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Alfresco Entertaining in my small Garden

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We’re at the height of summer and I find that almost every day we’re having a meal in the garden on the patio. It’s lovely to sit outdoors enjoying the beauty of the garden and when we’re lucky it’s bounty as well.

As I mentioned in my last post, our tomatoes are just beginning to ripen and very soon we’ll have cucumbers and beans. We’ve already been enjoying strawberries and raspberries from the garden and I expect that we’ll continue to enjoy them for another month or so.

It’s at this time of year when I most enjoy entertaining. I love inviting a few friends or some family members over for an informal visit. We’ll get together and have a barbecue or just a snack and a few drinks. Just a chance to get together – but of course it’s always in the garden surrounded by my lovely flowers and all the lovely scents they produce.

One quick and simple treat that I whip up when guests come over is cheese and crackers. I almost always have both cheddar cheese and a soft cheese on hand like Boursin Cheese and of course a variety of tasty crackers is always handy.

Do you do a lot of entertaining in the summertime? Do you keep supplies on hand for “drop in” guests? Supplies such as tasty spreadable cheeses like the Boursin cheeses discussed above or other quick foods?






Large selection of custom window treatments

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Like many home owners we try to do some type of renovation or decorating project on our home each year, whether it’s to help maintain the house or to make a room more functional and beautiful.

Many long term readers of this blog probably remember that we are completely renovating our home. We’ve been on a break from renovations for a while, but it will soon be time to start up again. We still have to finish our living room / dining room area, but after that we’ll move on to our Kitchen, the basement and the two bathrooms. After than the only things that will need to be done might be repainting, maintenance and perhaps changing decor.

If you are thinking about changing the look of a room you might start with a coat of paint and then perhaps move on to the windows. Adding shades or blinds to a window can help change the look and feel of a room, plus blinds and shades add function as well because you can control the amount of light in the room easily by simply adjusting the blind or shade.

If you’d like to look at a wide selection of custom window treatments for your home you might want to visit the DecoratingDepot as they have a fantastic selection of Wood Blinds, shades, horizontal and vertical blinds, Faux Wood Blinds and more.

They even have a selection of sliding panel blinds. I really like the look of their Woven Wood Sliding Panel. They’d look great in my enclosed back porch since it’s all windows.

Their blinds and shades come in a variety of materials and colors, for example you can get bamboo, wooden blinds, faux wood blinds, aluminum and vinyl blinds, and roman shades.

DecoratingDepot offers free shipping, no tax, guarantees their price and I believe you can even request free samples if you are having trouble deciding which type of blind or shade to choose. They even have a “virtual room decorator” that you can use to see how various types of blinds or shades might look in your room. Check it out for yourself.

Trying to make plans for our bathroom reno project

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Once my husband and I complete our living room dining room renovation project it will be time to move on to the next project. We won’t be taking a break in between projects since the living room dinning room reno has taken forever and has been more break than work lately.

I’ve love to work on our upstairs bathroom. It’s so small! At this point I haven’t decided whether we’ll work with the very small space that we have or if we’ll knock down a wall and expand the bathroom. Obviously knocking down a wall and expanding would be what I’d prefer to do as we’d be able to have a very nice upstairs bathroom if we did that.

Still … it’s a much bigger project in every way from expenses to the amount of work that would have to be done. We’d have to move the pipes and drains and so on. I’m not sure we’re up for that right now. Not on our own anyway.

So, if I were to stick with just renovating the small space that we currently have I think that it might be best to take out the bathtub altogether and install a very nice shower. Ideally I think something like this shower would work well in our small space. I think it would take a little less room than a bathtub so we’d be able to put a upright cabinet in the bathroom as well.

Right now we’ve just got a toilet, bathtub with makeshift shower and a very small sink with an under sink storage cabinet.

Speaking of sinks I’d love to get a new sink. One that looks like a beautiful bowl sitting on a table or counter with wall mount taps above the bowl. That would look beautiful.

I’ve actually been looking at the selection of bathroom tubs, showers, taps, furnishings and accessories at www.Taps4Less.com to get some ideas for our bathroom renovation project.

As you can tell I don’t have any definite plans for this upcoming project. It’s going to be a difficult project whether we keep the bathroom as is or expand.

Any ideas?

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