Great House

Great House
Sunsets, Stars, and R&R Also, enjoy my collections of food, wine, and design links and blogs that I love.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Fun, Dreamy, Surreal, Heart Thumping, Giggly, Peaceful, Easy, and Inspiring

What a wonderful week.  What a special experience.  What an extremely talented group of people.  I feel like all the worlds problems could have been solved by the 40+ people gathered at Rachel Ashwell's The Praire for The Bloggers Luncheon.  Far removed as it was from the fast paced life most of us live, it was like a walk into the past with a real forward thinking leader.



To cover this event will take several entries.  Everyone deserves their special time in the spotlight.  It took four different groups to bring this event to fruition.  Of course the one and only, Rachel Ashwell, Bud "The Pieman" of Royer's Cafe fame, Kelley Copeland of The Hidden List, and Dwell with Dignity's Kim Turner and Lisa Robison.  Each of these incredible spokes in the wheel drove us down a very special trail to The Praire.



Rachel is the quintessential hostess.  She has surrounded herself with top notch people who make everything look effortless. "A gracious woman with an ease about her that makes you feel so relaxed" is a great way to describe what it is like to spend time with her.  She doesn't mind telling you that "she's had her trying times that everyone knows about", "that she cried from stress AND had a wagonwheel chandelier", "that she has no formal training and just used her own personal love and passion for design."  (She had to dress up the deer to make him fit in!)




After our fabulous lunch provided by Royer's Cafe and Bud (more to come on this later) we moved on to tour Lilliput Lodge with Rachel.  Many more great stories were told of her and her team living in the Lilliput while staying at The Prairie.  Most of these pictures were taken by my niece, Kate Ragon of Jaxon Ivy, a repurposed lifestyle store, in Fredericksburg, TX.

















Next to come will be the Blogger's Luncheon itself........