Inspire

Design Sponge has an all-new and improved website! It's the prettiest site that I've been to in a long, long, long time. The dark background, fancy fonts and pretty ribbon details really knock my socks off. Not only is it an eye-catcher, but they've made some serious improvements to the site as well. I can't wait to take some time this week and cruise through all of the new features. Check it out!

There's a new post today on Design Sponge that shares the best loved peeks. The photo above is from one of the tours. I can't wait to look through the rest on my day off tomorrow! There are so many dreamy photos being saved in my inspiration folder it's not even funny. 

Happy Tuesday!

Multitude Monday

It's time for Multitude Monday!

Each week, I try to keep track of ten items that I'm thankful for. It helps to get the week off to a great start.This week, I'm thankful for (in no particular order):

180 - my cute little basil sprouted over the weekend!

181 - our new nephew, Ian! Daniel's bro and his wife had their first baby. He was born on Friday evening, and him and his mama are doing great (his daddy-o, too ;)

182 - a Friday date night consisting of a yummy supper at a restaurant and a beautiful walk on the beach... at sunset, no less

183 - great dental plan coverage - I got the last part of my root canalled tooth all finished up today

184 - a refreshing breeze blowing throughout the apartment - I have all of the windows opened up to enjoy it while it lasts.

185 - saving bread bags and closures. It make me feel like a granola chick... and I love it.

186 - lots and lots of fresh mountain water to water our garden with (and to drink, too!)

187 - a new purchase for Daniel arriving in the mail today - he's going to be pumped!

188 - a super duper pretty card from Kel last week - she knows me well :)

189 - watching a cute movie over the weekend (the new Karate Kid, if you are wondering)

What are you thankful for today?

Happy Monday!

Garden, Shmarden

Daniel and I have been making a lot of progress with our garden lately, so I thought that I'd keep you up to date with what we have done.

The "tiller guy" came last week and tilled up the ground in the area that we had staked off. We measured it to be 10' by 20' but it ended up a little narrower, and a bit longer. Since the shape changed, we decided to run our garden in the opposite direction: lots of short rows, instead of a few long rows.

Saturday, we spent a lot of the afternoon picking rocks. Yay! My back was sore for a few days afterward. We also raked and leveled the area. We talked about how tough farmers must have been years ago: huge gardens, and doing every bit of the prep work by hand. We were tired after an hour or two!

Daniel had the day off from work on Monday, so he took all of the rocks that we picked over the weekend, and made a bordered edge around our garden with them. He also did a lot more raking of the soil to get it all prepped for planting.

Monday night, we headed out to our little plot to form our rows. We shaped each one of them, and make stake and string rows along each one to help keep our planting straight. We planted four veggies that night: beets, onions, mesclun salad mix, and turnip. The rest of the items will be planted a little bit later.

We've been watering our garden on the days that there hasn't been any rain. So far, nothing's sprouted, but it hasn't even been a full week yet. We plan on planting tomatoes in containers, and a big herb container as well. It's been so much fun to spend time outdoors together, working on a project that we'll get to reap benefits from!

Since there hasn't been an activity in the field where we have the garden in a long, long time, we have been finding lots of little treasures in the soil. There are tons of tiny pieces of metal, glass, and ceramic. I've been collecting the prettiest pieces to use in some cool way. Look at the colour of this teensy goodie:

Well, that's about it on the garden front. I hope to work on it a little over the weekend. The weather has been so beautiful lately, doing anything outside is fun. Take some time to get some fresh air over the weekend - I'm sure that you will enjoy it!

Happy Friday!

Summer Must Have Swap

I participated in a super fun swap this month through Krysten's blog, After I Do. It was a summer "must haves" swap, so we sent our partners items that we like to enjoy in the warmer months. I was paired up with Kara, a fellow Canuck, and boy, did I get some cute little goodies in the mail this week!

I got the cutest necklace (I love the subtle, earthy colours!), Crystal Light (for making the ol' eight glasses a day a little easier to drink), two different types of Burts Bees lip products (yay! Burts Bees is awesome), and a yummy smelling bottle of grapefruit lotion, perfect for keeping in my beach tote during the summer months. 

Thanks, Kara, for all of the goodies! I'm so glad that I got to participate... and I hope that you enjoy your treats as well. Thanks, Krysten, for all of your hard work organizing the swap!

Make sure that you check out After I Do for other participants snail mail goodies... it looks like we all had fun exchanging our must-haves!

Do you have any items that you love in the summer?

Happy Thursday!