I've let time go by without writing here, but I did finish the script for the children's play I've been working on for three years!! I am eager to do a "reading", hopefully sometime soon. We'll get out some wine, assign parts, and read through the script.....
Christmas and the beginning of the New Year were quiet at the Retreat. The ice storms caused quite a bit of damage to trees so we have our work cut out for us between now and probably April to get all of the dead wood cut up and stacked and trim off damaged tree limbs. If you look at Google Maps and search for Chaparral Retreat, or 4978 OK Hwy 8A, you'll see how we are surrounded by forest. The forest is less dense after the ice damage - probably won't show up on Google Maps for six months to a year.
Andy and I worked on cleaning out some boxes from the garage to make room to actually park a car in there! SUCCESS! After Drew and Jenna got back from their excursion to visit her family, AJ and I went down to Dallas to visit friends and pick up the new baby. We haven't had a new car in ten years, and this "new" one is a 2010. Can't wait for warm weather when we can put the top down!
The kids have made some progress on their house in spite of weather limitations—it is exciting to see. We’re still having cold temperatures overnight and early morning, but the numbers are moving up slowly. Then again, we can have five days of temps in the 30's and 40's and wind, and then five days of temperatures in the 50’s and 60’s.
As a board member of the Oklahoma Tourism group, Red Carpet Country
Tourism Assoc., I’ve been distributing the annual Visitors Guide all around our
town and hope to get to other small
towns both in our county and around the state. Our B&B's audience is people traveling and looking
for a nice, quiet, clean, and even something a little upscale (which we are),
so we need to get the tourism guides distributed at hotels and convention
centers in the suburbs. We did drop some
off at the OK/Texas border Welcome Center and at the Cherokee Visitor’s Center
on I-40.
Drew and Jenna have ordered worms for their composting bins
and are busy shredding paper and hauling manure to get the bins set up. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it!! We're thinking about establishing a community garden in town, looking for a "Health and Hunger" grant.
We had a Liquid ART event on Friday, Feb. 12 – calling it a
pre-Valentine date night. On the 13th
we had a full house of guests from Edmond, OK, and added a Valentine’s dinner
for all on Saturday night. I put together
a menu of tapas with paella as the main course.
Our local vintner brought wine. I
miss the days in Dallas when we could go to happy hour and graze and sit for
hours with friends, telling stories and laughing at ourselves. Our
recent trip to Dallas was a joy and a special treat, getting to see friends
from Andy’s radio days and catch up. I
hope we were good enough salespeople to convince them to come up to BFE for a
visit.
In mid-January I attended a social media marketing seminar
at our local library. It was very very
good and I came away with lots of tips on increasing traffic to our website and
our facebook pages. It just all takes
time to implement those ideas!!
We are heading into our busy season and getting calls about
pizza dinner reservations. We haven't had enough consistent good weather stretches to advertise set dates, but we are willing to take a reservation and plan on dinner with the understanding that it is subject to the weather.
I have
scheduled a couple of house concerts for the spring: Caroline Cotter on March 23, and My Politic
on May 16 (check them out on their websites or on youtube. I have one potential booking for April but
haven’t gotten confirmation yet.
Easter
is early this year and we have no special plans. Our dinner with the Davis’ for Valentine’s
Day went so well and smooth, I am considering doing a special dinner out here
one night a month.
I am planning the First Annual Scissortail Arts Day for May
28. This year it will be a half day with
sidewalk squares made available for chalk art drawings, for kids and youth AND
adults (if any are brave enough to do it!!)
One food truck, and some live music in addition to a recorded
playlist. The point being, having
something in Watonga to bring people here in addition to the one festival the
town has and is known for – the Cheese Festival (which did not do well last October and lost some of its credibility with vendors). This week I have to start on making
flyers for the event, lining up the music, and visiting the local university
art department to drum up some interest and maybe volunteer help. We’re going to do a “trial run” in Okeene in
April at the request of one of the shop owners there who is looking for
something different to attract people to her storefront – the weekend of the
Okeene Rattlesnake Roundup—yes there is such a thing and it’s a pretty big
thing around these parts.
Andy and Drew are in Portland, OR visiting Blake this week. There is a "tour d'dirt" mountain bike event this weekend at Roman Nose State Park and I'm hoping to get a booking or two from that. Tomorrow and this coming weekend are supposed to be beautiful, warm days, so I hope to get some gardening done. The daffodils are blooming, as is the quince and crocus. New iris leaves are popping up all over, along with baby daylily shoots. Tomorrow I'll walk around and take an inventory, and maybe even plant some cilantro, parsley, spinach, and lettuces. I LOVE SPRINGTIME!!
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