PORCH SITTING TIME

Hey. It's Tim again. Where was I - oh yeah - I started telling you about our time in Texas. It's been a week and I didn't hear from anyone who has ever been to Fredericksburg.

It's been a little over 10 years since Patti and I left Texas but I still believe if you ever get to the Austin area, you would enjoy a day or two in Fredericksburg. This is where Patti and I found out about Guest Houses (NOT like a Bed and Breakfast) and enjoyed many weekends staying at one of the hundreds of Guest Houses in and around Fredericksburg. In fact we celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary at one. We stayed at one that was featured in Country Living magazine several times. The Guest Houses were very rustic and usually decorated with primitive crafts. They took you back to a simpler time - they were the perfect place to relax and unwind for a couple of days.

Then there were the shops in town. There were several craft shops and we had our favorites. We started paying attention to what was drawing us to these places. We had just ventured into selling our homemade crafts at the Crafter's Mall and now we were entering the 'what if' stage. We started going to Craft Shows. What if we tried doing one of those shows?! Or what if we sold our items to an actual Craft shop instead of a Crafter's Mall?? What if we had our own craft shop??! - nah - it would never happen... We would end up going back to work on Monday and forget about it for awhile.

Another thing we discovered in Texas was some music that we enjoy to this day. A chance encounter turning the dial and I found some of the unique Celtic music you will hear when you visit Brickhouse Craft Shop.

And before I finish this part of the journey that led Patti and I to our own Craft Shop there is one more Texas experience that also influenced the experience you will have when visiting our shop. Round Top, Texas, another day trip from Austin. Back then the sign you saw when you were entering town said 'Population - 79'. That was until the weekends when half the state showed up for lunch or dinner at Royer's Round Top Cafe. A small Cafe but a big impact. You couldn't go wrong - there wasn't a bad dish on the menu - and no meal was complete until you had a slice of pie! A family run establishment - and we met most of the family during one meal or another. If fact, we met Bud Royer, who along with his wife Karen and their children, own and operate this very small but now very successful business. They wrote a book (not really a cookbook but it does have a few recipes) about their experience with buying this tired Cafe in the middle of nowhere - what were they thinking? Stop by Brickhouse Craft Shop and we'll show you our autographed copy.

I think next time I will share some experiences from our time in New York (upstate - NOT the city). Patti and I lived in New York prior to moving to Texas in 1993. We moved back to New York in 1998. Ahh.. what a house - an 1865 Eye Brow Colonial (a bit primitive...) in a sleepy little town within a short drive to many New England getaways. Anyone ever heard of Yankee Magazine?