Opie's Famous Hot Dogs

If you have ever been to the Home Depot in Tyler during the day light hours you have probably noticed Opie's Famous Hot Dog stand conveniently located just outside. If you haven't seen them I guarantee you have smelled them, and if you haven't tried them what are you waiting for. We usually end up needing something from the hardware store almost every weekend, and we do our best to plan our trips around lunch time. It's become a tradition now in our household, it just doesn't feel like the weekend without an Opie dog.

(Katie just happened to lean in to apply the spicy mustard to her regular dog with onions just as I was taking the picture of the menu)

It's a cash only establishment and I would be lying if I said we haven't purchased something inside just to get the cash back to be able to buy our hot dogs but they are that good. Since you don't have a clear shot of the menu I will give you a run down. Katie has her usually, it's a regular beef dog ($2) with grilled onions (optional) with a bag of Nacho Doritos and a Dr. Pepper. Now I am a little more adventuresome with my choice of dog and I am not ashamed to say I have tried every single item on this menu. Usually I leave it up to the ones manning the grill to decide what looks the best at the moment and that's what I go with. Saturday it was a Bratwurst ($2.75), always with the grilled onions and spicy mustard.

If you are a first timer to Opie's, and you are headed there for lunch today after reading this post here is my ranking of every dog on the menu for your convenience.

1. Jalapeno cheese sausage ($3)


2. Hot Link ($3)


3. Bratwurst ($2.75)


4. Cheeseburger Link ($3, this one is strange, it's ground hamburger meat and cheese formed into the shape of a hot dog and grilled. It took me about 6 months to overcome to weird factor and try it, but it's pretty darn good)


5. All Beef dog (regular $2 or jumbo $3)


6. Polish ($2.75)


7. Sausage on a stick ($3, it's good but I prefer to eat my dog with a bun, and I wasn't sure how to make the grilled onions stick to it)

Chips are $.50 and $1.00 depending on the size bag, cokes at $.75 and a bottle of water is a buck. We can usually eat lunch for around $8 for the two of us including a generous tip to these fellas.

They were out there every day in the heat off the summer standing over a grill singing along to the ipod they have in one ear always wearing long basketball shorts and tall socks. They make us laugh. Since we frequent this establishment so often we feel like we have become friends with these gentlemen. They wave at us across the parking lot if we happen to stop by Home Depot during the week and occasionally ask if we will still come eat a hot dog when we are finished working on our house (like that will ever happen). Katie is more concerned about them leaving to find a real job once they graduate college. My hope is that they are going to school to study hot dog stand management and plan to take over this little place some day.

Opie's may not be your definition of fine dining in East Texas but if you are looking for a good quick meal on the cheap give if a try. So plan your next trip to Home Depot around lunch time and tell them the tall guy and cute girl who eat there every Saturday sent you. We are really trying to give this blog a shot and hope you are enjoying reading it. Our next post will be a DIY project over the weekend that includes this guy that has been laying in out garage for months. Stay tuned.

Now Open

Chipotle Mexican Grill officially opened its doors today in Tyler. You can find it on S. Broadway in front of the mall in the corner of the Sears parking lot. I guess they finally decided that since no one shops at Sears, they don't need a parking lot.

(I was expecting the line to be longer)

After years of rumors and what seemed like endless months of construction we now have our very own burrito subway. I know I know some of you Tylerites out there are thinking, "well what about Salsaritia's"? Let me start off by saying I appreciate that Salsarita's came in and filled a need in our town left by Frisco's (Where Daniel Boone's is now) almost 10 years ago. If you were craving a burrito wrapped in foil that you could eat with your hands Salsarita's was the only place in town. Now I have eaten at quite a few of these similar make you own burrito establishments in the past few years and with out a doubt Salsarita's is the worst. Management was terrible, the food was sub par at best and the menu was scattered with off the wall items such as pizza that I was too annoyed with to try. If you picked up on my past tense verbiage it was no mistake, it's just my general feeling that with the opening of Chipotle it won't be long before we see Salsarita's close up shop.

If you have never been to a Chipotle, which I was surprised to learn that one of my co-workers had not, you really need to go check it out. Get on there website, read their story, and appreciate their commitment to bringing you organic and locally grown food in an up scale fast food setting. Up scale fast food sounds kind of funny but I don't know how else to describe it. The food is outstanding and the atmosphere is more trendy than some of your traditional sit down restaurants, but you get your food FAST. They really have the whole ordering process down to a science assigning a single task to each employee and passing your order down the assembly line.

(only 10 minutes later from starting in the parking lot and it's my time to order)

(I went with the Babacoa with brown rice, grilled onions and peppers, corn salsa, pico, cheese and lettuce)

Chipotle also offers tacos, burrito bowls, and salads and I hear has some pretty darn good guacamole. I would tell you but come to find out I'm pretty allergic to the green stuff so I have to stay away.

If you live in East Texas be sure to check out Chipotle and don't be scared of the long lines. If they are already this fast on opening day just think how quick they will be once they get the hang of things. Be sure to leave a comment and let me know of any new restaurant rumors you have heard lately.

New Beginnings

Caught up in the excitement a few years ago of a time in our history I like to refer to as the year of the blog, the wife and I decided to start our own…and it failed. It sounded like such a good idea at first, you post a few photos write a few sentences and sit and watch as your legion of loyal followers hang on your every word. We really did have every intention of blogging on a regular basis. We were fresh out of school, had just gotten married, and the best way to stay up to date on the lives of your friends, your friends friends, and even friends of those friends, was to read their blogs from afar without ever actually having to speak to them. Katie spent the better part of a month designing/re-designing a background look for the blog that fit what she calls “our style”. We started snapping pictures of everything from decorating the Christmas tree to Lobo “el perro” playing in the snow. We said this is easy, we can do this! We were wrong. After the first few months we started to notice something pretty instrumental in the whole blogging process. Blogging is just a fun word for “writing” and writing is something neither of us like to do or do particularly well. So our blog died, we let it die.

Our last post on the blog was before the purchase of our house…over a year ago…where we so casually made the promise to start blogging more. I’m not exactly sure where the last twelve months have gone but here we are, another year older so they say, and taking on the daunting task of blogging again. The blog isn’t going to be so much about our everyday lives as it was in the past, but at the same time it kind of is. Instead of blogging about baking cookies and sharing our inner most personal feelings with the world we are going to focus on two primary topics we actually care a little bit about. That is renovating our house one project at a time, and food. I come from what you would call a “project family” and after purchasing this house last summer Katie and I can safely say without a doubt that this is our fate. Our evenings and weekends are filled with sawdust in our shorts and paint on our faces (not really because we are painting pros) and throughout this blog we are going to share with you what we like to do, how you can do it, and why in our opinion DIY is the way to go. Since we last left you with a picture of the house we had yet to purchase, we thought we would go ahead and share some before and after pictures of our kitchen remodel that is almost complete.

Here is a before picture of the kitchen from the listing when we bought the house. Not bad at all, but not our style. We did appreciate the gas range and stainless steel appliances though. It didn't take long after closing that we got to work.

My dad and I starting to take down the wall between the kitchen and dining room.

The wall is now down with a header in it's place. The studs you see are for the temporary support wall we had to build while taking down the wall since it was load bearing.

Since the pantry was on the wall we took down, we had to build a new, BIGGER, pantry and also decided to box in the fridge while we were at it.

We repainted all the original white cabinets after sanding off layers and layers of paint with Sherwin Williams ProClassic Universal Khaki which we saw in the kitchen of a parade house a few summers ago.

We replaced the old fake wood roll out flooring with some 16x16 tiles and built an island for our piece of marbel you may remember from our last post.

One Saturday while watching Sarah's Cottage on HGTV we saw this backsplash tile and Katie said "I want it". Come to find out it was from a Canadian supplier that only has one store in the U.S. which is conveiniently located in Indiana. Katie was determined however and after numerous phone calls, e-mails, and shipping mishaps the tile was finally ours. It really does look great. We also decided to refinish the original solid wood countertops in the rest of our kitchen after seeing it done at the Nix's remodel on Jeff Davis this last year on the parade.

FINALLY, here she is. The apron sink and pendants are worth mentioning, they were great finds from Ikea and the faucet is a pull down Moen from the HD. We also did a wood treatment on the ceiling and installed four can lights in the room and one above the sink to add more lighting.

In case remodeling and design is not your thing stay tuned because we are also going to be talking about food. Good food. Not so much how to make it but where to find it. We love to eat, finding new places, and enjoying what your put in your mouth past the point of simply fuel to stay alive. I wake up in the morning and think “what do I want to eat today”? I plan my day around food, I’ve planned vacations around food, and legend even has it my first word was “food”. We live in Tyler Tx, and despite the rumors, it is not the restaurant capital of the world. In the past few months we have added to our repertoire with the likes of a BJ’s Brew house and Chuy’s Mexican Café and have even seen construction start on Corner Bakery, Chipotle, and Panera Bread. However much is left to be desired when it comes to eating out in East Texas. Through the mass of fast food eateries and subpar Mexican restaurants on every corner there are still places out there serving good food worth the cost of eating out.

This week we have a short list of projects around the house that include putting the finishing touches on our kitchen, and at least half a dozen opportunities for eating out. We aren’t going to promise to start blogging every day or even every week for that matter, past history has taught us that it just won’t happen. When we do blog however, you know it’s going to be good so check back every once in a while and comment often, we are always looking for new DIY projects to tackle and exciting restaurants to check out.

Where have we been?

To start, let us apologize to all of those who have checked our blog periodically over the past six months only to be disappointed. We are officially the worst bloggers in the world, and you know what, we are okay with that.

A lot has happened since we last blogged so instead of overwhelling you with every detail, I am going to give you a quick time line. From February to June we have celebrated Camryn's 1st birthday, spent a month working in Sulpher Springs, spent two weeks in working Mt. Pleasant, traveled back and forth working in Longview for two months, went to Nashville for Justin's wedding, went to college station to recruit, bought a house, went to Dallas to visit Tyson & Sarah, and made the journey out to Abilene for a quick trip.

Wait a second did he say "bought a house"? That's right, for those of you who haven't heard, Katie and I are moving. We move into our new house on July 1st and have already started to draw up plans for remodeling/renovating if you can believe that.



The house was built in 1951 and if you have been to our current home, you might notice this house isn't a whole lot different. The new house has the same hardwood floors through out, wood windows, and the exact same trim and baseboards that are in our current home. The only major difference is the new place sits on almost 1 acre, and is a bit larger with a second living area and a formal dinning room which we are lacking currently.

I mentioned earlier that we have already started making plans to remodel and this probably doesn't come as a huge surprise to some of you. I won't go into a lot of detail at this time, we have plans to blog about the remodel every step of the way with plenty of pictures, so for now I will just tell you that the kitchen is getting some major attention and the master bath for a lack of a better word will be "gutted". We did however make a first purchase today that will go towards the remodel.


We picked up this piece of marble at a remnant sale that will be the top of our 6x4 foot kitchen island. Hope you enjoyed the pics and catching up on what has been going on with us over the last few months. We promise to be better about blogging from here on out. Look forward to some good remodel blogs coming soon and feel free to come see the new place after we move in.

We've Been Lazy

I just wanted to say sorry blogworld. We have been lazy in our posting. Every couple of days we say to each other "we should blog", but then we decide that we have nothing interesting to blog about. Not to worry though, we'll be back soon. I just need to charge my camera battery, then I can show you our snow dog from a couple of weeks ago. Until then....

Flamingos & Sewing

On Monday I came home to these in the front yard.


They are part of a fundraiser for the youth group at church. They are going to the Dominican Republic in February. When the flamingos arrive in your yard, you pay to have them remove and then you get the pleasure of choosing who they go to next. So thank you Beth & Matt, we enjoyed them, but are glad they are gone.

They are pretty cute though.

While Kevan is gone working, I have been finding ways to occupy my time. I have always loved sewing and have made several quilts and bags. I had never tried making clothes though, just always altering ones I bought. I thought I would give it a shot since I have plenty of time on my hands.
I tried a dress because, it didn't require a zipper or buttons. Hopefully I will learn to do those soon so that I can do more styles. My presser foot died in the middle of my project, so a special thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law who let me borrow her machine. Thanks Janice!!

I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Katie GOT A CAR!

I just wanted to share with the blog world my new car. I have wanted a 4Runner for a long time and we found the perfect one for me.

So now we are one happy Toyota family, and if you see me driving around I probably have a big smile on my face.

In other news school started back today. It was not as crazy as I thought it would be, which I was really thankful for. I heard a lot about all the cool presents they got (I sounded lame telling them about my clothes, running shoes and house stuff).

Kev will start his busy season in a few weeks so we are enjoying the free time while we can. Since it is basketball season we have spent some of that time watching Kevan's beloved Rockets. I know what your thinking, they shouldn't be very good this year, they are missing two of their high profile players. They have been so much fun to watch and I have been sucked in to the Kirksey family love of Houston sports teams. So here are my favorite players at the moment.

I know all this sounds a little crazy coming from me, but watch a game. You'll see.

That pretty much sums up what we have been doing the last couple of weeks. I hope everyone had a great New Years!