February 20th
Daffodils About to Bloom!
God Blessed Texas!

Introducing Coffee Mate's new flavors

Coffee-Mate Café Party
Café Latte, White Chocolate Caramel Latte, and Caramel Macchiato

We hosted a Coffee Mate Bistro Baking party for my friends on February 12th due to the local snow/ice/hazardous weather storms.

Coffee-Mate sent a party kit that included:

• A high-quality heart shaped silicon muffin pan
• A custom COFFEE-MATE branded red apron
• 3 printed recipe cards inspired by the COFFEE-MATE Café Collection
• 1 Coupon for free COFFEE-MATE to serve at your event
• A recipe book holder
• blank recipe cards
  
• NESCAFÉ® TASTER’S CHOICE® coffee samples to share with my guests
• Coffee-Mate powdered creamer samples to share with my guests
• Free up to $3.99 coupon for a Coffee-Mate Product to share with my guests
  

We customized our Bistro Baking party by baking HEART SHAPED apple Cinnamonon muffins, banana muffins, lemon poppy seed muffins as well as chocolate chip muffins. We got together Saturday morning and, with a Knitting Teacher (Jill), had delightful coffee, tasted new flavors of Coffee-Mate liquid Café Collection flavors creamers: (Café Latte, White Chocolate Caramel Latte, and Caramel Macchiato), ate muffins and learned to knit socks for a charity. A good productive, social time was had by all. Thanks Coffee-Mate!

Moody Gardens Festival of Lights

Moody Gardens, Galveston, TX
Festival of Lights

During the holidays, Moody Gardens wants their share of visitors as well so they have a one mile walking trail with over 100 light displays calling it their 'Festival of Lights'. There are also hit-and-miss live characters (we saw a Nutcracker and a Chipmunk) and live music (we didn't hear any) as well as a ice skating rink and, on Friday, SNOW. Each additional activity is only $5 after the $5.95 Festival of Lights ticket.

We chose to view the Aquarium pyramid and the Festival of Lights.

Main Street Bethlehem

Main Street Bethlehem, Burnet, TX
1st two weekends in December

This was much more than we had anticipated. The First Baptist Church of Burnet hosts this event. These are 'permanent' structures to simulate what Bethlehem could of looked like when Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem to register for the census (and there was no room at the inn and Jesus was born in a stable manger). I counted about 27 (?) structures including: a well, a jail, a synagogue, an inn (with no rooms available), basket weavers, loom, tax collector, tavern, oven (free samples of "Bethlehem bread"), an open air markets with fruit and vegetable sales people, a corral with camels, another with donkeys, another with sheep, a chariot, a rope maker, jewelry maker, a candle maker, campers, geese/duck sales people, dried fruit sales people, gallows, a typical Bethlehem home, and a cave used as a stable, etc. Very in depth.

And First Baptist Church has 50 - 75 period-dressed actors going around asking if you came to town for the census, did you come far, did you hear a child is born this night, etc. Very interesting. It's free (donations accepted). The line is LONG. But worth it. At the exit, there is free cocoa and cookies for everyone as well. Impressive.
On the first two Saturdays, the Austin Train Association has a train that departs Cedar Hill for Main Street Bethlehem as well. Reservations are needed in advance as early as possible.

We really enjoyed "Main Street Bethlehem".

Bastrop State Park and Lost Pines Golf course

I almost hate to mention it because we love it so much. Spent the past week there and the weather was fabulous, golf was enjoyable, even worked some. So delightful here! Here's Buster dog drinking from a 1930 CCC water fountain:

Halloween 2010

Halloween 2010

We only had 63 Trick-or-Treaters this year. Down from 120 last year. Could it have been that the Rangers were playing Game 4 in the World Series?? How many Trick-or-Treaters did you have??