Sealicious

surprise garden

Moving into a house with an established garden has been quite a wonderful experience. We moved in the fall so I knew we had a few different herbs but I was so excited when tulips and grape hyacinth popped up this spring. 

This garden seems to have a bit of magic as well . . .

The other day I was thinking about Lily of the Valley and how I would like to plant some. A few days later, Jeff walked in the house and told me he ran over some little white flowers with the lawnmower (there are still plenty left).

 

 

 

Then, I was admiring our neighbor's lilacs, secretly wishing they would grow over our side of the fence so I could cut some. And BAM!, Jeff found a Lilac Bush in our yard.

 

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, he has the uncanny ability to make Port-a-Potties appear on command, even in the most random places.

I'll think I wish for Irises next . . .

 

 

 

(no) scenes from the weekend

I didn't take any photos this weekend, so instead I thought I'd share the things we came home with from our inaugural trip to the new Anthropologie store in Cranston. Finally! There's a store in RI! This could be really bad.

I wish I had taken photos of the store, the design was incredibly beautiful. The building was painted a light aqua color and had large panels of salvaged wood. "Anthropologie" was inset into the concrete and looked like letterpress. The very front of the store was tiled with gorgeous, moroccan tiles. I wanted to takes photos for you but I didn't have my camera and my phone battery was completely dead.

Here's what we came home with . . .

 
* knobs for the kitchen cabinetry

 

 
* one coaster (for decoration)

 

 
* hurricane vase

 

I am going to take a wee break from blogging, because I am feeling a little overwhelmed with general "life" stuff at the moment. See you back here Monday! Have a lovely week :)

so ready

Once I got this issue of Martha Stewart Living in the mail, I knew it was ON. I am so excited to finally have a garden of my own, and have been spending multiple hours every weekend reading gardening books and magazines, daydreaming about our yard's transformation.

 
 
We plan to put in a rainbarrel and one to two raised beds. I am thinking of having one raised bed for vegetables and one for flowers. Our yard is decently-sized but mostly shady - I'm not even sure if we have enough light to grow these things.

 
*this is just a small portion of our yard, there is lots more room behind the garage!

I am also looking forward to planting those cool heirloom seed varieties we picked up on our honeymoon. I need to remember to start small though, and to keep things simple at first - I am a disaster with houseplants and I have a lot of learning to do.

 

scenes from a weekend

Three day weekends are the B.E.S.T. I finally relax by the second day and then I have a whole third day to enjoy said relaxation. This weekend was pretty quiet, but I did get a few small projects done around the house.

Friday I ate at the Bittersweet Farm Tavern in Westport. They brought you fresh baked bread with butter and an awesome roasted red pepper spread. We also ordered the seasonal cheeseboard that came with delicious pairings such as a balsamic reduction and strawberries. Afterwards, there was bowling.

 

Saturday, there was a buttermilk pancake disaster (I forgot the eggs and ruined a new pan) and lots of naps.

 

Sunday, there was a buttermilk biscuit success, yay! I let the birds out for awhile, and then finally found this private beach I'd been searching for in Little Compton -  Briggs beach. I walked down a long snowy road which eventually lead to a clearing with the coolest little two room cabanas (passed down from generation to generation). Beyond that was the ocean. It was exciting to see a stretch of coastline in Little Compton that I'd never seen before.  I can only imagine how heavenly the summer nights must be in that little cabana community.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

scenes from a weekend

This weekend Jeff and I visited the Natural History Museum at Rogers Williams Park so I could check out this exhibit. The exhibit was quite small, but luckily there were lots of other things to see at the museum including a planetarium show and (my favorite) a room fashioned after a Victorian-era specimen collection study.  I had never been to this museum before and was excited to learn they give out "vault tours" once a year. Did you know that most museums display only about 2% of their entire collection? The rest is locked safely away in climate-controlled vaults.

 
 
 
 
We also went for a blustery but beautiful walk with the dog at Mount Hope Farm.

 

 

 

Sunday night, we hosted a "Beer - It's What's for Dinner" party. We made beer bread, cheddar beer soup, and Guinness Cake for dessert. It all came out quite tasty! The Guinness cake surprised me a bit. I thought it would be a rich, sweet chocolate cake, and that the frosting would be super-sweet and thick like that cream cheese frosting you find on carrot cakes. Instead the cake was dense with a slightly mellower flavor, like chocolate pudding. The cream cheese frosting was tempered by the addition of fresh whipped cream. It was so good, I even had it for breakfast :)

 
*two pounds of cheese!

 
*Guinness Cake

chickens are no-go

When we moved into our house last fall, I wrote about wanting to get a few chickens for pets (and fresh eggs). I've done alot of researching and inquiring since then and ultimately decided that this is not the year for us to get chickens. 

Finding out it's actually illegal in my neighborhood was probably the deciding factor. My neighbors have chickens but they are able to hide a small coop behind their house and we do not have that option.  I also thought that as fun as it sounds in some ways, I don't know if I'm ready for the extra responsibility and the extra worry of who will take care of them when we're on vacation.

So in the meantime, I will have to be satisfied with chicken-sitting when my neighbors go away.  I did decide on a breed I'd like to get though - the cold-hardy, beginner-friendly Wyandotte. Aren't they pretty?

 

 
*image from here

 
*image from here

 

HAPPY FRIDAY!

holycrap we bought a house!

We kept trying to wait until after the wedding to look at more houses.  We weren't even sure if we should just continue to rent for the next few years - I keep coming across articles explaining why renting is much better than buying nowadays.

But we kept our eyes open in case anything special came up - particularly because our options are limited as our budget is pretty small. This little thing came on the market and we asked to see it the first week it was listed. Before I knew it, we were sitting down to sign the purchase and sales agreement. I still can't believe these words are coming out of my mouth. 

But it feels so right - it's small enough to be manageable for us and we knew we were staying in the area indefinitely.  Pending a home inspection and mortgage approval we can move in about two months, still giving us almost a whole month after we get married to move.

It is tiny tiny  (we'll say things like "cozy" and "small carbon footprint" from now on) but it has a gorgeous yard and is in a great location (not as close to downtown as I'd like but I can still bike there relatively easily).

Jeff has already gotten me all hot and bothered by bringing up things like rain barrels and programmable thermostats. Can I pick em' or what ?