COUNTRY MEETS CITY

Dripping Springs is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. I've never understood how it could have so many residents, but offer so few amenities. It's always been more of a bedroom community for Austin commuters than a real town, being just far enough away to offer more affordable housing, but close enough that everyone could drive into the city for all their shopping, dining and entertainment. That is beginning to change, however, due to the string of massive master-planned communities popping up all along the Hwy. 290 corridor, from west of Dripping Springs right on to Austin -- a veritable sea of houses! One of the most immense developments is a 1600 acre community called Belterra, at 290 and Nutty Brown Rd. Though I hope never  to live in one of these developments again, there is one thing I am pretty excited about -- the 93 acre mixed-use development that came as a result of it, and is being developed by the same group that worked on The Domain in north Austin. The anchor is Sky Cinemas, a sister to the art house theater in downtown Austin called Violet Crown. This new one, however, has fourteen screens and will show both popular releases and limited release films, which is how we got to see the movie Tully last week without having to drive all the way to downtown Austin. Woohoo! The shopping center is in it's early stages yet, but there was at least one shop worth checking out -- Breed & Co. -- which is definitely not your typical hardware store!

Another thing we are excited about? Some of the restaurants that are in the works!

Pieous -- a pizza joint more famous for its pastrami -- is our favorite place to eat in Dripping, but from the day it opened it was too small, which made it very hard to get a table.  Hopefully, this newer, larger location will take care of that problem. But probably not, as it will be a good bit closer, and therefore more tempting, to Austin folks.

On my personal burger scale, those at Hat Creek Burgers sit closer to Whataburger than to Hays City, but I do love their outdoor dining pavilion and their playground.

Also in the works, but not yet open, are Torchy's Tacos, The League, Bistro 54, Spec's Wine, Spirits and Finer Foods, and I believe a big HEB as well.

Looks like Hubby's and My "Friday Movie Dates" just got a whole lot more options!

 

THE THING THAT WILL BREAK MY HEART

In my 43 years of marriage to a traveling engineer, I've walked away from some fairly awesome homes and gardens with hardly a backward glance. You get used to it. I'm finding it extremely difficult, however, to contemplate a future where we might need to live somewhere other than here. What's funny, though, is that it's not really the house or the garden that I will miss. In fact, they have both been royal pains in the ass!

What were we thinking, buying a house with only two bedrooms, a one-person kitchen with practically no storage or counter space, a one person bathroom that Hubby and I have to share, with a tiny shower, one sink, no countertops or drawers, no walk-in closets, and no separation or privacy between the toilet and everything else? A house that has only three rooms on the main level, and which requires one to go outside to reach the two rooms on the lower level? And, gardening with deer, snakes, armadillos, raccoons, and feral hogs? Fuggitabowdit!

So, no, I won't be missing any of that if we ever have to leave. Nonetheless, there will be tears. The thing that it will surely break my heart to walk away from? It will be these windows in the trees, and the amazing things I see almost every time I walk past one. Views like this one out my bedroom window, which kept me mesmerized for most of the the morning the other day!

That very same afternoon I walked past the dining room windows and spotted a doe that must've been in labor, so there are probably at least one or two more precious fawns hidden away here now.  Is it any wonder that I can never seem to get anything crossed off of my to-do list?

 

NEW BOOK GIDDINESS

I rarely buy books anymore, getting most all of my reading material from our local library. However, when these two titles popped up in my feed by chance this week, I didn't even bother to do any research on them. I just went straight to Amazon and placed my order!

I mean, what better match for a creative grandma, an adventurous grandson, and the stack of Blue Apron cardboard boxes I've been accumulating, than a book called Epic Cardboard Adventures, written by the author of a blog called Pink Stripey Socks?!!!

Goobs may not be old enough to do any of these projects on his own just yet, but it won't be long.

In the meantime, there are several I could make for him, to play with now. Robot finger puppets? Egyptian pyramid? A king's crown? Where to begin?

The second book I ordered was this one:

Why did it reach out and grab me? Well, I love the work of Antoni Gaudi and, when we were in Barcelona, I learned that everything he designed was based on patterns and structures he observed in nature, such as the four basic design structures explored in this book. And, with these four,  the author created amazing art like this...

and this!

Perhaps this will help me to become a little more observant of nature myself, and to come up with some wonderful patterns that I can use in surface design projects, or to carve my own stamps with, or maybe to make patterns on my gelli plate then print onto my handmade papers. Who knows where it might lead me?

Is it any wonder that I'm feeling such giddiness?