Monday

Charity Garden Makeover, Stage 1

Today (Monday) a number of Bloggers and 1 superstar blog reader got together to do some manual labour for Bloggers Give Back. If you're new to my blog, Bloggers Give Back is a charity backyard makeover for George Herman House, a home for women living with mental health issues. You should see the awesome bloggers who are a part of it.

Frank Ferragine is on board as our celebrity garden designer, but because of timing, and prior commitments won't be able to do the yard renovation until September. So until then, we thought we'd get together and clean up the yard and give the women some IKEA furniture to enjoy through the Summer Months. So here is what happened today...we turned this overgrown yard .....

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....into this beautiful peaceful garden for the residents....

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With the hard work of some amazing people, and donation from Ikea Canada, the support of the Home Depot Canada Foundation, and Tonic Living donating custom cushions we were able to pull together this pretty fantastic makeover in one day.

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A special thanks to the following people that came out today to help.

Top Row of Photos: Sarah Gunn with her two boys, Lisa with her two boys. It was such a treat to have them helping us. These two women are just the sweetest, kindest individuals.

Bottom Row: Melanie, who was one of our superstar helpers (follow Melanie at @mmmzaw) Then we have Jen who brought the yummiest banana chocolate chip bread, but we shouldn't be surprised as she runs an AWESOME baking blog, Victoria our Mom blogger, stayed until the VERY end, making sure all of the Ikea furniture got built. She is pictured with my Mom, who came to help build IKEA furniture. :) And last, but not least we had Jen and Vanessa, who were superstars and shopped at Home Depot in the morning and brought us all of the accessories to make the yard look gorgeous. (These two ladies aren't shown. I was lost in trying to figure out how to build IKEA furniture!)

More pictures to come.

I wanted to say that although we now wait for Frank to come up with the design for the yard, you are welcome to join in on the fun. Don't let location be a factor. We just want help spreading awareness for this project, and if you are in Toronto, you can come out and help when we do the BIG reno. ;)