Our BIG Snow

As I am sure most of you have already heard on the news, we got a record snowfall last week here in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas. Thursday, February 11th was the single snowiest day in our history! We estimate that we received somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 inches....it was unbelievable! It snowed for a straight 24 hours. Many people were without electricity, around 250,000 as of Friday morning. We were very lucky in that we never lost power, so we stayed nice and warm.

Can you believe this is our neighborhood here in Texas? We can't!

We were not so lucky with our beautiful live oak tree that had about 20 years of good growth on it. The snow was very wet, and as result, quite heavy. The tree eventually succombed to the weight and we woke up to a disaster Friday morning, as our tree had split right down the middle. See the photo below for the carnage. Needless to say, we are very sad to lose it. We are glad it did not damage the house or block the street, but it is still with heavy hearts that we realize there is no way to save it. So we are now in the process of clearing it and shopping for new trees.

We think that after seeing what can happen to a live oak in snow (and we have experienced some scary stuff in the past with ice too), we're choosing a different type of oak for replacement. We are currently debating between the Burr or Chinkapin Oak. They are both native to this part of Texas and are disease resistant. They also tolerate the heat well, which is equally important in these parts. We would welcome any advice regarding our choice here, so feel free to chime in! It will be hard to have small trees for the next several years, but there isn't a lot of choice to be made.

Since this was our only tree and we have to start over, we will be putting in three trees at one time. Our front yard is large and we always wanted more, so this is as good a time as any to go ahead with that plan. Looks like there is going to be a lot of yard work this year!

On another note, I will be going to Wisconsin in a couple of weeks to tape a segment with Nancy Zieman for Sewing with Nancy! I am excited to be a part of her show. We will be focusing on some of the projects for my book. I will be taking photos of the process of the shoot for the show. It is scheduled to show later on in the year, probably fall. I will let you know as soon as I know more.

Guess that is about it for now....need to get sewing and working on those spring market patterns...hopefully I will have some goodies to share from that soon!

Keep warm and Happy Sewing!