During my search to learn everything about urban gardening, I came across Alys Fowler's videos on youtube and she is amazing. She has a 20x60ft backyard garden in England which is filled to the brim with vegetables, fruit and flowers. Not one inch is left untouched. The series I watched on youtube is called The Edible Garden where she teaches us about gardening through the use of her garden. There's something about learning from her that makes me feel like, "hey! well i can do that too!". It also helps that she always wears super cute outfits when gardening!
I do feel like she just briefly touches on 'gardening anywhere' and more goes into gardening in general... which is fine with me. She gives you suggestions on 'cool' and inexpensive ways to do things like compost tea and also how to start a garden from things you can buy from the grocery store.
If you are a new to gardening, I would really recommend you to watch her videos and read her books. You will gain alot of relevant information that you can apply to your own garden :)
She also always looks so great and fashionable while gardening. I love it!
One of my favourite things to do in the summer is for Stewart and I to ride our bikes to Granville Island, pick up some food and find a grassy spot to enjoy the day. Unfortunately, we don't get to do it that often but when we are able to, we don't take it for granted thats for sure.
While backpacking through Europe a few years ago, in hopes of stretching our funds, we often visited the grocery stores and had meals whenever and anywhere we pleased. The food we usually had was cheese and procuitto... yummy! Here are some photos of our usual eats!
We did still eat in restaurants too! But our favourite memories are times spent out doors people watching. In that moment, we can almost feel like a local and just relax under the sun and enjoy the day. So much of backpacking is zipping around to see what you can in as little amount of time possible so its really nice to be able to revel in the slowness of that moment.
Do you picnic outside on a sunny day often?!
Share your favourite recipes/food you like to eat/bring on a picnic in the comments!
Along with some other changes in my life that I will write in another blog post, I decided to really start up a garden in my backyard this year. When I was younger, my grandma actually gardened in this same space but unfortunately when she got sick there wasn't anyone to take care of it anymore and my mom cleaned it up and set out grass. So now here I am turning it back into a garden! Thankfully my mom is ok with it and I am sure my grandma would be happy about it :)
Last year Stewart and I had started some vegetable plants but we planted it in this little garden bed area infront of our house that didn't get too much sun. So this year, since deciding to take gardening seriously, we are going to take over the backyard!
My Uncle Bob and Auntie Mary were nice enough to help me build this raised garden bed! Since I had not built one before, my mom thought i'd be a good idea to ask them for help so it would get done the 'right' way lol. but i figure, if it holds dirt and veggies grow... then success!!
Anyway, here's a photo of some of the seed starts that I planted a few weeks back. I kinda went a little too far as i think I started too many for the space that we have :S but thats ok!
Seeing these seeds sprout is sooooo exciting!
So a few weeks ago I started planting some of these into the raised bed and hoped for the best. I think it was a little early to plant them in the soil but i was too eager to get them in. So far so good though!
See for yourself!
Not too bad eh?
Since I started a 3 week break today between semesters, I hope to get alot of stuff done!
Some things I still
need and
want to do:
- buy more strawberry plants and plant them in the planters along the fence.
- fill the garden bed at the front of the house with more dirt and get some veggies in there!
- look for some fruit trees to plant?
- build a second raised bed
can't think of anything else right now so hopefully i can follow on the blog the progress of the garden!! and hopefully you guys will enjoy reading about it :)
Thanks!
I was really eager to do something outside as the weather was sooo beautiful today here in Vancouver. Something that Stewart and I like to do from time to time is geocaching. If you don't know what it is.... it's basically using gpa coordinates to find hidden caches around the world. You are supposed to be sneaky and not let people see you finding these objects. People who don't know about geocaching are called 'muggles' just like in Harry Potter.
Today we headed to Central Park in Burnaby and set out to find 3 caches. Unfortunately, we were only able to find 2 as the third one was really hard to find! The logs on the website had shown many others who had difficulty as well so we didn't feel that bad. The second one we found was really awesome! The best caches are ones that are hidden into the daily landscape and you would never even know it was there if you weren't looking for it. Those are the best and there are plenty of them around Vancouver! If you want us to share which ones those are then let us know!
Have you tried geocaching before?
Share your experience with me in the comment section!
Tonight, Marjo, Jess and Natalia came over for cheese fondue. mmm... it was soo yummy! We were continuing the fondue trend that launched last month with chocolate fondue at Marjo's.
It was really nice having you ladies over!! <3
Stewart and I have been pretty busy latley with full time school for the both of us and work for him as well. In such case, we try to spend time together whenever we can.
We had received a gift certificate to La Buca from my aunt and was excited to try it. She told us that it had really great Italian food and since Stewart comes from a place in Ontario that is home to alot of Italian migrants, he was looking forward to finding some yummy Italian here in Vancouver.
We both love trying new restaurants and its nice to go out every so often. We have a list of restaurants that we want to try in Vancouver so hopefully we can make an effort to check some off the list!
Do you have any restaurants to recommend?! Let me know!
Stewart had a practicum day this year on Valentine's Day (he's in school to be a teacher) and he asked me to bake him something for his class since he isn't much of a baker. I didn't want to make the typical cupcakes or cookies so I went onto Pinterest to look for fun treats of the classroom. I found the photo on the left and was immediatley inspired to replicate those cute rice crispy treats, but with Michaels closing in a half an hour I would have to settle for what I could find at Superstore. When I got to Superstore, they did not have anymore white chocolate for baking left as well as the heart sprinkles :( So I had to just go with it and the photo on the right it what I ended up with. Not bad! But not as pretty as the inspiration. Oh well!! Maybe next year! If and when Stewart and I both become teachers, i'll be making treats many times a year so I'll be able to try lots of fun treats then <3
I hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day! Unfortunately, Stewart and I didn't get to spend the day withe each other or have dinner togethere but that is ok. Many people were on facebook posting photos of the lovely presents and flowers their husband/boyfriend/partner gave to them but all these things made me think. They made me think of how Stewart does those things for me almost everyday so I shouldn't feel bad that we didn't do anything for each other on Valentine's Day.
Take the time to appreciate what you do for each other everyday. Don't let Hallmark or consumerism tell or pressure you into showing your love on one certain day.
My mom bought a huge pack of gift tags years ago from Costco and we have yet to get through them all! However, it does get boring using the same tags every year so the past few years i've been printing out gift tags to use. At this rate, though, we'll never get through them all :)
Here are some that I really like and I wanted to share with you just in case you were looking for a change!
We had our last summer market this past weekend. It ended up being a really beautiful day which is always nice for outdoor markets and we had alot of repeat customers which is amazing. To hear that people love our products and are willing to come and buy from us again is such a great feeling.
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