Veggie Tales!

It's been about a month since we planted everything.

Mr. Cheddar is really proud of how his veggie boxes are going. The plant on the left is a habanero pepper plant and the right is jalapeno. They were doing fine until a particularly windy day, where they started bending over, so Hubs hightailed it to the gardening center to get some stakes.

Organizing the Kitchen Counter... Desk... Thingy.

Fair warning: This post is bordering on "mundane" because it's really just about cleaning. But it's one of those things that irks you for weeks that stretch into months and then suddenly you can't handle it anymore. And that's how I felt about this space:

Recipe: Jamaican Smile

Remember on "Friends," when Monica was making casseroles for her mother's party and Phoebe exclaims, "It's hard to believe that just a little while ago, this was nothing but ingredients!" I don't know why, but that always pops into my head whenever I cook. 

Yesterday was a dreary thunderstorm-y day here in North Florida, but that never stops us from having fruity blended beverages! So I threw out our old leaky blender, took Hubs to the store, and came home with a brand new blender, yay! On our honeymoon in Jamaica, we enjoyed a local drink called a "Jamaican Smile." I had probably five per day:

 

They are pretty much amazing, and when we got home, we immediately researched how to recreate these bad boys.

Vegetable Garden, and the Adventures of Lucy the Labrador!

The night after we were done repainting the guest bathroom (in late March) Hubs said he wanted to tackle the disgusting patch of mulch in our back yard:

 

Once upon a time, the owner of the house had a metal playground there. The tenant before us had it removed (except for the spikes, which were fun discoveries for Hubs!) and then we inherited this giant eyesore. We mainly used it to store the branches that fell off our behind neighbor's tree during thunderstorms, which Lucy would then break off and drag through the yard at top speed. So, in essence, we had turned it into an accidental dog playground.

Painting the Guest Bathroom

What better way to kick off a home improvement/DIY/cooking blog with a painting project! Better yet, we're kicking it off with a painting project that seemed like it should be simple, but it wasn't!

Our guest bathroom doubles as mine and Hubs' main bathroom because of our complicated living situation. It's hard enough to keep it clean for guests, but my two-day paint job stretched into a five-day paint job, and that made it pretty darn impossible. It ended up taking more time than I planned because we live in a rental, which has very gorgeous, deep, expensive paint that was unceremoniously slapped onto the walls. The trim was a mess. And I learned that when the trim needs to get re-touched, you should do the trim FIRST, let it dry for a day, then tape it up and move on with your real painting job.

But it's done now, and without further ado, I present a side-by-side representation!