Every year, before Christmas, we make the hour drive over to South Padre Island, TX to take in the new sand sculptures.
These amazing works of art are sculpted by sand artists from all over the world.
The only sculpture you’re allowed to touch is Santa’s chair, and I once again tried it out.
Hubs is Norwegian as far back as he can trace his roots on both of his parents’ sides.
One of their typical pre-Christmas activities is to make lefse, a Norwegian flatbread made with mashed potatoes and flour.
My mother-in-law made beautifully thin and soft lefse. In their family, good lefse is defined in comparison to their mom’s. She taught me how to make it, and I passed the skills on to our daughter, who will, in turn, teach both of our grandchildren.
I hadn’t made lefse since we started coming to Texas, but decided it was time, so purchased all of the equipment and yesterday, made a big batch (192 rounds), along with my sister in law, Lori. Hubs’ brother is also wintering in our park now and he loves lefse too. Lori had never made it before so wanted to learn and practice every step.
This was our Christmas gift to our guys.
It’s not an easy task and took us 8.5 hours of rolling and frying to make the amount we did. My feature photo is one stack of many we made yesterday. This amount used a 10 lb (4.5 kg) bag of potatoes.
One Christmas, many years ago, my mother in law famously made lefse from 100 lbs (40.5 kg) of potatoes!
The two- day process involves:
A few days ago, as a part of our usual pre-Christmas activities, hubs and I headed to South Padre Island.
One of our favourite activities while there, is to sit and watch the seagulls and pelicans as they scavenge and fish over the deep blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The seagulls were especially plentiful, the day was windy, and I was trying to catch a shot of even one gull soaring on the wind current above us.
I had no luck with my plan, but was completely shocked and amazed when we arrived home and I reviewed my photos to see this.
The direction of the wings is something I’d never seen before, so to say I’m well-pleased with this accidental shot is an understatement.
Everyone in our park gets into the outdoor decorating for Christmas.
Each year, on my morning walks, I find new and fun additions.
About a week ago, this one, at our neighbour’s house, caught my eye and gave me a big smile.
I agree 100% with “No Humbugging”
Last week, for our wedding anniversary, hubs and I spent the day visiting our fave stores in the RGV in search of things both useful and whimsical as a part of our anniversary and Christmas gifts to each other.
For the next couple of weeks, as a departure from my usual Mon, Weds, and Fri posts, I’m going to just stop in randomly, and likely more often, to post things about our Christmas season here in South Texas.
This cup caught my eye at the World Market Store near here.
My Mexican Hot Chocolate actually tastes better from this fancy cup (the mind is a powerful thing).
That’s cinnamon you see floating on the top. I stirred it in after the photo and enjoyed every last sip from my new cup.
December 1st is traditionally when I start my Christmas cookie baking. It’s when my mom always started hers, so I guess the date is firmly ingrained in me from an early age.
I bake the cookies that both of my grandmas and my mom made over the years, plus I always add a few of hubs’ faves from his memories of his mom.
My feature photo is of sugar cookies – a must every Christmas.
Each year, we exchange gifts with friends here in our park, and my gifts always include a selection of my home made cookies.
It’s been some time since I’ve posted about the smart phone photography classes I’m continually taking.
In a most recent class about photo editing in Lightroom, information was given about how to isolate one colour in a photo and correct/enhance it without disturbing the other colours.
In my feature photo, the one on the left is the original, so I chose to work only on the blue water and sky, while leaving everything else as shot.
My cousin, Carrie has visited us in Texas a few times since we bought our place here.
Hubs and I have enjoyed touring her around and I’ve especially enjoyed the fact that she loves to walk and hike.
My feature photo was taken at Quinta Mazatlan, a fascinating and fun place to visit in McAllen, Tx
We found this mural while hiking the trails that surround the historic adobe mansion.
As I was making this post, I was reminded of the Beatles’ song, “All You Need is Love”.
Carrying on with my prepared salads reviews:
This one is by Marketside and is called Spinach Dijon.
Ingredients: spinach, eggs, shredded Monterey Jack-Colby Cheese, chow mein noodles, almonds, sweetened dried cranberries, and sweet onion dressing.
The dressing is just sweet enough to cover the earthy taste of the spinach.
This salad is one of my faves in the line. If you like raw spinach, you’ll love this one!
Once every year, King Ranch – the biggest working ranch in the USA, hosts a breakfast for the public. All monies collected are donated to local charities. This is the only day all year that private vehicles are allowed on the ranch proper.
Hubs and I have attended the breakfast twice since 2019, once by ourselves, and once a couple of seasons ago, with friends from home who were ranchers at one time. This year, along with these same friends, we skipped the breakfast, but did the bus tour of the ranch.
The bus tour is open year round and is a great way to spend 1.5 hours learning about this 825,000 acre (in South Texas) massive ranching operation.
On the same weekend as the ranch hand breakfast, the city of Kingsville hosts a festival, complete with vendors, food and art demonstrations, rides for kids, entertainment, and lots of opportunities to get to know the locals. We decided to do the bus tour on the morning of the festival, so we could spend some time checking out the happenings in town, and then head out for the tour after lunch.
Unfortunately, just as the bus tour was about to begin, the rain started. We went anyways and, with the exception of not many photo ops through the bus windows, we didn’t regret it.
After my post Steamroller Blues? , I promised some of my followers that I would explain the festival in greater detail.
Radically Retired 