Can you believe its almost that time of year again? All these little Longhorns are off to new homes. My shop is on vacation for a little bit, but let me know if you need one before football season starts!
longhorn sewing season
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Tag Archives: texas
trip to enchanted rock
Last weekend, we took an adventure day to go climb up Enchanted Rock. We went all the way up to the top. I was a little terrified coming back down, but we made it round trip in one piece!
It was a nice, sunny day, with a little bit of chill in the wind. We were glad we had long sleeves when we got to the summit. The wind up there was cold on our ears.
When you are this far away, you think, oh it doesn’t look that steep. Extremely deceiving. Like a stair stepper times a hundred, plus the added danger of falling off the side.
We took a different route home and stopped for some bbq. The meat here is good, but they don’t have pickles on the side. Instead they have jalepenos. Just in case pickles with your bbq is a deciding factor.
We made it home in the afternoon, and then took a nice nap. All that danger and sandwiches made us sleepy.
texas flag blanket
I made up this blanket pattern as a wedding present a couple months ago. I wanted to try something new, and also, someday their future kids will make a fort with it.
So far, I’ve only made granny square blankets. I hope to branch out soon, but when you are going off the grid, sometimes its good to stick with what you know. The flag is mostly straight lines, so that part was easy enough, but the star. The star was the tough part. It had to be a 5-pointed star. I needed it to be the right size. I think there was a large, sad pile of discarded stars after I was done.
I ended up following a youtube video for this star. I figured out to outline the star in blue, so I could sew it on without obvious stitch marks.
It crocheted up pretty quickly, so you still have time if you need another Christmas present idea!
morning hike
Jon drove by part of the greenbelt for work the other day, and he was convinced that there might be water down in the creek. So twist my arm, we went on a morning hike to investigate. Now we have gone in the summer a few times before, and it was dry as a bone, so imagine our surprise and delight at this sight. We found it!
peach cobbler
We took an anniversary adventure to Fredericksburg last weekend. One of our main goals, besides celebrating our neverending love and devotion, was to obtain peaches. We are under the assumption that these peaches were picked fresh just for us. At this particular peach establishment, they also sold peach ice cream. So there were people sitting in rows of chairs, just silently eating peach ice cream. No words needed.
After we made it back home and took a nap, we promptly made a peach cobbler, with extra dashes of cinnamon, and with melty ice cream on top.
weekend snaps
Couple of pictures from anniversary weekend.
1. Taking a walk through the flower field, and naming all the flowers we know.
2. Visits to all the small town Texas shops.
3. Dinner out of Johnny Appleseed’s hat with the most handsome guy in the world.
longhorn nap time
This is a pillow for a little longhorn. One of our friend’s brought over a naked pillow. Her little guy uses it in the car, and it needed a cover. They are big Longhorn fans, so I added a big friendly face to some grey fleece, and sewed a simple pillow cover. Ready for lots of car napping, which I was excellent at when I was little.
football scrapbook
Let’s see… I graduated from UT 4 years ago, so these pictures are at least that old. And I have been hoarding a box of football/Texas scrapbooking supplies for about that long too. My new computer is much faster for sifting through photos, so I finally got to work on printing some out, and making that college football scrapbook.
While I was picking out photos, I was thinking about how college is a weird time. Some of the people are still your very best friends, and then some you never see again. Such is life. It was still fun to look through the memories.
Since there were so many photos I wanted to include, I basically grouped them into collages on the computer, printed them on photo paper, and then cut them out, keeping the collage in tact. That way I didn’t have to place every photo separately, and I could still use all the hoarded papers, and stickers, and other supplies.
If it looks like a football themed scrapbook store threw up on the pictures, good. That is exactly what I was going for. I just wanted to have fun using all the toys. Its nice to just make whatever pops into your head, and if it doesn’t turn out just right, I just tape something better over it.
road trip, part four + some road trip tips
We took the more direct route back to Texas. So we drove through eastern Oregon, south through Utah, a little Colorado, some New Mexico, and then back to Austin. There really is some beautiful scenery in those parts. Some of it looks like The Land Before Time. Like a dinosaur family might be roaming about right on the other side of the mountain.
When we started off, it was so foggy we could barely see, and everything was covered in a layer of ice, except the road, thankfully.
But then suddenly, the fog cleared, and it was a beautiful, chilly, sunny day. It was like angels singing cleared the fog away.
We drove through all types of terrain: gorge, mountains, desert, hills, and these kinds of magnificent, ancient land formations. We saw snow on the ground, but we never did see any fall from the sky.
I kept a sharp eye out for this rock with a hole in it for miles. I was starting to think it was just all a publicity stunt, and then, there it was.
A road trip is like 50% snacks. We had to eat this box of cookies right away, since the sun was going to melt the chocolate.
The sun spent about 8 hours a day glaring me in the eyes, and then it would go down, and I could spend a nice 5 minutes being able to see before it went completely dark.
Yay! We made it to Texas! You are happy for crossing the state line for a couple minutes, and then you realize that you have to drive like 8 more hours before you get to the middle of the state.
Even though there were some long driving days, our road trip was the best. I would do it again, with a few minor changes, in a heartbeat.
Here are a few tips for long couple road trips that we learned along the way:
- Pack smart snacks that keep well. Mostly healthy with some treats. We had mainly crackers, muffins, beef jerky, little carrots, and baby oranges. We also brought a little cooler with lunchmeat and cheese, and we would make bagel sandwiches for meals if we didn’t want to stop. Some states do make you declare any fruits or veggies you bring into the state. We had to show a policeman our oranges when we got to California.
- Remember to drink water. You can also use empty water bottles as pretend microphones for car singing. It makes you less grouchy, and its ok to have to stop and stretch your legs every now and then.
- Keep a separate spot for trash, and throw it out when you make stops. Also paper towels are handy, as are pillows/blankets.
- Be sure to have a car charger if you are relying on a phone for travel info, and be sure to have actual music stored somewhere for all those times when the radio and phone service are weak.
- Make rules beforehand. Our rules were to: 1. No matter what, be nice to each other, and 2. obey the traffic laws.
snow(?) day
This is the amount of snow substance that shuts the city down here. Here are some other snowstorm pictures from Austin. It was pretty chilly though, so I sweatered up and drank lots of tea.
Now today, the forecast is sunny and seventy, so we’ll have to say goodbye to the snow soon!
guy and his girl 