Oh SpectroJel - Where Have You Been All My Life?

Seriously. How have I never tried SpectroJel before? I have problem skin you see. I suffered from acne throughout high school and found solace in hormonal treatments. But then I had to go and damage my skin the first full summer I moved out here to beautiful Victoria. You see, the summers here are not hot. Some may argue with me on this fact (ahem…Patrick). But to me, a hot summer involves humid air and mirages of water on the horizon. Victoria does not have this. They have cool, crisp and WINDY summers. The sun might be hot, but the air is slightly cool. One of the reasons why Patrick loves it here so much :p

Anyway, the first full summer we lived here, we spent a good 3-4 hours on Canoe Club's patio…and I totally fried my face. Not a slight burn of the nose or cheeks, but sunburned my ENTIRE face. I'm not a peeler…but oh boy did my face peel after that burn. Sure, I had a negligible amount of sunscreen on (the amount that came with my facial moisturizer), but clearly not enough. And because I wasn't hot, I didn't realize that the baking sun, was baking me. Dumb, I know. As a result of that, I spent the next 2 weeks applying pure vitamin E oil to my face. But, the damage was already done, and now I suffer from rosacea. It has nothing on my teen acne days.

Anyway, I've never used a cleanser or toner before. I've tried them in the past, but they have wrecked havoc. Not only do I have problem skin, but I also have UBER sensitive skin. So I've stuck with plain old water…that was until I discovered SpectroJel! Seriously people, when you think you've tried everything…give SpectroJel a shot. It is likely the most frugal cleanser (next to bar soap) available on the market. I've spent $40 on a 1oz tube of miracle skin cream to get sub par results in the past. I've spent $5 bucks on a bottle of SpectroJel which will likely last me a couple of months with twice a day use.

My skin isn't perfect, but after only one week, I have found a noticeable difference. My skin doesn't feel gross anymore! And is it getting rid of some of the yucky bumps and redness of rosacea! Whoot!

ETA: Surprisingly this wasn't a paid advertisement…lol…but after re-reading it, I think it could've been!

Hippity Hoppity Easter Is Here!

The weather was pretty yucky here...except as the sun begin to set (it became sunny and clear out :p The weather didn't stop us from making a yummy Easter meal...hubs made the Cornish hens and the carrots (plain old roasted the biggest carrot I've ever seen...both of us shared ONE carrot :O), and I was responsible for the potato souffle and the strawberry shortcake dessert. All was yum, and we were reminded again how lucky we are to have so many bountiful blessings.

Some pics of our feast:






Last fall we planted some spring tulips. They've been poking out of the ground for awhile. Last weekend the tulip heads have finally made an appearance, and this weekend they have begun to turn pink!

I remember the tulips coming out around Easter, as a child, so it was lovely to see them appear around this time in our own home. Let's hope all the deer and squirrels that people have been warning about don't come and eat our lovely tulip heads ;(

I'll leave you with a cheery, albeit, wet picture of our beginning to bloom tulips - Happy Easter!!!

Was last weekend beautiful here in Victoria, or what?

It's weekends like the one we just had that makes my love for this city grow (which is a long time coming ;). Saturday, Sunday, Monday, were all beautiful sunny and warm…well, warm-ish ;)

We had a pretty full weekend which was nice. We've been plugging away at our backyard garden. Our poor grass is pretty worse for wear. Patrick has been working away at re-seeding it, but with two doggies trampling through it, it will be a bit of a process. Our neighbour on the left side of us just installed brand new sod - which looks *so nice…and our neighbours to the right have a pretty nice yard to begin with…I think they might be perfectionists though (yes, I'm talking about you Andre!) - this is the same neighbour whose house is *always spotless :P

The actual garden beds are pretty much ready…man do we ever have a lot of clay! We've been adding new topsoil and mulch to make it a little more home-y for our future flowers. So far we've added two round boxwood plants and 4 Camilla plants. The boxwoods weren't in the original plan, but when we saw them we though they looked so nice. I also learned that camillas flower in early spring (sometimes between February and March in certain climates or "zones"…likely ones similar to ours). Which means we might not get any blooms on them this year :( They don't have any buds on them now, so I'm not overly hopeful we'll see any. The foliage is a nice addition to the garden, although I will admit they are baby camillas.

We also purchased 6 rose plants. They have yet to go in as we're holding out until Costco has more garden stuff (it *just* opened). If Costco has something we like better, we'll be returning the roses…

I'll post some "in progress" pics when our lawn doesn't look like a disaster zone.

Patrick also finished up the stone patio addition, and it looks GREAT! I'm so proud of the great job he did. He actually ended up laying the stone twice as the first go around wasn't the most even and after a few days we noticed the stones had settled a little askew.

In other weekend news, we went to Yorkie Island! What the heck is Yorkie Island you ask…well…here is hubby's drawing if it:



Yes, my husband is a 27 year old banker, not a 4 year old kindergartener…lol I hope it's giving you a big of a laugh as it gave me ;) He emailed Meg and I this drawing Friday in preparation for our voyage over the weekend - this was his way of "gearing us up"…lol. Unfortunately the boat he's building is still not ready. Instead, we used his inflatable boat and his new electric boat motor, it worked like a charm!

Here are some pics of our "Adventure To Yorkie Island":

Beau and Bella ready for the voyage:


Here Bella is on the boat heading to Yorkie Island:


Bella and Beau have landed:


Bella is free! Yorkie Island is small enough that Bella can roam around without her leash…I think she was in doggie heaven!:


Meg and Patrick get ready for lunch:


Isn't Beau a cutie:


Whatcha looking at Ma?:


The whole famn damily:


Patrick and Beau's trickory…don't leave us stranded on this dang island!:


Ready to set sail to the mainland…err…at least to a bigger island anyway:


Doggie Overboard!!! Thank goodness Meg was there to save the day and scoop Bella back into the boat…


Jumping overboard didn't even seem to faze Bella…:


Hope you enjoyed the pics - have a Hippity Hoppity Easter everyone!!!

Sooooo Happy!

The above is Victoria's weather forecast for this weekend…so why does this make me so happy? Because I've been craving sun (haven't we all?)!!! Just when it feels as though SAD (seasonal affective disorder) is about to dig it's yucky claws into me, we will have sun! And not only sun…but sun on days when we'll actually be able to take advantage of it - whoop!

This also means we'll be able to get a big chunk of our backyard garden plans complete - yay! Before we moved into Hatley Ridge we lived in a north facing condo…not stellar conditions for growing a container garden ;p We do have a really big yard in our Kingston house…however, there was so much yard, and so much going on it was too hard for us to maintain it…and it basically all went to crap. High maintenance gardening is not us…there was just too much weeding involved, and not enough RELAXING.

In our new home, the backyard isn't very large…to some this might be a little crummy…but for us, it is PERFECT. Large enough to have some green space and to have a tree, a patio, even a small deck…and of course flowers! Lots and lots of flowers! At least that is the plan:


It will definitely be a bit of a process, and we might not be able to get it all done this year (the deck/pergola *might have to wait until next summer…)…and although we are hoping to buy semi-mature plants, it may take some time to totally fill out, but I’m excited to get them into the ground!

Here is a picture that I smooshed together of our entire backyard - we'll call this the "Before" picture:
***Click photo to enlarge***

Back to the "Plan":


Here's a legend of sorts for the flowers we are planning:
= Peonies - 3 plants of Sarah Bernhard pink peonies (I *heart peonies!!!)

= Camilllas - Either OR

= Roses not 100% on type or colours…possibly pink/white/cream/yellow? - who knows!

= Hydrangea - Either OR

= Dahlias - Likely some sort of pink

= Lavender - We've already purchased this pink-ish "Tinkerbelle" lavender bush:

= Dogwood - This is a flowering tree that was planted when our house was built…the plan is to move it once we build our little deck (where the dining table will eventually go :).

The only plants we actually have are the peonies, lavender and the dogwood tree. We're heading to Costco's garden shop this weekend (it recently opened for the season) and a few other nurseries…so you never know what plants we might fall for. I do know that we'd like to stick to the white/purples/pinks/creams though ;)

We'll likely also do some container planting later on in the summer, maybe some tomatoes…a few flowers etc.

Our plan might not seem like a lot of work…but having started it last weekend - manual labour is hard! ;)

Patrick began the extension of our patio stones to the fence which involved heavy lifting followed by pounding the stones into place. Cutting away the sod for the flower beds is pretty tough too. It doesn't help that our backyard seems to be solid CLAY. Our poor sod is struggling with pools of water on it right now from all the rain. So this will also likely involve some intervention of irrigation and sand. But, I am positive that when all the work is complete it will look great :)

We're Moving!

Yep...not even a year at our new house and we're moving again...here's hoping we stay longer than a year at our next place :P

APRIL FOOLS!