We took a break from posting last week to focus on updating the design of our blog. Its still a work in progress,  but we wanted to share what we have done so far. Also this is our 100th post! Here are some of the changes we have made. 

Woohoo for our 100th post. Thanks to everyone who visits.


Chris and Kris

This is hands down one of our favorite things about summer... Here is Kristen's healthy but yummy Pesto recipe. The Garden has been supplying the basil and parsley!

Happy 4th of July...one day late.


Over the July 4th weekend we had a small BBQ with our friends and family. Here are some of the highlights-

Menu/Theme

Main: Burger bar with all the fixings- Bacon, avocado, pickles etc.

Homemade BBQ chicken.

Sides: Potato salad and whole wheat pasta with fresh tomatoes and basil.

Dessert: Vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting

Unfortunately we had some rain so we had to move the burger bar inside

Overview of the table, before food. We took left over drop cloth paper we had laying around, and I (Kristen) painted circles around the bowls and wrote the names of each topping in blue paint. 

 Overview of  table when all the toppings were in their place. Only thing missing is the BBQ chicken..that was round 2.

Dessert..Yummmm

 Some other photos from the day:

Lanterns from Ikea.. of course.

Chris and Kris

We have about 1,000+ photos of all the work we have done in the house. And we are always taking more and more. We are now in the process of organizing all them. Its a hard task because we get caught of looking at the pictures and forget the task at hand. While organizing we came across some photos we took a year ago today. Its hard to believe we actually lived like this. It doesn't even feel like the same house. Its a  very surreal feeling. We also can not believe that we used our bathroom sink for three months to wash dishes. When did we have the time to do this?? Heres a look at the photos taken a year ago today.


Kitchen:

Now:

Living Room/Dining Room/hallway:

Now:

It kinda makes us proud!


Chris and Kris

A few months ago we happened to be channel surfing and we got caught up watching an infomercial about the Worx GT edger and weed wacker. WELL.... after one hour of being sucked into absolute weed wacking bliss, we knew we had to have one. Luckily Judy (Kristen's mom) bought it for us as a surprise gift.

Now beware. There have been some bad reviews online- No its not as powerful as a gas/industrial weed wacker. But it does the job and super easy to use. We highly recommend it. It was able to cut/edge this:
Before:

After:

This is the grass next to the curb in front of our house that we have been totally neglecting.  Yes we are way too excited about a garden tool.


Chris and Kris

We are one month in with our veggie garden. ITS OUT OF CONTROL.

Tomatoes: Doing well. Just starting to show little tomatoes.

String Beans: First signs of full beans. Will be ready to harvest within 5-7 days

Herbs: Doing well, except for the Cilantro. Its been wilting and doesnt look very happy. Here are pictures of the basil and flat parsley. We have been loving having fresh herbs.

Cucumbers: Slowly taking over the whole garden and slowly attacking the side of the house. We didn't realize they would attach themselves to EVERYTHING. If you look at the picture above of the overall garden you will see that the cucumbers are pulling down our cable line. Shortly after this picture we took on the cucumbers and put lattice fencing behind it. 

Brussel Sprouts: Again another veggie taking over the garden. We final had to take control of this bad boy and place it in a hoop like contraption. It was slowly stealing all the sun from all the other plants and herbs. Not sure if we will be planting these next year.

Peppers: No photo, there hasn't been any huge change since we planted them. Maybe next week we will start to see some more growth.

Overall the garden is pretty easy and exciting.  We have already learned a bunch. 1. Consider where you are going to plant the cucumbers. 2. We love the herbs and are going to try to do many more next year. Maybe a whole 4' x4' garden of herbs next year!

In other news. We are slowly making some exciting new changes to our blog. You may notice some new fonts and layout changes. We are working on some even more changes in the next few weeks. Stay tuned. The blog is in need of some freshness.

Chris and Kris

One of the top priorities for us this Summer was to start a veggie garden. Since we haven't had any experience with growing anything, we wanted to start small. We started reading up a few months ago about growing a garden and decided to go with A square foot garden. We started with a 4'x 4' garden for this year. We also wanted to plant a bunch of different things to see what works.


First of we picked an area that gets a lot of sun, and has good soil. Sorry for the old photo- this is before the french door, deck and bush removal.

Plan for the Garden