Madeleine Peyroux's Summer Wind blew into Dallas

“I don’t have a reputation for happy songs” said Madeleine Peyroux Thursday night at the Wyly Theatre. That may be true but I wouldn’t have her any other way. Before she began she said, “I sing three types of songs…sad songs, love songs, and drinking songs. Sometimes I don’t know which is which.” This set the mood for her first song, Dance me to the end of love…a love song.  
She breathes in life through her melancholy storytelling lyrics; so much so that when listening to her, you step into a dreamy place that is as relaxed as her body language on stage...head thrown back, hair in her face, mouth open as she danced immersed in her band members solos. 
Frankie says relax, but Madeleine has magical powers that make your body naturally “relax” as if you’re on top of feathery clouds and drinking cool sips of honey wine. She gives you that “Summer time and the living is easy” kind of feeling. Seeing Madeleine Peyroux live was the perfect beginning to summer. When she sang Standing On the Rooftop the audience was easily transported to a sultry night on a New York City rooftop.
Madeleine Peyroux (pronounced Peru) grew up in Brooklyn but says she really belongs in Paris, and that was evident. She seemed like a character out of the movie, Midnight in Paris. I could see her stepping back in time like Owen Wilson did to hang out with Hemingway and Gertrude Stein…she would fit in perfectly with that unique social circle.
She is special… très special! She has a true bohemian style that is moody and soulful and has a lulling effect on the body. I found myself breathing along with her as she added extra syllables to her words singing my favorite, This is Heaven to Me. She drew the audience in like we were old friends.
She’s been compared to Billie Holiday; while their voices are similar, Peyroux has a confidence and style that is all her own; performing her “three types of songs” meshed with her relaxed style…jazz, French and bluesy numbers too. Love in Vain would have made Bessie Smith say “yes child!”  
Before singing her third song, Peyroux spoke comfortably to the audience about Bob Dylan love songs always being bitter. She joked about her next Dylan song being a love song imagining Sylvester Stallone playing Rambo as the French poet Rimbaud.  When she sang Dylan’s song, You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome, I couldn’t help but feel the exact thing she sang…”I could stay with you forever and never realize the time.”
The highlight of the evening was when Peyroux said she was going to take the audience to a street corner in Paris. The band pulled in close together (unplugged) and performed Serge Gainsbourg’s beautiful La Javanaise. The graceful drummer, Darren Beckett used a cardboard box and Jim Beard (the pianist, organist and Wurlitzer) played my favorite instrument, the accordion…for a short while the Wyly Theatre was transported to a 1920's street corner in Paris and it was magnifique!
Peyroux’s French gypsy spirit was a throw back to Django Reinhardt, Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith updated...Peyroux style. Sad songs, love songs and drinking songs…it didn’t matter as long as it was Madeleine Peyroux singing.    

Posted by No comments:

May is a big month for giving gifts


It’s wedding season, graduation time, the end of the school year and almost Father's Day...need some gift  ideas? Here are fifteen that are sure to please the happy couple, graduate, teacher and dad.













 
Posted by No comments:

The Summer of Spritzers


Summer in Texas is crazy hot! I know exactly what I want to cool myself down...a refreshing spritzer. A spritzer is like iced sunshine in a wine glass.
Spritzer is German for spray/squirt/sprinkle/splash…all verbs that go beautifully with summer.
Wine spritzers are light, refreshing, and invigorating on hot Texas summer days. They provide just the relief you crave...quenching your thirst with a light and citrusy taste.
I enjoy reading books on my patio. Now is the perfect time while the gardenias are blooming and the promise of summer is on the way. I remember one hot Texas summer I read Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. As I read I sipped on a spritzer and smelled the gardenias. Ever since then I associate spritzers with the romance of summer, the inspiration of the classics and the intoxicating allure of gardenias.
Edith Wharton wrote, “Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.” Sipping on a spritzer is the perfect way to “drink the day.”
Try a rosé or white wine and add seltzer to your liking, then serve with a sliver of lime or lemon. Make it fancy with melon balls, rasberries, or lavender. It’s an elegant way to cool off in the hot sun and it’s more hydrating and invigorating.
Rosé is my favorite because it looks like the kind of drink that I imagine Greta Garbo would have had spending the summers in Ravello, Italy. It’s a pretty, pink and feminine.  I imagine glamorous ladies of the 30’s sipping spritzers and it makes me feel cooler.
It should come as no surprise that people drink more in the summer than they do at any other time of the year. Summer is a time to relax and people entertain more. The longer days give us more time to find the glamour in different ways of relaxing.
Turn down the day’s heat with the coolness of a spritzer.
My kind of summer...Greta Garbo with Cecil Beaton









Posted by No comments:

Jennifer Reese's: Make the Bread, Buy the Butter


I always look forward to the companionship of my book club friends to eat, drink and be merry while discussing our latest read. My friend Leslee suggested the most recent literary effort, Make the Bread, Buy the Butter and it seemed to be perfect for our book club (The Julia Child Book Club). Our book club is lighthearted and fun and is the kind of group that (as our latest party favor says) reads the wine labels! While this is only half true we did all enjoy Jennifer Reese’s Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, which is so much more than a cookbook.
My mom hosted and I’m sure the author Jennifer Reese would have loved it based on these words in the book; “Entertaining is exactly the right word for having people over. The dinner party is a work of theater, and the linens and candlesticks and ice bucket are props and they are every bit as important as the food.” My mom is a theatrical genius…flowers in the chandeliers, candle sticks a mile long, place cards with hilarious sayings that truly fit each guest.


Reese’s idea for the book came about after she had been laid off from her job during the economic crises a few years ago. She decided to begin experimenting by making most everything herself instead of buying it at the grocery store. She compiled her success and failures in a book that organizes 120 recipes for the reader to decide: should you make it or buy it? How much hassle is it? What is the cost comparison to buying it in the grocery store?
She writes about raising chickens, ducks, turkeys, goats, and even bees. About having chickens, she writes, “I’ve come to believe that having chickens is like having foxy teenager daughters. Trouble will find you.”
She says about vanilla ice cream, “The difference between even a premium brand of ice cream and homemade is the difference between the poly-blend sheets you inherited from your grandmother and Pratesi linens. I know vanilla ice cream sounds boring, buy homemade vanilla ice cream is nothing like Edy’s. For a sublime variation, try substituting ½ cup honey for ½ cup of the sugar.” I couldn’t wait to try this and…Reese was right, sublime!
Her storytelling is hilarious and entertaining. It reminds me of Julia Child’s commentary in her cookbooks…laugh out loud funny, giving stories about the trial and errors in the kitchen.
Make the Bread, Buy the Butter is exactly the essence of the book. With a little imagination, we may have found some decision making guidance applicable to choices we all have to make about which of our efforts are worth more of our time. It was thought provoking.

Posted by No comments:

Homemade yogurt: bring on the pleasure

Yogurt is the perfect food to have at any time of the day. It is not only delicious but yogurt helps to make people of all ages strong and healthy.
I enjoy using yogurt in multiple ways…in smoothies, in children’s lunches, in crepes, for dips, snacking…  
Eating yogurt is so good for you. Yogurt is a “super food” with its high calcium, protein and B vitamins. It restores your good bacteria levels and its healthy “probiotics” have the power to protect you in so many ways. Yogurt promotes a healthy digestive and immune system; it relieves cramps, controls cravings…
The best way to enjoy these health benefits is to make your own fresh yogurt. Homemade yogurt is richer and thicker and fresher than anything you can buy at the grocery store.
If I buy yogurt, I buy Greek yogurt. I love Fage. It is just the way I love my yogurt…plain, thick and creamy like a pudding with a sweetener on the side.
European yogurt is not as sweet as American yogurt. Americans like a lot of sugar. I like to make my yogurt plain and then sweeten it with honey or maple syrup.
I think that it’s important for children to develop a taste without the heavy sugar. I like to buy Stonyfield’s yobaby and yokids yogurts for my children because it’s thick, wholesome and organic. I love the fact that it is made without artificial flavors, colors and sweeteners. Stonyfield just came out with a greek yogurt for kids that tastes a lot like the yogurt I make at home. My children also love Yoplait GoGurt; the squeeze tubes are easily portable for their lunch boxes and it’s a perfect freezer treat. As long as they love yogurt, I am happy!
Making yogurt is a science of precise measurement of temperature and
time. I enjoy making yogurt on the weekends, I find it satisfying and rewarding. My children love to help by creating just the right toppings. It’s fun for them to experiment and find their favorite yogurt recipe (it usually involves strawberries).You do not have to have a yogurt machine to make it but it sure makes it easy and neat with the perfect size container. Everyone enjoys watching the yogurt set on the kitchen counter.
So, it’s very good for you, it’s fun to make, delicious to eat, a teaching/learning opportunity for your children (including the lesson about having the “patience” to wait for something as the yogurt takes its time to set) and finally, knowing that you have done all these things brings on the pleasure that comes from going to the trouble to do something that makes you feel good.
Ashley’s recipe for yogurt
4 C of whole milk
Either ½ C of store bought yogurt or homemade yogurt from a previous batch (you can also use a package starter with a little powdered milk). You can add more powdered milk to produce a richer yogurt
In a large saucepan over medium heat the milk to 170 degrees. The milk should look like it’s on the verge of a boil. Remove from heat and let cool to 110 degrees then stir in ½ C of plain yogurt to act as your starter. This will set the yogurt. Pour the yogurt into individual jars turn on your yogurt machine and let it stay warm as the yogurt gets firmer (about five hours).  Cover the cups and place them in the refrigerator until well chilled for at least two hours.
Posted by No comments:

I Had a Favorite Dress: dear mama can make it work

Growing up I thought my mother was magical because she could sew. I remember her sewing me a red dress with red roses in the first grade. She seemed to make it overnight…in fact, I think she did! It was my favorite dress when I was six.
When my friend Margot was four, she remembers her dad bringing back a soft green dress from Italy with stitchery in the front and lace at the bottom edge. When she grew out of it, her mom altered it for her baby doll to wear.
My daughter has several favorite pieces that she’s outgrown. I often wish I was a savvy D.I.Y. (do it yourself) kind of mom who could be like Mary Poppins and magically (as Boni Ashburn says) “make a molehill out of a mountain.”
I think most of us have a few items of clothing that we are so in love with that when we wear them out, we are heartbroken!

The little girl in Boni Ashburn’s I Had a Favorite Dress is so lucky to have a mom who can make alterations that keep her daughter smiling. I very much want to do this for my daughter; I think it teaches resourcefulness.
I love how the mom’s boho-chic style influences her daughter’s appearance in what looks to be like a trendy Greenwich Village neighborhood.
As the girl grows, her salmon colored favorite dress is transformed into a shirt, tank top, skirt, scarf, socks, and hair bow.  The mom keeps saving the day by using her creativity to solve a problem every time her daughter says, “Mama dear…”  and there’s nothing to worry about when mama smiles and does a, “SNIP, SNIP, sew, sew… New shirt, hello!”
Julia Denos
The young girl understands that nothing lasts forever and that’s okay because favorite things can be changed and used again in other ways. She dances into the days of the week as the seasons change.
Julia Denos, the illustrator of I Had a Favorite Dress, has a fresh whimsical style that is childlike with an old fashioned 1950’s feel. She is also the illustrator of another book I adore, Just Being Audrey.  
I would like to decorate my daughter’s room with Julia’s illustrations from both of these books.
I Had a Favorite Dress reminds me of a book I read to my second graders, Joseph Had a Little Overcoat. Joseph has an overcoat that he really likes and it becomes old and worn, but instead of throwing it away, it is altered into a jacket.  The same thing happens to the jacket and he makes a vest, then scarf, necktie, handkerchief, and finally a button. The message is that it’s always good to make something out of nothing or “make a molehill out of a mountain.”
This is such a good lesson to teach to children. As a teacher, I immediately thought about lessons I could teach comparing the two books.
I have already recommended I Had a Favorite Dress to our school librarian. It will be one of those books that never has a chance to be "checked-in!"
All it takes is a little inspiration from Etsy or Pinterest to get creative these days. Making alterations is the perfect answer to keeping hold of your favorite memories. Fashionistas can be green too and reduce, reuse, recycle their favorite items.
I plan to reuse my husband’s old neckties from the 80’s and 90’s and make them into bracelets like I found on Pinterest.
I haven’t yet decided how I will reuse some of my daughter’s favorite dresses but I imagine she’s probably going to think of it on her own sense we read I Had a Favorite Dress almost every night! I may be calling my “Mama dear” for the sewing! In the meantime, I hope to impart to my children and others the philosophy that although both things and people may appear to be used and spent, they may just be waiting for the energy and optimism of creative ideas to fill an old sail with fresh air.
Posted by No comments:

The Avant-Garde Isabella Rossellini

 

Isabella Rossellini walked into the Nasher Salon gliding with the grace of a ballerina and the confidence of a true Italian-American icon. She speaks with the same loveliness, her beautiful accent (being fluent in Italian and French).
The writer, model, actress, film-maker, mother, twin, and philanthropist graced Dallas last week to speak at the Nasher Salon.
She is known for her intelligence, beauty, style and elegance. She is one of those people who you just know is beautiful on the inside because it radiates from the outside. Her radiance has been seen on the covers of twenty-three Vogue magazines. Modeling was a lucrative job for her; in 1983 she made $9,000 a day. Her style has been influenced by Georgia O’Keefe and Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

Isabella and her daughter Elettra modeling for Lancome

Isabella has been in America since 1979 and is currently living in Long Island, NY. She is the daughter of three-time Oscar-winning actress, Ingrid Bergman and master director, Roberto Rossellini.
Skip Hollandsworth, a journalist for Texas Monthly, had the pleasure of interviewing Isabella at the Nasher Tuesday night to an intimate crowd of two-hundred. Throughout the interview, Isabella would think of many wonderful stories that brought you into her life as if you were sitting at her dinner table. She began each one with “Let-a-me-tell-a-you-a-story!”
My favorite story was the one of her daughter when she was five. She says that when her daughter, Elettra, was little and in school she was being trained to learn her address and phone number. Elettra’s teacher asked her if she got lost in the airport what would she do. Her answer was that she would sit under her mom’s poster. Elettra thought that all around town, there were photos of moms and dads in case kids get lost. She assumed that the world was covered with images of parents, not advertisements.
Her daughter, Elettra is now the spokes model for Lancôme and has her master’s degree in biomedicine.
                                          Isabella and her daughter Elettra and Isabella with her mother Ingrid
 
Isabella’s parents were divorced when she was two. She grew up in France and Italy. She lived in a separate apartment across the street from her father with her three siblings, the housekeeper’s child and the housekeeper (who she says was a saint). Isabella says of this time that they were four wild kids and she would bring home every stray dog and cat from the street. It seems like Isabella has always lived a bohemian life.
Isabella shared stories from her teenage years and said that for a whole six months she didn’t go to school before her parents figured out she was skipping. She would put on her uniform but then go to the beach. At night she would pretend to go to sleep, and would sneak out and go to night clubs. She admits that she was a terrible teenager and says that if her children had done that she would kill them!
                                                      Isabella's mother Ingrid BergmanGrowing up she suffered from scoliosis. Her mother, Ingrid Bergman, took two years off to take care of Isabella when she had an operation and had to wear a body cast for a year.
Isabella talked about her mother’s passion for acting. She said her mother would say, “I didn’t choose acting, acting chose me.” Isabella said she is grateful to have had the opportunity to have worked with her mom on a movie in 1976, A Matter of Time, in which Isabella made her movie debut in Vincente Minnelli’s film.
At the age of nineteen she came to the United States to work as an American correspondent for an Italian television network and interviewed Martin Scorsese. He fell in love with her and they later married.
She has a joie de vivre; she is always on a curious quest for adventure. She has jumped at any time an opportunity arose to get to know someone that was going to stimulate her mentally. She says it was such a pleasure to be enchanted by Martin for the years they were married (1979-1982).
Isabella says about remembering her mother that the voice is more painful than the image. “The voice is their voice; it takes your breath away.”
She has imaginary conversations with her parents. She says that when you are very close to a person and the person dies, the person is still with you...thinking of them helps keep you company.
Isabella has a love of the avant-garde. She speaks highly of European actors because they disappear into different roles, but a Hollywood star is always the Hollywood star. She mentions how Angelina Joli and Julia Roberts are always the star…their movie is always the adventure of them. Hollywood stars don’t disappear in the role like a European actor. She prefers the avant-garde because it is a release from the financial pressure…it’s more of an experiment…like her bohemian life style.
The biggest problem in her life was reconciling family with work. Work and family were organized at different levels. A woman who has a career eventually pays a price. As she says, “There are consequences with age, so you have to evolve.” She discovered how interconnected life can be and how it naturally evolves as you are open to it.
She spoke earlier on Tuesday to high school students at Booker T. Washington and encouraged them to stay open to new desires and challenges saying that life rarely goes exactly as planned. “As you evolve your career, it never ends.” Fortunately for Isabella, she has always been able to navigate and transition smoothly from one career to the next.
When Skip Hollandsworth asked her, where she is at sixty compared to her mother, her response was that she wishes she had done things earlier…modeling (starting at eighteen instead of twenty-eight), acting (afraid she wasn’t as good as her mom), directing (fifty-six).
Isabella recently bought a farm and says she always wanted to have lots of animals. She bought it on a whim and has become partners with a woman farmer and says she is her kind of girl because she’s organic and plows with horses.
Isabella’s most recent work, a series called GREEN PORNO, seemed to satisfy her thirst for knowledge and love for animals in her curious bohemian way. The series, GREEN PORNO, on the Sundance Channel’s online series explores nature’s sexual habits in a poetic style.
Hollandsworth’s final question was, “if you could be any animal what would you be?” Isabella hesitated answering but then gave the audience the pleasure of an unusual and surprising answer. She began her response by explaining the anatomical specifics of female ducks. Without getting into the graphic detail, her point was that female ducks have something of a trick by which they can chose not to conceive the baby ducklings proposed to be fathered by a male duck (drake) that she does not approve of. I think her point was somewhat feministic; females may have different methods of getting their way that males are not always aware of. Now that’s not so far off the mark, is it?
   

Posted by No comments:

You've Got Snail Mail...from Italy!



Scrolling through my twitter feed one afternoon I saw something that grabbed my attention from Jessica Lynn Writes, “POSTCARD SWAP!”  I signed up and impatiently waited…and waited for my snail mail to arrive.
I swapped postcards with Allison who is an American military blogger currently living in Naples, Italy.
A few weeks went by and I found myself skipping to the mailbox hoping my postcard would be in our little white box. When it finally came, I squealed with delight! Receiving snail mail is like opening a present, you don’t know what’s inside and you can’t wait to find out!
Birthday cards come once a year but you kind of know (or hope) they’re coming. A random postcard from another country is a jewel in the mailbox.
I’m a HUGE lover of Italy so when a postcard arrived from Naples, I did the happy dance. It makes me smile to know that someone in Italy thought of me instead of thinking about pizza, pasta, lemoncello…or all the many wonderful things there are in ITALIA!
I found two really fun apps called Snapshot Postcard and Postagram that makes sending a personal card a snap. I thought of my second grade students who have penpals in France. How easy would it be for them to stay in touch and create their own postcard?
I’m a big fan of letters too but getting a visual picture of a place is so satisfying!
Many brides are opting to have postcards as an alternative to a guestbook so when they come back from their honeymoon their mailbox is full of wonderful messages.
I always like to pick up postcards from my travels and when I visit a museum. The postcards I have are a shoebox of memories.
Jessica had a brilliant idea with the postcard swap!
Be inspired to mail a postcard buy or make your own.

Posted by No comments:

Dance Planet, Do it!




My friend Sharon knows how to do the seventies disco dance “the hustle.” This week at work I would sing to her, “Do it! Do the Hustle!” Sharon would stop what she was doing (teaching kids) and “Do it! Do the Hustle!” Ahh, the power disco dance has to make us happy!
This past Saturday I walked into Dance Planet held at Booker T. Washington in Dallas toting my sliver disco ball sequin dance shoes ready to Do it! Do the hustle. I staked my claim at the front of the room next to the instructor, John Chaparro and my fun at Planet Dance began. 
John Chaparro
Dance Planet is the oldest and largest free dance festival in the United States.  For sixteen years this free festival has been for all ages and offers so many different styles. People are so happy to have such wonderful opportunities and new experiences to be exposed to.  There were thirty styles represented: hip-hop, ballet, tap, jazz, cirque silks, samba, cha-cha, folklorico, swing, modern, drill team, kabuki, flamenco, hustle...They even had one-on-one Pilates workouts.
Bruce Wood, my favorite choreographer
Imagine meeting and learning from someone you really admire. I have wanted to take a class from Bruce Wood ever sense he created his The Bruce Wood Dance Company in 1997 and more recently the Bruce Wood Dance Project. Actually, what I really wanted was to be in his company. His classical modern style is what I was born to dance…but que sera sera! Thanks to Dance Planet, I had the pleasure of meeting this brilliant choreographer and taking class as if I WERE in his company (if only for one hour).

Bruce Wood turned up the music to Ray Charles’ I Got a Woman in studio C at the Booker T. Washington School of Visual Arts and tried to remember his choreography to an excerpt of Smoke, a very fun and sassy dance that easily puts a smile on your face.
Melissa Young, dancer from the Dallas Black Dance Theatre, stepped in to give Bruce Wood a hand when she noticed Bruce was leaving out details from the reparatory class. Bruce Wood has said, “I usually don’t explain dances.” He is very much like Nike with the Just Do It attitude and an in the moment, get inspired by the music kind of dancer. He graciously accepted Melissa’s help and we learned the exact choreography from Smoke.
Teresa Espinosa
The most popular style at Planet Dance was hip-hop. The TV show, So You Think You Can Dance has attracted so many more kids. It was hip-hop dancer and choreographer Teresa Espinosa who headlined Dance Planet this year. She has worked with superstars Britney Spears, Pink, Mariah Carey, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and more. The acclaimed hip-hop dancer got her start on Janet Jackson’s HBO special, The Velvet Rope. Espinosa is a Dallas native and Booker T. alumni who lives in LA and teaches at the Debbie Reynolds Studio.
Espinosa says this about dance, “If dance were a food, it would be a stew. For me, dance is more than just steps, it’s about how it all marinates together and comes out with a distinct flavor and a distinct message. It all comes down to expression.”
I think of dance as a language. I love the romance of France (ballet) and the spirit of Spain (flamenco), but we should all be exposed to many languages and styles to understand what Martha Graham said, “Dance is the hidden language of the soul of the body.” It’s up to the audience to translate, and it’s up to us to Do It!


Posted by No comments:

Get lost with your family in Lost Pines, Texas

 

It’s the middle of the night when I make my list in my head of what I packed and what I need to pack for our spring break road trip. That never ending list that mothers do to make sure their children are protected, safe and entertained…cough syrup (check), sunscreen (check), Cars DVD (check).

On a sunny Sunday our family of four hit the road to the Texas Hill Country. I felt in control driving down I-35 with the navigation programmed; it was going to be an easy trip. For weeks my children had been saying they were so excited for our vacation in Austin.

It was fairly easy. The navigation had us turn one road too soon and just when everyone had to go to the bathroom, we seemed to be lost. A quick phone call to the Lost Pines resort got us back on track and we started to wind down the road with that Mighty Python feeling that we keep on driving and we’re not really going anywhere.

As we entered the resort, we became one with the lost pines down an extremely long driveway. It felt like we were far, far away from civilization. Once arriving at the beautiful resort, you don’t really want to get back in the car until it’s time to go home.
We ventured out to Austin only once to go on a sunset bat cruise which was well worth the effort. Capital Cruises is the ultimate Austin experience because not only do you get to see one and a half million Mexican free-tail bats fly under Congress Avenue (their home from March through October) but you also get to see a traffic free look at Austin’s attractive cityscape.
Some travelers like to return to places they already know. I certainly do. We had stayed at the Hyatt Hill Country Resort in San Antonio last year. We knew another Hyatt Resort was going to be a hit. We met many people who were on repeat visits. It’s obvious why they wanted to come back; this is simply the kind of place that is almost magically bound to make those lasting family memories.

There were more activities than we knew what to do with. Upon checking in we were given an activity calendar of all the things we could experience: tennis, golf, horseback riding, kayaking, trap shooting, s’mores by the campfire, nature hikes, zipline, biking, archery, wagon rides, face painting, balloon making…My children’s favorite was the Crooked River water park because “a river runs through it!” This water park has a sandy beach, waterfalls, a lazy river, and waterslides.
My favorite part was enjoying being outside and admiring the old pecan trees and bluebonnets. Every time we saw a big bluebonnet patch my daughter would say, “Mommy look, bluebonnets! Don’t pick them!” I bet I heard her say that twenty times!

When I was researching where to stay in the Texas Hill Country, I found many places said that they were not child friendly. I knew the Lost Pines Resort was the place to stay when I read that Travel and Leisure Magazine ranked them #23 for World’s Top Family Hotels. Also, Conde Nast Traveler magazine highly rates and recommends the spa (another one of my favorites). It’s one of those places that keeps everybody happy.

We found a very laid back vibe with a Native American/Texan farmhouse style. It’s easy to feel comfortable enjoying the outdoors when you can relax in luxury. Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort is a 405-acre resort 20 miles from downtown Austin with more than 490 rooms that have patios or balconies.

Our room looked out over the beautiful Butterfly Garden. My daughter and I were lounging in the hammock when I looked over my shoulder to check on my son who was playing leap frog on the rocks by the lily pond when I turned and saw that he had just accidently jumped into the lily pond. An all boy picture, he was covered with green goo. Thankfully, our room was also right by a laundry facility! Something not on my check list…extra shoes!
Breakfast at the Firewheel Café was the perfect way to start the day and Texas style BBQ was the best way to end it. We enjoyed live Willie Nelson style music by the band Campcookie. The kids got up on stage with stick horses and cowboy hats to sing, Deep in the Heart of Texas (which I’m proud to say that my daughter knows all the words to thanks to her wonderful kindergarten teacher).

We left Lost Pines when the bluebonnets were blazing. All our cowboy activities seemed to add a little country swagger to our step. I’m proud to be raising little Texans. They look right at home on a pony, eating BBQ, wearing cowboy hats, singing campfire songs…

Like many of the families we saw who were repeat guests, I said to my husband…let’s come back next year!



Posted by No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)