Lemonade day

Our local chamber of commerce hosts Lemonade Day the first weekend in May. The goal is to teach kids how entrepreneurship works, so they get to learn about business plans, money management and giving back to their community. The turnout has been greater than expected, with over 70 lemonade stands popping up around town. The girls in the group home where I volunteer started participating last year. Since we were unable to see them in an official capacity this month, I gathered up personal care items like deodorant, body spray, lotion, chapstick and hair ties to create goodie bags for each of them, which they thoroughly enjoyed receiving. The little fun sizes of chocolates I also included in their bags were definitely a hit.

Spring showers

Rain in the Texas hill country is either feast or famine. We're pretty much always in need of some rain to fill our dwindling aquifer and local lakes. But this time of year it often arrives in the form of thunderstorms with hail and high winds. We're not technically in tornado alley, but we still get the occasional spring twister when the hot and cold air mix.

A recent afternoon for the dogs sunning on the back porch turned into a thunderstorm watch that drove them inside and soaked the area. Thankfully the hail falling in our neck of the woods didn't exceed pea size. However, some less fortunate folks in other parts of Texas had to deal with damage caused by baseball sized hailstones falling from the sky. Which sounds horrific, honestly.

Our lake house property is definitely prone to more frequent severe thunderstorms, and just rain, in general. It seems a recent local downpour floated a chunk of the mulch out of the landscaping bed nearest our front porch. Alas, I'm afraid that means we'll need to be making a mulch to river rock upgrade as soon as I can get it scheduled with our yard company.

Booking it with the built-ins

I thought our builder might have had his cabinet guy get started on the shelving and storage we opted to add to the living room and office at the lake house this week. You can imagine my surprise when I realized all that's left to do is paint both units the same cream color as the trim. Woo-hoo, y'all, I'm one step closer to displaying my travel tschotskes as well as blue and green glass collection. 

Lake post, random edition

Thanks to my handy husband and all of his woodworking tools out in our barn, he made short work of trimming my kitchen cabinet inserts to help get me organized at the lake house. Now all of my utensil, spice and coffee pod drawers are ready for guests to open up and be nosy.

I spent a good chunk of my Monday this week trying to locate online the exact kitchen cabinet pulls we have at the lake house. I need a dozen of them to put on the new living and office area shelving/storage drawers we're having built. I finally located something that's super similar, but even more attractive. So I gleefully placed an order for them.

When I was putting together four nightstands on my last lake trip, little man Finn decided to get right up in the middle of things. He seriously looked as if he was my supervisor at one point, providing quality control. What a ham.

 

 

Thus far I've collected three different outdoor games for the lake once we can start entertaining. The last one I caught on sale, extra large wooden dominoes. It joined the corn hole and oversized pong sets stored in the lake house garage.

And finally, I wanted to share with you one of my favorite new additions to the lake kitchen. There's a spot where I've placed this fun board with our wifi login for guests, plus a couple framed pics, some monogrammed notepads and colored pens in a caddy. Then on top of this pad set that works with the color of the granite countertops, I placed Claude the Crawfish to hold my pen. He's so darned cute, y'all, I can hardly stand it.

A fence for my fur babies

I was at the lake recently for several days, just me and the dogs, trying to cross more to-do items off my list for the summer entertaining season, particularly our backyard fence. The husband and I were happy to have the older daughter and her husband initially join us for a long weekend. This was their first visit to the lake, so we enjoyed showing them around. 

We discovered a darling local winery, Kiepersol Estates, so we booked a lunch reservation and then took a tour of their operations. It's unique in that all of the wines they bottle come from grapes grown on the estate. That is definitely not the case with a lot of Texas wineries. 

In other lake news, we are now up to three kayaks with the delivery of the tandem one the husband ordered. With six flotation vests, we're all ready to paddle our corner of the lake. Per our boat salesman, the tritoon we ordered will wrap up construction soon and should be ready for delivery by mid-May.

When I purchased a new light fixture for the dining room, I seriously underestimated the ceiling height. This lovely replacement was extended to the max hang height. Unfortunately when we added an extra two feet of chain beyond the fixed poles, it made this linear chandelier sit crossways at an angle to the dining table. I believe the appropriate southern term is cattywampus. Plus it was still suspended too high and looked awkward. And so I switched it out for a wagon wheel design that looks great in the space. Anybody local looking to buy a slightly used Pottery Barn forged iron chandelier, hit me up and I'll give you a good deal... LED lightbulbs included.

Azalea season has ended at the lake, but now roses are in bloom. Although the fence installation guys were great, they unfortunately punctured our sprinkler system in two spots. So I had to ring up our irrigation folks to come repair that. With our recent rains and the sprinklers running regularly now, the yard has greened up and looks healthy. St Augustine "carpet grass" is my favorite.

As for the dogs, they were thrilled when the fence was finished so they could roam the yard at will. But I still monitor their outside time because the husband killed our first snake at the lake. Thankfully it was a non-venomous water snake. But this close to the water, I'm on the lookout for water moccasins. And you always have to watch for rattlers in the piney woods. The other thing I have to be aware of is the possibility of our pups falling over the retaining wall into the lake if they don't put on the brakes soon enough when chasing the occasional duck or heron out of their yard. Then there's this nasty habit of them enjoying the occasional roll in duck poop. Talk about yucky, y'all. The local fowl quack me up by coming close enough to the house to taunt our terriers. The little white dog's other fav place to get a good look at the yard is the sofa nearest the back porch.

New doggy hairdos

It's April, so that means it's time for our cairn terriers to get their coats clipped as we head into warm weather. Our very own naked mole rats. It's only gonna get worse in terms of sweltering heat on the horizon. Plus sticker season is just getting started, which I loathe. With the grass growing again and my yard guy bringing in the mowers, that means the pups are also tracking in little green bits for me to sweep and vacuum on the regular. 

Warmer temps also means the lizards are out again around the back porch. Finn is quite the lizard hunter, even more than Pepper. He has only killed one this month, but that's mainly because I've started discouraging this behavior. He's the sort that would go after a snake in the yard, obviously not realizing if it's venomous, and that would be the end of little man Finn. 

There are times Finn *thinks* he sees a lizard and it has already escaped. Since he's a tenacious terrier, he isn't one to throw in the towel. And so he stands around and whines in frustration. Jumps at the fence where the lizard was. Scratches the roof downspout where the lizard scuttled away and out of sight to safety. The husband has tried showing Finn that the lizard isn't there, but this doesn't really deter his persistent behavior.  

The local deer that often waltz onto our five acres when the gate to our property is open are also prone to fits of terrier territorial behavior. When they come close to the fence to graze on the grass there, Finn and Pepper feel compelled to chase them away. Not that it does any good, mind you. The deer may dash off, but they're not truly afraid of the little yappers as evidenced by them returning to our property on the regular. 

My yappy little yard guardians

The dogs were on patrol all weekend when we were at the lake house. It got rather noisy at times when Finn and Pepper discovered intruders in the back yard. Barking ensued every time they spied a duck, heron or squirrel on their patch of grass. Once the fence installation is complete, they'll have a grand old time chasing away any future feather or furred trespassers.