Allie in the South of Spain

  As promised I'm back to tell the tale of our house hunt. And all the drama that has been associated with it so far. After our family grew by three in as many years our apartment was starting to feel small and Jose and I started discussing looking to move. In 2019 when I was pregnant with Carla we started to casually go and look at houses, mostly in the area where our apartment was located since there was a ton of new building going on. It took a pandemic and having to quarantine in our 900 square foot apartment with five people and a dog (without being able to leave or step foot outside) for 6 long weeks that finally pushed us to make a decision. In the summer of 2020 we put our apartment on the market and started to seriously look at houses. We decided we didn't want another apartment but rather needed more space for our growing girls to run around and hopefully some outdoor space which was so incredibly lacking when we were stuck inside all of last spring. The pandemic real...

FINALLY!!!! We have finally finished our bedroom. It was the last of all our projects in our apartment that we wanted to accomplish and now it is DONE! I had been holding off for a long time with hanging anything on the walls because I wasn't sure what I wanted exactly. It took one more weekend of motivation and another trip to IKEA, my Mecca, for us to finally complete our bedroom.  Here is how it all started. No furniture, no paint, recently moved in. After the paint then came the contentious construction of our wardrobes (definitely a marriage test if there ever was one). And our bed: We later added a few night stands, curtains, lamps a headboard and a dresser (for some reason I cannot find any pictures of these steps, whoops). Most recently it has been art on the walls and a chair. The final product: So there you have it (though not exactly all the angles). Done for now and no more projects on the horizon. Enjoy these other before and after...

For the last week or so the weather has been amazing here in the south of Spain. Sunshine, great temperatures and days that are getting longer can only mean one thing: spring is here. Spring can be a fickle season for us; it doesn't usually last very long (before the heat starts to tighten its grip) and tends to be rainy. That means we are trying to take advantage of this perfect weather while it lasts! This weekend we decided to get our balcony terrace ready for use. We have a pretty small space outside our apartment and last year we bought a table and chairs to go out there. During our first warm season in the new place, we didn't take advantage of our outdoor space because we get A LOT of afternoon sun which meant that things were pretty bright and steamy exactly when we wanted to be outside. Now that the association has been established in our complex we can finally get a retractable awning put up so that we be outside without getting burned. This awning will also allo...

Today is not only Valentine's Day but also marks one year exactly since Jose and I spent the first night in our new apartment. There are a lot of days that it feels much longer, probably because of all the work we have put in to making this place a home but it really only has been 365 days. That first night we had a quiet dinner at home (a tradition we will continue tonight) and we slept on a mattress on the floor since we didn't have a bed yet. Check out the post from the very beginning: Our first few nights in the new place It is times like these that I am so thankful that I have documented most big events in our lives on this blog because I am able to look back and see what has changed, how things have come together, our struggles, impressions, excitements, disappointments.  Here are some before and after posts specifically about our apartment from the last year: Bathrooms Kitchen Living room Small bedroom Today I would also like to add a few more after pict...

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. ...

The tale of our T.V. The other morning as Jose was watching the news our T.V. shut off for no reason. I   was still in bed but heard his curse and it was enough to make me get up. Apparently our T.V. had died which is a real bitch because we had literally just bought a surround sound system (a great deal at a sale we found while grocery shopping of al things) the weekend before. We hadn't even set up the system yet, it still sits sadly in its box.  We bought our flatscreen television no more than 3 years ago when we were in our old apartment and it later made the move with us. It was the first big purchase that we made together which is not to say that it holds some kind of sentimental value. Rather I make that point to show that we spent a good deal of money on this T.V. not very long ago. And it died. Dammit! Not built to last Things are just not built to last anymore. I swear that my family enjoyed watching the same ancient Zenith T.V. from the time of my older sis...

Counting on nice weather Jose and I leave tomorrow EARLY in the morning to begin our day-long journey from Sevilla to Michigan. We have connections in both Madrid and Chicago but this time it seems as if we have enough time between flights to 1)not get too bored in the airport and 2)not have to sprint across the airport trying to make it to our gate before they close the cabin doors (both of which have happened in the past). Today we have been packing and cleaning our apartment since it will be a while before we are back again. This summer we have decided to bring just one big suitcase between the two of us along with our standard carry-on items. Not only does this make traveling more comfortable but it also leaves us room for the inevitable things we buy at home (see crockpot, I really want one!). Luckily since we have international flights we get our one free checked back each but we have chosen to cut back since summer at the lake never requires all the clothing we have brought...

It´s the day you have all been waiting for Or maybe that is just me. It has been getting hot here in the south of Spain. Like sprawl out on the marble floor hot. That is where you can find Cooper most of the time. He will lift up his head and look at me with a face that says, whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy? I don´t have an answer for him. I am suffering as well. We live in a sweatbox. But there is a light at the end of this suffocating tunnel. Our pool is finally open!!!!! We thought that we would be long gone for the summer before our association actually got things all set to jet. Turns out we were wrong and I am so glad. It was torture to walk by the Olympic size pool with its shimmering, cool water as I was melting into a puddle on the sidewalk. We went for our first swim yesterday and will probably spend the afternoon today. As you can see it we had it all to ourselves for a while. The pool was a big part of the reason we bought this apartment. I cannot imagine surviving the ...

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: ...