summer | The Little GSP

Here’s a tasty little frozen drink recipe that we whipped up this afternoon after a long day at work. We’ve been having a heat wave here (today the weather has ‘cooled down’ to about 90°) so anything involving ice sounds good to us! This recipe is a blended, fruitier version of my Margaritas on the Rocks.

Frozen Strawberry Margaritas (makes 2 drinks)

You will need…
5 cups Ice Cubes
5 oz. Silver Tequila
1.5 oz. Triple Sec
3.5 oz. Lime Juice (I use Nellie & Joe’s Key Lime Juice)
2 oz. Simple Syrup (1/2 part sugar and 1/2 part water that’s been boiled together and cooled)
12-15 Strawberries, leaves removed
Lime, to garnish

Directions:
Place the ice cubes in a blender and blend until the ice is partially chopped. (My blender has an “ice crush” setting that does a good job of breaking up the ice so I use this setting.) Add the tequila, triple sec, lime juice, simple syrup and strawberries and blend until the strawberries are completely incorporated. Pour into a glass and garnish with a lime wedge. Enjoy!

Matt and I bought our house in the Winter of 2011 and when our first Spring rolled around I was disappointed to discover that there were very few flowers planted around the house. I decided that I wanted this Spring and Summer to be much more colorful so we’ve been hard at work digging new flower beds, planting dozens of bulbs, making our own compost, and starting flowers from seed. We’ve been rewarded with some gorgeous blooms so far this year and I’m excited to see how everything will continue to grow! Here are some photos that I took on Tuesday:

This lovely bright pink zinnia is growing in the new bed that we dug outside of our front door. I’m especially proud of it because it is one of the plants that we started from seed back in February.

We also started these painted daisies from seed. The bee landed on the flower as I was taking the photo.

These colorful little “superbells” are growing in a lime green container along with some pink blanket flowers and white Asiatic lilies.

I bought a few bags of Dahlia bulbs at Home Depot in the spring and about half of the flowers are this rich, deep red color. The other half are “peppermint” Dahlias… keep reading to see what they look like!

We planted this small purple-flowered tree in a container last Summer and, although it was supposed to be an annual, we kept it inside over the winter and it’s blooming again. I can’t remember the exact name of the plant but I think it might be in the Solanum family.

This clematis was one of the only flowering plants that came up in Spring 2011. It is planted under an overhang in a very shady spot and it’s “dirt” is a bed of river rocks… I don’t know how it survives without any water, sun, or soil but it seems to be doing well!