ONE THING I LOVE

Know what I love? Coneflowers!

It won't be long now!

When we first got the Cantina Garden installed and planted, I ended up with one bed leftover and not much to go in it. So, I just grabbed a packet of native wildflower seeds from Wildseed Farm in Fredericksburg, scattered those over the bed, and let it go at that. That first year it was chock full of flowers, but each year fewer and fewer came back. Except for the coneflowers, which just got bigger and better every year.

Last year I splurged and added a few fancy hybrids into the mix.

Will they be as hearty and prolific as their native brethren? Only time will tell.

Meanwhile...

I'm having oodles of fun playing with this darling coneflower stencil and stamp set, which I picked up at Crafty Scrappers in Waxahachie last week, for only five or six bucks!

Coneflowers...

Gotta love 'em!
 

HOLY MOLY!

Guess what's fixin' to bloom at the Wimberley Village Library?

That's one ginormous stalk of asparagus, is it not?

Just kidding! That's actually an agave. Some people call these "Century Plants" I think, and I've heard rumors that it takes forever for them to finally bloom, and then they up and die!

Sure hope that isn't true, or that I have my agaves mixed up, 'cause I just love saying "Hi, Audrey!" to these little-shop-of-horror-monsters each time I enter the library.

Wonder what I'd do if it ever said "Feed Me"?

WHY I'M STILL BLOGGING

The house across the street hit the bluebonnet bonanza this year.

This past weekend my sisters mentioned the fact that I no longer blog every single day, and asked if I was getting tired of it. I thought about it for a minute, then said "No, not really. After 7 1/2 years, and 2,500 posts, it's getting harder and harder to come up with subjects I haven't already covered, but when I do come up with an idea, well, it's sheer bliss!" Then, just this morning, I was flipping through a back issue of Stampington's Artful Blogging magazine, and I came across something in an article by Milynn Luong, who has a blog called Love and Whimsy. Immediately I thought "This is it! This is why I do it."

 "We sometimes make things much more complicated than they really need to be. So my solution to it all was simple: Remove the distractions and find joy in the simple things. It is a conscious effort, but with a little practice, it can manifest itself in many ways. Blogging helped to keep the momentum going, as with each blog post and picture that I took I tried to fit in this philosophy. Outside of my blog and photography, simplicity found its way in through my cooking, my home's décor, and my fashion choices. Simplicity became a lifestyle. I found that consciously looking for little things to be happy about, completely changes my mood and outlook for the entire day." 

Here's a good example:

 

Not all that long ago, I would have walked right past those white "plumes" out by the fire pit, not giving them a second thought. The new me, however, couldn't resist taking a closer look.

Which is how I discovered that they weren't actually plumes at all. They were spider webs! From there, something else caught my eye.

That's when my heart start to beat just a little faster, because I remembered another day much like this one, back when I first moved up here.

A day when just the right combination of fog and dew transformed these four acres into a place of magic and mystery!

I knew I just had to share it with you!

And that, my friends, is why I'm still blogging. It makes me notice the little things.

WAXAHACHIE: QUITE A CRAFTY LITTLE TOWN

Every time I drive back and forth from visiting family in Dallas, I pass the exit for a little town called Waxahachie (wok-suh-hatch-ee). And, every time I pass it, I say "I really need to stop there some day." Well, guess what? Yesterday I finally did!

My main reason for stopping was that I kept hearing about a little shop called The Crafty Scrapper. Now, my version of "scrapbooking" was to finally get all our photos stashed in shoe boxes, sorted by country, and yell "Hallelujah!" However, there is a good bit of crossover between the supplies that scrapbookers and art journalers use, so I thought it might be worth a visit. Indeed, it was!

My first big surprise was that instead of the cozy little nook of a shop I was expecting, it took up half of one side of the town square.

The second big surprise came when I realized there was some kind of class going on at the back of the shop...

and the person conducting the workshop? None other than internationally renowned art journalist Dina Wakley!

But, the biggest surprise of all was all the other crafty goodness I discovered while wandering around the square and its side streets. Such as this fabulous quilt shop...

with a liveried doorman! Or this awesome shop where you can make your own mosaics.

Of course there were oodles and oodles of antiques, such as the shop called Paris Market, but there were also some pretty hip spots like this...

As for dining options, well, you have your quintessential ladies-who-lunch-and-shop venue, The Dove's Nest.

But, I also spotted a funky Tex-Mex spot, an upscale pub, the Courthouse Cafe, a soon-to-be-open vintage drive-up burger joint, and a swanky-looking Japanese restaurant in their historic hotel.

 
So, I guess it comes as no surprise that, instead of my usual four-to-five hour trip from Dallas to Wimberley, it took me eight and a half hours to get home yesterday!

Waxahachie -- it's worth a visit!