Long time no see!

I know it's been forever since I posted last... Sorry, things have been busy. Well I just wanted to do a quick post that we have a legitimate reason to be away this week... We're on vacation!!

We're sailing away today on The Freedom of the Seas cruise ship by Royal Carribean to celebrate our 3rd anniversary. We're going to the Bahamas, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten. I can't believe we've been married 3 years now!

Yesterday we went to Universal's Islands of Adventure with my friend Sarah who lives in Tampa. It was a ton of fun! Today we made the drive to the port in our rental car and it only took about 15 minutes to board(!). Now we're just sitting by the pool sipping boat drinks and listening to the band.

I will do a big recap post or two after we get home. I hope you all have a fabulous week, I know we will ;)

P.S. I'm blogging from the app, so I hope this works!!

Updates around the house

I'm excited that spring is finally here. Let's hope it stays around, I love that all of my plants have sprung back to life.

Tulips coming up in the front yard! 

Over the past few weeks, I've planted a new rose bed in our backyard. We had an empty spot along the left fence that gets full sun, so it was the perfect place for new roses.  We started by removing all of the grass that was there and building the area up with dirt. Then, I planted two knockout rose bushes that I moved from another place in our yard. We added about 6 bare root roses from Home Depot as an experiment. They were pretty inexpensive, so I wanted to try to grow them... so far 4/6 of them have done really well and have lots of new growth!

New rose bed

This weekend, we made a trip to Witherspoon Rose Culture in Durham. This place is like heaven if you like rose bushes and like to collect them. I had to restrain myself but wound up getting some great ones! I was especially excited to get some David Austin roses, which are the type of large old English roses that often get confused for peonies. Here are the ones that we got.

David Austin's Heritage

David Austin's Abraham Darby

David Austin's Gertrude Jekyll

Fame Hybrid Tea

Legends Hybrid Tea

Other than gardening, we have also had some updates made to the house! We had a new roof put on yesterday. I love how much it updates the house. The old shingles were a gray-ish brown and just looked tired. Now the architectural shingles match our shutters and just look so much nicer! Here are some pictures I took with my iPhone yesterday. 

First thing in the morning, tearing off the old
shingles.

Sneaking a picture in the afternoon while they were
still working

The finished roof, this morning! 

Before (Christmas 2012) and After... what a difference!

So, what have you been up to around your house? Are you planting anything new in the yard?

DIY Raised Garden Bed

It's been more than a month since I last posted! I don't know why, but I guess we just haven't had that much going on, so there hasn't been anything interesting to post.

This weekend, however, we built a raised garden bed for our backyard and I'm excited to share it with you! We decided that we wanted to grow some veggies this summer, so we needed to find a place for them. I thought a raised bed was the perfect option to incorporate into our backyard plan. You can put a raised bed almost anywhere, just make sure you find an area that gets full sun, ideally at least 8 hrs a day.  This project is actually really easy and will make your garden look very organized, try it out!

We bought our supplies to build the bed at Home Depot. We decided we wanted a rectangular garden 4 feet wide by 6 feet long. To accomplish this, we bought one 12' board and one 8' board and had them cut them in half at the store. They will do this for free, so be sure to take advantage of this service! Also, when buying your wood, avoid any treated lumber, especially pressure-treated wood, which could seep chemicals into your garden. You definitely wouldn't want that if you are planning to eat the vegetables that you grow.  We selected kiln dried pine which cost about $30, here and here.

We created the frame by screwing the four boards together with long metal screws, after drilling pilot holes. After we had made the rectangle, we moved it into place in our garden. We dug out the ground a little bit, to make the bed level. After it is in the desired location, place a weed fabric down to prevent anything from growing up from the bottom. Then we filled it with compost and garden soil, be prepared, it takes a lot!

Then, we planted the veggies that we bought at the farmer's market! We selected roma tomatoes, zuchini squash, straight neck yellow squash, green bell peppers and pickling cucumbers. At this point, we were pretty excited with how easy it was and how great it looked already.

The next step is optional, but was necessary for us. We have tons of rabbits that live in our area and if not protected, they would likely eat our plants before they even had a chance to grow. So, we needed to create a barrier that would prevent rabbits from getting in, but still allow us to get in and tend to the veggies.

We did this with wooden garden stakes and chicken wire that we also bought at Home Depot.  We used a staple gun to keep the wire taught around the bed and secure it to the stakes.  With this done, our garden can be free from the rabbits!

Now we just wait for our veggies to grow! :)

Party!

This weekend we threw a big 60th birthday party for Kevin's mom.  We had been planning it for a while and were able to get family from NY and Florida to come. It was a lot of fun, here are some of the pictures!

The bar:

We had lots of wine, beer and cocktails... it was a fun night. I made a ribbon garland with different gold shiny ribbon to decorate the front of the bar. I created the actual bar on our kitchen table using 3 wooden wine crates from the wine store. I set them up on the back of the table and covered it all with a black tablecloth. This worked well to display the wine and keep it out of the way before it was used. The gold foil number balloons were a favorite of mine, they came from Party City.  

The dinner buffet:

We had a ton of food as always, but everyone ate a  lot and really enjoyed the spread. The menu was:

Vegetable tray with Knorr spinach dip

Hummus and pita 

Baked brie with crackers and apples

Bruschetta 

Pigs in a blanket

Mac and cheese bites

Buffalo chicken dip bites: Buffalo chicken dip in phyllo cups

Chicken nuggets and sweet chili sauce

Penne alla vodka from Daniel's

Chicken Marsala from Daniel's

Sweet barbecue meatballs

Glazed ham biscuits

The dessert bar & cake:

The cake came from Simply Cakes in Apex and turned out really beautiful. I sent them a picture of what I wanted and they made it look perfect! The bottom tier was double chocolate cake with chocolate mousse and the top tier was Oreo cake with Oreo mousse. It was covered in vanilla buttercream and had gold fondant decorations. We also had cupcakes and mini fruit tarts available.  Yummm. You can also see in these pictures one of the DIY tassel garlands that I made from tissue paper. These are super easy, check out a tutorial here.

The flowers: 

I bought flowers from different grocery stores the day before the party and arranged them all. I really loved the Bells of Ireland (from Whole Foods), fresh white tulips (Fresh Market) and hydrangea (Trader Joe's). 

The photo collage:

I secretly collected almost 150 pictures of Kevin's mom from family and friends from throughout her entire life to make this photo collage.  I had copies made of all of them into black and white with a white border around each picture (this helps them not blend together when they are laid next to each other). Then, I taped them to a cut out piece of poster board to arrange each number. It was a lot of work to get the photos to look right, but in the end, I think it was really great decoration for the party. In these pictures, you can also see the dot garlands that I made with scrapbook paper and my sewing machine(tutorial here or here). 

Opening the memories from everyone:

Kevin's sister Marielle collected memories from a lot of people in her life and gave them to her as a present at the party. I think we nearly had 60 envelopes all together.  It was a nice way for everyone, especially for those who couldn't make it, to show their love and share some memories they had of her. 

I love this picture, I think the cake looks great and the glow of the candles is really neat! It was a fun party! 

Tiling our Backsplash: Part 2

We're done! We finished the backsplash this weekend. It was another busy day on Saturday getting everything done, but it was so worth it! Here's where we left off last weekend.

The first step was sealing the marble. We chose 511 Impregnator Sealer by Miracle Sealants from Home Depot. It was really simple to apply, you simply wipe it on with a rag, wait 3-5 minutes, then wipe/buff it off with a clean cotton rag. In the second picture, you can see that the stone is a little shiny from the sealer before we wiped it off. 

I sealed the marble 2 days before we wanted to grout to make sure it would have plenty of time to dry.  We picked our grout supplies from The Tile Shop because they had the best selection of grout and caulk colors available.  Here are the supplies we used for the grouting step.

We chose a light gray colored (Whisper Gray) unsanded grout. This unsanded grout is important for marble so that you don't scratch your tile with other typical cement like grout.  Their grout system is pretty easy, all you do is add the amount of grount powder you want to a bucket and mix in the appropriate amount of flexible grout admixture and stir. You need to wait a couple minutes to use it, but we used that time to make sure we had all of the bubbles and pockets of powder completely mixed. We chose a slightly thick consistency, it almost looked like batter, for using on the walls. 

Once your grout is mixed, spread it onto the wall using a grout float at a 45 degree angle. When we first started grouting, I was trying really hard not to drip any grout anywhere and keep it very clean, but it doesn't matter. You can see by the end, it's fine to make a mess with the grout. All that matters is that you get all of the joints full of grout. You will be wiping down everything, including the countertops, very soon after, so don't worry about drips!

The next step is to use a wet sponge to clean off the tile and granite countertops. While I was doing the grouting, Kevin worked behind me to clean the tile with the sponges.  He waited a couple of minutes for the grout to set up within the joints, but before it was very hard on the surface of the tiles.  Keep wiping until all of the grout and haze is gone from the tile. Make sure to clean your sponge often! After that is done, you are almost done! 

So, next we waited for it to dry overnight and caulked around the edges, like the bottom where the tile meets the countertop and the top where it meets the cabinets. The caulk takes a little while to dry as well, but soon after, you're almost ready to use! The only thing left to do is seal everything again, you want to make sure that the grout gets sealed, so that you won't have any stains or moisture issues! That needs to wait at least 2-3 days after grouting, so we'll do that sometime this week! Here are some pictures I took last night of the almost-finished project, I'll update with some better ones later!