Zest Fest 2012, Taylor Texas

Dear friends,

We spent this morning acting like locals.  Because after all, we are locals now.  First thing we did was visit the small Hutto Farmer's Market and scored some delicious fresh produce from the folks there---fresh cauliflower, tomatoes and cucumbers.  The first tomatoes are just now coming in and we can never resist them.  We bought from farms in Thrall and Taylor, and other than my own backyard garden, that's as local as it gets!

Then we came back home to Taylor and went downtown for their annual Zest Fest celebration.  I'll admit, it was a lot larger than I expected.  The entire downtown area was filled with music and crafts, local organizations like the Taylor Garden Club, Chamber of Commerce and the Blackland Quilt Guild had booths, and a classic car show got both Rudy's and my attention.  Here are a few photos I took along the way.  Forgive the quality of the pics, it was in the upper 90's, my camera was being a bit flakey and the crowd of people were often in the way.

 

Quilts flapped in the breeze, hung from a building.  Sorry I didn't get the names of the quiltmakers.

My favorites are always the brightly colored ones.

The quilts had many admirers, young and old.

Husband Rudy liked this one the best.  The quiltmaker used all floral fabrics on an otherwise simple pattern.

Blackland Quilt Guild is the local Taylor quilting group.

The Taylor Garden Club had a booth selling plants.

The classic car show also caught our eye.  I love classic cars, especially the Chevys.  I've been a Chevy girl from the get-go. :-)

 After wandering around for an hour or so, I scored a grape shaved ice (we used to call them snow cones---when did they quit putting them in cones?  LOL), and we followed our ears to the live music.  We got quite a surprise when we arrived at the stage.  A young girl with a gorgeous, strong voice was belting out some contemporary songs.  Turns out, she's Courtney Ging, the very talented 16-year old daughter of our beloved plumber and wife, Wayne and Cara Ging.  Her performance deserves a blog post of its own, so stay tuned!

We also checked out the marquee to see what's coming next at our restored Howard Theatre in downtown Taylor.  YES!  Dark Shadows is coming next week, and Rudy and I already have a date for the first showing.  We haven't had a chance to see a show there yet, and  I'm looking forward to it.

Hope you've enjoyed this little picture of our new friendly, vibrant community!  The temperature eventually reached 96-degrees today.  Crazy.  But that didn't stop the Taylorites (as we're called, I found out) from getting out, having fun, and celebrating small town Texas.

Happy trails on Cinco de Mayo!

bobbi c.

A little setback and a little progress

All in all, I guess the setbacks even out the progress. Or something like that. All I know is that when I found out we had a huge gas leak and our heating system had to be shut down completely, I thought we had hit a major crisis in the remodeling of the cottage. But one call to our Favorite Plumber in the Whole World, Wayne Ging from Wayne's Plumbing in Coupland, Texas, got us fixed up pronto. By Tuesday afternoon, we had a permit, he and his employee Rick had dug the very deep ditch that went all the way across the yard, made the repairs, called the inspector (who called the gas company) and got us going again. Those guys don't mess around, I tell ya! And thanks to Wayne's wife, Cara, who keeps the office running and Wayne where he's supposed to be. :-)

That's Wayne on the left, and Rick on the right. Rick wants me to tell everyone that he's single. :-)

After some fiddling with the thermostat to get the unit fired up again, within a couple of hours we had wonderful heat in the house.

Can I just say that we love our plumbers? :-)

After all that drama, it was sort of anti-climactic to continue work on the bathroom, but Rudy did make a lot of progress today. Clap your eyes on these!

I must say I've always wanted a Jacuzzi, but this one is slightly small to bathe in. LOL. The Jacuzzi Prestige toilet has a unique feature--there's no worm-like curlicue at the bottom to collect dust! Could it be that I'll enjoy cleaning my bathroom? ARE YOU KIDDIN' ME?

We're taking a few days to rest, ponder, maybe pack a few boxes (eek) and eat some pretty good cookin'. And if we're lucky, Santa might just come for a visit. Wonder what he'll bring? A new ceiling fan, perhaps? LOL!

Happy trails,

bobbi c.