Traduce Aqui:

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Furniture

Since Angelines and I have been together, the only furniture of importance that we have purchased has been
We also bought this lamp for the bedroom.
It's from the same Moroccan emporium as the
wall tiles in the living room. :)
our dining room table with six chairs and a couch.  Granted we have had a few things made, like the table in our kitchen or the sofa in the living room, but my point is we have been living for seven year with mostly gifted, hand-me-down furniture.

For years now, my mother-in-law has been after us to get a headboard for our bed (hand-me-down gift from my sister-in-law).  First of all, this has never seemed like much of a priority to me, and second of all, we just never seemed to be able to find anything we liked.

Last year we found a full bedroom set from Ikea which we both really loved, but just couldn't justify spending the money at the time.  Finally with little Emily on the way, we decided we would buy the bedroom set (bed, night tables and a nice, big dresser) thinking tha the dresser could be for all the baby's clothes.  When we finally went to Ikea to make our big purchase, it turns out they don't make the set in the color we liked anymore!  Now they only have it in either black or white, neither of which works for us. :(  We were quite upset and kicking ourselves for not having bought it way back when.  It was back to the drawing board for the bedroom, but we decided we would at least have to buy some kind of dresser for Emily Alejandra's growing wardrobe.

Our bedroom looks legitimate now!  My
mother-in-law was thrilled to see our
purchase. ;)
Another item on our shopping list was an armchair.  We have a nice big couch, but it isn't very comfortable for sitting on.  It's more of a sprawling type couch; so with the prospect of breast-feeding in the future and the possibility of being very uncomfortable in a completely prone position as my pregnancy reaches full term, we began the hunt for a nice recliner.  At first we were looking for a rocking recliner thinking it would be nice for baby comforting, but a saleswoman at one furniture store (upon observation of my bump) pointed out that breast-feeding can be tricky enough as is at first without the added complication of rocking.  She said she had bought a rocking chair when she was pregnant and it's sat virtually unused in her living room ever since.  It seemed like sound advice.

After all the bother of renting a van to take back and pick up the closet units from Ikea, we weren't keen to find a nice armchair in Malaga.  Angelines suggested we look at the local furniture store.  As long as we were in there, we decided to have a look around at possible bedroom sets (or at least dressers), too.  Alas, they were all too modern and quite frankly, ugly; but hidden away at the back of the shop behind several unassembled bed sets, something caught my eye.  It was a beautiful, rustic-style headboard--exactly what we've been looking for!  I asked about the price.  It is solid teak and valued at 500 euros...my heart sank.  But, as it turns out, it's been sitting there for some time and being a solitary piece--not part of a set--the man was looking to get rid of it.  We took it home for 195 and we were also able to find a suitable armchair!

I'll have to put up a picture of the chair in our living room...this is obviously in the store.

Hooray for supporting local business!

...of course, the dresser has yet to be purchased... Ha!

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Outings

July and the beginning of August have been full of home-improvement projects.  We really haven't had much time at all to enjoy the summer.  Until just last week we hadn't even been to the beach!  But now we seem to have reached an appropriate resting point on all our various projects.  We continue to peck away at things--our closet isn't completely finished yet and we still have to organize the upstairs bedroom and do a bit more mop-up cleaning--but it seems that the most urgent parts of everything have been finished and so we can carry on normal life in between spurts of organization and cleaning.

Being back to "normal" has freed us up to do more fun things.  Angelines especially is prone to diving head-first into projects and not coming up for air until they are 100% completed.  Of course "100%" completed is an unattainable goal when you're a home-owner.  There is ALWAYS something more to do!  So her get-it-done attitude in this case is more harmful than admirable.  We've been working to break-up the work and enjoy the small, daily progression of things as opposed to holding off to celebrate the elusive End to work around the house.

In the past two weeks we've taken several evening trips out.  We had a picnic dinner at El Chorro and also visited two different fairs in towns nearby.  Our most recent trip to the fair in Puente Genil on Sunday resulted in a delicious and oh so unhealthy dinner of churros con chocolate!  Angelines loves potato churros and they're hard to come by except at fairs so we ordered to go and brought them home for a greasy, sweet dinner. ;)  Puente Genil is the town that we always visit at Christmas time because it's famous for the great lights.  The lights at the fair were equally exceptional.  I think a summer pilgrimage to see the fair lights might become a tradition. 

Tuesday went to the beach to take advantage of the fact that I had no afternoon classes.  It was fabulous.  When we headed out in the morning it was cool and overcast in La Roda and I was worried that we'd chosen a bad day for the beach, but as we came down from the costal mountains to Málaga the temperature had gone up to 30ºC and it was a clear, sunny, windless day!  Perfect!  The beach was full, but not packed and the water was the perfect temperature--just cool enough to be refreshing.  As the afternoon wore on the wind picked up and we got to have some fun playing in the waves. :)  Around 5 we decided to pack up and head home.  Although we were only on the beach for about 4 hours, it felt like a mini-vacation. :)

At the fair in Herrera we decided to get shwarma for dinner--Mmmmm!

Posing in front of the waves in Rincon de la Victoria, Malaga.

The churro stand at the fair in Puente Genil.  Aren't the lights great?!

Silhouette at dusk looking out over the reservoir at El Chorro.

Picnic time!

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Perks of Pregnancy

In Spain they say that if a pregnant woman has a craving for something and she doesn't satisfy that craving, the baby will have a birthmark in the shape of whatever it was.  Birthmarks are called antojos--"cravings".  Needless to say they take this very seriously.

Being the stupid American that I am, I haven't taken advantage of this major perk: everyone, everywhere will heed my every whim and fancy!  For example we were out having beers before lunch one day and when everyone else had ordered a second round, I was still nursing my lemon soda and therefore wasn't entitled to a tapa.  When Angelines chose some salami (which I cannot eat), I said, you should have got the cheese to share with me!  Nuria, who was sitting on my other side, overheard and immediately called the waitress over: "She's craving cheese, give her a tapa of cheese".  The effect was immediate: a mini plate of cheese was placed before me within seconds; although I'm sure it was added to our tab. ;)

There is a small, family owned and opperated dairy farm behind our house down a dirt road where we walk the dog most days.  For some time now, I have been wanting to talk to the owners about buying milk straight from them, but I´ve never had the oppotunity to bring it up and I didn't feel right just waltzing up to the farm with a bottle and asking for milk.

Wednesday evening Angelines and I were coming home from our evening walk when we ran into the dairy farmer heading for home on his tracktor.  He stopped and as we were chatting, I noticed that he had a small tin canister by the tracktor seat.  This was my chance to bring up the topic: "What's that," I asked, "milk?"  It was.  Apparently he takes some home every day... I would too if I had a dairy farm!  When I told him that I wanted to buy milk from him, he wanted to give me the cannister then and there: "Take it!  You don't want your baby to have a milk-shaped stain across her face!"  I laughed and said that we'd talk about it after the baby was born.  I know that fresh milk can be more dangerous to drink than what you get in the store and playing with risky foods during pregnancy isn't a good idea.  

I was finally able to dissuade him and off he went.  But the next day coming home from my walk, as I was turning the corner to go home, his 85-year-old father, Pepe, flagged me down and said he had a bottle of milk for me!  I wasn't about to argue with an elderly man who spent all his youth milking straight into a glass and drinking it about the possible dangers of raw milk... so after asking about how to boil it and for how long I  graciously accepted the bottle and headed home to do a few google searches just in case.

Pepe had assured me that I just needed to bring it to a boil, that once the milk had formed a foamy head and risen to the brim of the pot, I could take it off the stove and let it cool.  I should stir it as it was reaching the boiling point to kill anything in it, but "nowadays there are all kinds of controls and vaccines for cows, they're healthier than we are!  There's nothing bad in this milk" he assured me.  The germaphobe got the better of me though and I opted to follow some advise I found online on home pasturizing which said to let the milk simmer at 145 F for thirty minutes.  I took out the meat thermometer I only ever use at Thanksgiving, and got to it.  

The milk was on average well over 145 and so I took it off the stove two minutes early.  Even though I know that cooking it so long changes the flavor somewhat, this was by far, the best milk I've ever drunk.  It was delicious.  I didn't even wait for it to cool, but instead grabbed a chocolate chip cookie I'd made a few days earlier and sat down to enjoy--divine. :)

Today Angelines and I finished off the last of the 1.5 liters that we were given.  They say that you should drink fresh milk between 36 and 48 hours after milking...although I think if you cook it as I did it will last a bit longer.  In any case, we finished it off with no problem within the 48 hour time frame.  Breakfast this morning was homemade pancakes with peanut butter, maple syrup and ice-cold, FRESH milk.  Yum!


...and just for fun, here's my belly at 7 months. :)

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Back in the Pool

Last Thursday, after about three months of no swimming, we finally got back in the pool.  Life just got too crazy for a while and driving to and from Antequera took up precious time we needed to spend elsewhere and so our swimming routine was put on hold.  During the summer months, however, the outdoor pool here in La Roda is open and so we're finally getting back in the water.  July flew by with all the work we've been doing here in the house and so we've only just bought our pool passes for August.

It felt great to be back in the water, but the first lap was a long one!  Our pool in town is 50 meters instead of 25 like in Antequera...and after three months of nothing, I could feel it about half way across.  It didn't take more than two laps to get back into a rhythm.  I ended up swimming 1,200 meters.  Not bad, right?

But as is always the case when it comes to me, the real highlight of the day was coming home to the great lunch I'd prepared ahead of time: homemade pasties with tomato, cucumber salad and a side of zucchini cream soup. Soooooo good!

No picture of the pool...but those of you who know me aren't surprised by that!

Saturday, August 2, 2014

One Month and Counting...

This was all I was able to do myself...pathetic.
Remember way back at the beginning of July when I blogged about the tile work we'd be doing in our walk-in closet and living room?  That ended up being far more work than either of us imagined.  If you recall, we had planned to do the prep work for the tiling ourselves, but after chipping away no more than about one square meter of 45 total, we caved and paid the brick-layer to do it.  I may have inherited the Wilbanks frugal gene...but I also have my mother's practical, good sense in these situations--the time and pain (literally: Angelines couldn't raise her arms after one day of helping the guy we hired) just weren't worth the money we'd save in this case.  As it was, the brick-layer took a full week of seven hour days just to chip the walls!


In the living room we discovered that part of the reason there was so much humidity seeping through was because the walls weren't covered in cement.  It was just plaster on brick...usually they put a layer of cement in between as a humidity barrier.  We still aren't sure of the origin of so much moisture, but it's nice to know that now we've got things a bit more under control.  That was extra work we hadn't counted on: cementing over the brick in the living room before tiling!


Notice the bare brick?  ...and see all that dust?  Every day we had to finish up the morning by sweeping and mopping. :p

...Another three days of work.

See what I mean?!  Yuck.
Finally, we got down to the "easy" stuff--tiling.  And yet again we ran into a small hiccup in the work.  The decorative tile we'd chosen to go along the top of the work in the living room looked beautiful in the showroom, but was absolutely horrid when put up on the wall.  We had thought it would look nice because it had darker shades than the wall tiles and would look nice with the dark wood furniture and window frame... WRONG.  It completely took away from the elegance of the clay-colored wall tiles and especially clashed with the three, beautiful, smaller tiles we bought at a Moroccan emporium.  It looked nothing but busy and created an atmosphere that was far from relaxing.

Thankfully we decided we just couldn't live with those tiles while the cement was still wet.  We asked our patient worker to please take them down and then dashed off to see if we could find something better.  At the very least we'd decided we would just end the wall without any deccoration, a far better option in light of the hideous alternative.

We ended up finding some very nice, blue and white tiles for the deccoration.  The design is much more simple and I think you'll agree that the end result is light-years better than our first choice.  The blue brings more color into the room and ties nicely with the moroccan tiles.  It also contrasts beautifully with the reddish tiles and the red grout we chose.  I am very pleased with the final outcome, but there was a moment when I was worried we'd made an irreparable mistake!

The finished living room wall.  Only the couch is missing from the picture.

Close-up of the wall.  The tile below is one of the ones from the moroccon emporium.

At the back of the picture you can see the closet.
The tiles in these front nooks are the same as the
living room, but set square instead of on end.
The tiles in the closet are different: long, rectangular, cream-marble. They have a glossy finish as opposed to the living room, which is semi-glossy.  It looks very elegant finished and so I'm a little sad that we've decided to go with Ikea pre-fab closet units (purchased Monday, delivered Friday) which will completely cover the tile!  We could have saved ourselves the money on the tiling, you say?  Yes, perhaps, but the main purpose was to keep out the humitidy anyway and regardless of what kind of shelving we put into the closet, once all our clothes and things are in it, you wouldn't see much of the tiles anyway.  That's also why we chose the tiles we did, they are beautiful, but they're best asset by far was the 6 euro/meter price tag. ;)

This weekend we've run into some issues with the Ikea furniture; it doesn't seem to be quite the right fit.  But thanks to their awesome return policy, we can exchange everything, even the stuff we've already put together!  I think with the exchange, we might even end up saving ourselves some money--hooray!

Bela supervising Angelines's work as she puts together one of the closet units from Ikea.  The color is nearly the same as the tiles!  That was completely unintentionaly, but it looks great in there. :)
In total the guy worked three weeks to get the job done.  He did great work and, all things considered, I think he did it pretty quickly, too.  Now one month has gone by since we began with all this and only this week did we finish all the clean up--so much dusting! moping, scrubbing, painting (walls and ceilings)...  Angelines has done virtually all that by herself.  My sister-in-law came over to help a few days this week too.  I'm being told I can't partake in such "heavy" labor and so I'm off the hook! ;) Now the living room is all back in place and looks more beautiful and homey than ever!  Of course, the closet has yet to be finished...and so our bedroom continues to look like a disorganized thrift-shop, but we're getting there... little by little. ;)