All posts by: Brenda McDearmon

02 Jan 2020

#10 of Top 10 2019 – Started Over Like a Champ

Happy New Year, my friends! Welcome to the first installment of my favorite posts to write this year! My List of Top 10 2019 experiences! Have you noticed how much we all love lists of Top 10? Sometimes we need details. But there's something so clarifying about the short version, the skinny, the lowdown. Put all the info into a boiling pot and then let us know when it's reduced by two-thirds. Right? Well, here's the lowdown on my very adventurous, action-packed year at Texas Over Fifty. Of all the experiences, even the many

08 Nov 2019

Where to Buy Texas Pecans for Your Holiday Pies

By Brenda McDearmon / No Comment

Where to Buy Texas Pecans for Your Holiday Pies Until I started researching Texas pecans for this post about where to buy them, I was totally oblivious to most every pertinent fact. Only one thing did I know for certain on the subject. Pecans are my favorite nut, and Thanksgiving can never come and go at my house without at least one slice of pecan pie. But, hey. A pecan pie made with Texas pecans? That's got to be the ultimate.

Photo - Goode Company Pecan Pie made with Texas Pecans If I Were

25 Oct 2019

Hamilton Pool Preserve – The One Last Thing

By Brenda McDearmon / No Comment

Hamilton Pool Preserve When we moved to Austin in January 2014, it was the dead of winter in the place we were leaving and nearly spring in the one to which we were headed. After living our entire lives in the Texas panhandle, we were making an Over Fifty move to the Texas Hill Country. From the normal to the “weird.” From the land of cotton and windy days to the land of wineries and cedar haze.

Eeek - know before you go. This rustic ladder is the only way down to the pool.

On Every

22 Oct 2019

Let’s Go to Luckenbach, Texas

By Brenda McDearmon / 4 Comments

Let's Go to Luckenbach, Texas! Most Texans can sing right along with Willie Nelson's famous song that put this tiny Texas spot on the map. But a whole bunch of us really have no idea where it is, much less what we'll find once we get there. When we lived in Austin, one of the long-time locals asked if we wanted to see this Texas hole in the road for ourselves, and what did we say? You better believe it. Is the Pope Catholic? Do fish swim? Is Willie Nelson the king of country music? We were all in. Let's go to Luckenbach,

18 Oct 2019

My Favorite Fall Cookie Recipe of All Time

By Brenda McDearmon / 4 Comments

My Favorite Fall Cookie Recipe Many times, I've thought that if cookies could be a love language, that's what mine would be. Forget words of affirmation, gifts or acts of service. Just gimme cookies.

Cake vs. Cookie When it comes to cakes, my favorites are Wanda Mason's pound cake, Texas sheet cake with creamy chocolate icing, wedding cake and carrot cake in the spring. I've made cakes for office potlucks and taken really good ones to grieving friends. I've baked Paula Deen's strawberry cake for my

10 Oct 2019

All Stories

Top 10 Texas Day Trips to Take This Fall

By Brenda McDearmon / No Comment

Fall Has Arrived! It's finally fall in Texas, y'all! And you know what that means, right? We're out and we're about. Our minds are off the heat, and we're ready to experience a little weekend adventure around this beautiful state of ours. I've been so excited to bring you my list of this year's Top 10 Texas Day Trips to Take This Fall. There's something for absolutely everyone, including music, foliage, boating and hiking. Each location can be enjoyed in the space of a day, but if you want to stretch your day trip into a full

10 Oct 2019

Lady Bird Hike-and-Bike Trail (Austin) – 15 Things to Know Before You Go

By Brenda McDearmon / 01 Comment

The Ann and Roy Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail in Austin

The Ann and Roy Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail around Lady Bird Lake is a 10-mile stretch of outdoor beauty, thanks to the effort of two very forward-thinking Austin friends. On a trip to London in 1971, as Ann Butler and Lady Bird Johnson stood together admiring a portion of the beautiful Thames Path, they wondered if something similar could be accomplished in Austin. When they got back home, these two visionaries decided that it very likely could. And then it

02 Oct 2019

What it’s Like to Visit a Starbucks Reserve Bar – My Review of the Experience

By Brenda McDearmon / No Comment

What it's Like to Visit a Starbucks Reserve Coffee Bar Marketing marvels exist in so many ingenious ways, don't they? There's the start-ups that end up going gangbusters (Facebook), the solutions that soon become sensational successes (Dave Ramsey), and the institutions we see as commonplace that got that way because they refused to be common at all (Chick-fil-A). And then there's Starbucks.

Photo - Starbucks Reserve Coffee Bar experience menu Starbucks - a Dot on the Over Fifty Timeline When I think

02 Oct 2019

Seeing Life as a Daring Adventure

By Brenda McDearmon / No Comment

An Ailment of the Eyes Recently, I came down with an old fashioned case of the dreaded pink eye. Otherwise known medically as conjunctivitis, the symptoms of this ailment include several annoying things, like redness, itchiness, and waking up goopy. It's been a long time since anything has been wrong with my eyes. I couldn't see very well in 2nd grade, but got glasses in the 3rd, contacts in the 8th and then had Lasik surgery at 41, no longer needing either one. So, I didn't like having this eye condition one little bit. I had

28 Sep 2019

All Stories

How to Make Outrageously Good Coffee (at Home!)

By Brenda McDearmon / 2 Comments

Coffee, Coffee, Coffee If you're a coffee lover like I am, you may not remember your very first cup, but you most likely have fond memories of when you really started to enjoy drinking it. I was a college freshman at a small university in the Texas panhandle, living my best life with four gorgeous roommates and one beloved guy named Mr. Coffee. Yep. That's when I started loving the smell, the taste and even the sounds that came from a smallish, inexpensive contraption that lived on our apartment's kitchen counter. Whether

All posts by: Brenda McDearmon

#10 of Top 10 2019 – Started Over Like a Champ

Where to Buy Texas Pecans for Your Holiday Pies

Hamilton Pool Preserve – The One Last Thing

Let’s Go to Luckenbach, Texas

My Favorite Fall Cookie Recipe of All Time

Top 10 Texas Day Trips to Take This Fall

Lady Bird Hike-and-Bike Trail (Austin) – 15 Things to Know Before You Go

What it’s Like to Visit a Starbucks Reserve Bar – My Review of the Experience

Seeing Life as a Daring Adventure

How to Make Outrageously Good Coffee (at Home!)

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