Artwork going up

We purchased our lake house on February 28. After almost three months, I'm finally down to "prettying up" the interior now that the anchor items are arranged. As much as it was driving me nuts to stare at blank swaths of wallspace, I couldn't hang anything until all of the furniture was in place. Once the beds delivered a couple weeks ago and I got them all put together, it was time to start considering where to place artwork.

Speaking of hanging things, I got my first set of curtains delivered and I'm really happy with them. When my decorator suggested this busy pattern, I was a bit hesitant. But it really does look good in the dining space. I also ordered a couple custom solar shades to help keep the western sun pouring through the master bath windows at bay this summer.

 

 

 

I hired the sweet little retired high school shop teacher, who has been a curtain hanger on the side for the past thirty years, to get some artwork on the walls for me. His name is Tom and he did an excellent job with our first set of curtains through the local design shop recommended to me. Did you see the oryx mount over the mantel? It's a real conversation piece in the living area, and Tom was very methodical and conscientious as he worked to get it in place. When he comes out to hang the rest of the curtains I ordered that are being made, then I'll hire him again to place some more things on the walls that I still need to get to the lake on my next trip. Bit by bit, y'all, the lake place is sloooooowly coming together.

Home from the lake

Three weeks later, and I'm finally home from the lake. I got a lot accomplished and will post about that soon. In the meantime, here are some highlights. I enjoyed boudin balls with bug sauce at our favorite local cajun restaurant, hung new summer wreaths on my double front doors, saw sailboats on the water while back porch sitting with the doggos and watched the flamingo themed golf tournament participants from our dock. Some of our community's retirees realllllly get into anything themed. 

Still working at the lake

I'm still working on my to-do list at the lake. However, now I've got company for the next several days. The husband, plus our law student and her boyfriend arrived yesterday to hang out through the weekend. Everybody was happy to see we've got beds now instead of just mattresses on the floor.

One of my favorite improvements at the lake has been the removal of all mulch in the landscaping beds, so now they feature river rock. The husband agrees it's a much better look. The doggos have enjoyed more hands to pet them today. Plus the added bonus of us playing games like washers and corn hole in the backyard. I guess it was fortuitous our custom boat under construction is a bit behind schedule, because the wind has been a blowing to the point where I don't think we would have taken our new tritoon out on the water if it had arrived on time this week. But don't think the wind is deterring Pepper and Finn from protecting our yard from any nefarious behavior the local herons or ducks might have in mind. 

Grown girls update

This spring has been eventful for our girls. The CPA and her husband moved to the cutest bungalow in Austin. We were glad our furry grand dog Chorkie finally got a nice yard. They like that their new casa is walking distance to lots of fun places in this hip and happening 'hood.

The older daughter attended a baby shower recently and took Nena, my husband's mother. Such a sweet pic of them!

The law student wrapped up her 2L year and will begin a summer internship next week with a Dallas firm. She and her med school boyfriend have been in Chicago celebrating the end of her spring semester and his last hurrah before starting clinical rotations. Several weeks ago, they attended an early birthday weekend celebration for the med student's dad at a cool B&B ranch. Giddy up, y'all!

This last pic was taken at what the younger daughter calls the law school prom, which cracks me up. Such an attractive couple, if I do say so myself. A year from now we'll watch this girl cross the stage to get her JD and thus our tuition-paying days will finally come to an end. What a blessing that we've been able to get our girls through school without going into debt so they can chase their career dreams without the burden of owing an arm and leg in loans once they graduate.

Iron beds finally arrived

As soon as our lake house cleared the inspection period, I promptly ordered five iron beds from a British-based company. Silly me didn't realize they were considered custom and thus had to be made, then shipped across the pond to clear customs and get delivered. This process from order to delivery took exactly three months. 

I spent almost three hours from start to finish to get the first bed put together Monday evening. These beds were realllllllly well packed for shipping, protected by both styrofoam and wool around the matte black powder coated iron. It takes a solid fifteen minutes just to get the headboard, footboard and rails unpacked. But the first bed was way more time-consuming because I had to do it by myself. The next morning I hired a next door neighbor's college age daughter to help me put the rest of the beds together, and that was definitely the way to go.

I gathered up all of the packing "guts" as I worked, easily filling up five large bags. So I've been placing multiple contractor-sized bags out at the curb for trash pick up this week. Now I just need to finish breaking down all of the boxes for them to dispose of, too. As you can imagine, I'm beyond thrilled to be sleeping in a real bed instead of on a mattress on the floor as I've been doing since we bought the lake house. 

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.