Green Lawn Care!

Since we're lucky enough to start with a brand new lawn we wanted to make sure we kept it beautiful . . . organically! Most of what is used to "help" lawns, degrades the soil and pollutes our waters so we're taking extra steps to make sure our lawn stays DRUG FREE, "just say No to chemical fertilizers!" haha

Instead of using Chemical Fertilizer on our lawn this Spring we used  CORN GLUTEN!
It worked AMAZING! If you take a peek at the part of our lawn that touches our neighbors, it's definitely darker, healthier, and it grows twice as fast. Our other neighbor used chemical fertilizers on their lawn and our lawn looks exactly the same!

It's super easy to spread on, you can just use your hand and sprinkle it evenly on your grass!
The little orange pellets dissolve over about a month!

Here's before:

Here's after the corn gluten!

Master Bedroom: Artwork!

I wasn't sure about what to do above our bed! I loved Lee's paneled wall so much I wasn't sure if I wanted to cover any of it!
But the offer of free framed artwork from my mom was too much for me to pass up!
These little birdy prints are way too cute not to hang somewhere! The prints came from a book I bought from Homesense just a cute little book full of drawings of birds, mom picked some of her favorites and I picked some of mine and we ended up with a good mix, a bit of color, but not too much!

The frames are from Walmart, I'm not exactly sure how much they cost? but my mom bought them so I couldn't imagine them being very expensive . . . my mom gives a whole new meaning to frugal :)

And even though I LOVE the paneled wall, I think I like it even more with the black frames :)

Here's what it looked like before the new art addition:

And here it is after:

I want to thank my mom for the frames! And Lee for hanging them!!! At this Manor it takes a
village :)
I also wanted to thank everyone for all the super sweet comments on my mom's new kitchen! She was so excited to see every one's response and I was so happy to share with my mom what fabulous readers we have here at The Manor!

My Mother's Daughter!

Hope everyone had a great Father's Day!!!! Lee's a "Doggy Daddy" so he got a new Hawaiian Shirt (a la Jimmy Buffet) haha
We spent the weekend on Vancouver Island. Half to visit my Dad for Father's Day! and Half to see my mom's new/old Kitchen!
So Happy Father's Day Dad and Nice job MOM!

Because who doesn't Love a Great Before and After?
Here's the Before:

Here it is now:

I was shocked when I walked in the door and saw that my beige loving mother had painted the bottom of her cabinets . . . . Martha Stewart's "TIDEWATER"!
I LOVE IT!!!
They didn't want to replace the counters, which were in perfect shape, but did put up a back splash and matched the grout to the counter top.
Another thing I LOVE is that Mom took the doors off of the upper cabinets and used it to display her lovely white dishes (she's definitely my Mother and if anyone had their doubts just check out all those white dishes). And how about that bead board wall paper! Mom really wanted to fit bead board into the cabinets, but using a jigsaw to cut large pieces of wood was outside of her skill set. So we found this bead board wallpaper, it was easy to install and looks GREAT!

The paper towel holder is the same one that we have, and the faucet is a close copy of the faucet from our townhouse . . . Just say'in! haha

The view from the door looking at the sink is lovely it looks out over their yard and makes doing dishes less of a chore.

This little blue kitchen has an eat in area, and for everyone who was wondering where the church pew from our old dining room went, you're about to get your answer.

 

The board and batten wall treatment was done using the same technique as our bedroom wall, but with a different pattern. I love how it comes about 2/3 rds up the wall! 

I should also mention the flooring. It's peel and stick vinyl flooring. You cut it with scissors and lay it down. It costs about $1.65 a square foot, and you can lay it right over your old ugly linoleum flooring. It's super durable, and water/scratch resistant! I was amazed how great it looks, you'd never know!

And check out this garbage can, $2.50

So there it is. I think Mom and Dad did a great job on their new/old kitchen! Spending less than $1000!

Guest Blogging At: Not Just a Housewife

Hey
I'm over at Not Just a Housewife today! Doing a little post on 10 ways to get ready for summer!! :)
It was so much fun to write, and I was so happy to do it for Not just a housewife, it's my kind of Blog!
I hope you'll check it out!
Lots of Love
Ashli

Flowers on Friday: Knitting

Just a little guy made from some leftover super on sale flowers from the grocery store, it was a $6 bouquet marked down 50%, not bad for $3 :)

And a picture of my latest knitting project! It's hopefully going to be a pillow cover for the library this winter.

Book Review: HOME by Bill Bryson

If you've wondered where Monday's and Wednesday's posts were this week, you can blame Bill Bryson! Him and His book have completely annexed my week! But it's done now here's the review, and I'll get my butt back behind the computer, or behind a paint brush :)

I LOVED this book! I couldn't put it down, I would look at Lee each night and ask if he was tired  so we could go to be and I could . . . gets my read on! (clearly I read a lot because my English is soooo gooder).

Seriously though, it was a great read. Each chapter is on a different room, and although I would have never thought that you could write so many words about a room, Bryson manages to keep you interested with every word. The entire book is filled with tons of history,and not just history on the big stuff but the little things too, who new there was history behind the mousetrap! Bryson moves from subject to subject with un stoppable enthusiasm, and it's nothing if not contagious. I found myself dying to read on!
I can't really put into words why it was so amazing. I couldn't even begin to summarize what it was about ( a simpler route might be to tell you what it's not about), Bryson moves so seamlessly from topic to topic, room to room that you will at some point find yourself awake at 4am promising you'll go to sleep at the end of the chapter.

A couple snippets I found interesting:
-if you lived in America and needed windows for your house, you would order them from England and 6-9 months later you would get them, and most of them would be broken :(
-Thomas Jefferson ordered a fireplace surround for his home, when it finally arrived from England 6 months later,  he found the they had forgot to ship the top mantel piece.
-The glue they used for wallpaper was poisonous, and that's why Victorians think that everything can be cured with fresh air. Because if you were sick, you were put to bed where you would get worse until you went outside.
-I found the information about England's 19th century sewage system both interesting and disgusting.

I couldn't recommend this book enough!

Backyard Vegetables!

I am basically a farmer now! Let's just file that under, the biggest overstatement of the year, or maybe century or maybe of all time!
But I have grown food! and I have eaten said food! and I'm still alive to write about it!

Our little vegetable patches have been an endless amount of entertainment for us this spring! I swear if you sit still long enough to can see them growing! One day the pea's were ankle height and the next they were knee height! It was amazing! (in case you can't tell, I'm easily amazed, seriously that pulled your thumb off trick every one's dad used to do, amazed me to no end).

We've already eaten more radishes than any two people should eat (although they are way different then store radishes, they're juicy and so much spicier). We've had . . . get this . . . 2 strawberries each haha
The only thing I've been disappointed with is, the green onions, I wouldn't do that again! They're taking for eva! and they don't look all that impressive and upon further review they are Super Cheap to buy at the grocery store (even organic) so it doesn't make too much sense to grow them in the limited backyard space we have.

Here's what's "UP" in the backyard:

On the left are our radishes, they are seriously done now and it's already time to plant round two, although we'll plant about half as many, I'm a bit radished out!
In the Middle is Lettuce. Lettuce has been so rewarding to plant! It's so easy to grow and it grows oh so fast! We planted the "Buttercrunch" varitey, it's like a cross between romaine and green leaf lettuce.

On the right are the pea's on their trellis!

Behind the lettuce are some carrots, both purple ones and regular ones.
And behind the radishes are some purple pole beans, I still have to add the teepee for them to climb up on!

and here's out before and after (because we all love a good before and after)

Before:

After:

Ignore the smaller bed on the left for now, it's full of beets and I planted them later because we had a bit of a cold snap and it killed all of my first beet planting! If you want to plant beets the soil needs to be warm and you need to have good weather people! I totally blame the failure of my first batch on the weather man! haha
But the second batch is coming in really well and with any luck we'll be pickling beets by the end of summer!
I hope you've all been having some vegetable luck, I'm thinking of grabbing a cherry tomato plant from Costco the next time we're there, although everyone has been warning me not too, apparently they over produce, but I have a great bruschetta recipe so I don't see how that can be a problem :) Famous last words right??

Flowers on Friday: Company's Coming

We've got some company coming this weekend so that means little bouquets in the bathrooms :)
Here's our little powder room arrangement:

I think this is my favorite powder room bouquet of all time!! I hope you enjoyed it too!

We'll be working on the closets all weekend so hopefully we'll have some nicely organized closets to show you next week!!!

Linen Closet Organized

Seriously, what is it about linen closets that make them junk magnets?? Maybe it's the fact that they are meant to hold sheets, and folding fitted sheets is horrible, and so it makes you give up on the whole closet?? who knows!
But I'm so excited to show you our newly organized linen closet, folded fitted sheets and all :)

If you missed our Linen Closet Progress post, here's what the closet looked like before:

And here's what it looks like after:

We painted the closet walls "Geyser" by Martha Stewart. I wanted something a bit darker and more dramatic. I love the way it looks with the wall color and the trim color. Painting the insides of closets is my favorite thing to do. It's such a surprise every time you open the door.

Lee installed solid shelves, I just like solid shelving better! We have wire shelving in our front hall closet and it works really well for shoes and dirty soles. But everything that's going into the linen closet is clean, so we had the option to choose more attractive shelving.
We ran wood around the perimeter of the closet, then cut the shelves to fit and screwed them into place.

We absolutely needed to make room for the vacuum. As much as I wanted to have pretty shelves with beautifully folded sheets and towels, filling the whole closet, we HAD to fit in the vacuum (function wins over beauty every time here) and lost a lot of space but we had no choice. We were able to squeak out  a bit more storage, Lee installed two small shelves just big enough to hold to baskets from Ikea. In the top basket is where I keep the "Fall/Winter" touches for around the house, the lamb skin throws and fuzzy blanket. And the bottom basket is where I keep all of the throw pillow covers, we have summer ones and winter ones and fall ones and since I started sewing we've had A LOT more :)

Under the baskets is Max's Crate, I was going to take it out for the picture but this is reality blogging and in reality we have to store his crate somewhere. Lee made sure to leave just enough space for the crate and the vacuum attachments.

I had a friend over the yesterday for coffee and she wanted to get "the inside scoop" on today's post, so I took her upstairs and showed her the linen closet and her reaction was "where are all your sheets?" So I thought you might be wondering the same. We only have 2 sets of bed sheets for our bed, our white organic sheets, and a set of organic flannel sheets for the winter (p.s. organic flannel is expensive, next time I might just opt for regular flannel :). I don't think we need anymore than that. Once a week I wash the sheets, then put them right back on (well, I really wait for Lee to get home so he can put the fitted sheet on for me :). We all have sheet sets in our linen closet sitting there getting musty, I like things simple and to me simple is 2 sets of sheets :) But I wouldn't go fewer than 2 sets in case of emergency, we've had to spend a hot summer night on flannel sheets before because Max thought grass was his main course for the night!

So there's our super duper newly organized linen closet.

*If you look at the top of the linen closet, there's a space for future quilts this amateur quilter (me) will be quilting :) Always Plan Ahead!! haha

Bird Feeder

We've got some hungry hungry birdies over here ;)

And those hungry hungry birdies are insanely messy! Seriously there is seed everywhere!

But they're darn cute so we put up with the mess . . . like with Max . . . and Lee! hahaha

I found this round bird feeder at Canadian Tire, it was way to big to for our little apple tree to hold up, so we needed to figure out another way to make it available to the birdies!

So we found a post from Home Depot and a fence spike (also from The Depot). It was super easy . . . just stick the post in the spike and stick the spike in the ground!

Securing the feeder to the post was easy too, we just used a couple of small L brackets and it was done.

We're hoping to paint it out white or stain it the same color as the fence (when we get around to staining the fence). We're super concerned about using an eco-friendly, non toxic paint as the little birdies will be eating from it! I also want to make sure that it doesn't flake off so maybe a stain is the way to go! If anyone has any bird feeder paint tips I would LOVE to hear them.


And while we're out in the garden with the birdies, I wanted to share with you my new garden shoes! I've got my rubber boots (or RUBBERS as Lee's mom calls them, imagine poor teenage Lee's embarrassment as him mom yells out at the Field trip bus "Lee did you remember Rubbers!!" haha) but for the spring time, some light little shoes are just what I needed. I picked up these ones from TARGET! They are Amazing! They are stupid comfortable ("stupid comfortable" means they're really comfortable). I LOVE them, I love them so much I bought my mom a pair and she Loves them even more than I do, so she bought my grandma a pair too. Grab a pair then shoot me an email and let me know how much you love them too :) hehe

Have a great day, and Happy Gardening!

Floor Plan!!!

One last Blogaversary post :)
Dee from BC sent:

"Congrats on your "blogaversary" I'd love to see a floor plan of your lovely home-Dee" 

Main Floor:

 Upper Floor:

Basement:

I hope this was what you were looking for :) They are super accurate as Lee used autocad and did them from the blueprints :) I was just going to scribble something down, but Lee took over and the end result was way better!

Flowers on Friday: A year in Review

Our last day of our Blogaversary Celebrations is Today, It's been fun! We're looking forward to another year of blogging and renovations :)
To cap off our Blogaversary Week, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite Flowers on Friday's from the year:

I Love this little guy in the julep cup beside the powder room sink (If we're having people over I like to keep a little bouquet in the bathroom.

This purple one is probably my favorite:

And Max's too!

And our carnation topiary! To find our how to make them follow the LINK.

Most Popular Posts from the Year!

In keeping with the blogaversary celebration this week, here are our top 10 posts from the Year!
How did I decide what the most popular post were?  I'm so glad you asked :) I decided that the posts that gathered the most comments were the most popular, so here they are:
Number 10:
Our Mudroom from the Townhouse, complete with pebble boot tray!

Number 9:
Kitchen Reveal, with the new pendant lights, and new appliances :)

In at Number 8:
Green products we've been using around the manor, this gathered lots of debate and some great ideas for new products to try!

Number 7:
The Living Room Reveal! 

Number 6:
Our most recent chart topper, Our Master Bedroom Paneling Reveal!

 At Number 5:
Can you tell the difference? Our Painted the staircase. Thanks to your comments I didn't feel like I wasted a day painting :)

 Number 4:
The Dining Room Art! I've even received a few emails from readers who made their own DIY art from Wall Decals (I LOVE getting those types of emails :)

Number 3:
When we revealed our NEW MANOR. I cried when I woke up in the morning and saw all of the lovely comments and well wishes!!

Coming in at number 2:
The Powder Room turned into a computer room in the old Townhouse. This little room won us a Fridge from Style At Home Magazine's, most organized space contest.

 And our number one most popular post was . . . . . (drum roll please):
The Library Reveal, complete with the tablecloth curtains.