Conil de la Frontera, Spain

I remember how much I like blogging just when I think I don't have time to do it. It is a nice way for me to keep track of what I did when and look back on fond memories and/or learn from things. I also like to think I may be halping soemone else who happens to find my blog while preparing to do something similar. So, this is post kind of fits all of those categories.

Over Easter, we decided to take a mini break to Spain.Specifically the southern Atlantic coast of Spain. On our agenda was relaxation, ocean, Gibraltar and maybe Morocco. I loved the idea of touching 3 countries on 2 continents in a span of 4 days but in the end relaxation and the ocean won out over Africa. When this is your balcony, you would choose to spend as much time as possible here too.

We had both been to Spain before on vacation as teenagers and for work more recently. We thought about Barcelona but then decided to go further south and ultimately revisited a hotel P stayed at with his family in the past. It also happened to be the one I found via Google maps when looking for something near to the beach.

There's so much I could tell you about this location that won me over in the end. I think I will start with the photos because even though they can't do justice to the location, they still make me swoon. I should also note that these photos were taken on my red Japanese video camera and have not been edited in any way because I am way to lazy to learn photo shop any time soon.

More words to follow. + Gibraltar + Easter + Tapas.

Keys

I am just quickly dropping in to show off my latest functional stress reliever. Banging nails. With more than 100 nails in the completed project, I can safely say this entails the most non-load bearing nails of anything I have ever built and I build with nails a lot.

This was a spin off of a the Pinterest challenge I wrote about last month. One of the other challenge participants made a nail and string New Hampshire and it won me over. I had this small board that I bought from the Ikea spare parts section years ago intending to use in a wedding project. It cost 1 EUR and P has yhreatened to throw it out several times but it has the perfect hanging holes in the back so I could not part with it. When I saw 2 packages of "extra" Ikea nails in our bathroom I knew I had the bones of this project and just needed a practical reason to make something out of string. Anyone who knows my husband knows he is famous for asking where his keys and glasses are and sends me on a panic search for either at least once a month. I clearly made this for him. He seemed genuinely impressed by it when I showed him the final project. Now to see if he uses it is another story.

Total cost 5 EUR mostly for the string of which I now have about 100 meters left.

3 Chairs Hooray!

I couldn't resist that title. I finished chairs 2 and 3. There was a bit of a challenge with the upholstery part of these two. First, the home improvement store in the city does not sell foam (or Styrofoam either in case you are wondering) so I had to wait for P to visit and ask him to get me some with his car. Which he did...he also got a piece of wood for another project which is another story all together but exciting none the less.

There was a bit of MacGyvering going on here as I needed to figure out a way to spruse up the cane seats. I was set on upholstery, especially when I found that nice lt. grey polka dot fabric but not really sure how to do it. I thought about removing the caneing. Then I learned these chairs were an iconic style and started searching the inter webs to see how others had remade them. This is the post from Apartment Therapy that caught my eye via Pulse one morning. So, I guess I really need to give some more credit to P for forceing me into a smartphone lifestyle. Specifically, this rainbow confirmed my decision to upholster

Photo Book

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Brain Dump

My favorite blogs are ones which post daily and teach me new things. I try to teach things on my blog but I certainly don't post daily. I don't post reguarly. I get it, this would not be my favorite blog for that reason. I won't be promising to post more frequently. In fact, just the opposite. I am in the super stressful end phase of my dissertation and although I just had a very positive research meeting, there is so much to do....research, analysis, writing, editing, and other daily tasks. When I am not in my office, I am at sports, sleeping or (hopefully) doing something creative. Blogging requires sitting at my computer and lately I only do that at home to watch TV. It's just how it is at the moment. So, instead of not posting until I have something with photos here's a brain dump of what'S going on in my life.

I had an amazing Easter weekend in Spain. Eventually, I will post the photos. I will also pick a few favorites to fram and hand in my apartment and actually do it this time. The photos are that impressive and the vacation was that good. I can highly recommend Conil de la Fuentera and if you want more info before I post about it, just ask.

I booked a flight for my next "mini break." Great friends are gettign married 2 weeks before I hand in my dissertation and it will surely be the peak of my stress but it is so important to me that we are there. They flew across the country to celebrate with us and I was happy to have them so I am happy to do the same, remove country, insert Atlantic. I am actually really looking forward to a long weekend in the US. I just need to get myself in line so I can enjoy it with minimal stress.

I am looking forward to breakfast at my fav. cafe with my husband tomorrow morning. I know this is a small thing but sometimes the small things are exciting and should be savored.

I have two pallets on my balcony waiting for my attention. I dread the sanding process but would really like to do something with them so they are 1) off my balcony, 2) useful, and 3) I realized I really enjoy nailing. I also really enjoy painting so I will most likely use this as an excuse to pick up another color. I think I will make the smaller one into a shoe rack as I am constantly running out of places to put my shoes. On the construction front, I also need a board to make my entryway table more useful, maybe I can combine the two somehow. Measuring tape required.

I like to releive my stress via sports. I did 3 sessions of training this week instead of 2 as well as biking to work 4 of 5 days and it is a huge difference in my productivity and attitude. I hope I can work some more running into my routine in the coming weeks as I am running in a team marathon on May 11.

I think I may head out "early" today and ride my bicycle to the Turkish grocery store for olives and wraps. It really is the little things like finally a day of sunshine to ride my bike and the promise of olives that make me excited. There's also a second hand store around the corner which has a nice selection of furniture, maybe I will stop in for inspiration.

Lace Candle Jars - Pinterest Winter Challenge

Much to the dismay of my darling husband, I have been collecting glass jars to hold candles since I used them to light the pathway of my 26th birthday BBQ. I recycled most of them when we moved but then started over again. I have even made purchase decisions based on the jar size/shape. Before you put me in the crazy pile, I should point out that I am generally not interested in cleaning gross jars so my collection is not much larger than 10 and, a you will soon see, most are tea light friendly. I love the simplicity of the glass jars for illuminating my balcony in the summer. So, when I saw this pin I knew I had to dress up my jar collection

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In the past, I have been overloaded with inspiration after one of Sherry and Katie's Pinterest Challenges. However, I never had a project to add. This time I have two which came together in the right time frame to participate. In this post, I will detail my new candle holders. The other project is the final reveal of my white and grey chairs which will get their own post. If you want to read the rules and check out the hosts and other participants head over to YHL for over 600 links and be prepared to get sucked into the creativity. You have been warned.

Full disclaimer, I have since unregistered myself from Pinterest after reading a couple of articles pertaining to the legal protection of its user agreement. Specifically, the company puts all the risk onto users for any potential copyright infringement. This recent Forbes article links back to a couple of others and explains the situation pretty well, comparing Pinterest to Napster. I don't want to rain on the Pinterest party but I just do not feel comfortable promoting a site I am no loner happy to use. 

So, with the above inspiration photo in mind, I headed out to my local secondhand shop in search of a doily or two to spruce up my jars. In life, this was a spontaneous project that I did not intend to blog so I don't have before photos of jars (think small olive and sauce jars) or the doily I ended up buying (it was yellowed and stained but large enough and with distinctive patterns I could cut out. 

This is a really simple project that can set the mood for a casual evening get together. It also seems to be a popular addition to an outdoor shabby chic styled wedding. Most importantly it is cheap and easy with a capital E. Here are my jars in action:

 

You will need:

Modge Podge (or any brand of decoupage glue) 

paint brush (small but does not need to be fancy as you will ruin it with glue)

glass jars (save these as you use them)

lace

My total cost was 0.50 EUR cents for the doily! I had the glue and brush from prior use and jars are all recycled. 

So, once you have gathered your supplies, set them out so you have a feel for the different sizes and can approximate what bits of the lace pattern you want to use on each one. I started by picking a non-stained section of lace and snipping it out. I found it was super easy to separate the patterns in my lace so that is what I did. You can see my inspiration photo used a more delicate lace and just wrapped it around the jar. If I had bought new lace by the yard, this would have been fine but since I used an antique doily that may have been created by hand, the pattern was larger and more defined and I wanted to really highlight its intricacies. So, I snipped, figured out placement and then brushed a thin layer of glue on the jar. I then stuck the lace on and applied a thicker layer of glue over it. Keep in mind that the glue will make the fabric thicker, feel free to use that to your advantage in designing the jars. In the jar below, you can see, I left a bit of the fabric standing over the top. This bit was fully covered in glue so it would stand on its own like that. For fire safety, I will only use a small tea light in that jar to be sure the flame is no where near the fabric.

My lace doily had three distinct patterns. The parts that looked like flowers, the parts that looked like paisley and then a cross hatch pattern in the middle. You can see a bit of an imperfection in the center of the large flower below. This was the biggest flower and fit perfectly on my largest jar so I decided I was fine with the imperfection. After all this was a recycled project and I was going for an antique look for my cake party anyway.

Here is the finished product acting as a centerpiece on my dining table. I think these little guys will get to stay indoors now. You may notice I mixed in a few non-lace covered candle holders, both types are from IKEA. While the tall candle stick is an orphan since its mate broke a couple of years ago and has since been discontinued, the small tea light holders can still be purchased and are the flip side of the holders used in the first photo with purple candles. They cost less than 1 EUR each and can be used for tapers or tea lights and I love this about them.

And that's it, low effort, high impact. Now that I used these jars, I will recommend only using tea lights inside them. I used small pillars (also from IKEA) in 3 of the bigger jars and by the end of the day noticed the rims were black. In the photo below, those flowers are in a vase but it looks like they are in the largest jar which may be a great alternative use for these. 

Did you also make something for the latest Pinterest challenge? Add a link in the comments...I want to see. 

Last Weekend

 Last weekend I had a cake party. More appropriately and in German, I invited some friends over for "Cafe und Kuchen." Cafe und Kuchen is a German thing in my mind and I associate it with Omas (grandmas). It's essentially eating cake and drinking coffee in the afternoon, so I have no complaints about the concept but I think the Oma association comes from the fact that they are the ones who have time for such a thing. To be fair, it is mostly a Sunday afternoon thing for most. Anyway, enough rambling I am no expert, I just like cake...and coffee...and friends. So, I decided to organize a cake party of my own. P was here for the weekend and kindly drove me to a supermarket where we bought lots of ingredients for an afternoon of baking.


I planned to bake 5 cakes in all, 4 using authentic recipes from German Omas and one following a recipe from the internet, Guinness chocolate cake as a nod to the upcoming St. Patrick's Day that Germans do not celebrate. Last summer, for my birthday, my wish list included baking items and family cake recipes and my colleagues really came through. However, this was the first time I was getting around to actually trying to bake these cakes. Unlike the internet, family recipes tend to have less instruction and leave more room for interpretation which was pretty intimidating for me. Also, each cake called for 4 eggs so 30 eggs, 1.5 kg of flower, 300g nuts, Guinness, cream, and lots of sugar later I had everything I needed to spend the day baking. And then this happened...

Luckily that had nothing to do with my baking. I dropped a flower pot that had been holding spare change while moving something in the kitchen. The kitchen which I had so thoroughly vacuumed just hours before. You can also see we have replaced the industrial strength wet/dry vac with a Dyson which is A-mazing. Minor set back but moving on to cakes...


I found the inspiration for this Chocolate Guinness cake online and it did not disappoint. It was rich and moist and even though I made mine in a different pan than suggested, I did not have a problem getting the intended results. I didn't get leftovers either as P took the rest to his office. I will make this again even if it is not near St. Patrick's day.



This is a Fanta cake, make with Fanta orange soda. It kind of looks like a volcano so I just went with it when adding the glaze and let it pool at the base. The cake and glaze both have a slight hit of orange but more in the way that it tastes fresh than in an overwhelming this is an orange flavored cake. It is also very moist and tastes like a classic birthday cake. We got to enjoy the leftovers for breakfast at our department meeting Monday morning.  The only part I would change is the frosting. I think an orange butter cream using either a fresh orange or orange buttermilk would be better than the glaze. I would also try this as a cupcake.




The apple cake and whipped cream. I cannot take credit for this as I was too lazy to peel apples so this only made it onto the menu when P volunteered to do the peel removal. This is a German classic. Unlike an apple pie, this is actually half cake topped with the fruit of 6 apples. It was moist and delicious and there were sadly no leftovers. This was the winner for best cake best on the basis of the small piece of the cake chart remaining (my guests were mostly researchers, and the German term for a pie chart is cake chart, you really have to turn your nerd on for that one).

The last cake is not exactly a cake and I have no idea what to call them in English. I made the dough on Saturday, balled it up and refrigerated overnight. On Sunday I rolled it out and made the egg white and nut filling then cut, filled and rolled like mini croissants before popping them in the oven to bake. I had lots of filling leftover so I tried to make some meringue cookies in my whoopie pie pan which turned out to be an epically delicious fail that got washed down the sink because I didn't grease the pan first. The actual dessert was delicious and approved by the recipe owner.



In addition to baking, I had fun setting up the party. As I mentioned the idea of a cake party makes me thing of grandmas, I went with a bit of a vintage theme. I was super excited to buy an antique tea pot and some matching dishes (top left corner of below photos) for the occasion. P thought they were redic but I love them. I also picked up a lace doily and deconstructed the lace to decorate my jar collection. I think I will write that up in its own post for the current Pinterest Challenge since I got my inspiration for that from the internet.



The final cake I do not have a solo shot of is in the bottom left of the above photo and it was delicious. It is lovingly referred to as Oma Kuchen. It's a dense cake with raisins and chocolate bits. I love it for breakfast and it pairs so well with black coffee. I will be making this again for sure, it is also on my mental list to bake for Christmas in RI. I think nuts would be a great addition and cranberries could substitute nicely for raisins.

All in all, there were zero cake fails which makes me so so happy. We also successfully entertained 15 people in the living room and everyone had a place to sit. This Kuchen party did not turn into a Küche party!