It's a good day...

Have I been in a bit of a funk lately? Yes. My husband should be WAY tired of me by now, but he's got the patience of a saint, and just keeps talking me through everything, and encouraging me like crazy. I'm super lucky. As I write this, I'm sitting on our newly power-washed back deck on an adirondack chair sipping club soda with a squeeze of orange, and it tastes like SUMMER. I'm also admiring all the planting I did on Saturday. I've got big pots of flowers right next to me, and it smells divine - big fat glorious marigolds (they just seem like such a humble flower), a pretty little cluster of purslane, some feiry red salvia, some deep deep purple petunias, hot pink geraniums (which remind me of my mom - I think I remember her planting lots of geraniums and impatiens back in our garden on Rebecca Street), and a big cluster of lavender that I absolutely cannot WAIT to get bigger. Oh, I almost forgot, I also have a little potted zucchini plant, but that is soon to be transplanted into our veggie garden. What veggie garden, you ask? The one Kevin built on Sunday. Well, he would say that we both built it, but it was really him. I mostly just watched and brought him cold drinks and chilled towels from the freezer.

We had a huge area in our back yard right next to the deck that desperately needed attention. It was just eroded, and muddy, and it was impossible to get on and off the deck without getting covered in red Georgia clay. On Sunday, he decided enough was enough. A few trips to Lowe's, and a couple hundred dollars later, we (let's be real - HE) had a 2 1/2 foot retaining wall that we filled to the brim with good healthy moist garden soil, and hopefully by the end of the week, our zucchini plants will be cozy in there next to some cucumber plants, tomato plants, a big fat collection of herbs (basil, rosemary, mint) and some MORE lavender! I can hardly wait to plant them and watch them grow. I've heard zucchini is very easy to grow, and it produces a bonkers amount of zucchini. I may write a post in the next few months begging people to come by and please, please, PLEASE take some zucchini. We'll see.

Lately I've really been missing my family back in Canada. Some days I just wish I could swing by my Nana and Papa's house for a cup of tea (and to sneak my Papa a fresh made shortbread cookie). I wish I could just meet my Aunt Dori and Uncle Steve at August 8 for a full belly of delicious sushi. I wish I could just sit in the backyard with my Auntie Sheryl and talk about life and smell the fresh earthy smells of her garden while Chester rolls around in the grass in the background. I wish I could just have a cup of tea and a slice of bread with butter and jam with her. I wish I could see my Grandma and Grandpa all the time, just to listen to her tell stories, and tease him about how he misbehaves. I wish I could hang out with my cousin Rachel and her two (oh my gosh she has TWO) kids, and eat some of her fresh made bread and talk about life. I wish we could spontaneously meet my cousin Jon and his wife Jordan for a random date at this amazing Poutine place that keeps entering my dreams at night. I think I tend to miss Jon this time of year. Since we were born the exact same day (8 hours apart), it doesn't feel quite right to celebrate my birthday without him.

It just feels strange to be feeling this nostalgic and a little homesick. I'm usually not like this, you know.

Time to enjoy Tina Fey's "Bossypants" for the 6th time. The book just gets more hilarious every time you read it, I swear.

Diana

Birthday

It's almost my birthday. Sort of. May always sneaks up on me, and before I know it June is here and I'm older. Just like that.

I'll be 27 this year. Scary! It's literally the oldest I've ever been. Know when you read those articles on CNN and it suggests other articles you might be interested in? It keeps suggesting that I read scary articles about how your reproductive parts start to grow ominous cobwebs once you hit 27. C'mon. Give a girl some time. I'm only going to be 27, some of those gals in the Bible were still having babies when they were like 60.

Anyway, here's a few things that are adorable. You know, things that might ease the scary transition from 26 to 27....

This watch is super pretty and has an awesome vintage feel

Some yummy vanilla perfume like this or some yummy vanilla COCONUT perfume like this

A pajama set - nice soft cotton for relaxing around the house on the weekend!

This little guy. He's a Beagle Corgi mix. He's a Beagi. Or a Corgle. Whatever, his name is Peanuts, and he's adorable. Although the name Peanuts would have to go. I think his name would have to be Gus, like the guy from Psych. Gus and Ruby. Doesn't that have a nice ring to it?

Speaking of the TV show Psych, I love the little blue Toyota that Gus drives. He calls it "The Blueberry". If I had this car, I'd call it The Blueberry. Plus it has an audio input. Kevin laughs at me because it seems like the biggest factor for me in a potential new car is whether it has an audio input or not. But seriously, I love listening to music and podcasts and such when I'm driving around in the car, and my FM transmitter is terrrrrrrible.

My piano. I literally have not played it in years. When I moved into my house 3 years ago, I realized there wasn't really any way it would fit. I miss it all the time....

I'm almost 27. Scary stuff.

In the bedroom....

Man, today was one of those days. One of those days that can only be rectified by amazing Japanese food and cold beer. On normal days, I come home and sit on the couch and catch up on a couple emails, check Facebook, and start to figure out dinner, laundry, and the next day. Today I just came home, grabbed my MacBook and sat on the bed in our LOVELY bedroom.

See, our bedroom wasn't always lovely. When I bought this house, the walls were beige. I foolishly picked out a heinous blue for the walls that I swore I would love till the day I died. I actually only ended up loving it for a month or two, and then I just sort of tried to avoid looking at it. Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I picked out the paint color for the bathroom. We bought about a gallon more than we needed, and Kevin suggested that maybe we'd paint the bedroom the same color. Genius! We did it - painted the trim a nice crisp white, and did the same gray on the walls. I decided I had to share the results...there are no before pictures. Suffice to say it was a scary sky blue, and the trim needed to be painted BADLY.

Okay so it's not 100% done. I need to tweak the window situation a little. 

Dresser with gorgeous smoky gray on the walls, and one of my paintings.

Additional dresser shot. The birthday card is from my first birthday as a married lady. Kevin wrote a lovely note to me in it, and I will probably display that card forever. 

After giving it a lot of thought, I finally settled on what artwork I wanted for over our bedside tables - framed printed copies of our wedding vows to each other! Kevin's vows to me are over my side of the bed, and my vows to him are over his side of the bed. Just a little something to remind us of our love for each other, and of the promises we've made to each other. One of the things he promised me in his vows was to support me through all of life's difficulties - man did he ever come through this week! 

Our pretty bedding, an awesome wedding present from my cousins!

The bouquet I carried during our wedding, along with a little porcelain cat I swiped from my mom a jillion years ago, all nestled around one of my favorite pictures of my Papa...

My home-made silhouettes - our little family portrait wall. More to come once I figure out what goes on the wall to the left...

Wedding vows....

Fave Five...

I like to make lists. I like to make lists at work. I like to cross things off from lists. It's pretty fun, you have to admit. Between you and me, sometimes I put things on there that I've already completed, just for the pure satisfaction of feeling like I accomplished more. Don't tell anybody. It'll be our little secret. Here's a list of things I'm really digging right now....

Essie's "Turquoise and Caicos". I cut my nails nice and short, and painted this over a layer of OPI's "Dear Diary", and finished it off with two thick coats of clear lacquer. I feel fancy. It looks like I went to the salon, except usually when I go to get a professional manicure, the little Korean lady who does them usually cuts one of my cuticles too short, and it hurts, and then I vow to never go back (until I do). All the joy of a fresh looking manicure, without the knife-wielding Korean lady attacking my poor innocent cuticles like a jungle explorer chopping through bamboo with a machete. And it's turquoise. I love turquoise. 

This water bottle. You fill it, and as you sip, it filters the water for you! Brilliant! And perfect, since it seems like the Brita jug in the fridge at works mysteriously ends up there completely empty at the exact moment that I'm super thirsty. I ordered mine from our Amazon Prime account, and it arrives Monday! Plus, it's supposedly spill proof, which is really excellent, because I tend to fall over my own feet. True story. 

If I could just magically create an outfit out of thin air, this would be my perfect date night outfit. Casual. Crazy. It's got red glasses. It's a winner. I'd wear this out on Saturday night to see the Hunger Games with my awesome husband. 

This Carrot Ginger Elixir from Shutterbean is delicious, and I swear it helped me get over whatever crazy insane stomach bug/cold/who knows what that I had the other day. Seriously. Try it. Go do it right now. 

KT Tape! Kevin and I have been using this stuff (he's got what we think is paroneal tendonitis, and I have posterior shinsplints) for the past few weeks as we do our couch to 5k training, and so far so good! I will say, though, that once we ran out of our original roll, we bought the KT Tape PRO next, and it seems like it has more staying power, especially when you want to wear it for a few days and not have it fall off after you get out of the shower. 

xoxo have a great weekend!

ps: check out my husband's blog. He's a genius, and he wrote an awesome blog post on how he used C# programming to make our thermostat fancy and automated. It's okay if the actual code part confuses you. It confused me too. Just focus on the concept :)

Shades of Grey....

If I were in elementary school, I'd be all ready to write my "Things I did this weekend" essay.

Let's just say when I moved into my house about 2 1/2 years ago, I thought it would be super cool to paint the bathroom this crazy blue color. Needless to say, I regretted it within a couple of months, and have been thinking ever since about how nice it would be to give the bathroom a sophisticated makeover. Over the course of the past week, our bathroom has gone from a scary blue, with trim that desperately needed to be painted, hardware that needed to be updated, and a big scary set of glass shower doors that were begging to be ripped out....

Here's the after pictures....I'm so excited!

We went with a nice Martha Stewart color for the walls called 'Zinc' - it's a little darker in person than it looks here...

Believe it or not, this shelf was a nice 1970's avocado green until yesterday. It belonged to my dad when he was in high school, and has holes punched in the back of it so he could run wires to his speaker system. 

Brand new shower curtain from Target - you can't really see it in this picture, but it has little flecks of metallic silver all over it. Love it! You can see the fancy new shower head we got peeking up over the shower curtain....

Fancy new rainwater shower head (with a hand-held for giving the dog a bath!)

It's weird to take pictures of your toilet....so I took a picture of what's above the toilet. Pretty scented candles, and a black and white print of Paris that I swiped from our own kitchen...

With the paint being pretty masculine, I wanted to go with something a little more feminine. Pretty vintage inspired glass door pulls for the closet doors and cabinets!

Pretty little vintage inspired drawer pulls....

More of the vintage style glass pulls (I'm a teeny bit obsessed)

A view looking toward the bedroom (and Ruby taking a little nap)

I LOVE the Neptune and Mermaid prints I found for the bathroom! The colors stand out so nicely against the crisp white mat ($16 frames courtesy of the clearance section of Target!)

Mermaids!

I can't get over how cheap these frames were....I just like how they stand out against the dark grey walls....

Keepin' it organized on the bathroom counter! 

So excited that this project is nearing completion! Just a couple of shelves to put up, a few paint touch-ups, and we'll be good to go! Yay for a new bathroom!

For a girl...

Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and give myself some advice. Just to tell myself things that I know now. Things that would have made things WAY easier....

1. The cool kids aren't really cooler than you. They're just more confident. They have bad things in their life, too. Their parents are divorced, they have doubts about themselves. Some of them are bad at math just like you are. Just keep your head down, focus on getting good grades and being a good friend to the people who don't care if you're not popular. 
2. You don't need all the boys to think you're pretty. You just need ONE boy to think you're BEAUTIFUL. 
3. Some girls will get boobs WAY sooner than you, and you'll be mortified when it's time to change for gym. Quit worrying about it and develop confidence. The boobs will come later on their own. 
4. Don't let people tell you you're bad at math. If you think you're bad at it, it'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
5. Enjoy eating whatever the heck you want while you're a teenager. Go to the store immediately and get a McCain Deep & Delicious cake and eat the whole thing with two big frosty glasses of milk. You're welcome. 
6. Keep running track & field through high school. There will be a day when you wish you hadn't stopped running. 
7. If you're not happy being single, you'll never be happy in a relationship. Get your own life first, then share it. I really wish I'd known this earlier. I think I finally figured this out a few months before I met Kevin. I think I felt like at my age, I was supposed to be headed toward getting married, so I compromised and ignored the nagging feeling that I was in the wrong relationship. Once I ended that one, and got my own life, my own interests, started going out into the world and making new friends and having new experiences, I really was happy with just me. Shortly after that, I met Kevin, and the rest is history. 
8. It will all be okay. I recall freaking out about something or another every week through adolescence. I don't remember what any of the actual things were that I was freaking out about. Moral of the story: most of what you're freaking out about won't matter in a week, let alone 10 years. 

So what advice do you wish you could give your younger self? Leave me a comment below - I'd love to know!

Sometimes....

Sometimes I don't blog regularly. Maybe I should change the name of my blog to "Ruby Sometimes", or "Ruby Periodically When Diana's Not Too Tired".

Sometimes work is CRAZY, and sometimes it's not. I love it when it's busy and HATE when it's slow. 

Sometimes I just have a HUGE overwhelming urge to make and eat a whole giant mixing bowl of chocolate Jello pudding, fresh from the cold cold fridge. It just tastes to me like velvet would taste. Sometimes I imagine sprinkling fresh raspberries on top, along with a nice big dollop of Cool Whip. Usually at that point I wish I actually HAD fresh raspberries and cool whip on hand. I never do. I should keep them on hand for just such an emergency. They should be in the fridge in a glass box with a hammer that says "break in case of emergency". 

Sometimes I go to websites that have cute clothes, and I put EVERYTHING I want in the cart, and then at the end I just close the whole thing without buying anything. It's my equivalent of window shopping, without actually having to go to the mall. I don't like the mall because of those aggressive sales people who work at the kiosks that sell weird things like fake hair extensions, and electronic cigarettes, and bejeweled cell phone cases that instantly make your phone three times thicker once you put it on. 

Sometimes I just like to talk to my mom. Even if it's just for a minute on the way home. 

Sometimes I wish we lived with the characters from "New Girl". Zooey Deschanel is adorkable, and I love that. 

Sometimes I have CRAZY dreams. I had a dream last week that my coworkers showed up in my office carrying their dogs, telling me that they were giving me their dogs to keep since they were too busy. Crazy. Last night I had a crazy dream that Kevin and I were house hunting (what?) and somehow we ended up looking at what was quite possibly the most awesome apartment in Oakville (Ontario, where I am from). Except the whole place was decorated all dark and masculine with leather and dark walls and stuff. But in my dream I was psyched about painting the whole place shades of pale aqua and light gray. I was going to plant marigolds and basil on the balcony. Also I was going to find two cute chaise lounge chairs to sit opposite each other facing in opposite directions so Kev and I could chill out but be facing each other. I'm not sure what the dream meant. 

Also in the dream there was a baby nursery decorated with boy colors, but the closet was full of pink baby clothes. Maybe that means our future child will have gender confusion issues. I don't really know. 

Sometimes I realize that I'm scared of making pie crust. Joy the Baker makes it seem so easy, but I think she's just a pie crust Jedi who makes everything look easy. 

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Diana