Our Granadina oasis!

James spent all last weekend getting the plunge pool ready for summer! One of the main reasons we chose this house during our intense 2-day morning-sickness-infused house hunt was for the terrace. It is an awesome little getaway. I know that if this was in Galway I would have a lot of visitors on sunny days! For now, it's our little oasis (Visitors always welcome!)  

Notice the terrace has lots of wooden boards and 4 kind of weird elephant tables on it. Our landlady left behind a little more than I bargained for in terms of plants and tchotchkes. She asked me if she could leave a few of the larger plants behind. She left ALL of them. This is a small percentage of them. They all require watering at least every 1-2 days to remain alive in the Granada heat. But I don't mind! It's worth it, no? This is why I have a 'Plant Survival Plan (PSP) document taped to the fridge. I put a check mark on it every time they get watered. It helps keep me on track. I love plants but instead of a 'green' thumb I have a 'black moldy plague' thumb. 

After!!! Notice all the boards are gone! The elephants are in the basement!!! I wish I took more pictures of the before as James was working - he had to separate all the boards, lower them off the balcony with rope (I was waiting down below to untie the rope and stand guard). He also had to go to the hardware store to get pool cleaning stuff and Chlorine and PH strips and then clean the pool from top to bottom because it had not been used in years. Then we had to learn how to use the pool filter system, which is basically a big engine-y looking steam-punk thing down in the basement. Apparently the water is filtered through a big box of sand. Lovely clean blue and fresh! Perfect for a hot day!!

That is the splash of one very tired happy man! 

First dip! 

"Ahhh YEAAAAAAAA"

Happy James! 

View from the other side. Notice more plants!

It's Hammock-time! 

My gorgeous husband

Huh? Huh? We live in Spain!!! 

We had just noticed that the towel design matched the edge of the pool. 

Darken leather cowboy boots!

These are my new cowboy boots! I have always wanted a pair.
When they arrived the color was a bit paler than I expected, so I aged them a little with this really cool product by Delta Ceramco. I originally bought this product to age polymer clay, but with a little faith and a lot of guts I applied it to my brand new boots and am quite pleased with the results!

Here they are 'before'. Actually I think I had already started to paint the toe in this one. 

This product is kind of like a gel, first I started applying it with a paintbrush but that was taking far too long and also you have to work quite fast so it was better to just accept that the teal thread would also darken, and work simply with my hands and a dry cloth. 

So as you can see, it didn't darken them too much - just enough to give them more of a Mid-west vibe as opposed to a Las Vegas vibe. 

I really like how they turned out! The left is the before, with toe and the right is the after. Yeehaa! 

Upholstery!

I did this a while back but I forgot to upload photos. I updated our chairs with some nice fabric I had.

They really needed to be recovered! 

You will need: a little cat, just in case there is not enough cat hair on the fabric you wish to use. I happened to have this fabric because I had bought it for curtains but didn't realize at the time that the packet only contained one panel. 

You will also need upholstery tacks. Don't do what I did and think you can get away with using normal office thumbtacks! The ratio of successful thumb-tack entry into chair is about 20 to 1!

You will also need scissors and a hammer. Basically I just kind of did it - one tip is to folder over the edge of the fabric so it does't look scissored. 

Thumbtacks - you will be sick of these by the end! 

Perfect for a first time upholstery! Much better. Now repeat for all chairs - somewhat thankfully I remembered we only have 3 chairs Ha haha! 

4th July Cupcakes

Making 4th July cupcakes, I realized I didn't have any blue or red sprinkles. I mentioned this to James who decided to try his hand at decorating. He sort of hand-painted them with a new kind of cupcake decoration technique - Introducing the Morris family Custom Watercolor Painted Cupcakes!

James using a knife to brush on the blue

Notice the 'Mr Fixit' t-shirt.  This is his second favorite around-the-house T-shirt. 

The street sign in the background was given to us for our Wedding by one of our very good friends. It is also where we had our first kiss!

Now for the - ahem - red. For some reason the red coloring would not turn darker than pink. I feared for our safety using any more of the stuff so - cheerleader pink it was! (Next time I will get Gel food coloring or add some black, I think it will give a better color).

Happy 4th July! I'm wearing my new navy sundress with little white dogs on it. I thought it worked well with the stripy scarf! It is OK as it is stripes on one thing and dots on the other.

Kisses for my little moose! 

Look how handsome I am!

Happy 4th of July Everybody!

Freedom, patriotism and following your heart

Happy Birthday America! A few years ago, when I first moved to the States, I did it for love. Not for the country - because that didn't matter at the time, I would have gone to live in a capsule by the moon. I was just following my heart.

Everyone has their own America, and I grew to love mine. After serendipity and passion had brought me to the States, I fiercely fell in love with it. Now I believe that I would live in America no matter what. And I hate to hear anyone who has not experienced first-hand the good in the States, criticize the bad. (I have heard people make highly generalized and throw-away comments especially in random acts of facebook scorn).  Maybe it is because I am an outsider, who has adopted the States, with all its good and bad, with all its apple pies and NSA, that I feel the sting just like I believe an American would, except without the convictions which come with generational patriotism and home-grown pride.

Perhaps it is because I'm not all that patriotic about my own Belgian roots that I analyze it a little more and delight in it when I see it in others, I love it when the Irish get excited about a football match or St Patrick's day (Aside: Don't call it St. Patty's day, I believe this just came about because of the American habit to pronounce T's as D's and is an incorrect spelling of Paddy and drives the Irish mad!!), I'm sorry to say I have yet to see strong Belgian patriotism - unless it comes out collectively, reactively to something negative, for example a crime or a wish to linguistically prevail or conversely as a microcosm - locally, for a youth football team perhaps. I may be wrong and I hope I don't offend my fellow Belgians out there. This is a Belgian person who has never lived in Belgium, who grew up in Ireland and loves Ireland just as fiercely as I love the States. So here's to Freedom, Patriotism and Following your heart!!

"It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you. "

 ~Author unknown, sometimes attributed to M. Grundler

Freedom is never free. 

~Author Unknown

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom. 

~Simone de Beauvoir

What is the essence of America?  Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom "to" and freedom "from." 

~Marilyn vos Savant

Tweetie's room

Last week James and I went to Rota to get all the large ticket items that we need for when Tweetie gets here. Later on I'll write something on what we all got in terms of stroller and car seat and maybe I'll do a couple of reviews once I've had a chance to use them! There is a really nice US Naval base in Rota and it's about a 3 hour drive from Granada. Generally when we go there we stay at the Lodge and spend the day getting all our commissary items and ticking things off a tattered old list that we'll have been adding to for weeks. This time around, it was a baby gear run! 

We had decided that rather than ordering to the PX and risk it not being there when we got to Rota, we would simply choose from what was there. It was actually a lot less overwhelming that way because we only had a couple of choices for each thing. Who cares if we didn't get the absolutely best, most perfect and absolutely THE most 'bang for your buck' stroller? We will have our little perfect daughter to put in it, and as long as it was good value for the money in general, safe and functional, and not a complete disaster to use, I'm happy! (I did however google all product recalls and reviews on the fly just to make sure.)

The one thing we didn't get at the PX was her crib. There were 2 to choose from, one large white one and a smaller cherrywood one. The cherry was quite dark so the really helpful guy at the PX suggested we visit the IKEA in Jerez which is only about 15-20 minutes away. It was my first time EVER at an IKEA. Thankfully it was open till 10pm because I was in..wow, I don't even know - an IKEA trance! We walked around for 2 hours taking it all in. I'm surprised we didn't fall asleep in one of the display rooms afterwards Ha haha!

So - we finally got her crib and James worked all day Saturday to put everything together for me so that I could finish decorating!

What I love about the room is that it is teensy - just a couple of metres across and wide, but we managed to fit everything what all we needed in there. I think it's completely cute and functional. I also love that there is evidence of our friends and family all around her room - little tokens of love!
The crib itself is my Momma's present to us. It is just so beautiful for a little girl's room. James was the Daddy-mastermind behind the netting which was 15.99 EUR from IKEA.

This is basically what you see when you walk in the door. We took the doors off of the closet to open the room a bit more (James and my Mom were initially against the idea but I really like how it turned out). I took one of the shelves out and replaced it with a hanging rod, which James attached securely by drilling some tiny holes on either side to hold it in place. Afterwards he even put her little outfits back in order of size! <3

We ended up getting a changing table after all, which I'm really thrilled about! Initially we weren't going to get one because I figured I would be mostly changing her on-the-go but the storage space underneath is really valuable, especially in such a small room! 

Right of the room with my new gliding chair! I have it covered
with a blanket because of our naughty kitties! The room must
have a nice vibe to it as I keep finding Mia curled up asleep in there! 

Left of the room

The room has a tiny shelf running along the top of the closet which is so handy for little things like this. The little lacy edging is from Grandma in the States! (as are pretty much all of Tweetie's hanging outfits underneath!) 

Little teddies that I don't think are kiddie safe are going up top on the shelf! 

I made this little box - or rather I bought it as nude pine, and painted
it pink and green and glued the hedgehogs on it. My sister will recognize those! 

My friend Muriel made the necklace for us on the occasion of our wedding. She wrote a virtue on
each little bead as reminders of what makes for a successful marriage.  What an amazing idea! We loved it.
Definitely a burn-box item. 

The little porcelain house at the bottom of this picture is something my sister gave me many moons ago.  It reminds
me of a little cottage in Ireland. I bought this book 'Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms' many moons ago in Boston because I thought it was so cute! 

A little inspirational meditation from Sally! 

James had some adventures putting up Mr Sun but it was all worth it in the end 

New buddies