Round Top, TX Spring 2011

Round Top, Texas is a paradise for junk collecting girls like me.  Twice a year they host the greatest open air market in the land.  You can find anything under the sun here.  And, if you like this sort of thing, you can spend days combing through all the goods.  We're talkin' miles of highway lined on each side with tent after tent of antiques, trash, and treasure.  This is the first time I've made it in years and man it did my gypsy soul good!  But my time was limited, and I had my sweet Emerson with me, so I gave myself a set time limit and hit it, stroller and all!  These are some of the interesting things I saw:

I have to be honest.  I was terrified to take her.  It's not that I was put off by the idea of pushing the stroller through the masses for miles in the blazing sun.  I wasn't even worried about the logistics of diaper changes in a land of Skid-O-Cans.  The thing is...
She's two.  She's unpredictable.  She's destructive.  She's very hard-headed (her Daddy's side;))  When she's angry, she's angry at me.  And she's LOUD.  VERY LOUD.  When I imagined her there with me, in that place that's like paradise for a junker like me, all that kept running through my head was a picture of myself zooming through the crowd at break-neck speed, struggling to make it back to my car with all eyes on me as if a deafening noise was blasting impossibly out of the tiny princess in my stroller.  A noise like a firehouse in a three alarm fire blazing a trail back to the safety and serenity of my car.  But, lo and behold, she was awesome.  It was like she was on an adventure and was loving every minute of the strange sights, smells, and sounds.  She was a natural.  A gypsy in training.  So we tore through, never stopping long enough for her to even ask to get out of the stroller.  She even took a nap!

Overall, the trip was a success and I was only there for three hours.  I found a great looking peacock blue bowl

 

and the perfect cabinet for my living room.  It needs a coat of paint to fit my house, but that's easy enough.  I bought a dozen antique glass Christmas ornaments and two square bowls and a vase from someone selling Fiesta.  I am using the bowls to feed and water our dog Maisy.  They are turquoise and green and look great in our laundry room:)  That's all the time I needed to find what I was looking for, load up, and head home.  Score!

Picking Strawberries at Marburger Orchard, Fredericksburg, Texas

     We started our weekend at the strawberry patch!  Strawberries are one of my favorite things about Spring.  Marburger Orchard in Fredericksburg, Texas has an abundance of fresh ripe strawberries starting in mid to late March every year.  They allow you to go out in the field and pick away.  Sampling two or three is okay, but try telling that to a two year old.  My berry eatin' girl couldn't get enough and there was no hiding it.  Her fingers, face, and shirt were stained so badly she might as well have had an "Over the Limit"  sign stamped across her forehead.  I think they may do better by weighing kids in and out and charging by the pounds gained!

     I plan to make preserves and possibly a strawberry pie with our berries this year.  I didn't get around to making my strawberry preserves last year and we sure missed them.  Marburger Orchard is a wonderful place for a family outing.  Just know that for a two year old and five year old the attention span only allowed for about 30 minutes of picking.  For more serious picking for your canning needs, go it alone.  I will be going back by myself one early morning during the week.  They are a cash or check operation and they're only open when there are berries to pick, so make sure you call ahead or check their website before making the drive.

     They also grow blackberries, peaches, and vegetables throughout the Spring and Summer months, so get on their email list to get notifications as things ripen throughout the season!

By the way, I have no affiliation to Marburger Orchard.  I just really like them and want to spread the word about a local farm and encourage you to buy local, eat local, and support your local farms.

Happy strawberry picking,

Outside Lisa

The Help

    

I just finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  Actually, I should say I just finished listening to the audiobook.  I downloaded it from ITunes and was mesmerized right from the start by the voices and accents of the very talented narrators.  I think it adds so much to a book when you have a voice to go with a character and you're not just left to imagine what they might sound like.  They were so good they had me thinking and sometimes even speaking with a Southern accent!

     Stockett's honest style of writing was captivating and the heart-wrenching and uplifting stories are a reminder for all of us to be kinder to one another and never pass up the chance to say thank you.  We are, after all, just people trying to make our way in life.  We all have ups and downs, trials and victories, different yet the same.  Read it or download it here.  You will not be disappointed!

Signs of Spring in the Texas Hill Country

The peach blossoms are coming on and the bees are busy doing their thing.  I can feel it in my bones.  Spring is upon us:)

R.I.P. Chicken Lou

In Memorium

Our dear matriarch of our flock, Louise, has passed away.  I am unsure of the exact cause of her demise.  All I can say is she was treasured during her time here with us and we hated to see her go.  She was one of our original three hens that we brought in a card board box from Fort Worth.  One of my kids' first pets, we named her after a spirited hen in the children's book, "Louise, The Adventures of a Chicken" by Kate DiCamillo & Harry Bliss.  She was a superb egg layer and was the Alpha Hen of our flock.  We will miss her dearly.

***I noticed about 12 days ago that Louise seemed weird, but you know...chickens are weird, and she's a chicken, so I went on about my business.  A few days later I noticed she wasn't jumping up onto the roost in the evening any more.  Instead, she was sleeping in the nesting boxes.  I thought maybe she had gone broody and that's why she was hanging out in the nest so much, but she was only spending her nights there, so that blew my theory.  During the day she would go outside with the other hens.  After a few days of this, I noticed she seemed sort of mis-shapen.  She really didn't even look like the same chicken any more, so I decided I better get a closer look.  I scared the poop out of her when I tried to catch her and it was like clear liquid.  I lifted her wings and realized that she was just a little bag of bones and feathers:(  I could have chopped wood with her breast bone.  I knew then that something was definitely WRONG.  I went to my computer and started trying to diagnose her while watching her out of my kitchen window.  When I saw her just standing there, not eating, not scratching around, eyes glazed over, neck swooning like she could fall over at any moment, I made a difficult decision.  She was suffering and probably had been for days without me knowing.  What if she had some illness that was contagious?  I could lose my entire flock.  It was time to put her out of her misery.

Roger was out of town, but luckily one of the guys who works for the ranch was near, so I asked him to take care of her.  I ordered the hit and didn't ask any questions.  I only requested that he dispose of her in a way that would not cause her to end up back on our front door step for the kids and I to find later.  Our dog, Maisy, brings any dead thing she finds around the ranch and puts it on the front door step, or in the front yard.  The other day, she brought a deer leg into the kitchen!  Now that's COUNTRY!  More country than I can handle!

In half an hour, I got word that the job had been done and I felt a huge wave of relief knowing that Louise was in a much better place and her suffering was over.  I contemplated whether or not to tell the kids how she died (they already knew she was sick). I decided to tell them exactly what happened.  Life sometimes presents difficult decisions and I think they need all the practice they can get with their parent's guidance before they have to someday make those decisions themselves.  That is one of the beautiful things about growing up on a farm and ranch.  There are lots of opportunities to learn life's lessons!  We said a little prayer for Chicken Louise that night and imagined her in Heaven laying golden eggs for God.  The kids were understanding and peaceful throughout the whole experience.

Louise taught us many lessons in her short time with us.  She taught us that it IS possible to haul a chicken in a cardboard box five hours across the state and she'll even lay an egg for you on the way!  She taught us about the social hierarchy of chickens and what happens when another hen gets out of line.  She introduced us to the joy and satisfaction of having your own fresh eggs that, by God's perfect design, are the most complete and nutritious single-item meal you can consume.  And those same eggs, if fertilized, can become fuzzy yellow chicks in 21 days time.  Amazing!  She taught us about the responsibility of owning a pet or farm animal and the joy of watching a chicken just being a chicken.  They are truly entertaining little creatures!  And finally, but most importantly, she taught us about the circle of life and the tough decisions we may encounter along the way.

Rest in peace, sweet Louise.

Enter at Your Own Risk

My friend Lor! called me up out of the blue the other day to say, "You know how every once in a while you watch a movie that just really moves you?  That just happened to me!"  She had just seen the movie "Australia" for the first time and it really spoke to her...changed her...and she was excited about it.  

That's exactly how I feel lately.  Excited. Not specifically about a movie, a book, or anything else that tangible.  Just excited.  I'm excited about life and all that it is now and what is still to come.  Mostly I am excited to be given the chance every day to live it!  The other evening I was standing outside my wide open front door (which is just how I like it) and noticing the scene.  For that moment, time stopped in my head and I took a mental snapshot and began listing everything I loved about that little tiny speck of a moment in my day.  It looked like this:

car full of groceries behind me, chickens doing their thing all over the yard and on the front door step- scratch, scratch, look- scratch, scratch, look- POOP- scratch, scratch, look (oh, to be a chicken!) dog in pen barking at chickens, the aftermath of a two year old playing all over the house all morning which means a lot of obstacles in my path on the way to the five year old who is sitting on the toilet yelling, "Mommie, I'm DONE!!!", my arms full of bags, mail, backpack, purse, while two year old is begging, "Mommie, hold me" and teenage boys are texting, "What's for dinner?" and "What time will it be ready?"

And my list of what I loved about that moment:

See above.

It's life, and it's messy, and I LOVE it!

Outside Lisa

My Sweet Valentines

Valentine's Day 2011 has come and gone, but just now when I uploaded my pics from my IPhone, I decided I had to share some photos of my little darlings and all the beautiful reds and pinks of one of the most endearing days of the year.  I hope you had a wonderful day and didn't get all hung up on trying to give (or receive) the "perfect" gift, or even worse, set your expectations for the day so high that Cupid himself couldn't have pleased you.  To me Valentine's Day is simply a day for loving harder and louder than usual. A day to remind, reassure, and acknowledge the love we give and receive every other day of the year.

We are short on Valentine's Day decorations, so we decided to make some.  By cutting strips of scrapbook paper and stapling the strips together in loops, we were able to make a chain to drape over the mantel.  So fun and easy!

The kids and I made cookies and decorated them with icing and sprinkles.  They were so cute and we had a ball making them together.  I really enjoyed watching all of the kiddos in Harrison's class gobble them up!  The work it takes to make something from scratch and then share it with friends is an act of true love.  

My number one Valentine.  My husband.  My best friend.  

Nighty, night...

Outside Lisa