Allie in the South of Spain

Although my parents have been over to see us a few times since the pandemic started, it has been almost three years since I have seen anyone else in my family. We were lucky enough to have gone to Michigan in the fall of 2019 during my maternity leave to attend my sister's wedding and then spend the holidays. We returned just in time for the world to shut down and haven't been back to visit since then. So when my oldest sister said she wanted to come visit during their spring break, I couldn't wait! My sister and her family arrived and we spent our first few days locally, seeing Seville and catching up. I sometimes forget with the hustle and bustle of everyday life just how beautiful Seville is and it is nice to be reminded of it when people come to visit and I'm able to play tourist for a while. First we headed to the Plaza de Esp a ña which is one of my favorite spots in the city. It was created as part of the Ibero-American Expo of 1929 and is a located right next to...

In the past month and a half we've advanced a lot in our renovation. The floors were installed in almost all of the rooms. The ceilings were all finished and our bathroom and kitchen are almost complete. You may remember that when we bought the house there were two small bathrooms which we decided to convert into one larger bathroom, using some of the space to expand the kitchen a bit. We opted for a shower stall instead of a bathtub and had our builders construct a narrow closet in the remaining space along the back wall. We had enough room for a double sink as well. I'm still happy with our tile choice (it's fake marble with brownish-gold veining rather than the typical grey. We've opted for black accents throughout (faucets/shower stall etc) and although things aren't finished yet, I like the way it's coming together. In the kitchen we decided on white cabinetry and will have a white countertop installed. Since the space is still pretty small and the floor is...

One of the biggest investments of our renovation so far has definitely been new windows. Jose and I decided to replace all of the old, super not energy efficient windows with what ended up being the most expensive options we could find. They are also the highest rated for sound and energy which we are hoping makes our house much more liveable in the heat of summer. They were finally delivered a few weeks ago and we had them installed. We opted for a dark brown frame which will contrast nicely with what will eventually be a white exterior of the house. I'm not sure if I mentioned in previous posts or not but almost all houses here have security bars on their windows, at least on the first floor. Right now the bars on our windows are in good shape (they are strongly welded and in that sense safe) but they are really retro-looking and will need a lot of work to get sanded and painted. I'm hoping we will have to budget to switch them out this spring. The layout of this house was a ...

 I mentioned here previously that we had found a house, put in an offer and were waiting and waiting and waiting for the paperwork to go through but I hadn't been back to say that we finally signed on the dotted line a few months ago in November. My mom reminded me that I have followers back home who would like to know how things were going on our renovation so I've hopped over here to post some pictures of everything that's been going on. Before shot of kitchen Bathroom that was next to kitchen Wall that came down New wall in the kitchen Not long after finally getting the keys the demolition process started on our house. We decided to take down a wall between the tiny kitchen to take up some of the space that had once been a tiny bathroom. We were able to expand the kitchen into a small one and then have a nice sized (for Spain, mind you) bathroom. Basically we combined two bathrooms into one and the kitchen got a bit bigger. Wall down in the girls' room We also took o...