We are huge gazebo fans! We absolutely love it and can't imagine our backyard without it. It's our second home during summer months. We enjoy spending time outside until late at night and thanks to the gazebo, we can stay up late and not worry about bugs.

We had to move our gazebo to a new spot this year and will show you how you can install it in the area where there is no existing patio or deck.  We used 4 large patio blocks from our previous patio and bought some gravel, sand and landscaping fabric which will stop the weeds from growing. You can pick up large patio blocks at any landscaping or nursery center.

You need to make sure your gazebo is attached to the patio. When we first bought our house and put the gazebo together, we didn't screw it to the patio and a strong wind knocked it down! So now we know :)

First, we measured the area the size of our gazebo and removed the grass. Go deep enough to have room for sand, gravel and then the patio blocks.

We made sure the ground was leveled and covered it with landscaping fabric so that the weeds will never grow inside the gazebo.

Level it really well and then position patio blocks in four corners. It's important to level them, so that the gazebo will stand straight.  Position your gazebo and then drill holes for the screws.

It looks pretty simple right? It only took us a day !

Planning our beach vacation got us totally beach inspired. Check out our new decor around our house - lots of blues, whites and green.  We even decorated our dream beach cottage. What can be more relaxing than the beach?

Small shelf in the kitchen

Kitchen table center piece

We love to rent cottages when we travel. We get the most privacy, access to nature and feel like home. Big resorts and crowded hotels are not for us. If we ever get our own beach cottage, it will reflect everything sea. Here is our dream beach cottage created using polyvore.  

Seagrass Flower Flip Flops
3 GBP - monsoon.co.uk
Monsoon shoes »

 

Indoor and Outdoor Decorating Ideas for a Casual Cottage
bhg.com

 

Brighton White Full Bed
$699 - crateandbarrel.com

 

Maine Cottage: Browse Ruby Glass Cabinet
$1 - mainecottage.com

 

The Well Appointed House by Melissa Hawks. Loft Wicker Student...
$638 - wellappointedhouse.com

 

Maine Cottage: Browse Della Cocktail Table
mainecottage.com

 

BYHOLMA
$60 - ikea.com

 

Maine Cottage: Customize Rectangular Flanged Pillows
$60 - mainecottage.com

 

Diane James Peony and Tulip Bouquet in Glass Ivy Bowl | Gracious Home...
$210 - gracioushome.com

 

Blue Martini Glass Table Lamp | LampsPlus.com
$135 - lampsplus.com

 

PJÄS
$13 - ikea.com

 

Footed Fruit Basket
$13 - crateandbarrel.com

 

Real Weddings - A Casual Wedding in Carpinteria, CA - Starfish Place...
weddings.theknot.com

 

gone to the beach sign by giddy kipper | notonthehighstreet.com
notonthehighstreet.com

 

Star fish, starfish
photo-uploader.com

 

Our mood boards.

 

Thank you so much Kinga for having me here on Blueloom. She's given me the opportunity to introduce myself and my blog.

My name is Ashli, and, I live in British Columbia Canada with my husband Lee and our little doggy Max. Our blog is Maillardville Manor, and it's about everything from Organizing, to Cleaning, to decorating, and everything in between. We are trying to make greener choices around the manor while still keeping everything stylish.

It hasn't been easy, not everything green is stylish and definitely not everything stylish is green.

We recently made some changes to our Mudroom, while they aren't particularly Eco-green, they are definitely Green:

Then we worked on the Bathroom

Followed by the Master Bedroom and Guest Bedroom

And most recently we completed work on our Living Room and Dining Room.

But the most popular room in our home, like in most homes, is the Kitchen. It's the most organized room in our house, and with a lot of blood sweat and tears we made it as close to our ideal as possible.

I couldn't give you a tour of the manor without including our Dog Max, he's the heart of this home.

I hope you enjoyed touring our home. Thanks so much to Kinga for hosting me here at Blueloom. And I hope she'll come over to The Maillardville Manor and maybe share her beautiful garden (seriously it doesn't get any more serene then that). ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Ashli M www.maillardvillemanor.com

We are thrilled to be back on The DIY Show Off blog.  Roeshel, thanks so much for featuring our pond on your fantastic blog. We hope that your readers will enjoy it.

If you love all kinds of projects, renos, makeovers, crafts and everything creative, you need to visit Roeshel's blog.

Here are some pictures of our pond taken this summer.

We are looking for tips and ideas on what to do and see on Cape Cod. We booked a small beach cottage and will be going for our first Cape Cod vacation. Can't wait! So we did some research online and were happy to find out that Cape Cod ranked #1 in the top 10 National Seashores in US (Coastal Living).

I guess we picked the right spot. We heard from people who vacation there every year for many years now and always come back happy. After a busy and hot summer, we need a quiet getaway, just the two of us and the beach. We don't need the heat, just some nice coastal breeze will be fine.

If you live in the area or have been to Cape Cod, we would love to hear from you. Did you visit Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket? Did you go antique shopping?

Thanks

We had some unusual visitors this summer.  It started with the bird nest right above the front door. We noticed it one morning on our way to work. Joe decided to build a support for the nest and the mom bird was quite happy raising her family here for a while. Once she was gone, we removed the empty nest.

We also found a treasure in our backyard. We were removing and old tree and found this small car in the ground.

And one day, while putting some mulch in our flower beds, we noticed new residents on our front yard. This time there were not as friendly. Check it out.

Hornets nest on the tree. We called professionals to remove it.

Pond in our garden attracts many birds.

So this summer has been fun.  How is your summer?

Our blog received 5 spam comments today, so you can imagine the surprise we got going through the emails that one of them was not a spam! It was an award! Wow! Thanks Childfree Chic! We are honored.

Check out Childfree Chic blog and her amazing kitchen reno.

And now we would like to share this award with:

 

Rhoda

from

We discovered the world of home and garden blogs right here and got totally inspired, so thank you. You show southern hospitality to all of us every day.

Congrats on your award!

 

Le

from

Third on The Right

I'm not sure if you are finished packing and moving but you need to take a break and celebrate. You got an award! Congrats and we hope to hear from you soon!

 

Now we supposed to share 7 things you may not know about us:

1. We met in university and moved in together 9 months later, got married 4 years later and will celebrate 10th wedding anniversary next year.
2. We don't have kids or pets, just the house and garden to look after.
3. English is our second language, so we apologize if you are confused reading our blog sometimes.
4. Kinga got her driving license when she was 30!
5. We are in our mid 30s.
6. We got addicted to home renovations and everything domestic when we bought our first house 5 years ago.
7. Kinga loves red wine, Joe prefers beer.

Thanks again for the award Childfree Chic!

When we bought our house, we knew we had to do something about the ugly kitchen from the 70s. We didn't want to spend thousands of dollars on a complete renovation, so we decided to do it ourselves. Total kitchen reno took us more than 2 years (working mostly on weekends) but we saved a lot of money.

KITCHEN BEFORE

Here is our original 1975 kitchen

KITCHEN AFTER

New 2010 kitchen

New tile floor, no more wallpaper, new white trim

The biggest project was to restore the existing cabinets.  We were lucky they are solid maple, so we were able to send them and apply white paint. It's the only reason we decided to do the kitchen ourselves because the biggest saving was on cabinets. Check our original post here. Money saved on cabinets allowed us to hire contractors to instal spanish tile floor and new windows.

• restored kitchen cabinets and replaced hardware
• installed the back splash
• installed new countertop
• replaced all light fixtures and added two new ones above the sink
• removed one kitchen cabinet and installed a dishwasher (originaly there was no dishwasher in our kitchen). We also built the new cabinet for the dishwasher
• replaced the old trim
• replaced electrical switches
• removed wallpaper
• painted the kitchen

New back splash and light fixtures

Building a cabinet for the dishwasher

Joe's part time job on the weekend

New cabinet for the dishwasher

New kitchen is so light and airy now.

We came across many great kitchen diy's posted on blogs and other websites and most homeowners admit, kitchen reno is very time consuming and can be exhausting, but the money saved makes it all worth it.

Are you thinking about renovating your kitchen?