Lissy In Italy

So first off...

Like the new bloggy look? I figured why not change things up a bit? I was tired of the old look and the photo needed to be updated. I don't really have time to redo one myself so I went to one of those sites where they have templates....Shabby Blogs is one of my favs (see link in top left corner). So yellow normally wouldn't be my choice of colour but I went with this one because I'm in serious need of something sunny. It's been raining cats and dogs (almost literally) here lately. Infact, the River Po has overflowed again and G heard that the floating bridge at Piacenza is closed. Anyways, getting off topic.... so this leads to my first tip of today:

Tip 1:

Changining up or customizing your bloggy:

Super easy even for the most html illiterate folks.... for example, head on over to Shabby Blogs and she gives you the code AND instructions of how to set up your background. I was so happy to find her blog months ago as Blogger really has no templates that even remotely appealed to my shabby, crafty style. Shabby Blogs even has headers and tags for you to use for free plus a lot of extra cute blinkies as well. It's not the only site out there but it happened to be my choice. So get out there and give your bloggy a little springy facelift!

So as we live in a condo and have no backyard of our own (we have a "public condo backyard") and I love to garden and plant flowers we decided to give our balcony a little lift. We planted window boxes with pretty petunias of all colours.... and I think I might try to convince hubby we could use a few more... and we planted some pots too. I decided this year we would try to grow some tomatoes... I mean in summer we have full on sun in the afternoon so it gets good and hot out there.... our tomatoes should love it! Here's a little tip for giving your plants a little boost....

Tip 2:

A little kitchen fertilizer of your own...

So I save the shells from egg to crush up and put in my pots.... We have really clayish dirt here and hubby went and got me dirt (instead of the bagged kind) and now I don't have anywhere to dump it... so why not try to make it "better"? We're doing our own little "sort of" compost thing.... I am trying to add egg shells and every so often I also add some coffee grounds as I've noticed my flowers really seem to like it (don't add to much folks). They must be reacting to all the caffeine (haha!). I have been adding the old dead flowers from my petunias as well.... we'll see how my tomatoes do this summer.

Tip 3:

Clean out your drains - naturally....

So I needed to clean out the kitchen sink drain as there's always some food that ends up in there, and I found this cool tip somewhere on the net. Put some salt, baking soda and vinegar down there and let it sit and fizz for a few minutes..... Then add hot water.... voila! This works great on cleaning up your kitchen sink as well. It's much better than dumping harsh chemicles like Draino down there don't you think?

Happy cleaning!

So it's Post-It Note Tusday over at Supah's blog.... so here's mine: