Pinterest Spring/Summer Inspirations!

Its been forever since I’ve shared some fantastic Pinterest stuff! Mostly because while pinning is super fun and therapeutical, putting together the posts can be tiring.  Just deciding what to do takes so much time that it becomes less therapeutical than it actually is even if I love putting those posts up.  However, maybe this is what Pinterest is going to be: Therapy or Inspirations! Spring is pretty much almost over and hints of Summer is landing in Montreal.  The last few days have been hot and humid and I love it! 🙂

This also means spring cleaning and garden/outdoors stuff needs to be taken care of! I have some rhubarb to harvest and maybe make some nice drinks.  The heat also means that I kick in a much healthier lifestyle.  Lots of things that I seek out Pinterest for! Lets look at some of my faves and ones I hope to pursue if not now, eventually!

The Anatomy of Sangria

Hot summer days calls out to me in the form of Sangria. I don’t drink a lot in general but a great sangria is so hard to resist. This infographic breaks it down in an interesting way and peaks some new ways to use different ingredients next time.  For the record, I’ve recently realized that I’m intolerant or maybe allergic to red wine so any sangria’s now have to be with white or rose wine. I have also done a autumn sangria with brandy and that turned out pretty good.

Popsicles

I’ve tried out a few popsicle recipes before and I’m not really good at it but its something I’m trying to learn to do better. This one looks delicious.  They are called Fruit Salad Ice Pops.  I love fruits and especially fruit salads and wrapped up in a popsicle. Yummy!  I’m already thinking of what fruits to get to make it and wondering where those popsicle molds are.

Infused Water Combinations

Last year I started getting into infused water. I like cold drinks and water is super healthy so I’ve tried something with blueberry and basil before if I remember correctly.  This summer, I want to keep with the healthy stuff and try some other ones.  These ones are pretty neat especially detox and weight/sugar control and metabolism booster. I guess everything but the lower blood pressure one looks like choices I want to try out.

Watermelon Strawberry Sorbet

For those of you who are new here, I’m lactose intolerant or at least it seems to be in an extreme phase again.  Its really built a love and appreciation for Sorbets in my life. I’ve been wanting to try to make sorbet for a while and if these recipes say its easy, I’ll believe it! Its one of my goals this summer to give it a try.  This combination particularly looks great. I love strawberries and watermelons and yet, no one really pairs these two together. I wonder what it’ll taste like.

Liquid Sunshine

I know, its a lot of alcoholic beverages here! In general, there’s a lot of drinks. Thing is, I was going to do a cruise dedicated post after my cruise recap last year and I forgot about it. I flat out forgot. That’s just how I am. A year after, I remembered and was thinking maybe this year, I’ll start a little drinks segment to experiment different recipes.  I don’t mean alcoholic cocktails, even if they are resistible, I don’t usually drink that much but even for like lemonades or infused waters and other healthy stuff. I think its well worth a shot! 🙂

That’s it for this Pinterest Inspirations!
Originally, it had a ton of other stuff for the garden and whatnot, but I just wanted to keep this fun and short! 🙂 

Let me leave you with this lovely quote!

Happy Friday! 🙂

Drinks: Strawberry-Basil Infused Water

Summer is finally here!

Its actually feeling like summer in here as the rain has pushed out of the picture this weekend and we were in the low 30s Celsius.  I finally wore my shorts, tank top and flip flops and did a ton of garden work and started working on harvesting stuff.  I’ll give a garden update very soon with My Weekly Adventures. However, my basil has grown a lot while being indoors and it was time to do a harvest for it.  Then our little visit to Costco reaped a big package of strawberries. Then I found my pitcher for infused water so everything worked out perfectly great to make another infused water to help with a little refreshing detox.

STRAWBERRY-BASIL INFUSED WATER

Ingredients:

1/4 cup fresh basil leaves
1 cup sliced fresh strawberries
Water

Depending on how your pitcher is or whether you use it in those infusion bottles, the quantity will vary.  It’ll also depend whether your ingredients will float all together.  My pitcher here is pretty cool because it has a tube to put ice, another netted layer where I put my herbs and then directly in the pitcher (as you see) are the sliced strawberries.

I kept it in the fridge to infuse for more than 4 hours before I tasted it at night. The strawberry and basil both came out very well.  And the mix was rather delicious.  What I worried about initially was that the basil was such a strong herb that it would mask the taste of the strawberries but I was wrong.  While you could taste the basil, it balanced really well with the strawberries.  What’s nice is that you can adjust the amount of each ingredient to your liking.  If you like basil more, then go for it. You can add more to make it taste more of basil than strawberries.

I’m pretty happy that this time’s infused water was a lot more successful than last year’s try at blueberry and lemon mix.  I think a huge part is in choosing the right combo and also slicing the fruits so that it infuses better. Now, onwards to try out a few more blends over the summer.  I’ve been thinking of putting more drinks (cocktails included) section.  It sounds like a fun idea, don’t you think?

Here you go! A nice simple summer drink to help refresh and stay healthy! 🙂 

Gardening & Summer Evenings

Not that those two things are related: Gardening and summer evenings but it kind of does work.

I’ve been hanging outside for a while.  For Canada Day last week, I spent some quality time tending to my own container gardening and transplanted some of the plants I had bought a few weeks ago.  The only one left out right now is my Bay Laurel and thats going to be taken care of this week some time once I buy another clay pot. Plus, that one is going to grow into a house plant tree size so I’m being careful with how to transplant it 🙂

This week has actually been not so eventful and just mostly sticking around my garden and hanging around my new house and actually organizing and moving a tad more of my stuff.  One shelf is finally empty and ready to be moved to my new place.  Just two more thats double its size to go 😉 Plus, with my boyfriend having this week off, he’s been cracking down on moving forward the painting.

Before I get more into my garden and its little surprises, lets check out some stuff aside from that.

On Friday night, I went out with my friend to check out some biking gear and then went to Quartier Dix30 to get some sorbet at this delicious ice cream joint called Bilboquet.  I don’t have a picture of my sorbet but it was so comfortable to sit outside and chat with my friend right next to this lovely fountain.

Quartier Dix30

On Saturday, I went to another Tree adventure with two friends and we discovered the Arbre en Arbre Havelock.  It was a different experience than Arbraska.  I actually think I enjoy the experience a little more although I was rewarded with a lovely bruise on my ankle when I crashed into a platform.  Lets just say that I make a good choice when I don’t play around on skateboards on ground, probably should try to avoid them high up in the trees.  I had a moment where I lost my balance and flailed in mid-air but then I was reassured about how heavy the wires and the harness could handle so I’ve proved that its very sturdy if anything 😉 We had a guide that accompanied us throughout the entire circuit and he was very interesting to chat with.  Plus, he talked about the other Arbre en Arbre experiences a little and I’m pretty psyched up to eventually try those out. For now, there was one part in the last course that was so hard that I’m going to need a break from this tree adventure business. As I put this together, my muscles are expressing their profound hatred for me. So I’m trying to not make that any worse. Regardless of that, the nature of the activity itself is not one that I can carry a camera or phone with so no pictures unfortunately.

That was the end of events for me. So moving onto the big part of this post, my container garden 🙂

Let me see how to start…

1) I harvested my first Lemon mint tips…

Lemon Mint

And then used it with blueberries and eventually adding sliced lemons to infuse some water, which actually tasted pretty good.

Blueberry Lemon Mint Infused Water

My mom’s been on my back about how lemon water is really good for me so when she came back from vacation and saw this in the fridge, she was pretty happy about it.  Its refreshing and delicious (as long as you don’t let it infuse for too many days).

2) I implemented a self-watering system for my raspberry because it drinks too much and always has try soil.

Self-watering system

One wine bottle does the job and it takes about 2 days to empty one bottle.  Even though the top of the soil may look dry, at least its positive that water is constantly flowing directly to the roots. I’m starting to the think the raspberry could benefit from two of these. So far, its been doing better so I’m already pretty happy with it. This is a picture after experimenting with the self-watering system for 5 days or so.  Its looking better everyday 🙂

3) Harvesting strawberries and the accidental harvest of lemongrass

Strawberries & Lemongrass

My mom is an adorable woman.  She is.  I love her to bits. I’m happy to share my ripe and delicious strawberries with her and my boyfriend. But she was my accidental harvesting of lemongrass because she thought it was weeds.  When she reached down to pull my poor lemongrass, I exclaimed in shock and stopped her. My poor lemongrass has just gotten stronger after the transplant. Its having a hard time at my place.  So I told my mom to smell the stuff before she pulls.  It has an unforgettable lemony scent to it.  If its still good, I believe its supposed to be good for making chicken or something like that.

4) The unlikely but surprising regrowth of Clematis

Slow revival of Clematis

After the first rainstorm, my Clematis was drowned in water and looked like it was dying. My boyfriend helped me drill some holes under the pot and it drained for a few days.  This weekend, I saw that it bloomed a flower even though it looked like it had pretty much died.  I’m just happy there’s a second chance for it.  I will have to find a permanent location in the garden for it before the warm weather ends.

5) Second batch of lettuce growing

Lettuce mix

My first batch of lettuce got ridiculously huge so we now have seeds ready for the next year.  However, we chopped it off and some more of the salad mix survived and is growing more again.  This time, we will harvest earlier so we can have proper lettuce to eat 🙂 With all the rain in the last few days, it won’t be long until its ready to be harvested.

6) Calendula blooming

Calendula

My calendula is one of the newer additions to the family.  So to prove that the repotting did great, its all perked up and even bloomed some bright yellow flowers to light up my garden a little.

I’ve been reading up on what to do with my calendula.  If any of you have any suggestions, feel free to tell me in the comments 🙂

7) First signs of Squashes

Squash

I always wondered if the squashes would work in containers but here we are, the first signs of them growing up.  I have a lot of flowers blooming so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that maybe I’ll see even more 🙂

8) Tomatoes

Tomatoes

There’s tomatoes in the plant! Woohoo! The only one with anything so far. But its a start 🙂

9) Ground Cherry almost 100% back to normal

Revival of my ground cherry plant

Unlike the Clematis, ground cherry survived the drowning a little better and after a few days in the sun, it helped dry up the soil a bit more and the leaves are back to its lush green with the exception of a few and its bearing fruit except I’m having a bit of an issue with it not ripening before it falls.  Something I need to look into a bit further and figure out what exactly is the problem.

10) Flowers and Catmint

Fuschia

Purslane

Hibiscus

Geranium Citronella

Catmint

Catmint

To end things off, a little display of some of the flowers currently in my garden.  Also, an insert of my catmint that has finally gotten stronger.  It was really droopy when it first came home.

There is obviously a lot more to show but some of them haven’t progressed as much as these and I think 10 items from garden is more than you’d all care to read about 🙂 I tried to keep it short and sweet.

I’ll have more house/moving/garden updates as that will be the center of my focus in the coming few weeks. I apologize that Tranquil Dreams has slowed down on some content but I have it all backlogged and I’m working on things one at a time.  Things will get back to normal soon.  I’m working on it 🙂 There may be a few changes but they will definitely be for the better.

Any green thumbs amongst us?  What do you like to plant? Any gardening tips for me?