Thursday, May 24, 2018

A TINY HOME COMMUNITY COMES TO WIMBERLEY

The Muses and I have long been enamored with the new ideas popping up for nursing home alternatives -- ingenious ideas for aging out. We especially like the ones where friends band together and each build their own small home on one piece of property. We know it's not the place to be when you can no longer do anything at all for yourself, but it could be a great way to maintain your privacy and dignity up until that point, while still having help at hand in those temporary times of need. Needless to say, when Spirit Woman said she had seen a flyer mentioning a place called Hummingbird Lane Tiny Home Community, right here on the edges of our little town, well, of course we had to go check it out. So, we sent a message to owner Rose Burke-Duncan, and she agreed to a meet-up.


We expected to get maybe 10 or 15 minutes of her time. Instead, she spent the entire morning with us!



This 12-acre property has four sites, two of them already occupied. Turns out, however, she owns more property in the same community, and when she finished showing us this one, she was kind enough to show us that as well.


This is where she built her own not-tiny-but-small rock house, every stone gathered by her from this property.


She will soon have this house rented out, as she recently remarried and they have nine kids between them, so they're going to need a bit more space when everyone gets together -- especially when the grandkids start coming! Not only did she offer us a peek into the house...


she also gave us a tour of her bountiful garden and orchard...






and sent us home with pockets full of peaches, as well as some great tales about her amazing, wild, adventurous life!


She's nearing completion on a tiny house for this property as well, which she plans to rent out. Could it be yours? Contact her at zenroze@gmail.com.

P.S. Did I mention that both of these properties are in a community with river access?


Wednesday, May 23, 2018

BIRTHDAY WEEK ADVENTURES

Did Little Goob Man's birthday celebration end with the early family party at his house? Of course not. It went on all week long! Next up was his first adventure at a splash park.

What IS this place?
So that's how you do it.


Best of all, though? Getting to go to The Austin Zoo -- a non-profit rescue zoo on the edge of Dripping Springs -- with both sets of grandparents. The animals are pretty cool...




but this is what he really came for.

Nate's Parents, Frank and Holly

Not only did we get to see more animals along the way, but there were also gnomes and dinosaurs and aliens and pirates!


Not quite up to Disney standards perhaps, but enough to make one two year old mighty happy.



Tuesday, May 22, 2018

TINY DINNER CLUB GOES CUBAN

I may have mentioned before that the more fun I am having, the less photos I take? Well, that holds doubly true when the event is at my own house. Which is why I have so little to show for the latest meet-up of our Tiny Dinner Club. Since I chose a restaurant on my last turn, it was my time to cook, so I chose to do a Kinda Cuban But Not Really dinner.


If only I hadn't been so busy cooking, I might have remembered to snap a photo of Hubby's little Cuban cigar/rum station he had set up, complete with the cedar strips they taught us to use for the proper lighting of a cigar. Or I might have remembered to snap one of his mojito prep area, or of us all enjoying them out on the balcony with my brother and sister-in-law's Cuban dip, while listening to Alexa's Cuban Jazz lineup.


The main course consisted of Cuban Rice, which has a couple of cloves of smashed garlic added to the cooking water; Cuban Sleeping Beans, which are black beans with lots of veggies and spices that must be cooked the day before and allowed to sleep in the fridge overnight in order for the flavors to meld, then finished off with a dash of vinegar and a bit of sugar; and my not so Cuban but oh-so-good-at-Thanksgiving Spicy Pork Tenderloins With Orange-Cranberry Sauce. For dessert I pulled out an old recipe for Hubby's favorite birthday cake -- a French Vanilla Cake with sort of a Praline Frosting, which I didn't think to photograph until it was half gone!


My favorite part of the whole dinner? Hubby's spec-TAC-ular mojitos. How spectacular were they? Well, as most of you know, I'm not really a drinker -- especially anything with hard liquor in it -- and I finished off one whole mojito. He had never made them before so he started googling for recipes, and we were lucky enough to find one for the Hotel Nacional Mojito -- the one our tour guide claimed to be the best mojito in all the world. I think he just might be right about that! Here is the recipe -- you can thank me later.