photos from magazine fashion spreads and style icons, product reviews, street-style features, and even videos. “The content has grown with my age, but now I think it has reached its peek with modern, up-to-date information on menswear and consistent, contemporary advice that all men in Washington could use,” he says. His audience ranges from fashionable Hill staffers to bearded hipsters.

We caught up with A. to get his take on Washington style and his advice for sartorial newbies. Read on for where he shops, his fashion pet peeves, and much more.

Blogger Claudia Holwill is brunch’s Carrie Bradshaw: “My college roommates and I watched Sex and the City together, and it always seemed to trigger my desire to write,” she says. “I’m not the type to write about my personal life or dating life, so I went with food instead.” The name Brunch and the City seemed the perfect fit.

She started the blog two years ago to fill what she saw as a hole in the food-blogging scene: “No one else was really covering brunch, and I knew there was so much more that could be shared,” she says. Holwill blogs about her favorite brunch spots, of course, but also posts recipes, foodie gossip, and the occasional ode to bacon, her favorite food. Her most useful feature: a list of bottomless-drink deals at brunch spots throughout Washington.

We caught up with the 29-year-old to find out where she’s brunched lately. Read on for her favorite brunch spots, recipes for at-home brunches, and her pick for the most unusual brunch menu in town.

Have you ever had Derby Pie? We haven’t, but the chocolate-and-walnut-laden dessert sure sounds delicious.

For blogger Rivka Friedman, the pie is a family classic—a specialty of her mother’s—so it was only natural that her cooking blog, Not Derby Pie, would borrow the name. But why the “not”? Apparently Derby Pie is trademarked by Kentucky-based pie company Kern’s Kitchen, which lays claim to inventing the dessert. The Washington Post ran an article about Kern’s in 1982 and included several spin-off recipes. Friedman’s mom made one, and the family loved it; the trademark-honoring name Not Derby Pie has stuck around the Friedman household ever since.

Friedman launched the blog in 2007 after spending hours every day reading other cooking blogs. She doesn’t have formal cooking training, and she doesn’t follow recipes—but that’s half the fun. The 26-year-old has developed many of her of food preferences from traveling—Friedman lived in Israel for two years—and she spends a lot of time trying to replicate dishes and flavors she tastes in restaurants. “The blog has been a place to document that process,” she says. “The need for fresh material constantly pushes me to try new things.”

We strapped on an apron and caught up with Friedman to get her favorite recipes, cookbooks, kitchen gadgets, and more. Oh, and her biggest kitchen disaster? We asked her that, too.

You can’t get more Washington than a home-design blog whose name riffs on the federal government. Enter Department of the Interior.

Jenn Lore, who works at Edelman PR, launched the blog a year ago as an outlet for her creative side. She uses the site as a scrapbook of sorts, posting photos from magazines, products she likes, artwork, and more. “I write for someone like me: a younger urbanite who loves repurposing vintage finds, likes feminine but unfussy design, and who has a major crush on the idea of rural living,” she says.

Lore doesn’t have professional training—home design is simply a hobby—but she’s been interested in it for as long as she can remember: “I was the only kid on the block who would rather spend a weekend afternoon rearranging my room than playing on the swing set.” Her current canvas? A one-bedroom apartment in DC’s West End.

We caught up with the Staten Island native to talk shop about interior design. Read on for Lore’s tips on making a small room look bigger, landlord-friendly design ideas, where to find bargain furniture, and lots more.