Love, peace, joy, health and contentment. May these gifts fill your heart, as the New Year approaches, and guide your path through 2012!

We are grateful to each of you for blessing us with your presence in the past years. With sincere hospitality, we served you and all of you have immeasurably enriched our lives, and that is the gift we have received and cherish. To express our thanks to you, a present to our past guests this Christmas is 20% off weekdays, from Monday through Thursday nights, December 12th, 2011 through March 8th, 2012 (excluding holidays, holiday weekends, and Christmas week).

Easy Christmas Shopping

Remember we have BlissWood Gift Certificates available. We also have Romance Packages and other gift ideas, along with Dinner Certificates for Carol’s at Cat Spring Restaurant.

E-mail us with your requests, carol@blisswood.net or call 713-301-3235.

In the Spirit of Hospitality,

Carol Davis & Staff

Each cabin comes with a fully equipped kitchen. Bring fixings for a great feast and enjoy an evening of cooking, or head to nearby Carol’s Cat Spring Restaurant, where New Year’s Eve Dinner will be served between 5:30 p.m. and midnight (reservations required).

New Year’s Eve Menu

Toast the arrival of 2011 at Carol's Cat Spring Restaurant.

Appetizer Platter:
Seafood-stuffed mushrooms
Stuffed Grilled jalapenos with Cream Cheese
Feta and wrapped with Peppercorn Bacon
Assorted Cheeses

Soup:
Lobster Bisque

Salad:
Spinach and Romaine with feta crumbles, dried berries, mandarin oranges and poppy seed dressing

Entrees:
Tasting Platter consisting of Filet Mignon with Merlot Demi glace, Seared Sea Bass and Chicken Cordon Bleu
or

Steamed Live Maine Lobster with drawn butter (Lobsters must be reserved in advance – see pricing below)

Sides:
Wild Mushroom Risotto and Asparagus

Desserts:
White Chocolate Bread Pudding
or
Chocolate Mousse

Tasting Platter meals are $59 per person and include a glass of champagne.
Lobster meals are $69 per person and must be ordered in advance.

Happy New Year Everyone!

It feels like the gods have come together to create the ideal weekend for a getaway with your sweetie. Three days? How can you resist?

Let us help take the pressure off you – all you need to do is call our Texas guest ranch and ask for our Valentine’s Day Special. You’ll open the door to your guest house to find flowers, chocolate covered strawberries, cheese and crackers and even a bottle of chilled champagne. You’ll have three mornings to laze together in bed, and three days to explore 600+ acres of the ranch by horseback or on foot.

The guest houses all come with kitchens. Have fun cooking together on Friday and Saturday night, and treat yourselves to a romantic dinner together at nearby Carol’s Cat Spring Restaurant on Valentine’s Day. After days out in the fresh air, you’ll both have good appetites.

Don’t stress about Valentine’s Day this year. Treat yourselves to a much-deserved weekend away, and let us throw in a few romantic touches. They will be appreciated, and you’ll get all the credit!

Carol with a jar of her tasty cookies

“I grew up on a farm/ranch in Texas with wonderful memories of family togetherness. Eventually, I left to become a city girl, and went to night school to get a court reporting degree. Yet, after the appeal of city lights faded, I yearned for a simpler life, with nature and animals. Now I’m back in the country at my own B&B and restaurant, on my own ranch, raising cattle, horses, miniature donkeys, chickens, bison, black buck antelope, fallow deer, and my pet kangaroo, Roger Roo, all which guests love to visit.

My favorite holiday cookie is a family favorite my Mom always made at Christmas. Our family would spend many weeks preparing for Christmas, and we always had lots of sweets. Mom always made her favorite fudge, along with sand tarts, icebox cookies, divinity, and these heavenly fruit cookies. I can remember helping to shell pecans and cutting up the fruit for the cookies. What made them extra special was the homemade butter we churned (from the cows we milked), and the fresh eggs gathered from the chickens we raised. We kept these sweets in gallon jars – our own homemade cookie jar.”

There is no better time than the present to try out new cookie recipes. By the time the holidays roll around in 2010, you’ll be well practiced at making these delicious fruit cookies. Why not plan a girlfriend’s getaway at our Houston area guest ranch with friends? We have guest houses that sleep up to eight people. While some of you bake, others can enjoy pedicures, manicures, facials and massages. Bake until you drop, than burn off those all those tasted cookies with a horseback ride on the 650-acre ranch!

For Marti’s article, please check out examiner.com.

Read on for the recipe:

Mom’s Fruit Cookies

1 1/2 cups butter

4 1/4 cups flour

2 1/4 cups sugar

5 eggs, beaten

1 1/2 teaspoon soda

2 teaspoons nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 teaspoons vanilla

3/4 teaspoon salt

3 cups dates

1/2 cup candied citron

1/2 cup candied cherries

1/2 cup candied pineapple

(all cut into small pieces)

3 cups raisins

4 cups pecans

Preheat oven to 350-degrees. Sift dry ingredients together 3 times. Cream together sugar and butter. Add beaten eggs and vanilla, flour mixture, chopped fruit, and pecans. Mix thoroughly. Drop cookies by tablespoonful onto a cookie sheet approximately 1” apart. Bake approximately 10-15 minutes, until brown. Yeild: 60 cookies.

Cookies will keep like fruit cake and are good sprinkled with whiskey to keep them soft.

We wish you a joyous and peaceful holiday season

From all of us at Blisswood Texas Guest Ranch to all of you. Thanks so much for your support this year.

Why not go horseback riding to your Thanksgiving Feast?

If this sounds like you, why not come to the edge of Texas Hill Country and let someone else take care of Thanksgiving for you. Our Houston fine dining restaurant, Caraol’s at Cat Spring, will be serving a traditional Thanksgiving buffet from 11:00 am to 6:00 p.m on November 26, 2009.

The best part is that your whole family – and friends too – can stay at our Houston area bed and breakfast near the restaurant. Work up an appetite before the meal (while others do the cooking for you) by walking around the 600-acre ranch or enjoying trail riding Houston. Enjoy a post-meal rest (while others do the cleaning for you) in your comfortable, private lodging. Get together with extended family and friends when you like, but have your own space to return to when you need a little alone time.

This can be your best Thanksgiving ever. Don’t delay!

Reservations required for the Thanksgiving feast. Call 713-301-3235.

We hope you will come and visit us in the New Year for a Texas Weekend Getaway! You will have the chance to pick from one of our many special packages to make your weekend the perfect romantic escape. We always have lots going on at the ranch: horseback rides, fishing, bird watching, hot air balloon rides, trap shooting and golf! Not to mention all our our fun and beautiful farm animals!

Don’t forget that Blisswood is also the premier Outdoor Texas Wedding venue! With locations for both inside and outside ceremonies, we can accommodate two people to 25 and more. Let us take care of the details so that your big day can be as stress-free as possible!

Make sure to include Carol’s at Cat Spring with your reception party! We can cater or you can come to the restaurant where we can reserve the banquet room for you!

From Carol, Rodger Roo, the dogs and all of us at Blisswood, best wishes towards a glorious year of success and happiness in 2009!

I wanted to take some time to share photos and stories from recent guests that really enjoyed Blisswood, our big-hearted Texas bed and breakfast.

This happy couple came to the Ranch for Thanksgiving and had a wonderful time celebrating with us! They also made sure to stop by my restaurant, Carol’s at Cat Spring, for their Texas Weekend Getaway. We love, love, love making folks happy out here at Blisswood! That is why I opened the B&B and why I continue to try and make the Ranch the best it can be!

This is another family that came to stay at the ranch for Thanksgiving. They participated in the Thanksgiving turkey shoot, where we gave away a nice bird for the holiday. What really tickled me was that the girls out-shot the guys! Way to go ladies!

Lastly, I want to include some photos and a Trip Advisor review from the wonderful woman who’s photo is at the top of this blog post. She came to the ranch for a weekend of rest and relaxation, and that is what we provided her. We are a pet bed and breakfast, and your dog or cat or even horse can be accommodated here at Blisswood. So this wonderful woman brought her 13-year-old “puppy” with her. She and her family had a wonderful time! Read her review from Trip Advisor below.

“Just returned from a long weekend at Blisswood and it certainly lived up to the name. The ranch is tucked away under hundred-year-old live oak trees and was truly the epitome of rest and relaxation for me. If you are looking for some of life’s simple pleasures and a quiet time to decompress, this is definitely the place. I woke early in the morning to run several miles and never saw a soul, paddled and fished in the enchanted pond, and rocked peacefully in the porch swing at the house. Dinner at Carol’s at Cat Spring was fantastic, it is a wonderful little restaurant with great food and service. Staying at the ranch is almost like having your very own little cottage in the country if you have never had the experience. The best part of the trip was being able to bring my 13 year old golden retriever! I was glad that Blisswood is a pet friendly ranch. He had such a wonderful time that I couldn’t get him out of the car when we got home, and when I finally went out in the yard to bring him in, he was hiding from me! When the dog wishes it wasn’t over, now THAT is a really good weekend.”

Like I said before, we LOVE to make people happy out here on the ranch, and we hope you will choose Blisswood Bed & Breakfast for your next Texas Romantic Getaway or Outdoor Texas Wedding!