Close Encounters of the Hoofed Kind

This weekend we enjoyed a rare event in South Central Texas – snow. It wasn’t much – just enough to make everything a temporary winter wonderland before it all melted away today.

The irony is that our friends Bob and Julia were visiting from Illinois – trying to get away from that cold white stuff. We actually had to dig the snow scraper out of our trunk so they could clear off their rental car before driving to the Austin airport. Oops! Sorry guys!

Our friend Matthew, affectionately nicknamed “Moose”, commented to John that the only post I had up about animals only showed John. True, it was a post about us (ok, mostly John) installing the 17 owl boxes on the property to qualify us for a wildlife tax rate.

But we have had other critters about including an Eastern Coachwhip Snake last spring, various owls, and when we first moved in, a pair of mice (yuck!).

Our neighbors to the North did a lot of work fixing up the fence between our properties because they began running cattle so they could receive the agricultural tax rate (a pre-requisite to receiving the wildlife tax rate we have). Every so often the girls will hang by our side of the property, grazing and laying under the post oak trees.

And then there is Randy, the bull. We named him that because, umm, well, he really wanted to get to our OTHER neighbor’s property and see the girls over there. Apparently his harem is not enough for him… So he started pushing through the fence. Yikes

But we’ve also had some “deer friends” stopping by regularly. There is a momma deer with twins – we’re pretty sure we saw them the day they were born because they were so tiny, they looked like stuffed animals for a child’s bed. Sometimes they are down by the “tank” or pond, but quite often they come up close to the house and eat at the scrub brushes in the yard (I’m not even going to think about landscaping until the pool and other hardscaping is done). Thankfully they have not found my garden yet so my peppers, zucchini, lettuce, rainbow chard, and more are all still untouched by them.

Unfortunately, that is not the extent of our deer encounters. Like many of you, we’ve been staying at home, cooking much more at home with occasional take out. But we decided to go out to one of our favorite places in Smithville, The Blazer Bar, and hang in their speakeasy on a Thursday night. Why a Thursday? Because it’s much less busy than on Friday or Saturday nights (in fact, we were the only patrons in the speakeasy) and it’s only open Thursday-Saturday. We enjoyed a lovely time, had a fantastic lobster bisque, scallops, and drinks. I was the DD, so after dinner I drank 3-4 glasses of water before we headed home at 9:30 at night.

And then this happened…

Yep, at the top of a hill on a Texas state highway (where the speed limit is 75 miles per hour) was a big 10-point buck in the right hand lane. Since no one was around I slowed down and got into the left lane. If the deer had kept moving the direction he was going or even just stayed still, we would have been fine… But at the last minute, he turned and slammed into the passenger front side of the car. Thankfully we were fine and the airbags did not deploy. I pulled over and walked back to where he was on the side of the road and sadly, he tried to get up but then just laid down. I’m not sure if he died then or was able to get up later and move on. 🙁

For those who ask, why didn’t you pick it up and take it with you? OK, a couple of things. A) that’s illegal in Texas (and just because your family wouldn’t care about receiving a misdemeanor (or whatever) doesn’t mean I don’t care). Texas Parks and Wildlife has a zero tolerance policy on this, according to their website. B) Let’s think about the logistics of this. We’re out for date night and I’m wearing a dress and heels. And now John and I are going to pick up a half alive 250+ pound buck and just through it into the back seat of our sedan? Umm, yuck. C) Have you seen the movie Tommy Boy?

What probably would have happened to us if we tried dragging a 10-point buck into the back of our Avalon…

Thankfully we were able to limp home with the car that night and the local collision repair company said it was not totaled. It did take about a month for them to get the parts to fix our Toyota Avalon – but we aren’t ready for a car payment with the pool construction about to begin. And besides, the car only has about 195,000 miles on it – I feel like I’m just starting to break it in…

Good as new!

In the meantime, we have set up the gravity deer feeder down by the lake and even have a game camera attached to it so we can see the wildlife up close and personal. It took about a week for the deer to discover it, but now we have an almost nightly wildlife show right in front of our home.

As we see more and more wild animals, I’ll be sure to take photos. A pair of Crested Caracara, aka, “Mexican Eagle”, have been hanging in one of our oak trees in front of the house. I’ll see if I can get a decent pic of them as they are only located in a few US states and, although they look like big hawks with white heads, they are technically falcons (according to the Cornell website I looked up).
In the meantime, stay safe and warm. And thanks for stopping by!

Hugs, Libby

Happy Holidays and Welcome 2021!

Wow – that went by fast! The weeks since Thanksgiving have really been a blur! As many of you experienced, our holidays looked different this year. No trip back to the Midwest, no chance to see our daughter or my mom (who is in assisted living so I wouldn’t be allowed into her facility anyway), or high school friends, but lots of FaceTime and Zoom calls with friends and family.

My favorite cocktail napkin this holiday season

But we still were able to see friends Betsy, Aldy, and Michael (and we are looking forward to Julia and Bob visiting this coming weekend!) and family visits with cousins Bill and Susan, Kristi and Terry, and cousin Gary. All in all not a bad holiday season.

One fun adventure we had was to go out onto our property and cut down what became our very first Christmas tree in our new home. It’s challenging to find a tree that looks good from 360º, and this one did turn out a little Charlie Brown-ish, but it’s our first!

Yes, John was wearing shorts the day we cut down our Christmas tree…

I was bummed that so few of our holiday decorations made the trip out of storage and down to Texas. To tell you the truth, I’m hoping they made it into the storage unit at all, since we hired others to pack up our lake house. What couldn’t make it onto that last truck went into our last storage unit and I hope that includes my bronze reindeer, vintage ornaments, and sentimental decor. But John came to the rescue and purchased many of the ornaments you see on our tree from a local resale shop!

Since we just finished building the house and are awaiting the beginning of pool construction (YAY!!), we decided to forgo purchasing each other Christmas presents. That being said, we did splurge on one gift for ourselves – a new leather couch for the living room.

The new couch is 89″ long!

It’s long. Really long. But thankfully I think it fits. And it is the same leather as our swivel chairs in the library, all of which is from Pottery Barn. Good leather will really last forever (unlike bonded leather, which is made from bits of scrap leather that have been glued or bonded together), and since we had a 20% off coupon code when we ordered it, we decided to make the splurge.

Another holiday (specifically New Year’s Eve) tradition we have is playing pool or billiards. Although we went out for New Year’s Eve last year, I’m generally not a fan of going out on NYE. Last year we lived in Smithville and could walk to the restaurant and back home. Now we live on 43 acres in the country and it’s just a little more dangerous on a busy state highway and with deer running about (more on that in another post). Historically, we have stayed in for NYE with a few friends, listened to fun music, enjoyed a cozy fire in the fireplace and played several rounds of pool. For our first game ever in our new home I had the honor of breaking and was delighted that I pocketed four balls on my first shot!

As I mentioned, we love fires for New Year’s Eve, but also for most every other night during the winter. In fact, we love fires so much, we built three fireplaces into our home. Three. In Texas.

It is a bit different having a fire when it’s 60-something degrees outside, but I love it on these dark nights. And not just at night, as we had our first fire in the master bedroom fireplace on an unusually grey Sunday back in December.

A huge thank you and shout out to cousins Callan and Linda for the very generous housewarming gift of three firewood holders (fully loaded with split wood even!). We’ve loved having them near every fireplace and they’ve warmed our hearts and our hearths!

Thanks Callan and Linda for the wood holders and supplies!

John and I hope you enjoyed a healthy and happy holiday season and we wish you all the best in 2021! As always, thanks for stopping by!

Hugs, Libby

Happy Thanksgiving 2020

We hope you all are enjoying a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and are healthy and with family. Our own extended family celebration was much smaller as some family members felt uncomfortable gathering and others had recently fallen ill with COVID-19. We hope anyone who is suffering with this virus makes a speedy recovery!
As a result, Thanksgiving Day 2020 was an intimate and special occasion – thank you Diane and Don for hosting!

Back at the house we continue to make progress with sorting through boxes, placing oriental rugs, hanging art, and more.

In the living room, we hung one of our favorite paintings with a picture light over the mantle. Man, was that thing heavy… We cannot read the signature, but it looks like Josepn is the first name and the last name begins with an L…. Anyway we bought it more than 20 years ago at an antique store in Dayton, OH.

Surrealist oil painting by Colombo Carlo dated 1959

We also hung this oil painting that we purchased years ago at an antique store in Springfield, IL. We’ve searched many times but cannot find other work by a Colombo Carlo… It still needs a picture light.

And we’ve hung this painting by Marguerite Grossenbach, dated 1950. She was born in 1900 in Milwaukee, WI and died in 1996 in Davidson, NC. When she was 30 years old she married Charles Norman Barnum, the man who would go on to design the landing craft used on D-Day called the LCT (for landing craft tank). Isn’t that interesting? We picked up this piece at an auction in LeRoy, IL for $50. Fifty dollars!

More artwork, oil paintings and other media will be coming, but this is just how far we have gotten with this genre so far…

In addition to more traditional art, we’ve also hung some stained glass windows in the great room windows. We actually don’t remember where we purchased this set of four craftsman windows.

A window purchased at our favorite antique store in Bloomington, IL (Asahel Gridley Antiques) hangs in the mud room window at the end of the hall…

And in our master bathroom and bedroom is a set of 3 antique windows purchased in an antique store in Dayton, OH. These used to hang in the entryway of the lodge.

Since this is our first Thanksgiving in our new home we decided to do our own Thanksgiving dinner (round 2) on Friday night. I decorated with the few Thanksgiving holiday decor items I could find in storage and it was very cozy with a lovely fire in the fireplace as well as a bottle (well, not the whole bottle) of 1982 Chateau Gazin. The wine was FANTASTIC, which made me VERY happy because I have been worrying about our old wines’ integrity after the move and being out of proper wine storage for months. Thankfully we have 19 bottles of the 1982 and 1983 era French red wines left as well as 1 (ONE) of my mother-in-law’s favorite, a 1976 Chateau LaRoque. If that isn’t motivation to come visit us, nothing is…

I’ll close this post out by saying how grateful John and I have been for your support through this long journey of building our home. It’s crazy to think that it was mid-November two years ago when we first moved to Texas and began staying in a room in cousin Diane’s home. Thanks again Diane and Don for helping us have a “soft landing”! And thanks to all of you for stopping by!
Hugs, Libby

Little Town, Big Heart

Slowly we are working through the seemingly endless sea of boxes as we get settled into the house. It’s going amazingly slowly – when we moved into our rental house in Smithville, we had the house set up and ready to go in 48 hours. Seriously, art on the walls, everything unpacked and boxes broken down – in 48 hours.

Our rental home in Smithville

Moving into Smithville, we HAD to get everything set up. Nephew Andrew, his wife Melissa and daughter Kyleigh were coming to spend spring break week with us (which had been planned the previous fall). Necessity really is the mother of invention..

Since we put the lake cottage on the market during the height of Illinois’ lockdown, we hired people to pack and move the contents of the cottage to us here in central Texas. These days I’m unpacking boxes labeled like the one in the pic above. What exactly is “you know” or “n shit”? Or worse, the are labeled like the box below…

mystery box

So until we get the ranch to a photographable stage, here’s what we learned living in a rental home for 19 months.

Our rental home living room
  1. You really can make anyplace feel like home. Just pull out your favorite pieces, make a comfortable seating area, and invite some family or friends over. When our friend Matthew visited last fall he saw our living room (with furniture from the lodge) and said, I know this place!

2. Kitchen layouts really, really do matter. Although our rental had a nice looking and spacious eat in kitchen, it drove both John and me crazy. The sink was opposite from the fridge so to wash veggies or take raw poultry to the sink, you had to skirt around the island. When John made coffee in the mornings he had to do-si-do around the island to get to the water dispenser and fridge. Repeat after me – put your sink in the middle of your kitchen work triangle.

Adam and John moving us out of our rental home

3. Neighbors can really enhance your experience. We got SO lucky with Adam and Ginny next door. I’m sad I cannot find a pic of them together on my phone and super surprised that I cannot find a pic of their dogs, Dixie and Gus. One of my daily rituals was to walk out almost every day to pet those dogs and get a few dog licks across my chin.
Ginny and Adam frequently shared goodies from their garden, homemade boudin and sausages, and even chorizo. Adam also helped us move from Smithville and recently brought his brother and another friend over to help usher the pool table in place in the great room. I really miss our chats at the fence.

4. Make the most of your environment. One of the great things about living in Smithville was how we could easily walk to many different restaurants, shops, the library or even the grocery store. I’m really glad we had the opportunity to experience that, especially since we cannot walk to anything from our forever home.

Another fun aspect of Smithville is that it is frequently used for filming movies and television shows. In fact, while we lived there, they were filming the Amazon Prime series, “Panic.” It’s based off a young adult series of books by Lauren Oliver. The funny thing is that we would notice a new store or restaurant only to find that it was a fake front created just for the show. So let’s play a game – are the following photos of real establishments or fake? Answers will be below.

Ok, have you guessed? Here goes:

  1. The Blazer – very real and very fun. There is an intimate speakeasy bar in the back, open on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Otherwise, a great place for lunch or dinner outside or in.
  2. Richards County Sheriff Department – fake. Smithville is in Bastrop County. In fact, there is no Richards County in Texas.
  3. Front Room Wine Bar – real and another great restaurant option in downtown Smithville.
  4. Lyle and Sons Pharmacy- fake
  5. Main Street Convenience – also fake
  6. Roy’s at the Emporium – fake again
  7. Dot’s Diner – a great place for home cooking. Just kidding! It’s fake!
  8. The Grand Movie Theatre – another fake front!
  9. Smithville General Store – real and a cute home goods store with a coffee bar in the back
  10. Mane Street Hair – another fake front
  11. PS Theatre – real, although I don’t know if they are running still since COVID-19 shut down so much this year.
  12. Rio Social House- real and recently opened cafe and bar.

Pics of the house will be forthcoming (I promise!) as we sort through the boxes and find a place for everything and get everything in place. In the meantime, we hope you enjoyed your Halloween.

Since I had to travel last year for Halloween and could not attend our neighbor’s party, I decided to wear my costume from last year for a socially distancing party of 2.
Stay safe and thanks for stopping by!

Hugs, Libby

Happy Independence Day!

This is our first Independence Day in Texas and the first time in a decade that we don’t have a houseful of guests. It was so quiet, especially since Smithville, where we are currently living in a rental home, has a zero tolerance policy for fireworks in the city. I found that I was very nostalgic and a bit homesick for fun on the lake.

But, as previously mentioned, it just isn’t worth keeping a lake cottage 1,000 miles away. We wouldn’t get enough use out of it to warrant the costs and we aren’t allowed to rent it out because it is on the city’s water source. Thankfully it is under contract to close on or before August 14, 2020.

Too bad it’s so far away from our home in Texas!

In the meantime, work continues at our forever home, including the installation of our new septic system and heat pumps.

The foundation of the house was also skim coated, which is technically known as parging. It’s not required by code and is essentially decorative, making the foundation of the house and porches nice and smooth.

And with the parging completed, they added dirt and graded around the house, minimizing the big drop offs from the porch.

And tile continues to be installed, thankfully without any further mistakes. I really like how the bar bathroom shower turned out.

I hope you all enjoyed your Independence Day, however you celebrated it. We began packing our rental house – quite different than any holiday we’ve had in the past decade! Thanks for stopping by!

Hugs, Libby

First Party at the Ranch!

This week I had a birthday and many thanks to those who remembered me and commented (thanks Lorri!) or sent me texts, emails, LinkedIn Messages, and Facebook posts. I appreciated everyone remembering!

Cuz Bill always has good ideas!

Cuz Bill sent me a text last week and suggested that the cousins get together to see progress on our house and have a socially distancing party. I thought it was a great idea, texted the cousins, looked at the weather forecast, and conveniently picked my birthday to host this family event for 8. Thankfully, our porch is 16′ wide and quite long, so it was not difficult to fit camp chairs for everyone on the porch.

We got catering from one of our favorite restaurants, the Front Room Wine Bar, which, like any restaurants still open, is only offering take out. John and I love this place and we have visited here many times before, including when our friend Matthew visited and it’s where we rung in New Year’s Eve!

Earlier in the day Travis, aka, Bestie, arrived with his beast of a machine to clear out our view. As I wrote in a former post, we lost most of our view of the valley as the trees leafed out. We wanted to keep any substantial trees, but those that would look like lollipops if trimmed had to go.

Travis makes quick work and the view was significantly enhanced from before…

before

To after an afternoon of work….

We also gave our family a tour of the home in small groups and some elected to wear masks inside the house. In addition to changes we shared with you in previous posts, one of the major purchases we made (and my first birthday gift of the day) was this set of antique Egyptian doors. We have decided to do a VERY light sanding, just to get any paint (which is likely lead based) that will potentially flake off and then cover them with a protective coat to keep their character. I love that they have frosted glass that will let light through, but also provide a bit of mystery at the end of the hall as you enter the great room.

The other progress is the new ceiling installed in the living room. It is the same “Texas Honey Brown” pine that is on the ceilings of the porches.

The pine beadboard for the great room is also all stained and sealed, and ready for installation in that room. We opted for the beadboard in the great room because we wanted something a bit more rustic and different to set this large room off from the others.

So that was my quarantine birthday at the ranch! Not too shabby, given the world circumstances. Thanks to sister-in-law Janet for the lovely birthday card and special thanks to my high school friend Miste for the card, awesome gift, AND subscribing to this blog! I hope you all continue to stay safe and thanks, as always, for stopping by.

Hugs, Libby

Happy New Year and Welcome 2020!

We are back in Texas and today John and I walked through the house and marked on the wall studs where we want switches to control certain lights or fans. It’s really all about the user experience. How do you turn on enough lights to get safely to the kitchen in a darkened house, for example? Do you want to be able to turn on hall lights from both ends of the hall? Yes, by the way. I’m hoping our preparations will make the electrical walk through Thursday morning go much faster.

Looking into the kitchen

The front porch now has its ceiling done and the cedar posts are in place. The batten is also being installed on our Hardie board and the chimneys have been stuccoed.

We are also beginning to look at exterior house colors. I’ve painted a few swatches on the siding and we are debating looking at more color options.

Tonight we are looking forward to walking to a local restaurant and bar for a fun New Years Eve. Our ability to walk to restaurants, shops, and a local grocery store is one of our favorite things about living in our rental home in Smithville, Texas. We will definitely miss that when we move into our forever home on 43.5 acres, because, yikes, that would be a long walk.

Celebrating New Years Eve at the Front Room Wine Bar at their black and white party.

On our drive down to Texas (it takes 16 hours), John and I reflected on 2019 and looked forward to 2020. It was a good exercise in mindfulness and conscious living. I think of it as a way to slow down, reminisce about our favorite moments, make sure we take the time to appreciate all the little and big things that were a part of our lives in the past year, and also to draw some conclusions about which kinds of things make us happy and which don’t. My goal was to start seeing more clearly and confidently what are our goals & intentions for 2020.

John looking dapper on NYE. I think this should be his new LinkedIn picture.

Maybe some of these questions will be a fun conversation starter for you and your family too.

Reflecting on 2019

  • What 3 words would you use to describe 2019?
  • What was your favorite destination in 2019?
  • What was your biggest lesson of the year?
  • What are you most proud of from 2019?
  • What was your favorite compliment from this year?
  • What worry turned out to be completely unnecessary?
  • What or who had the biggest positive impact on your life this year?

Looking forward to 2020

  • What do you want the overarching theme of 2020 to be?
  • What are your biggest goals for 2020?
  • What skills do you want to learn, improve or master?
  • Which personal quality do you want to develop or strengthen?
  • What do you want your everyday life to be like?
  • What do you want to achieve with your career?
  • How do you want to remember the year 2020 when you look back on it 10/20/50 years from now?
Me in my vintage fur stole

I hope that you and your family have a wonderful start to the new year and new decade. Thanks for stopping by and Happy New Year!

Hugs, Libby

A little music to ring in the new year.

Merry Christmas 2019

Just a quick note to wish you all a very Merry Christmas this year. We have been celebrating this year in the Midwest with friends and family everyday. It is difficult to fit everyone in, so we wish you a very happy holiday if we cannot see you in person.

Christmas Eve on the lake (photo and special effects by Neil)

Our most exciting news is that our daughter Lauren is engaged to be married!!

Christmas Eve night at the lake

We had a wonderfully fun visit with Lauren and Julian on Christmas Eve, but most importantly, we didn’t blow the surprise that Julian was going to propose on Christmas morning. So congratulations to the happy couple!!

We hope you all enjoy a very Merry Christmas with you families!

Photo by Neil

Hugs, Libby