Working in Salado

I just took a “barely above minimum wage” job one day a week at a home decor shop here (Charlotte’s of Salado). After ten years of self-employment, I felt like it would be good to try being an employee again and to learn something new. I chose Charlotte’s because I think the world of Charlotte Douglass and am looking forward to being around her and getting to know her.

Terry’s high end handyman business takes him out into the community and into people’s homes so he has quickly developed close relationships that have been hard with my travel schedule and work from home or in Austin. I’m hoping to develop some of those kinds of relationships by working at Charlotte’s. Besides, it’s great fun hanging out with Charlotte, Manuela, and Becky and the other fringe benefits – employee discounts, delicious coffee and a cheerful atmosphere – make it worth my while.

It’s interesting how quickly it has made me a “member of the club.” I learned more about my community in the one day I worked than I had in the past year. Well, that may be an exaggeration, but the social invitations ARE rolling in! Go figure.

Charlotte’s is a great little store packed with beautiful home decorations – lamps, table runners, candles, flower arrangements, throw pillows, table scarves and wall hangings. Since it’s fall, we have (ooh, I like being able to say “we”) table runners in oranges and browns, and fall food art. Of course we have plenty of my favorite coffee, Seasons of Salado. (It’s available online if you can’t make it to Salado.) I wish blogs and smellovision or scratch and sniff so you could experience the heavenly aromas I get to smell at work! Most of my paycheck is going for coffee so I can honestly say that I’m working for beans.

I’m also hoping that I will be able to learn how to create those wonderful flower arrangements and wreaths that Charlotte is so famous for. On my first day on the job, I sold a wreath leaving a bare space on the wall. When I asked Charlotte what I should do to fill it, she said, “you say to me, ‘Charlotte, make another wreath!’” So I did and in no time, she appeared with this majestic fall wreath…

…complete with a full-sized pumpkin (I think it’s made of suet, but you wouldn’t want the squirrels to get to it).

A day later, it was sold!

salado art fair

yesterday terry and I went to the Salado art fair. I tried to post a photo of some rings I liked from my iPhone, but apparently failed due to lack of service. ARGH!!! now I have lost the photo, but here are pics of brochures an the arrist’s web site is http://www.jmdesigner.com

Our Wedding Announcement

Taylor Willingham of Salado and Terry Crain (Traverse City, Michigan) were married on Saturday morning May 31 in a family ceremony at the home of the bride’s parents, Ben and June Willingham, also of Salado. After a brief honeymoon in a yellow caboose on lake LBJ in Texas Hill Country, the couple will reside in Salado.

The couple first met in high school in Longwood, Florida where Taylor was the editor of the yearbook and Terry was the photographer. They reconnected online late last July after being separated since 1975. After a first date to the opera La Traviata in Chicago last October and frequent flights to meet in Salado and Traverse City, Terry proposed next to the Christmas tree at Lincoln Center in New York following the opera, War and Peace.

After careful deliberation, Taylor, a consultant in deliberation and public policy, accepted Terry’s proposal on New Year’s Day beside the pond near her home on Salado Springs Circle.

Taylor is an active member of the Salado community serving as a board member of the Salado Education Foundation and a Salado Library Board Trustee. She will continue to teach graduate library school courses for the University of Illinois and manage Texas Forums, a program of the LBJ Library that she founded five years ago. Terry is starting a consulting and reconstruction business specializing in home security systems, minor construction repairs and household rehabilitation for independent living. Taylor, a frequent blogger and contributor to professional journals will continue her writing. Terry will take the photographs!

“Inn the News”

Just got a call from Will, the proprietor of Inn on the Creek gushing about my last blog posting prominently featuring his lovely establishment. After suffering for weeks painfully sworn to secrecy about the bridal luncheon he was hosting for Jenna Bush, you can understand he was delighted to launch his blog with a description of the day.

I’m almost breathless from reading his post because a) it sounds like a simple yet delicious and scrumptious day (I took notes), and b) Will’s relief at finally being able to shout out the news is palpable! (Have you come down enough to sleep, Will?)

Congratulations Will and Chris and the Staff of Inn on the Creek. Y’all done good by us Saladoans, keeping us on the map as the best darned wedding destination in Central Texas!

Big Wedding News in Salado

There’s big wedding news here in Salado. The whole town is buzzing! It made the evening news last night. The streets were lined with tourists and residents alike straining for a peek. But weddings aren’t anything new here, especially for a wedding wonderland like Inn on the Creek. Hmmm…

Salado, my home town, is the preferred destination for brides all across the country. Weddings are big business here. Florists, wedding planners, B&Bs, photographers…we’ve got it all in this cozy little village. How lucky am to be a resident of this lovely jewel in the heart of Central Texas AND to be a bride.

And Inn on the Creek is THE hot spot for weddings. You can get married on the lawn, have cocktails on the sweeping porch overlooking the creek and then a private dinner in the small dining room for 12 or in the larger dining room for 25. Then the couple can make their way up three flights of stairs to the preferred bridal suite, the McKie Room

It is a beautiful spot and for two days, it was my chosen location. But for reasons I’ll disclose in another posting (reasons that will be obvious to people who know my taste and see these pictures) we have made other arrangements which I’ll also disclose later.

So even though I won’t be getting married at Inn on the Creek, it is still amusing that my initial wedding site was the chosen location for the Jenna Bush bridesmaid luncheon yesterday. (Did you really think that the big wedding buzz was about MY wedding?)

We see lots of weddings and pre-wedding parties in this town, but oh what fanfare we can put on when it involves the President’s daughter. Never mind that this was to be a secret affair. I knew the cat was out of the bag when I drove into town and saw the flags lining the streets two weeks ahead of Memorial Day! For an artsy little shopper’s paradise, a visit from the first Daughter, first lady, former first lady (first mother?) and later the President himself, was news

And BIG news it was – over 1,200 google hits for “Salado Jenna Bush” including an AP article that had this to say:

Early in the day, the three attended a bridal lunch for family and friends at an inn in Salado, more than an hour’s drive south of Crawford. They stayed the day in the small tourist village, founded before the Civil War, getting ready for the evening events. The president made his way solo to Salado.

There the parents of the groom, Henry Hager, hosted the rehearsal dinner for members of the family and the wedding party at the Old Salado Springs Celebration Center in the heart of the town filled with coffee shops, western-style stores, antiques, eateries and clothing shops.

Then later, all of the wedding guests, some just arriving in the area, were invited to what was billed a “Texas-sized celebration” at the Salado Silver Spur Theater in the village, once a stagecoach stop.

Well, my wedding won’t be such big news here in town even though my parents are local celebrities and the oldest white settler of Salado was a Willingham (no relation, but still…). But the wedding will still be a perfectly lovely occassion, I’m sure. Like Jenna, I’m getting married in Central Texas in my parent’s back yard, albeit a much smaller back yard than the Western White House. And it will be a smaller crowd – eight family members, two couple friends and the bride and groom.

No time to fill you in on the wedding plans now. I’m to busy with the doing! But I promise to write more later when I’m not rushing to the post office to mail Terry his new cell phone.