Mini Grilled Cheese

I don't know about you but what's not to love about a grilled cheese sandwich. Michael loves them so much he wanted to have a late night grilled cheese station at our wedding. It didn't happen but it would have been cool.

When I saw these I immediately fell in love. How great would these be at your next cocktail party!

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I just adore these. You could also move away from your typical grilled cheese and add some fun toppings like arugula, prosciutto, brie, possibly an apple wood smoked cheddar.... the options are endless!

Are you a grilled cheese fan like me? Would you serve something like this?

Don't forget I have a great giveaway going on hosted by Blurb Books. Click here to enter!

Blurb Giveaway

If you read my post on Sunday you know that I attended Blog Podium over the weekend. The event had some fabulous sponsors, one of which was Blurb. Blurb is a great online resource to help you make your own photo book. When Blurb contacted me about hosting this giveaway I quickly jumped at the opportunity. I mean who doesn't have a million pictures sitting in a box somewhere or on their Facebook page! Why not arrange them to your liking in a gorgeous book!

Blurb has both hard cover and soft cover books with numerous trim options to suit your fancy. Blurb offers tips and tutorials to help you make your bright, colourful and smart looking photo book. I don't know about you, but I love these!

You can add both your favourite photos and text to your Blurb book. Whether it's your wedding album, cook book (I need to make a cook book), Facebook photo book, or a baby book, Blurb has every tool and idea you could imagine.

Now To The Contest Info:

Blurb would like to offer one of you fabulous readers a $35 promo code to create your next book...Amazing, I know!

Here's what you have to do:

1. Leave a comment and let me know what type of book you'd like to create.

2. Follow my blog!

For a bonus entry, tweet about this contest.

It's that simple folks! The contest ends June 7th @ 11:00PM so be sure to enter before then.

This contest is open to Canadian residents only.





Window Treatments

We've been in our house since November, 2011 and still have these gorgeous hideous paper blinds. At the beginning they did the trick but now they're just driving me nuts. We don't have a big house (1970 sq ft) so we don't have many windows to worry about. We need to tackle our bedroom window, window in walk-in closet, kitchen window, great room window and slidding door.

Here's what things currently look like... It's not pretty!

Slidding door to backyard. As you can see, there's still lots of construction going on around us.



This is the kitchen window at the front of our house. Yes, I need to take down the ugly builders house number too!

I'm not a big fan of shutters so that's out of the question.

I really like these Serenity Shades from Blinds To Go for the kitchen, great room, bedroom & closet.  

Would you do the same for the slidding door? What do you think of these serenity shades? What do you have in your house?





Sunnies!

With the amazing, unseasonly warm weather we've been having in Toronto I thought I'd touch on a summer must-have, sunnies! I'm always on the look out for a great pair of sunnies. I have a fabulous pair but a girl can never have too many pairs, right?

I've found these and have fallen in love. Tell me what you think.



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What type of sun-glasses person are you? Do you have a favourite brand or style?

Blog Podium 101... Through My Eyes

If you follow me on Twitter and read my post on Friday you know that I attended Blog Podium yesterday. I'm not going to lie, I was a bit nervous going into yesterday event, with being around all of the fabulous people with amazing blogs and all.

First off, I need to mention how great the space looked. I walked in a fell in love with the centerpieces We Create Hoopla created. I also adored the Blog Podium pencils in the rice jar - definitely something I'm going to do in my office.

The event was headlined by key note speaker Nicole Bach from Making It Lovely. Nicole spoke about Monetizing Your Blog and boy was it a great presentation.

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Here is some of what I took from Nicole's 40 minute presentation

- Anything I'd want to read on another blog is what I'd put on mine.
- Different avenues of advertising on your blog: Sponsored Posts, Affiliate Links, Direct Sales, Networks, Google Ads.
- Determining rates - Chat with fellow bloggers and see what they think is reasonable and is working for them.
- 10,000 page views per month is a good start for advertising.
- Offering free ads is a good way to get your feet wet.
- Blog Networks - most offer a page view minimum
- Placement of ads matters - above and below the fold
- "There's a good match for everyone"
- "Brought to you by....." Sponsored posts has worked for Nicole.
- Don't be shy to propose ideas that make you comfortable and feel right for you.
- Going out there, getting what you want and giving exposure.
- "Always experimenting and seeing where to go next"
- Business & blogging can co-exist. Don't blog about your daily business, blog about what your customers are wanting to hear.
- Contacting trades and how to go about it.
- Making your blog look bigger than it is.
- Make sure your comfortable for what's right for you.

After Nicole's inspiring presentation we moved onto the Business Of Blogging. The Business Of Blogging portion of the event was a panel discussion with four influential ladies and a great moderator, Leigh-Ann Allaire Perrault.

Lindsay from Little House Blog

Christine from Bijou and Boheme

Cheryl from Gluckstein Home

Laura from Tribal DDB

The above panel covered some interesting topics with great banter.

Here is some of what I took from the panel discussion

- Set a goal
- Don't be too specific when contacting companies
- If I'm getting something for myself I try and get something for my readers too.
- Don't do giveaways too often or you'll become to giveaway blog!
- How are companies (people) finding you? Chicken & egg scenario.
- Brands are always looking for content
- The concept of working with bloggers is still new - Companies find bloggers intimidating.
- Good content, knowledge, attractive, identify yourself as a Canadian blog.
- Twitter lists - I must look into this!
- What the companies are looking at
- Your blog has the ability to open avenues and opportunities you wouldn't have otherwise.
- Make sure you're commenting on the blogs you're reading - time consuming but necessary.
- How much to charge for ads & a minimum amount of months
- If you tweet about a sponsored post say it's sponsored!

And that's only the information I was able to quickly write down in my fabulous new Blog Podium notebook.

A big thank you to the amazing sponsors of Blog Podium!

 Last but certainly not least, a big thank you to Lindsay & Jennifer for putting on such a fabulous, inspiring and educational event. We're lucky to have such motivated women in this great blogging community!

How To Set Your Table

Ever wondered how to set your table properly? Whether it's for a formal dinner party or a casual night with friends, it's always good to know to how set your table the right way.

I always add a nice floral arrangment or something unique to the table depending on the season, guests and reason for the event.

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Annemarie from Brunch At Saks did a post using this diagram back in the fall and she added the pink banners.

Call me crazy but I always remember the start from the outside trick from Titanic!

I hope everyone has a great weekend. Tomorrow I'm off to Blog Podium, a fabulous event for bloggers put on by Jennifer from Rambling Renovators and Lindsay from Little House Blog. The event is held in Toronto with a discussion panel focusing on the 'Business of Blogging.' There's also a cocktail reception and vendor meet and greet. I am beyond excited to meet some of my favourite bloggers tomorrow!

Enjoy the sunsine :)

Garage Sale Glory

Today you can find me over on my great friend Krista's blog Nook Of Wellington where I'll be sharing some of my great (if I do say so myself) garage sale finds.

Be sure to hop over and check out Krista's blog, it's fabulous!

Have a great day!

This Wall Needs Some Love!

We are slowly turing our house into a home. Someone asked me recently if it's feeling like home yet and the answer is 100%, YES! Are there things we'd like to do to our house so it looks more finished and polish, of course.

One of things on the to-do list is tackle the big blank wall in the kitchen / dining area. Right now we have one lonely painting on it that we bought in Venice on our honeymoon.

I did a post a while back about doing a Plate Wall here and while I do love that idea, I also love this idea.

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How amazing would it be to frame my mom and grandmother's recipe. All three of them are amazing cooks and it would definitely add a personal and touch to our kitchen, the room we use most.

Would you do this? What do you think of this idea?

Weekend In Review

If you were in the Greater Toronto / Ontario area this long weekend you know the weather was beyond gorgeous. Not a cloud in the sky all weekend and boy did I take advantage of that!

Aside from being outside all weekend, I also ate some incredibly delicious food and drank some great wines.

Saturday night we headed to one of my favourite restaurants, Fishbone Bistro. The food and wine is always amazing and the service never disappoints.

This was Michael's dinner at Fishbone.

On Sunday Michael and I headed to Niagara On The Lake for a fun, relaxing overnight get-away. Either of us had ever been and we loved every minute of it. We couldn't get over how beautifully landscaped and maintained the town is. From the gardens to the waterfront to the shops, it was all fantastic and a great way to spend the long weekend.

I hope you all had a great weekend too! What did you get up to?



Strawberry Vodka Sparklers

It's a long weekend here this weekend and I couldn't be more thrilled especially since the weather is supposed to be amazing!

Being that it's the first long weekend of spring I thought a fun cocktail would be a suitable post for today.

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Recipe
2 oz. strawberry infused Svedka vodka | 2 oz. simple syrup | 2 oz. fresh lemon juice | Top with sparkling wine | Garnish with strawberries and mint

Are you a mixed drink lover? Is this something you'd try?

Have a safe & fun weekend :)