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On this first day of summer, I can truly say that it feels as though the season has arrived. The menu sitting on our kitchen counter for this week's meal consisted of mostly grilled dishes. The flowers in our patio have grown from small sprouts to lush blooms. Summer cocktails or an evening beer have replaced glasses of red wine. And Lilah has assumed her favorite position atop the stairs leading from our deck to the patio.

Our summer evenings are our favorite. Dinners eaten on the patio. Baseball games listened to on our roof deck with a refreshing beer in hand. And maybe a bowl of ice cream for dessert. Not a whole lot needs to be done or said, but relaxing and enjoying the moment takes presidence instead.

We love fresh herbs in the summer, so we have planters full of them on our back patio. Our mint plant, a hearty specimen that has lived through several winters, is growing wildly. We use the fresh mint for salads, mint tea, and of course mojitos. I'm not always one to stick to the same thing and enjoy other options when it comes to summer refreshments, so I set out to create a new and tasty concoction. With an abundance of mint, a bowl full of organic lemons on our kitchen counter, and several cucumbers in the fridge, I put together this refreshing iced vodka that just might be my new favorite summer cocktail.


Iced Vodka with Cucumber, Lemon, and Mint

What you'll need

• 2 sprigs of mint, one for muddling and one for garnish
• 1 lemon
• 5 slices of cucumber
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 2 oz vodka
• club soda
• ice

Directions

Pick the leaves off of one sprig of mint, squeeze the juice of half of a lemon, and add sugar to an 8 oz glass. Muddle the mint, lemon juice, and sugar until the mint is well bruised. Fill the glass with 4-5 ice cubes. Pour 2 oz of vodka over the mint and ice. Top with club soda and add cucumber slices and lemon slices from the leftover half of lemon. Stir with a swizzle stick until the glass is frosty. Garnish with the remaining sprig of mint.

Enjoy! What are your favorite summer cocktails?

With a post about Australia yesterday, it only seemed natural to write about Australian music today. One of the things that piqued my interest in Australia from a very young age was music. This began at the ripe old age of six and will have to be elaborated on during a different blog post (one in which you will think I am a crazy lady). What is important to know now, is that I quickly became a fan of Australian music.

One such band that I came to love was Powderfinger. They were like no other band I had heard, and their singer had a very distinguishable voice that was like none other. Their sound was an instant success in my book. A couple years back, Powderfinger broke up. I very was sad. Yes, I get sad over things like these, don't you?

There is, however, a happy ending. Bernard Fanning, the singer of Powderfinger, released his second solo album, Departures, this month. I was looking forward to the release of this album for two months. Yup, two whole months I was counting down to the release date because I'm crazy like that. When the album was released, I hopped on iTunes to download it and to my horror I could only download it if I had an Australian iTunes account. Say whaaaaaat?

By Australian iTunes account, they mean an Australian address and an Australian iTunes card or credit card. Sad face. I have neither. Until.....

Me being the crazy lady that I am, I posted on Facebook about my sadness over iTunes' inability to realize that I should be able to download Australian music. And to my rescue, came an old friend of mine that I met in college that just happens to be Australian and just happens to know how to trick iTunes so that I could listen to Australian music once and for all. Haha! Screw you, iTunes gods!

And that my friends, was the longest intro to some music videos I have ever written. Sorry for that.

To be a bit more serious, when it comes down to it, Bernard Fanning truly knows how to craft an amazing song regardless of having a band to back him or not. He uses uncommon melodies and beautiful harmonies in a way I have heard few songwriters do. I leave you with Battleships, his new single from the album, and Departures (Blue Toowong Skies), an exemplary of his songwriting abilities that is written about his father's passing.

What music have you been listening to these days? Do you know or love any Australian bands?

I've written about Australia before, but only in a spattering here and there. During college, I spent a semester studying at the University of Wollongong, just south of Sydney. During my time living there, I spent as much of my free time traveling throughout Australia, a feat which is very difficult to do in such a vast land.

I spent a day snorkeling along the Great Barrier Reef. A friend of mine who lives in Melbourne hosted me for a weekend of enjoying the city and an afternoon of live music. I spent four days in Byron Bay enjoying the beach life and doing nothing but relaxing after a long midterm week. A weekend was spent on Bowen Island, a bird sanctuary in Jervis Bay, where I was lucky to see fairy penguins emerge from the water to nest on the beach for the night. And another weekend was spent in a cabin in Kangaroo Valley, where I saw wallabies in their natural element hopping through the forested land.
And then there were some things I didn't get to do because I simply ran out of time and money. I remember arriving at O'Hare in Chicago after a long flight back. My parents were happy to see me and gave me huge hugs. I began tearing up. I already missed Australia and didn't want to be back. And here I was, thinking I would never be able to go back.

Two months ago, while chatting with Andrew about plans after my final months of teaching, he suddenly said, "I have an idea. Let's go to the courthouse and get married and then fly to Australia." I responded with, "Are you serious?" A few weeks later, we had purchased round trip tickets to Sydney for September.

Slowly, we're reserving accommodations and flights for more adventures while in Australia. We've made plans to stay in an apartment in Sydney for several days before jetting off to the Northern Territory where we'll be staying in a cabin near Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. This was one of my bucket list items that I didn't get to do last time. We'll be staying in Cairns a few days to check off one of Andrew's bucket list items too-- the Great Barrier Reef. Never did I think I would get to see such a magnificent natural phenomenon twice in my life. And finally, we're heading to Byron Bay for several days of relaxation at the beach after a good solid two weeks of adventure. Byron Bay, my favorite place in the world. How could it not be when it looks like this?
Lots of plans still need to be made, and while we still have several months ahead of us until the trip, I am already counting down the days. It's been nearly nine years since I lived in Australia and this is a trip I've been looking forward to ever since I left.

For me, this trip will also symbolize a new start. It's a break in our usual lives. In September, when I would normally be starting a new school year, we will be traveling in a beautiful country, on our honeymoon so to speak, and celebrating my 30th birthday in Byron-- my favorite place in the world. Life doesn't get much better than that.

If you're following me on Instagram or Facebook, then you'll already know just how obsessed I am with a new line of cards that I've been working on and slowly releasing in the shop. Inspired by a few conversations about geometric patterns with my friend Kristen, I decided to play with triangles in bold colors. This isn't the first time I've used this concept and you can see my first take on triangles and stationery here. But I wanted to try something that had even more of a pop. The result is a line of thank you and hello note cards in three different color schemes that will all soon be available in both single greeting cards and sets of four with accented solid colored cards. Each card has been paired with 100% recycled Speckletone Kraft envelopes from French Paper Co.-- my favorite! The quality of these cards as a whole does not get any better.

These cards are currently already in the shop with the rest to soon follow. I love how each color schemed turned out, and I continue to indecisively move from one to the other as my favorite. It is an amazing feeling to have something turn out just as you had envisioned in your head, and this is truly one of those types of projects.

What do you think of the new line? Are you obsessed with the current fad of bold colored and modern triangles like me?