Hill Country Bed and Breakfast

You are invited to the largest Real Estate Event in Bastrop County history.

Sell  Smithville

Visit the Smithville area for a preview of our available Real Estate, whether residential, commercial, farm or ranch.

Realtors and owners are holding the doors open so you can view property – From 10 AM  to 4PM

Learn about Mortgages, Title Companies, Home Warrantee, Insurance, Home Inspections and MORE at the Smithville Recreation Center.

Free maps to all open locations are available at the Smithville Recreation Center, Hwy 95 at 1st Street on Saturday, May 7.

For more information or to hold an open house (RSVP by April 22, call 512 678-1131)

Realtors and owners are here to help you BUY SMITHVILLE!

Get a piece of your dream. 

 For more information on Smithville, visit the Chamber site.

GREAT COMMUNITY * GREAT SCHOOLS * HOSPITAL * RECREATION CENTER * PARKS * RIVER * FRIENDLY PEOPLE

“Go Wild in Smithville!”  The Smithville Business Association is sponsoring its Second Annual Wildflower Event.  The merchants in Historic Downtown Smithville will be giving away FREE packets of wildflower seeds (while supplies last). Each of the 18 locations will have a different variety. Start out on Main Street for your first free packet and a map of the participating locations.  The “GO Wild in Smithville” celebration is being held on Saturday, May 1st from 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM. The Katy House Bed and Breakfast is one of the participating merchants.  We are not on Smithville, Texas’  Historic Main Street,  where all the antique shops are located, but one block away on Ramona and Second Street.

The parlor, here at the Katy House Bed and Breakfast,  is full of fold-up tables. You can not see the top of the tables because they are filled with paper, photos, stamps, rulers, type, ribbons, and all sorts of stuff I can not name.  We have 10 ladies here for the weekend scrapbooking!  This is their 6th year to come.  We take most of the furniture out of the parlor, and they move in! There are type machines called Cricut that cuts letters and lots more.

They come early on Friday and scrap book late into the nights.  We feed them three meals on Saturday and they leave around 3 pm on Sunday.  There is always lots of laughter coming from the room.  I just asked the group, “How many kids are mother-less this morning?”  There are 15 kids, under the age of 18, with their dads today. I believe these ladies will return home today, having solved most of the problems of the world. They will return home refreshed from having time for themselves.  They scrap, shop downtown Smithville, eat fried pickles at Pocket’s Grille, stay up till all hours, and did I mention ‘laugh’?

And of course, their photos from the past year will be on creative, wonderful pages, and in beautiful albums, with labels and notes.  It is a fun weekend for us too!

Last Saturday was a Quilter’s Delight, here is Smithville.  Downtown antique shops were displaying quilts in the store windows and out in front. There were over 140 quilts shown just on Main Street.  Many old homes had quilts on balconies and porches.

 The Merchants are already planning for next year’s  “Airing”.

Watch the Smithville Chamber web site, for the new date. 

 Call the Katy House  for more information.

Our beautiful Colorado River will be featured this Saturday in Bastrop Texas, just 12 miles from Smithville. There will be ‘newbie floats’, Snakes and lizards, arts and crafts, a petting zoo, river padding and much more.  For more information see  www.VisitBastrop.org

All of this is just 12 miles from our B and B. Come join in the fun.

Airing of the Quilts, Smithville, part 2

Airing of the Quilts is based on an old European tradition.  Quilts were treasured possessions, essential for long winter nights.   After much wear and tear the ladies would “air” their quilts in the sunshine. See quilts displayed all over town on Saturday, November 7, 2009, from 10AM – 5 PM.  Smithville is located 13 miles East of Bastrop, and 110 miles West of Houston, off Hwy 71.    Smithville Chamber has more information about Smithville. There are many Bed and Breakfasts around town. The Katy House is one block from Main Street and will be displaying quilts. Many of the antique shops will have quilts for sale.

There is a raffle quilt called “Lapsided Log Cabin”.

Admission is free and it will be a photo opportunity.

This is part of a report from the  Austin Bastrop River Corridor.  This area of the Colorado River is about 30 minutes West of Smithville. 

 September Travis County River Monitoring Trip Results – Sept 5 –

 Location:     Austin Colony – Webberville

Observation date:     9/5/09

It rained on us; first thing when we were doing the shuttle.  The river was a dirty brown muddy color and running fairly quick.  We think there was lots of runoff from last nights rain over downtown that filled up Waller Creek and Shoal Creek.  After the rain we were treated with overcast skies for the rest of the ride down to Webberville.  For the first time in a long time I did not use any suntan lotion.  Oh birds, you want to hear about the birds.

We have three very good sightings for the day.  While still preparing our boats at the put-in a Tricolored Heron flew upstream.  Later in the morning we got an Anhinga.  Finally there was that Olive-sided Flycatcher, we will put that one in the good sightings list also.  We also got a Yellow Warbler and several Empidonax Flycatchers.  Owls are always fun and we got two Great Horned Owls.

In the migrant column we got Baltimore Orioles, Yellow Warbler and Empidonax Flycatchers.

In the ‘we-should-of’ category we missed most ducks and we had no migrating hawks.

In all we got 49 species.

 Number of species:     49

 Black-bellied Whistling-Duck     1

Anhinga     1

Great Blue Heron     12

Great Egret     5

Snowy Egret     6

Little Blue Heron     2

Tricolored Heron     1

Green Heron     24

Black Vulture     32

Turkey Vulture     28

Osprey     1

Red-shouldered Hawk     4

Crested Caracara     4

Killdeer     3

Spotted Sandpiper     28

White-winged Dove     48

Mourning Dove     8

Yellow-billed Cuckoo     3

Great Horned Owl     2

Chimney Swift     7

hummingbird sp.     2

Belted Kingfisher     5

Red-bellied Woodpecker     14

Downy Woodpecker     3

Olive-sided Flycatcher     1

Empidonax sp.     3

Great Crested Flycatcher     3

Western Kingbird     11

Eastern Kingbird     8

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher     3

White-eyed Vireo     26

Blue Jay     6

American Crow     14

Northern Rough-winged Swallow     6

Cliff Swallow     12

Barn Swallow     100

Carolina Chickadee     26

Black-crested Titmouse     16

Carolina Wren     22

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher     18

Eastern Bluebird     9

Northern Mockingbird     5

Yellow Warbler     1

Northern Cardinal     78

Red-winged Blackbird     25

Common Grackle     26

Great-tailed Grackle     12

Baltimore Oriole     18

House Finch     2

There are  fun times ahead, here in Downtown Smithville, Texas.  Sunday, September 13th will be a photographer’s dream come true. Smithville Film Commission is  sponsoring  the “Texas Photo Festival,”  Sept 12 and 13th, 2009. There will be sites set up on our historic Main Street on Sunday.  All you need to bring is your camera and you will have a ball. You will see where to stand to get that “perfect shot.”  The cost is free and I promise you will learn a lot and enjoy our town. Here is the web site for more information-   www.texasphotofestival.com

Call the Smithville Chamber at 512 237-2313 or the Katy House B&B at 512 237-4262 for additional infomation on our town. Smithville is the first town in Texas to be named Texas Film Friendly. It is the hometown of the movies, “Hope Floats,”   “Tree of Life,”  “Five Times Champion,”  and “artois the goat.”

The Smithville Chamber Banquet showed a video where they interviewed locals on why they loved Smithville.  There are a lot of neat photos of the beautiful homes here in Smithville. Look closely and you will see my grandparents home, and our home.  Here is the link to see the video on Loving Smithville. Looking at the photos you can see why film makers see the town full of sites for their movies. We are looking forward to the release of “Tree of Life,” starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn in the fall of 2009.