Making home more homey!

I want to share with you, my faithful blog readers, what I've done to my home (so far) to make it more homey and personalized! A few weeks ago I went to Ikea with Denise, in the hopes of finding a few good priced items to makeover some areas of my living room and bedroom. First, you must know that all of the walls in the "MA living area" are mintish green. I don't think they were expecting it to be as minty as it turned out, but it is, and I guess they didn't want to redo it. It's fine...after a while you don't even notice, but it would be nice if my furniture didn't clash with it! Yes, I have forest green couches, that IMM has had forever!! I saw them in a program from back in the day when IMM was located in Belgium (in the 80's and 90's). I also have a nice burnt brown/goldish recliner that looks like something I would've seen at my grandpa's house. At least I have a brown toned rug to tie everything in that area together. Anyways, after a missionary garage sale, an afternoon at Ikea and an afternoon at the Rastro (a huge market Madrid is known for), I was able to do a small makeover in my living room area. Click on the photos to enlarge them so you can read what I wrote.

Pictures from my bedroom soon to  come, once I put it all together.

Sunsets...

I love them! Here's some captured images I want to share with you. The first two are from my birthday in Segovia. I love how in this first one, there are light beams that come out and are so noticeable. 

A full moon (with a lens flare).

Thank God for digital!

I celebrated my birthday this past Saturday in Segovia, a city just north of Madrid with Vino and Erin. Two other new friends were supposed to come, but something else got in the way, so they had to bail on us. Anyways, as we all know, I love pictures!! Buying my digital SLR camera was the best purchase I have made...probably ever...well, equal to my Mac! I took about 450 pictures in one day! The reason I was able to take so many was because I had just deleted all the pictures from my memory card. Some of the pics were of textures, doors, windows and different fonts/texts for various stock image collections I'm building up, but still...450 is quite a lot! I'm now going through and deleting ones of course that are duplicates or out of focus or just not good enough to use memory on my hard drive. The point of this blog is: if you don't have a digital camera...get one! 

Photos of Segovia and Toledo to come soon!

Making Memories...

This past weekend I had the opportunity to make some great memories with a friend from college, Christina, and a new friend, Mac, from Mexico City. Mac and Christina met on an airplane from Mexico to Minneapolis earlier this year. Christina flew in to Madrid on Wednesday and on Friday we took a bus to Barcelona! We met Mac there on Saturday morning and had a very full day of sightseeing, meeting Italians, watching Spain's favorite sport...futbol (or as we say in the USA - soccer) and laying on the beach of the Mediterranean Sea! Since I only had until Sunday afternoon, I packed my full day in Barcelona with visiting sights from my top list of things to do!  Christina and Mac were very good sports about letting me decide what things to do that day. Thanks guys! We sure got our exercise in for the weekend. I love being a tourist and traveling, but when you have someone or some friends to travel with, see new sights, and make memories...it makes that time all the more better! I believe, it's really the people and relationships in my life (or anyone's life) that matter most! The sights and places in Barcelona would've been nice to see by myself, but friends make it so much better! Even though I met Mac for the first time on Saturday morning, the three of us had a great time (at least, I think they did too)! Here's some of the captured moments from the trip!

La Sagrada Familia

L to R-Mac, Gianlucas and Mateo (the guys we met from Italia! They were fun and nice, they gave us their Barcelona guide map and told us about Fira Barcelona, a beautiful fountain, light and music display you'll see later). I LOVE meeting people from other countries/cultures!! Living in MN, I didn't get that much, but in Spain...yes! 

 That's me, in front of the National Art Museum. Didn't go in it, but it had a great view of the city!

Oh yea, Barcelona vs. Russia Futbol! One thing I wanted to do while living in Spain was go to a soccer game, however, once I found out the price of the tickets, I knew that would probably not be an option. But, thanks to Mac and his generous offer to pay for the majority of the tickets, we got to go!! Muchas gracias amigo!

Mac, all smiles at the game! (until is started raining, but it just makes for a good story and fun experience!) The gorgeous sunset was a nice bonus...thanks God!

More pics to come....it just takes so long to download.

Guys like girls with skills....

...like nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills...

so, while I'm in Spain I'm going to try and get skilled at cooking and baking! This week, I made buttermilk pancakes (didn't turn out so well, because I didn't have baking soda) and I also made maple syrup from scratch!! yep...1 cup of boiling water, add 2 cups of white sugar, dissolve then add some maple flavoring (I don't remember how much) and  you have maple syrup! Mine turned out a little more runny that I like.

Tonight, I made banana nut, chocolate bread and muffins! Yum!! My muffins turned out well, however, after an hour of the bread baking, it was still mushy and not baked in the middle (I think my first mistake was putting too much  batter in the pan). So, I dumped the partially baked bread onto a cookie sheet, cut off the done outer edge, scooped out the middle not done batter and put that into a muffin tin. Then I baked those all some more and have sloppy looking muffins and parts of bread...but it all tastes the same, so who cares what it looks like, right!?

Also, a couple weeks ago, I made refried beans from scratch (Vino's family recipe and he coached me through it). I hope with great cooks as neighbors that I'll get some good recipes and tips from them so I can one day be a great cook!! I want to be able to cook (good food) for my husband when I get married!!