Trip To Bountiful

Twice a year, a little event happens in the unassuming area (Round Top/Warrenton/Burton) known collectively by those who attend as simply Round Top, or more recently, Roundtopolis.  Hundreds of thousands of visitors descend upon the place over the course of a week or two that normally is a humble home to maybe a couple hundred or so to hunt for junk and fine antiques alike.  The event itself is generally referred to as Antique Week.  Antique Week is crazy in a good way, like Christmas.  You just sort of jump in and hold on.

Round Top is different things to different people.  For some, it's a place to be seen.  A place where the famous sometimes want to be recognized because (among other things), they want to be associated with the hot swagger of it all.  On the other hand, if you truly don't want to be seen, it's easy to blend in because there are lots of beautiful, cool people who are not famous [hello, it's Texas].

For others, it's a place to people watch.  Their goal is to find the famous people (who may or may not want to be recognized) or maybe just observe the more outlandish outfits & personalities that stroll through, especially on Prom night.  Round Top is a Mecca for girlfriend posses, creatives & celebrities of all stripes, so you never know what or who you'll see. Anything goes.

For a smaller handful [a.k.a. corporate outsider types who want to capitalize], it's a cool backdrop for TV segments, magazine articles and such.  [That's okay, I guess.  We've got enough cool to share and still have plenty leftover.]

There is nothing wrong with any of the things I've mentioned above.  Just different stories.

my grandmother (Loena), great-grandmother (Auguste), and great-great-grandmother (Annie)

For me, getting to Round Top is returning to my roots, not about being a character at a carnival. Driving the highways and byways is going home.  I'm not from Round Top, but my German-Texan ancestors (the Guderians) first settled in the area from Falls County (Lorena, Golinda, Cottonwood) to Washington County (Brenham), which is the birthplace of Texas, and also happens to be the drive I take to arrive at Round Top.  They farmed the land and built some of the first storefronts and generations later, I still feel the connection.  So for me, the Trip to Bountiful (bountiful junk, that is) is a sentimental journey...a sacred pilgrimage.  When I'm looking out over the fields, I'm seeing scenes that generations before me also saw.  They probably scattered some lupine seeds from their homeland among the native bluebonnets, as was the custom with many German immigrants to Texas back in the day.  In the Spring when the wildflowers are in bloom, it's almost more than my heart can take.  This is what I'm always looking to capture and bring home with me from Antique Week.

www.thegoodtexanlife.com

When the cameras go away and the famous people get bored [and there are no signs of happening any time soon] and everyone is moving on to the next thing, I will still love this land and these little towns and all the good junk, just like I did before HGTV was a twinkle in some corporate executive's eye, because it's in my blood.  I'm proud to say, this will still be home.

Once in Round Top, the fields of plunder are a playground for old souls on a Disneyland scale....overwhelming in a good way.  I don't ever remember seeing truly famous people there, even though I know via social media that I indeed rubbed elbows with them on any given Round Top day.  This is mainly because I don't look up, so to speak.  I'm not looking at other people, really.  With tunnel vision, I'm scanning the goods like an artist surveys her palette.  For me (and scores of others), it's all about the "good junk."  

When I go, I'm looking for components.  Sometimes I accidentally find things that are finished or fine on their own.  But more often than not, I'm looking in the trash bins or the scrap heaps.  I'm looking for things the vendors don't even think to price but are happy to get rid of because even to them, it's rubbish.  Here are a few things that caught my eye last time I was there...

vintage curtain panels

vintage trim, King's Crown plates (my weakness), Staffordshire turkey plate

vintage bread board, vintage Parisian trims, purrrrrr

Here's what I saw in my mind's eye when I was foraging...the scraps became one-of-a-kind curtains for my bathroom

Of course, no trip to Round Top (Antique Week or not) is complete without a meal at Royer's Round Top Cafe.  During Antique Week, you need reservations.  My favorite here is the Shrimp Po' Boy & Pecan Pie, but IT'S ALL OMG GOOD!

Royer's Round Top Cafe

The Beloved Bud Royer, The Pieman, holding court.  Love him.

This weekend, I head South once again...driving the familiar terrain, meeting up with loved ones, scrounging the acres upon acres of plenty, and eating a communal meal at Royer's.  Looking forward to every minute.

Introducing my friend D'Wana Villines of Mountain Girl Melodies to the awesomeness that is Round Top Antique Week a few years ago.  (Whew!  It was a hot, humid Texas day!)  

Sister Camp

Sister Camp is the beautiful brain-child of my friend, D'Wana Villines at Mountain Girl Melodies. D'Wana has a passion to facilitate connection, refreshment & creativity of generations of women from all walks of life.  It's my joy to partner with her to help tell her unfolding story...and maybe yours, too...

D'Wana & I at Sister Camp 2015

Sister Camp is about getting away from the hustle and retreating to a peaceful, all-inclusive mountain setting with girlfriends for a few days.  It's deep breaths.  It's heartfelt hugs.  It's pampering.  It's homemade, gourmet, organic food.  It's candlelight.  It's an acoustic lullaby.  It's unhurried conversation.  It's a scrumptious breakfast on the back deck.   It's an easy, refreshing hike in a national forest.  It's a picnic lunch on the river bank.  It's singing & roasting s'mores by a campfire.  It's cozy quilts.  It's a chance to make art in D'Wana's fun little cabin studio.  It's encouraging, soul-stirring sessions led by creatives and life coaches.  It's what you always wanted summer camp to be.  It's the space and time for a nap or two.  It's the best kind of surprises.  It's a place for healers to be healed, nurturers to be nurtured. It's about filling up your vessel so you can pour out fresh love & creativity over the heads of those you influence.  Sister Camp is all this and more.

To see what Natalie Freeman of Natalie Creates wrote and captured about Sister Camp 2015, click here.

The next Sister Camp is April 28-May 1, 2016 and we'd love for you to join us.   Register here.

Little House On The Mountain - Part 1

When I first saw our current house, I knew I was home.  (Even though it would take me months to admit that.)  It was tiny but quaint in the middle of a gorgeous, peaceful setting in the Ozarks.

National Park trail minutes from our house.

Just past our driveway, descending into the valley.

Wild elk herds roam freely less than 10 minutes from our house.

Hay in our field.

I loved the simple white, the tin roof, the native fieldstone.  Nothing fancy.  

Our property was actually owned by our friends Scotty & D'Wana Villines at the time (it had been in his family for generations...and I will say here...they had nothing to do with any of the construction of the house.  ha!)  I remember removing my sun glasses to get a better look and D'Wana  saying, "You haven't seen the inside.  It's not fabulous."

 

D'Wana & Me

Our "local" coffee shop...45 minutes up the mountain.  It's since closed and I deeply mourn these vintage red chairs.

I didn't see the inside of the house that day, as we were on our way to another of the Villines family homes nearby on the mountain to paint interior walls in preparation for Scotty & D'Wana to move in.  In fact, I didn't see the inside of the little house until after we bought it.  We didn't buy the place for the house, we bought it for the land.  I knew we'd deal with whatever we found inside.

As I would learn later, D'Wana's "not fabulous" comment was no exaggeration.  It may not be immediately obvious in the pics, but trust me, we would have had to fix it up just to use it as a hunting cabin.  To make it livable as our family home on a shoestring budget with zero construction skills in a remote place in the winter was daunting.

This is the faux tile linoleum that was in every room.  This happens to be the kitchen.

Standing in the front door, looking straight into the laundry hallway.  To the left, the kitchen.  To the right, the living room.

At least it was clean & there were new towels.

The original house was about 800 square feet or less, the size of a small apartment.  There was one bedroom, one bathroom, a living room/kitchen combination and a "laundry hallway" in the middle of the house.  There were three closets in the entire house.  None of them was a walk-in.  One was an unfinished water heater closet with no door.  One was a broom closet.  One was a bedroom closet with no door.  So we left most things in storage and basically lived out of a suitcase.  The only interior doors were on the broom closet (which we lost before we moved in, more on that later) and the bathroom.

The view from just inside the front door...laundry hallway to the left, bedroom with no door on the right.

Yes, that is a flyswatter hanging above the floor heater.  Handy and homey.

You could stand in the front doorway and see into every room, except the bathroom.  The walls had no texture on them. High gloss paint (in two colors) had been sponge-painted directly onto drywall.  It was a sight to behold.  The floors were old linoleum throughout the house that was peeling up at the corners.  There was no central heat or air, just a gas floor heater and a window unit in the living room.  All of the outlets were installed upside down.  The ceiling was cafeteria-style ceiling tiles.

The house had never been lived in full-time.  We were told it was only built so that city water could be run to the property.  The house served as a landing place for over twenty years for family members and friends who were between homes or just starting out.  Many people in our area have "camped out" temporarily in this house at one time or another while waiting for their house to be built or remodeled or to get on their feet.  Still, just about every aspect of the construction was questionable and not-to-code because it was never meant to be anyone's full-time home.  For months, I watched professionals shake their heads the first time they would come to repair pipes or lines or construction.

We are a family of five.  At the time, our oldest son had graduated from high school and was still living in Texas; our two at home were fifteen and nine.  *The first year, our daughter slept on the couch and our teenage son slept on an air-up mattress on the kitchen floor.  He would roll it up in the mornings and roll it out at night.  Yes, it got very old.  When my husband was away on business trips, the treat for my daughter was to sleep on the real bed with me and our son got the couch.  To give ourselves a break from clostrophobia, we'd sit out on one of the porches and take in the mountain views.  [Put another dime in the therapy jar.]

*more later on why it took over a year to get traction on the remodel 

Kit & Cali

These rural Texas ranch dogs were so happy to be in the cooler temps with soft, cool grass after surviving two years of extreme drought in Texas.

Front Porch Therapy...love the view of Scotty & D'Wana's pond just beyond the pine trees...

Capo & Kit...think happy thoughts

Did I mention, we homeschool?  So we didn't even get a break during the weekdays.  We were always. together. in. a. small. space.  An hour from town.

Living in such close quarters with no privacy for so long teaches you a lot about yourself and your family.  I wouldn't want to go back to living on top of each other in 800 square feet while remodeling  said square footage, but I will say, the experience helped me hone some decorating skills & philosophies, to which I'll dedicate some future posts.

To be continued...