Home Away From Home

As you may have read in my last post, our house was out of commission for about 5 days. David and I spent the weekend in Granbury, we already had intentions of going out there to play at the farm so it kind of worked out. Well, it was cold and the farm is no fun when it's cold, so on Saturday my husband was the greatest husband in the world, as always, and we browsed around The Square in Granbury. He went into every store with me and that is unheard of! The things you do for love :)

It's always so much fun to stroll around there on a Saturday, it's completely relaxing and such a beautiful place. My SIL, Merry, love's shopping there too. It's so fun when we can all go together. I have a few favorite stores that I always go to even if I don't make it into all of them. The first one is Brazo's River Trading Company. It's an antique store, I LOVE antiquing and I always find at least one or two fabulous antique purchases when we go. David enjoyed it too because Brazos River has some old guns and "dude" stuff that he enjoys looking at. This is my purchase that I HAD to have! Only $14.00, not too bad!

Isn't this plate AMAZING!?! I love the detail the most, notice the raised dots around the edge and the shape as well. There actually used to be a gold rim but it's almost completely faded except for in one place. I love it!

The plate below is actually a past purchase at one of the antique stores for five bucks and I love it just as much! I bought this plate at Merry Heart Tea Room on the square. The food is so amazing and it has a small area to shop in and this just happened to be one of the items. There was a complete set of smaller plates and a tea cup to go with it but I just wanted the one plate.

My MIL'S favorite store, and I really like it too, is St. Helen's. St. Helen's has new items to decorate with, lotion, jewelry, etc. You know, all the great boutiquey stuff. We love this store and this is one that I always visit! Another favorite is on the same side as the tea room and Brazos, I can't remember the name of it but this store has NEW and AMAZING, unique and kind of modern home decor items. It is a must!

We have lots of favorites, I suggest you go for yourself and decide which one is your favorite! David and I discovered a new store, we've been on the square a million times and we've never seen it! It's awesome! It's actually not on the square, a little bit behind but it can be seen if you're walking past the book store. It's called The Wagon Yard, it is a huge place and has everything from home decor to refinished, old furniture and new. It's incredible, we are amazed that we had never discovered it before, and now we really can't wait to go back. We discussed that if we had a ranch we would furnish our ranch house from this place! In our dreams, one day :)

Another store that is worth mentioning is called Accents II. It's not on the square but right across from the parking lot that leads to the beach. Don't let the store front fool you, it's got some great purchases. It also reminded me about a time before Scentsy came along and these were all the craze...

I can still appreciate the wonderful aroma of a Tyler candle over Scentsy any day! They strangely remind me of the good ol' Abilene days :))

The last shopping place I'll mention is The Antique Mall across from the beach. I believe it's next to or very close to a bed and breakfast. This place has some golden goodies, there is SO much to look at! I always spend at least an hour and a half browsing this store! If you don't love antiquing, then you won't love this place. But it's at least worth going in for a quick browse. If you like vintage, shabby chic and all that good stuff, then go, you won't regret it!

You can't tell me you don't love this....

Yes, it's milk glass and simply beautiful and one of a kind...at least in my mind. I'm sure there's another floating around out there in your grandmothers garage or something like that. I have a couple of filler ideas in mind. OH and notice the table, that's the refinished console table. Here's another peak at it...

It's hard to tell, but the hardware is a lime green/yellowish color--bought two at Hobby Lobby for $1.50 each. Much better than $10 apiece from Anthropology. I'm waiting to show the final product because we have to finish decorating. Greatness takes time ;)

Back to Granbury, I also ate at a wonderful hole in the wall. I've been there a few times actually. You should give it a try, the fried catfish and hush puppies are mmm mmm good!

Not sure what happened to my picture, but you get the picture (cheesy, I know). 

I tried to make a somewhat healthy choice for my sides considering I was eating fried catfish, hush puppies and tartar sauce. I really wanted the french fries and fried okra, I don't think my arteries would have forgiven me though.

I think everyone should visit Granbury if they want a quick weekend get away. There are bed and breakfasts and if your a hotel kind of person, check out the Hilton Garden Inn. It's very nice and pretty new. I'm not sayin' it's the W, but it's nice for Granbury. I'm not above the Hilton Garden Inn, sad for you if you are ;))

Plenty of great restaurants, Babe's being one of them! Here I go again with the fried food, but come on, you can't beat Babe's fried chicken! There are wine bars/restaurants and two bars/restaurants. One of them is new that I plan on trying when the weather gets warmer, it has a patio and TV's for you sports buffs!

The beach is actually a pretty beach to lay out on...I'm not into getting in the water though, only if I'm on a boat. You can rent boat's and jet ski's too if you prefer staying off land.

I should get paid for all this advertisement!! Second job maybe?? I just wanted to share one of the places that I LOVE to visit and think that everyone should spend at least one weekend of their lives to say that they've been! 

The main reason we go is to visit my wonderful in-law's, Ronnie and Margo! They are such a blessing! 

We also LOVE to visit the farm as much as we can in between March and July, it really starts getting too  hot in July. We would live there if we could, seriously, we think farm life would be the best way to live!

All my boys rompin' around bein' boys! I love them with all my heart! I better not jinks myself into having only boys in the future...I need at least one girl! These pictures are from last summer, can't wait for this summer!

Ahhh, this is our little home away from home! It's a little over an hour away but it feels like your ten million miles away from the crazy metroplex and it's seriously the best de-stressing place that I know to go. If you can't go to the farm, Granbury is equally de-stressing! I highly recommend it! 

Hope that you all have a fabulous weekend! I know that we will. We're spending time with my grandparents, my parents, my sister and all the Cooper babe's (they have my heart, next to my husband)! Sad that we're missing our BIL Casey :( Boo for work! 

Blog post soon to follow Spring Break 2011, OKC style! Love that I'm 27 and I can still say that I have a Spring Break, ahh! 

Happy Spring Breaking to all and to all a good night! 

DI-SAS-TER!!!

First, I must apologize for being a bad blogger. It's been 3 weeks since my last post! Who knew three weeks could fly by so fast?! A lot has been happening at the Clark household, nothing out of the ordinary except for one major thing that occured last Friday. I've been much busier with school and that makes all the differene in the world. Subbing four days a week, class two nights a week, hw on non-class nights and then trying to fit in my husband on the weekends...which is priority! I mean, we only see one another two days a week so we try to make the best of our time together. I have a feeling most families operate on super busy schedules though, but I still like to complain just a little bit. It makes me feel better :)

So back to the major thing..... I came home from work on Friday and my garage door was not opening. Naturally, I thought the batteries had died in my garage door opener. I remembered that I had a key to the front door, then to also quickly remember that I lock the dead bolts. Stupid, but smart if you want to look at it from a safety point of view. I drove to Wal-mart for a battery, it was a special battery so I went to Radio Shack. Bought a $7.00 tiny battery that's the size of a dime only to find out that it doesn't work. Great, what now? While on the phone with the Beagnyam's, my phone dies. I drive back to Radio Shack for a phone charger (because my car charger broke and I failed to buy a new one until I really needed it), the Beagnyam's call David for our address (while in Temple) so they can come rescue me.

Well they couldn't do anything, they really just drove over for moral support and so I could chase little Linc around my front yard, that little flirt :) Love them!!

My neighbors come home and they inform me that they saw the electricy guy at one of the houses around us. I decide to call my energy company to find out if my electricity has gone out for some strange reason (we pay our bills people)! Champion (our company) can't find our address in the system...or our name, only to the last place we lived. That was over a month ago!

A light bulb goes off in my head and I realize that when we transferred our service it just happened to be during snow storm 2011. Basically, we were trying to transfer service with rolling black outs, regular black outs and black outs at Champion (where all the magic happens...but only with electricity)!

So long story short, our service was never transferred, which means it was never even set up, which means that Oncor has been paying for our electricity for over a month! So they came to take the meter, which I don't completely blame them considering they thought we were stealing electricity. Well when that happens, you have to get an inspection for a permit to be released to stab the meter.

In the mean time, I call a locksmith and the only way to get into our house is to drill holes in our front door! I lock the house up pretty well! Champion said we couldn't get service until Monday and I explained that we have dogs inside our locked house and they WILL be coming with us, so we discussed breaking windows or getting a locksmith. They seemed hesitant but came around really quickly when my husband asked if they were willing to pay for two dead dogs.

I packed up our things and took my dogs to meet David in Granbury at his parents. We spent the weekend there and then I came home Wednesday morning.

Some old inspector man came to our house for about a whole 2 minutes Tuesday morning, I had to wait 4 days for this 2 minutes. They told us between 9 and 2. What am I going to do in a house without electricity for 5 hours? He came at 11:30 and cleaning and talking on the phone passed the time quickly. Luckily he was very sweet and given my situation he called in my permit release number so I didn't have to sit on the phone for two hours with oncor trying to get this stupid number so we can have electricity.

We have electricity as of this morning! HALLELUJAH!!!

I will say how wonderful Champion has been through this process.....

-offered to pay up to $100 a night in hotel as long as it took
-paying for expenses during process (food while out of house) (about $100)
-replacing all perishable food (a lot!! I haven't taken inventory yet)
-paying for locksmith ($115)
-replacing front door (a lot a lot!!)
-paying for gas to and from Granbury because we opted out of hotel since we have dogs (insane gas prices!)
-paying for permit ($30)
-waiving all activation fees

This could easily come out to $1000!

I had a wonderful time in Granbury but I'm glad to be home :) Next you'll hear about the wonderful little town of Granbury. LOVE love love! Enough for tonight though, more tomorrow!

Watch for my little Granbury review, you'll want to see it!