Allie in the South of Spain

I have mentioned it before, our apartment is kind of small. As we move more and more stuff in, we are forced to try and find places to put it all while trying to maintain a certain sense of organization. Here are some of the ways we are making that happen. Anyone who knows me knows that I swear by my Joy Mangano Huggable Hangers from HSN. They are seriously amazing. What are they and why the heck are they so special? Well, they are thin hangers with a velvety covering that honest to God help me fit more clothes into my closet. Plus they live up to their claim that things do NOT fall off of them. I can cram a ton of clothes into a smaller space since all my hangers are the same small size, no bulky plastic for this girl. I have been growing my collection for a while and have even shared some with Jose. I could rave about them all day but here is a picture to show you what I mean: I also am loving the IKEA pants holder that we bought. Mine holds both pants and ski...

I have given up sweets for Lent. Boooooooo. Jose decided to join in and give them up as well. Thank goodness because I couldn't handle it without him. We are keeping each other accountable. (Plus I couldn't stand it if I had to watch him enjoy a sweet everyday when I couldn't). This is actually the first year I have chosen to give something up for Lent and have actively stuck with this promise. Why sweets, you might ask? Well, because... Jose and I both have a sweet tooth. After dinner we would regularly eat a mini-Reese's from our stash. Our Movie Fridays often involve gummy candies. At work I spend the day with a group of women who always have cookies or chocolate around. I have been to a birthday party with a triple chocolate, peanut butter and Snickers cake. This weekend we went out with some friends and they ordered a brownie dessert with vanilla ice cream after the meal. And can we talk about the churros that are popping up everywhere I look? We are surrounde...

Today while walking Cooper, Jose and I had a discussion about what animals say here in Spain after hearing a rooster crowing off in the distance. Did you know they say something different in Spanish? I had never really thought about it. It completely changes the Old MacDonald song. My kids are going to be a mess when they go to preschool, singing about a woof, woof here and a quack, quack there. Here is the list: Cow: Muuuuuuu                                              (English: Moooooo) Horse: Hiiiii hiiiii                                       ...

This has been a seemingly never-ending moving process. It just keeps going on and on and on and on. I am trying to look at it positively (besides having a wonderful new place to live) since anyone who has moved before knows how much of a pain it can be. I can honestly say I have learned a few things while moving. First, Jose and I have WAY too much stuff. Way too many clothes, too many books, too many things. We are discovering things we forgot we even had as we pack up our old apartment. If we haven't seen it in so long that we could live without it we have decided to get rid of it. This goes for clothes, old notes and papers from school, kitchen stuff, etc. We need to simplify, something we are just realizing now. I have never been a person who accumulated a lot of things. In fact I have moved so many times since graduating high school (averaging once or twice a year) that I was never able to have that much stuff. A move overseas would logically reduce my crap even more but ap...

I just wanted to take a moment today to post some more updates and photos of what we have been working on around our apartment. Last weekend was a busy one since we got our closets set up (except the doors), the new bed put together and things organized. We still have a LONG way to go. We are alternating between moving things from the old apartment and getting them put away here. We kind of have a goal in mind of being pretty well set up by March. We'll see. It might be wishful thinking since this has been the slowest move of all time I am guessing. Here is the bed (minus a headboard). We still aren't sure exactly what we will do for a headboard but I will post when we figure it out. On the opposite wall we have our closet which still needs the doors (though it has one), a project we are planning on finishing today. IKEA offers a lot of great storage solutions and our clothes are fitting pretty well so far. Next we have our bookshelves in the living/diningroom. The...

Second graders at my school were recently working on farm animal English vocabulary and they made these super cute sheep to decorate the hallways. All they needed was a few cotton balls, a sheep head design (which was provided for them but that could also be drawn), a black crayon and scissors.      They cut out the sheep's head and then traced their four fingers (basically their hand but not including their thumb, like you were showing the number four on your hand) and colored it in with their crayon. Then they cut it out and glued on the sheep's head. After they added cotton to make the wool. Adorable. And original since each girl's hand is slightly different.  

Jose and I decided we wanted to spend our first night in our new apartment on Valentine's Day. We worked really hard to get the essentials into our place to make this happen (and it did)! Since we are basically broke at this point, we had a quiet pasta dinner cooked in our new kitchen to celebrate the holiday. Besides that no gifts or flowers or anything out of the ordinary. Though nothing is really finished and we are still living out of boxes, we slept here the past few nights. As anyone who has moved into a new place knows, it takes a while to adjust to the new sounds you experience. Here in general the noise is not bad as we have only a couple neighbors thus far. We mostly hear the big fountain outside on the street which is pretty calming and makes for nice background noise. Cooper, however, has taken it upon himself to bark any time he hears the elevator. He is having a hard time adjusting it seems and with his giant over-sized ears he can hear the elevator begin ...