We Built a Deck and Hit the USA

Hi!  I feel like I’ve been gone for-ever!!  I don’t think I’ve ever gone this long without posting, but my days have been jam packed and awesome!  Sunday-Monday were our deck building  giving the backyard a face lift days and yesterday I travelled over to Amherst and Niagara Falls NY to refill my kitchen with goodies!
Before it started to rain on Saturday I took some before photos of what the “deck” looked like.  It was basically a 6 x 12 foot concrete slab that wasn’t big enough to do anything with.  We’re not sure why the previous (and sole) owners of the house made it so small!  **Please ignore the junk that we had there!!**  As you can see, it’s situated under our main floor deck.  We LOVE the *high* deck, but can’t use it as much as we want because there is no shelter from the sun at certain points of the day.  One HUGE plus to making the new ground level deck is that it’s pretty much always shaded so we can enjoy it any time of the day.   We also made it home with all the wood and supplies minutes before it poured! We had to borrow my Dad’s truck.  No way all that was fitting in our Jeep!  LOL So, that’s pretty much as far as we got on Saturday with that.
SUNDAY
Deck building day!!!  We were at it by 10am and aside from a 1/2 hour lunch break, we worked until 6pm!  I had full intentions of being the deck grunt, but my hubby ended up doing the whole thing by himself….willingly.  He knew what he was doing anyways.  I, on the other hand, spent all the time in my existing flower beds and creating a few new ones.  I figure that if we’re gonna be spending lots of time out back, we should have something nice to look at!  Here are some work on progress shots!
  
At one point I left to drive the kids to a friends place and seeing as it was hot, hot, hot and my hubby was sweating like a beast, I made a pit stop at 7-11 for an iced coffee for me and a huge Slurpee for him:
By dinner time the deck was 98% finished. Food for the day went like this….
Breakfast was a lush bowl of oats.
1 cup water, 1/2 cup oats, carob chips, unsweetened coconut and some *real* cream!!  Lunch was a huge, fresh salad with greens from my parents garden, lots of extra veggies and feta:   And some chocolate!
Now that I look at my picture of dinner, I realize that it was rather yellow!  Grilled chicken breast, quinoa, pan “fried” yellow zucchini, yellow bell pepper & turkey pepperoni from St. Jacob’s market and some coconut mango sauce on the side.  It’s bland hue is deceiving because this was full flavoured!!
Other things I did Sunday were pick some of my gorgeous hydrangeas for the kitchen table:  
Purple is my favourite colour in the whole world so it goes without saying that I love these!!  I also made a batch of granola; recipe over at Simply Life.
As soon as it was cool enough I tasted a shot glass (literally) worth with some USAB:
It’s delicious……and gone!  Needless to say, we both slept like rocks that night and woke up on the stiff side Monday morning!   Nothing cures aching muscles quite like getting back at it, so that’s exactly what we did.   But breakfast came first!  I didn’t drink all my iced coffee so i used the rest of it to make some overnight oats: Along with the coffee went some water, 1/2 cup Quaker oats and 1 tbsp of chia seeds.  I added some granola before eating it.
I worked outside until noon and then my MIL popped over which was just the excuse I needed to drop the shovel, hit the shower and grab some lunch!  I topped some leftover green beans with a half can of tuna and coconut mango sauce and called it a day: Sometimes simple is the way to go!  I also heated a zucchini muffin and spread a little honey pecan butter on it. My hubby took charge of dinner and made a shrimp pasta sauce which I opted to serve over quinoa with some freshly grated parm over top.  It was SO good! My sweet end was half a Mr. Big bar which I enjoyed on the new deck!!
We sat out there until 9pm then watched some TV.  I hit the sack early because I knew I had a full day ahead of me on Tuesday!!
TUESDAY
This is the day we crossed the border for some shopping fun!  I scarfed back a bowl of ancient grains cereal with bloobs before hitting the road:
And I was SO excited to leave that I left my camera on the dining room table!  I made do with my phone, but please excuse the less than stellar shots!  At one point the Jeep was straddled in between Canada and the USA!  
 
We arrived in Amherst right in time for lunch at Panera.   This time I went with the turkey artichoke panini:    
I took half this beast home with me which was how I planned it.  Next was Target where I dropped some pretty coin, then on to Wegman’s for my groceries.  Lastly, we hit the outlet malls.  Here are my goodies!
As you can see, I stocked up well.  Especially in the bar department!  I did buy more than just food, though!  DD got this outfit:
 
I really liked the message on the shirt!   I also bought the cutest lights for the deck!
 
Before coming home we popped back into (a different) Wegman’s to grab some food.  We all did the serve yourself food bar for convenience.  I made a veggie salad with lots of goodies and a fruit salad on the side.      Once we crossed the border I tore into my cinnamon crunch bagel that Katie told me rocks.     She was 100% right!  :)  All in all we shopped for 6hrs!  When we got home we changed, put everything away, made drinks, grabbed our neighbour and KC and crashed on the new deck until well past midnight.  Pure bliss and the perfect way to end a busy day!
So, I think I’ll leave off here as I believe this is already long enough!  I’ll be back tomorrow (for sure) to recap today, which has been mellow, and tomorrow.  I hope you’ve all been having a great week!  I’m hoping to be caught up on all your fab blogs by tomorrow morning!!!  Have a great one!
Bye for now!!