My birthday boy turned 45 this July! As per usual, we had the band and few other friends and family over for a bbq in the backyard and a jam session. We typically make burgers, but this year we switched it up a little and made this, which is delicious and a highly recommendable dish for a crowd. I also made some fresh pitas, this is my go to recipe and they're always a hit. Happy Birthday Bunny!

Speaking of yummy recipes, Mom and I had my sister-in-law, Pam over for lunch one day and we made shrimp toast for the first time. Have you tried making it or maybe you've ordered it before at a Chinese restaurant? It's so good, add a salad and it makes for a satisfying and unique lunch. 

We continued to work on the yard through July. This area has had many makeovers through the years. I always want it to have a tropical feel because it's right beside the waterfall/pond so I used to plant a lot of annuals like Cannas and Banana plants, but last year I filled it with shade loving perennials and I'm thrilled how it's turning out! I put several hostas, astilbes, coral bells, Rodger's Flower and Herman's Pride in. I love the contrast of colours and textures and earlier there were a lot of hot pink blooms on the astilbes - I look forward to seeing it fill out even more. 

In another garden bed, I had a big dogwood removed (the white and light green leafy shrub in the middle below). It actually looks small in the photo because I was severely pruning it down to contain it, but all it wanted to do was to grow super big so it wasn't a good spot for it. I love how its removal opens up the yard again - 

Mom and her dog came by for visits when the weather was nice -

Little Sheila sitting up by our veggie box and some radishes I harvested shortly after.

My dear friend, Skye came to town for a visit as well. She brought her craft supplies and I collected all my found feathers together so that we could make kitty mobiles 😊.

Chris hung the feather mobile in Mickey's catio and Mickey was interested in it for about 1 minute. 😂

The following weekend, we participated in the Gold Hunt game in Edmonton with our friends, Leslie and JL. It's a live treasure hunt for $100,000 hidden in Edmonton. You get clues and once you figure out the location to each clue you have to go to it to find the answer. We did the first Gold Hunt with them back in May, but this time it was way more challenging. There were a set of 16 clues to start, for each clue, if/when you got the answer right, you were sent a line for the next level of clues, all of which had to be de-scrambled. Once you found the location to the second set of clues, you had to go to those locations to find the answers for them and for each answer you were given a line for the final clue (4 lines in total). We worked on this for so long, driving around Edmonton for a week before we got to the final clue, which was so ridiculously vague that it could have been anywhere. Every free moment I had, I was going off to little, obscure parks and monuments, looking under rocks and searching around ponds and lakes. For a month, we carried on with the hunt and just before they were going to release a bonus hint at the end of August, a guy found the treasure chest. Doh! Of course, we wish we would have found it, but regardless, it was so much fun getting out and exploring the city on a level I never have before. It was a very exciting month. Here's a google map we made of all the locations that were in the first part of the hunt -

Though a lot of my August was hunting in bushes and under rocks, we also went to our sweet niece's wedding out at Pigeon Lake. I actually don't have any photos from the day yet, I'm hoping to be able to grab some from facebook or instagram once they're posted, but nothing has been put up yet. I'll update this page once it has.

And Chris and I enjoyed our favourite festival, The Fringe by going to 12 plays! 

We also spent a weekend at Seba Beach with some friends and I snapped this lovely photo of the lake after sunrise. Lake living is the best -

One bummer from this summer is that our house was broken into. They took my computer, several other items and Chris' truck. We now have a full on security system, and in the end, nobody was hurt, my cat didn't run away, and everything that was taken can be replaced so I'm trying to appreciate that it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

I can't believe it's September now, what? The kids are back to school, which usually motivates me to get back to work, but today is probably the nicest day we've had all summer - ha! It's been such a whirlwind these last couple of months, we've had so much going on. It's going to seem strange to get back to a normal work routine. I hope to get back to the torch by the weekend. I ordered some new colours of glass that I'm excited to experiment with. In the meantime, hope you had a wonderful summer. xo