King's High Ranch - Part 2

Living in a rural area where there are few choices to eat one usually gets to be treated to the local restaurant. Such was the case when we visited.  Two meals and good conversation over dinner and breakfast at Galvan's Restaurant with some awesome homemade sweet rolls in the morning.  They serve everything from great Texas favorites to Mexican food.  Across the street allowed me to take a picture of one of Bob Wills original tour bus and what a gas station would look like long ago.  Bob Wills is from Turkey, Texas.

Then in Texas some towns you do not say the name until you hear it.  In our county such is the name Mexia. The press gets it wrong every time and pronounces it Mex-ia.  Across the state the pronunciation is Ma-hay-ah.  But locals pronounce it Ma-hare.  Both are right and Mex-ia brings laughter and fun loving admonishment.  The little town of Quitaque on the town's Chamber of Commerce website shows the pronunciation as Kitty-quay!  Still the locals pronounce it slightly different, maybe just speak it faster.  LOL, I'm just not sure.  There is a great mural in town celebrating they are the gateway to Caprock Canyons State Park.

A trip back is definitely in order to visit the state park!  There is also a Trailway leading into the Park extending 100 to the south.  Part of the Trailway extends onto another of King's High Ranch properties.  On the site of an old railroad bed this is a great trail for biking, hiking or horseback.  So if your into any of those activities you definitely need to look into a great vacation idea utilizing the trailway.  But I encourage you to read the reviews.

Kings High Ranch - Part 1

This past weekend Larry and I travel towards the Panhandle for Memorial Day Weekend.  Texas is known for it's wonderful hospitality!  Our friend and owner of Kings High Ranch certainly provided the most wonderful hospitality anyone could wish for.  We were the first to stay in their wonderful new 1 bedroom/1 bath guest house.  And here are a few of the photos of the interior.  Classic western decor.

Darling kitchen, the porch table kept inside due to the ever blowing wind.  We did move it outside to enjoy the beautiful sunsets.

Kings High Ranch makes up several different properties in four counties just below the Cap Rock.  A few photos of what I found interesting on the property where the guest house is located.

Some triticale King's High is growing.

Cap Rock in the distance.  Through the gate is the bank of the Pease River.

Traveling from one of Kings High properties we passed what George called the "Red Neck" Windmill.

I've seen these wind generators on the web before but can not find it now.  George told us the story behind it.  Some still operate, but very noisy as are the big wind generators of today.

The above picture is another property of George's he has leased out and will eventually fill with his own cattle.  This field was filled with Thistles with beautiful blooms making a striking contrast to the black calves.  We have a different species of Thistles, Musk or Nodding Thistle on our ranch with beautiful purple blooms that look like purple cotton balls.

I have more photos for tomorrow.

Intelligent

What fun this week's sketch is over at Nuts About Sketches!  It's week #264 with an excellent sketch!

I rotated the sketch and kept the elements using mostly Studio Calico to once again do a layout with Zuby as the focus.  I am also wondering, 'Is vellum coming back in?'  I hope so.  The Studio Calico paper and vellum along with the Simple Stories Burlap paper came in my January Paper Bakery Scrapbooking Kit.  I used the vellum for the circle element in my layout.  Everything else came out of my stash.  Fun sketch....oh yeah, I already wrote that!

My daughter took this photo Summer '09.  I probably have written about how intelligent Zuby is. One of the first things I remember learning about horses is to look at their eyes.  They will always without fail tell you exactly how the horse is feeling at that moment.  You quickly get an idea of his intelligence and character.  I can tell from the base of his ear that they are pricked forward and he's wondering why with interest what Lynn is doing.  At the same time it didn't take him long to become bored with the black box going 'click.'  Having him born in my arms I can immediately read what his mood is and what is interesting him at the time.  And how quickly he will find it either boring or continue his interest.  Lynn took some other photos this day which I will scrap soon. They show it didn't take him long to find much more interesting things to occupy that constantly moving mind of his.

I hope you enjoy this week's sketch and will take a peek at the amazing work the design team came up with!

Until next time!

May Day Inspiration!!!

Happy May Day everyone!!!  For those of you in the upper Midwest and northern Great Plains you have snow this morning!  Really????  Did someone forget to tell the weatherman there is suppose to be no SNOW in May!  That really dampens the fun of delivering baskets today!

I always love the first day of the month!  Challenges for the month are going up everywhere and it's so much fun to see the creativity.  No exceptions here as my two challenges went up this morning on ACOT.

The Heritage Challenge this month is to scrap a heritage layout about the arts and you can find it here.  And my example is an incredible photo to have the opportunity to scrap!  A photo of my maternal great-grandmother in a stage production at Howard Seminary School in West Bridgewater, MA dated 1885.  I wish I knew what the production was.  She is far left standing looking at camera.

I love once again pairing Bo Bunny Gabrielle up with Graphic 45.  This is the second time I've done this.  I find jut the thought of using these two companies together an odd pairing as they are so opposite of each other in design.  I spent some time fussy cutting some of the elements for the layout using the paper from G45  Once Upon a Springtime Fairy Folk.  I have to admit I just love love the Martha Stewart new Circle Edge Punch System!  So much fun!  I loved using it for this layout and it's comes as a kit with the base!  What is even more fun is I get two punches Circle Edge Punches every quarter from HSN to my ever ongoing expanding Martha Stewart punch collection!  I love HSN's auto ship!!!

The other challenge I host at ACOT is the 4x4 Challenge.  A super fun challenge for me!  I remember the first one I did and it was almost to the point of excruciating to get it done with so little.  Now it's fun to see how detailed I can get with so little.  This month is the first time I used more then one photo for the challenge and used Nuts About Sketches #263 to do the layout.

Most of the product I used for this layout was Basic Grey Out of Print with some Little Yellow Bicycle, October Afternoon, Tattered Angels Pink Lady Glimmer Glaze thrown in.  Alphas came from Quickutz Zoe Unicase Alphabet and Martha Stewart's String Lace straight edge punch.  The photo is of spring calves in late March or Early April '09.  I still have another layout of 5 or 6 photos from 2009 of spring calves to scrap, too!  To my many northern cattle friends, I know this year your spring calving has been wrought with worry over the arrival of calves due to winter just not letting go.  I've only had to deal with that type of inclement weather with newborns a couple of times  Yet again, you wonder how we make it through our summers.....it's called the right type of cow as in Brahma in the pedigrees and Texas Longhorns do well in that type of  hot, too!  We are fortunate to have our Lowline Angus herd adapt to our summer weather but it is so much harder on them then with our Brahma influenced beef herd.

I hope you will stop by two of my favorite sites on the web, Nuts About Sketches and ACOT!  If your an avid scrapper and love online crops then come join in the fun in ACOT's community for the NSD Crop on Saturday, May 4th.  Unfortunately I will not attend until the evening if I'm not totally worn out as we are hosting a Field Day at the ranch this Saturday with about 200 people expected!