Let Me Tell Ya About this Texas Tee... and Roots

Let me tell you about this Texas tee - This is one of our original designs and we are pretty, stinkin' excited about this one. We love our State of Texas and everything that makes up this great state. We took graphics along with pictures we have taken, to fill up the Texas collage. It took a while to design, but once I came up with the idea, I had to make it happen! 

East Texas peaches and sweet potatoes, pine trees, a sunset over FM 555, barbed wire fences… bluebonnets and Longhorns in central Texas. Windmill and big sky in the panhandle. Dirt roads and cactus in the west. Throw in old barns, pickup trucks, rodeo Cowboys, boots, hats, sunflowers, and a lone star. What's not to love about that? 

The sunset is a view from the place where Jeff grew up and where we both feel at home  - the 555 Road Sign also comes from there - a curvy farm to market road with a great group of community and family. Side note - Jeff and I grew up on opposite ends of the same mail route and my family baled lots of hay all along the route, so I had driven a truck and tractor all over the area, long before I met Jeff or even had a drivers license. His family also baled lots of hay in the same community and true story - we talked about tractors and hay on our first date! Roots, it's just simply our roots and what we both grew up doing. 

Sweet potatoes - our town in know for the East Texas Yamboree (a huge fall festival / county fair with a Yam theme) and there is a basket of sweet potatoes in the back of the truck. Our area is also known for peaches and pine trees. The Yamboree was were we set up for our very first event and we even won the Yam Pie Contest a few years back. Jeff and I both grew up showing our animals at the fair through FFA and 4H, although not at the same time. Once again, it's part of our roots. 

I took the picture of the longhorn in the bluebonnets along the Ennis Bluebonnet Trails several years ago. 

We think of cactus in west Texas and that's actually Jeff's mom's horse standing out there. My niece Brenna (who is also a cousin) took the horse picture (which is also on our Support Your Local Farmers and Ranchers Tee) Here's another crazy side note - my grandparents and my niece's Great-grandparents were all from west Texas and all ended up on the opposite side of the state, without planning it. So yeah, I should probably explain that a little more, huh?!? My granddad and Brenna's great-grandmother were brother and sister. Now you should know that Brenna's dad is Jeff's brother. Brenna's mom and I are second cousins that married brothers, but we really didn't see each other much, till we became sister-in-laws. Wild huh? 

Ok, moving on! Big sky moments for the panhandle with a windmill and a barn. I took the sky picture on some of my travels. 

You can't think of Texas without thinking of boots, hats, and rodeo cowboys. Throw in some sunflowers, a horseshoe, and a single lone star and we filled up Texas. 

Oh, I should also mention that I started making coffee mugs this week! The Texas images show up in even more detail on the mug, opposed to the shirt. 

The collage reminds me of high school, when I cut images from magazines to cover my folders and posters. Twenty something years later, I still have my ag folder, where we had to cover it with clippings to describe ourselves. Here it is, describing me in 1998ish. Look at how many of the same type elements made into our Texas collage! I just opened the folder and it has pages of quotes in there, back from our FFA leadership days... on the right side of the folder it says raised to work... roots, I  tell ya, roots. I foresee some of those same quotes showing up on our daily Facebook post in the near future. When I created agendas for our 4H and FFA meetings, there were always motivational quotes included and now we share them daily on our social media pages. 

You can find all three of the Texas tees on our website: www.GypsyFarmGirl.shop
You can also find them when we do our local events, such as the Gilmer Area Farmers Market and the Texas Collage, Home Grown, and some of the mugs are currently in our space at P20 Land and Cattle on the square in downtown Gilmer, Texas. (I haven't got the mugs online yet, but if you want one, please let us know and I can ship.) The shirts are all super soft and the design is actually dyed into the fabric, so you can't feel it on the shirt. 

Support Your Local Farmers and Ranchers New Tee + Return to the Farmers Market!

So it went like: 

"Hey Brenna, you got an idea for a farmers market themed tee? I want to do something different from last year and put it on a red bleached tee."

"What about something with a red tractor?"

"Yes! Oh, yes, yes!! I have a red tractor graphic."

"Ok!"

We were hanging out at my mother in laws house with my niece Brenna, my husband Jeff, and of course Ms. Karen, my sweet mother in law. We ate supper, hand washed the dishes, played with Sally, our puppy, and finally set down with the computer about 10:00 on a Saturday night. 

I started pulling on some graphics I had on my computer - the vintage red tractor, baskets of produce and flowers. The squash was grown by Brenna's family last year, we grew the cucumbers, the best ever blueberries were purchased at last years farmer's market. The basket of sweet potatoes once decorated the Yamboree band stand (our county fair is centered around a yam.) The sunflowers were some I used in flower arrangements and the wildflowers were grown in our yard and (digitally) placed in my Granddaddy's old well bucket. I grew up driving my Granddaddy's Farmall tractor in the hayfields, when I was a kid and Brenna's Granddaddy had a restored Farmall they played on when they were growing up. Red tractors are definitely a part of our history. 

Brenna "what about adding some animals?"

We tried some of our cow pictures and they just didn't fit. I had some farm animal silhouettes, that we tried and by midnight we were like, Ok, its done. 

Sunday. Jeff: "You need real animals. That's just not right."

Well ok, then. We went searching for farm animal clipart and purchased some. 

Sunday night, after supper again, Brenna and I worked on updating our image with the farm animal clipart. We saved our work and was excited about it all looking more life like.

Our sweet puppy, Sally May, had recently started travelling with us and made a fast friend in Brenna. They played together a lot and Brenna had taken a pretty picture of Sally sitting in the kitchen floor. Sally set in Brenna's lap, while I was designing on my computer. "It'd be cool if Sally could be in the graphic." 

"Oh yeah!" Grabs my phone, pulls up the picture Brenna had taken, removed the background, uploaded it to my file sharing app, downloaded it to my computer, and there she was setting by the produce baskets! 

Save As... again. Then it was time to call it a night and go home. 

About midnight, I text Brenna (we are both night owls) and ask if she would have any goat or horse pictures we could use? Brenna was an award winning photographer in 4H and has a love of photography like I do. She had showed me some of the animal pictures she had recently taken, so I knew she had some good ones.

She sent some pictures and the next morning I went back to editing. I looked through my pictures and found a cow picture to go along with her horse and goat pics. I removed the backgrounds and adding them to the farm scene. 

A few more tweaks and saves and we were tickled with the outcome. We added both our initials to one of the baskets, because we just felt like our work needed signing. We added the Rocking E brand and 2021 to the tractor. (Due to trademark / licensing / copywrite type stuff, I won't use the tractor brand name, make, or model.)

So our final image has Opal (our heifer),  Brandy the horse (who belongs to my mother in law and picture taken by Brenna), Tex the goat (who belongs to Brenna's family) and our sweet Sally May. A few chickens and a cute pig also make up the image. 

Fun little side note about Sally - we already have a Hank and Drover, named after the main characters from the Hank the Cow Dog series,  so when it came time to name her, I looked up characters from the series to find a girl name. Sally May was wife of High Loper, chief of the chicken coop, and manager of the vegetable and flower gardens. (according to Wikipedia) I knew Sally May was the perfect name for her as a puppy and that she would in fact be a part of our flower and vegetable gardens! How pretty is she posing in out gazebo?!?

Of course she's loving playing in the dirt, helping get the garden soil prepared for planting. Our goals are to have some extra produce to sell some at Farmers Market this summer. 

We had a great time collaborating on this graphic! It took time and more edits than usual, but we feel like the hard work was worth it and the shirt tells a story.

Last years shirt said "Support Your Local Farmers," and Brenna suggested adding "and Ranchers" so we did. It's a powerful message and we believe it needs to be said over and over again. I grew up watching Horace McQueen on the Farm and Ranch Report. It came on at 6:00 am and we ate breakfast, listening to him, before we got on the school bus. Everyday he reminded us the "if you eat, you are involved in agriculture" and that's stuck with us for many years. 

We will be joining the Gilmer Area Farmers Market again this year! Although, please take note, there are new hours and different days. It will be held the first and third Saturday evenings (except July when holidays will affect schedule)  from 5-8 pm on the Gilmer Courthouse Square (empty lot by Stewart Insurance and Hil-Tex Insurance formerly known as the Roberts Building, on the northeast side of the square, just a block from US Hwy 271 and Hwy 154.)  There are lots of new businesses and restaurants on the square. If you haven't been lately, you should really come check it out. We've also got items inside P20 Land and Cattle Interiors and More on the opposite corner where the new mural is at (at Davis St and 154/Tyler St.) The new speakers are up and there should be music playing and a great time to be had at the market. 

Our Farmers Market themed tee will be available at the Farmers Market or you can order online. If you want to order online and pick up at the market, you can use coupon code LOCALDELIVERY and let me know you want to pick up at the market. Also, for the first time ever, we have YOUTH sizes as well, so we have Youth XS all the way through Adult 3X! 

We hope you enjoy the story and history behind this shirt and as always, we thank you for your support! 

 

 

 

 

News and Updates

Hey Y'all! I know I haven't blogged much lately, but I wanted to stop in and tell you about a few things. We've been as busy as ever, this year and haven't set down long enough at our computer to write many blogpost (sure wish I could easily blog from my phone, like we used to.) 

We have brought back the Tee of the Week special on our website (not on etsy.) We had the tee of the week special earlier in the year and it went away during the summer, but we are excited to bring it back for the foreseeable future. Watch our Facebook and Instagram pages to see the current featured tee. You can actually shop from both our facebook or instagram shop now, by simply tapping the picture (when we have the product tagged in the picture.) On our website, go to the menu and scroll down till you see the Tee of the Week option. The special will expire on Saturday night and a new tee will be announced by Monday of each week (hint: if you check the website on Sunday evenings, you may get a jump on the sale.) 

If we have the featured tee in our space at Kickin' K Cattle Co Boutique in Quitman, you can show the weekly sale graphic to them and they will honor the sale. The sale is not advertised in the store, so you must tell them about it. 

We have been adding lots of new tee shirt designs to our website as well, so make sure you check on all the new releases. Here's just a few of them! 

This design is special to me - I had a request for a tee with a longhorn cow. I looked for longhorn graphics, but couldn't find any that tickled my fancy. That's when we recalled taking pictures of Longhorn along the Ennis Bluebonnet Trails in 2011 or 12, so we took the picture, edited it, and worked it onto a new, original design. 

I know it is short notice here, but we will be at the Christmas Bazaar at the Gilmer First Methodist Church on November 7, 2020 from 9-4 in the gymnasium. 

Here's a little more notice for our last scheduled show of the year - On December 5. 2020 we will be at the Gilmer Yulefest and I will have Miss Gussie my camper there. (Yulefest will be modified from previous years, so not sure the exact time or where we will be parked yet. For the Yulefest event, by nephew and owner of Jake's Jigs will be joining us! Jake is just 14, wants to be a pro fisher, has won several 4-H virtual fishing tournaments and makes all his jigs. 

Other than these two shows on the calendar, we have a few weddings and events to create flowers for. Our website and etsy shop remain open and shipping daily. As always, for local customers, I can meet or deliver, if needed. We so appreciate all of you who have supported us over the years. You're the best! 

Introducing the Tee of the Week!

Introducing Something New here at GypsyFarmGirl! We are excited to start a $15 Tee of the Week Sale! Each week a new tee will be available at an incredible deal. We had stocked up on shirts for our spring shows (currently on hold), so I have decided that we will feature a new shirt each week on our website and it can be shipped to all of you!



Out first shirt to be featured is the bleached tee with a sunrise, windmill, flowers, and a rustic turquoise truck. This shirt was a favorite at our shows and booth, before they got put on hold for the epidemic...


You can click on the Tee of the Week from the menu to find the current tee on sale. Also be sure to browse around our shop, as we are adding more items, as we get them made. This week, we've been working on some new wreaths. Since we are missing more of our in person events, we will be adding more goods that can be shipped to all of you. As always, we appreciate your support for our small, handmade business! Be sure to check out the announcement at the top of our page to find the current coupon codes and sales.

Please note this sale will only apply on our website and not our etsy shop.