Allie in the South of Spain

Here in the south of Spain there isn't much of a tradition of throwing showers (neither for weddings or for babies) but when my good friend, Cristina, announced that she was going to have a baby I decided to organize a party in her honor. Cristina is a wonderful person, who cares about and cares for all creatures great and small. She and I worked together in the past and our husbands work closely on the English team at their school. We share a love of animals and have teamed up to rescue a few in the past. I am very happy to be able to call her my friend and am excited that she will soon be welcoming a baby girl (named Blanca) into her family (which includes 5 rescue kitties). Keeping in mind that I wanted to bring this tradition to Spain, I took advantage and did a bit of shopping for decorations while at home this summer. This party was by no means one of those fantastically put together showers that you find on Pinterest but I think it came together well. We ended up havi...

This year instead of making a bunch of resolutions that I knew I would end up forgetting or quitting quickly after the end of January, I decided to make a one word themed resolution and chose for 2013 CREATE. I wrote about it originally here .  My initial goals were simple: 1. I would like to  create  a home here in Spain that I am excited to live in and that people will enjoy visiting. 2. I am going to  create  more friendships here in Spain. 3. I love writing and would like to  create  some more projects this year.  Recap : Create project 1: I think that we did well with making our apartment into a place that we really enjoy living. It has taken us the better part of the year to complete all of the tasks but I think it has come a long way. We are really happy with the home we have created. So I would say that we definitely accomplished this CREATE goal. You can find all the updates on our apartment projects under the Nesting and N...

Update 2 Today I am updating my 30 before 30 list (those things I want to do, see, accomplish, experience, enjoy before the big 3-0). I wrote about the list originally here  and then updated it a first time here . So without further ado these are the latest things that I can cross off my list (the new ones are those with a quick explanation, the old ones are simply crossed out): 1. Go on another cruise. 2. Learn to cook Indian food. 3. Start a family (read: have a baby). 4. Become my own boss. 5. Visit Morocco. 6. Spend Christmas in Michigan. 7. Walk at least a part of the Camino de Santiago. 8. Drive comfortably here in Spain. 9. Go to (and enjoy) a soccer game. 10. Write a book. 11. Visit Ireland. 12. Cook a Thanksgiving dinner solo.   This in fact is something I am going to finish on Friday but I am cheating and crossing it off early in the hopes that all goes well. I found an itty-bitty turkey and will cook it for Jose and his parents this week in order to celebrate m...

Since coming back to Spain we have completed a few more small projects here in our apartment. Here are a couple photos of what we have been working on. Small bedroom, small changes First we added a small wardrobe in our small bedroom. I think proportionately it works in the space (which isn't incredibly large to begin with). We also added a headboard that matched. I really think that headboards make rooms feel more grown up and permanent. Black and white photos Next we finally hung up the black and white photos that we had printed before we headed to the U.S. for the summer. I had been dreading trying to hang these frames because I knew it was going to be difficult to get them exactly even in a row. It took us a couple of tries to get it right but we did eventually get them hung fairly well. The giant empty space between them is our missing television which we are still waiting to hear about from the guy who will hopefully fix it for us. Read about it here. ...

As promised, here are some links to some old blog posts that I have recently updated with mostly photos of our adventures. When I first started this blog I didn't include a lot of visuals so though the stories pretty much remain the same, I wanted to add our pictures in the mix as well. I hope you enjoy. Our visit to Lisbon, Portugal with friends Honeymoon cruise with stops in Athens and Olympia Then on to Venice and the Greek Isles Heading to Rome and Florence In case you missed it yesterday, our time in Vienna Spending Christmas in North America ( The U.S. and Canada ) Our time in the north of Spain ( San Sebastian, Pamplona and Bilbao ) My sister's visit to Seville and Cordoba Besides these I am going to make an effort to post on some other places that I have visited but that for some inexplicable reason never wrote about. There seem to be several and I am not sure why. It is fun to look at old pictures and see what I can remember about these visits. It i...

The next installation in this series is covering our bathrooms. Our apartment has got two of them, one for guests with a shower and one off our bedroom with a tub/shower combination. One of the things I looked for (since our old apartment just had a stand-up shower) in a new place was a tub. Sometimes in such small spaces this can be hard to find but with our hopes of having kids some day, I knew we needed a bathtub. We decided to change out the floors in our bathrooms just like in the kitchen. I hate having to sweep and mop every day and knew with the light colored tiles that came with our apartment we would constantly be cleaning. We opted for some rustic tiles when we made the switch. Eventually we added mirrors, lights and closed in the shower in our guest bathroom. We also added some storage solutions to both. Here are the before pictures: This is the guest bathroom This is the master bath but the tiles are the same in both Now here are some after photos: Guest...

As promised, here are some before and after shots of our kitchen. It is pretty small, in fact at most 2 people can be in there working but after all the drama with the design (read about it here ) I am very happy with the outcome. Thank you IKEA! Here are the Before pictures: First we switched out the flooring. And then for about a day it looked like this: And finally: Tadaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

When you come into my apartment, you walk through a small entryway (which we are still working on finishing). Directly on the right is our kitchen which is galley style and opens onto a small inner patio where you will find our washing machine and miscellany. If you continue on, you will go into our living room, dining room combo space. It is the biggest area in our apartment and is more or less a rectangle. The space closest to the kitchen has got our small table and chairs while the area closer to our terraza has our sofa and television. This is where we spend most of our time. Today I wanted to share some of our before and after pictures of the living room. It is still a work in progress but I am pretty happy with how things are turning out. When we first moved into our apartment the walls were a yellowish beige color. We painted some walls a dark greyish blue and the others a lighter greyish blue. Neither color comes out very well in pictures.  Here are some before pics: ...

It has been a while since I last posted an apartment update. Let´s be honest, most of our big projects are now done and the last couple of things we have added haven´t been too exciting. Mostly curtains but since I have documented the process thus far, I am going to continue today. As a lot of you know due to my stress over this project, my mother-in-law was kind enough to sew most of our curtains for us. She does an awesome job. Please excuse the photo quality. We get lots of light in our apartment and I think my camera doesn´t know what to do to adjust. Here is our guest room. It is decorated in beige and purple. We obviously need somewhere to hang our coats that isn´t out in the open like that. Please ignore that they are chilling there for now. Next we got the curtains up in our kitchen. I had the hardest time finding a fabric I liked for this space. I ended up with chickens. In a kitchen, I feel they work. Usually these curtains are pulled back but in this picture they d...

It´s been about a week since my last post and though not a lot has been going on around here, I figured I would write a quick summary of the more "interesting" things that have occurred. To begin on a high note, we got our first set of curtains put up (and all the rods as well). My mother-in-law is currently sewing the rest of what we will be hanging so hopefully within the next few weeks we should be finished. That leaves only a few more lamps and we will be pretty much done!  This has been a very long process and I am happy that people can´t see in to our living room anymore. P.s. I hate the way my wall color was photographed here, in real life it is a lot more gray. Bad lighting, whoops We also had our shower stall doors installed in our guest bathroom. It´s all set up now for people who are wishing to visit : ) Needs a lamp  Plus we closed off our small inside balcony where we have our washing machine (which is also relatively new) with opaque windows. T...

This week we celebrated St. Patrick's Day at school. We used the holiday to tie in with a English-language themed week that will take place later this spring. The country chosen for this year's English week was Ireland (last year it was England and next year will be USA, USA, USA!). St. Patrick's Day was a good introduction and the girls loved it. We kicked off the week by presenting some important facts about the saint, when he was born, his life and miracles, a little about Ireland etc. These facts were hung throughout the school and were discussed in our girls' English classes. Then first and second grade participated in a coloring contest while third and fourth had a drawing contest. Here are some examples from first grade: And from fourth: We also had the girls do different crafts to decorate the hallways. One was a shamrock (that symbolizes the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit). Another was a rainbow made out of a paper plate. Finally th...

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...