Paella!

Paella!

Hi everybody, thanks for stopping by once again. Today I bring you another little glimpse of our life here in Spain.

Yesterday we celebrated our church pastor's birthday  (Pedro). In southern Spain when it's party time we typically cook a paella, a rice dish cooked in a wide shallow pan. 

Paella is ideal party food as it is easy to cook. When we cook for a gathering, a large paella pan is brought in with a burner and the paella is cooked outside.

First the meat (or fish) goes in with the peppers, then water and spices are added and then you get what you see in the photo here:

 When the meat (in this case chicken) is cooked the rice is added. I think I saw 7 packs of rice go in (7 kilos):

Our church is in a large warehouse, and while the paella is cooking we all hang around and chat, our mouths watering with the lovely smell of food. This lot of paella fed 40 people abundantly plus a few dogs as well afterwards.

Here is the birthday boy Pedro with his wife Erika and a helper:

Now the rice is nearly cooked. A few more minutes and Erica will start serving. We all walk past with a plate and she just heaps it on! Yummy!

Eating paella with a large gathering of friends is definitely one of the great things about living in Spain!

Thanks for looking,

God bless and.... keep scrapping!

Lisca

CSI lay out "Ineke"

Hi everybody! 

Today I’d like to show you the scrapbook page I made this week. I follow CSI (Color, Stories, Inspiration) and the challenge this week was this:

I loved the colours as well as the quirky 'scene'.

I chose a photo of me and my best friend Ineke. Because the yellow of my cardigan and the grey in her blouse it matched the colour scheme perfectly.

The colours are all there. I had difficulty with the khaki, but I found it in the arrow and in the heart of the white flower.

The evidence are circles and flowers and an arrow. I didn’t know what ‘ransom lettering’ was, but looking at other people’s work I guess it means un-matching, individually cut letters. I’ve got those too.

My testimony lies in the stamped journaling spot, and is about the lifelong friendship with my friend Ineke and on the back I wrote how we met and what’s been happening in her life. It could qualify under mind-boggling too I suppose....A friendship that lasts that long is in itself mind-boggling.

On the page I wrote: “Let me tell you about my lifelong friend Ineke. Her story is on the back of this page.”  By the name ‘Ineke’ I added “Ineke pronounce ee-nuh-kuh”

The journaling on the back goes:

Ineke is my oldest and best friend. She is the type of friend with whom it doesn’t matter if you haven’t been in touch for a while. We just continue where we left off and it seems we were never apart.

We went to college together. When we were students we would go out together and one night at a bar we met two handsome dark-haired foreigners. The guy she was talking to spoke German and I was talking to the other in French. Now my French is abominable and my German is passable. Ineke speaks reasonable French but hardly any German so you can imagine we sort of swapped naturally. The German speaking one turned out to be an Italian and became my husband (later ex-husband, and even later deceased ex-husband). Ineke never married.

Ineke qualified as a physiotherapist and I never finished the course. I bummed around with my Italian and back-packed around the world before qualifying as a nurse.

Ineke had a mental breakdown at some stage and had a lot of time to think about her life and where it was heading. She went back to college and qualified as a psychologist some years later. She then lead a sort of double life: for two days a week she worked as a physiotherapist and the other three days she worked as a psychologist, until she retired quite recently.

Nowadays we only meet up about once a year and I’m looking forward to welcoming her here in Spain now she is retired. We have plenty to reminisce about.

That's it for today. 

God bless and.... keep on scrapping!

Lisca

Wednesday: What's on my desk...

It’s Wednesday! And if you were hoping to see my desk and what I’m working on, you’ll be disappointed. Because I’m not working on anything at the moment.  Tomorrow I plan to make a scrapbook page for the CSI challenge, and I will show you that when it’s done.

But there are a lot of goodies on my desk. I found a British supplier with very reasonable shipping charges, so I went a bit mad and bought four stencils and 10 ink sprays and some Perfect Pens (which I don’t quite know what to do with yet). I was given some money for my birthday and I’m spending it on scrap supplies. Great! 

Then the other day I was in town and went to the local Chinese bazaar. (Every town in Spain has a Chinese shop that sells household goods, nicknacks, toys, clothes, tools and yarns. You name it, they sell it. All imported from China. Cheap and cheerful, although not such good quality of course). I bought 4 heat glue guns and some glue sticks to go with those. They are for the craft workshop I now do every Monday afternoon in the village. (see previous blog). 

I still haven’t found a Sakura white gelly roll pen, so I’ve bought a pen with correction fluid. It does the same thing, although it’s not so fine and most probably not acid free. But hey, I have to work with what I’ve got...

I’ve taken photos of my goodies and have since then tidied my desk. It’s now ready for tomorrow when I will have time to do some scrapping! The household chores will be rushed through no doubt so I can get into my scrap room and ‘play’! (I can’t wait).

That it for today, thanks for looking.

God bless and .... keep scrapping!

Lisca

My first craft workshop in the village

Hello again! It’s Monday, and although I’m retired it was a super busy day for me. Doctor’s appointment, go to the bank,  church prayer meeting, grocery shopping and a workshop late afternoon.  In between all that, cooking meals had to fit in somewhere..... (and eating them of course).

So today I have started a weekly craft workshop in the village. The idea is to get the ladies here interested in scrapbooking, for which there is no Spanish word as far as I know (Elaine might put me right here). They are all part of a group of mothers who have children with epilepsy. This way I’m doing my bit for the charity too.

It all went very well. I showed them my scrapbook albums and explained about scrapbooking. They definitely want to do that. Great! But today they were going to make paper flowers as arranged. They have a fundraiser in May and want the venue to look pretty so we are concentrating on that for the moment.

Here I am explaining in my best Spanish how to fold the paper to make the petals. 

      

And this was the result: 12 happy ladies with the flowers they have made. I think they had fun. I certainly did!

Bye for now! God bless and..... keep scrapping!

Lisca

In My LIfe (Beatles)

Hi everybody! Thanks for stopping by again at my blog. This time it's about scrapbooking.

Depending on where in the world you live, you may or may not have seen a man in a kilt. Although my husband Graham was born in Guernsey, he is of Scottish descent and is allowed to wear a MacKay kilt.(The one in the photo has the hunting tartan).  He used to wear it a lot on stage when he was front man of a ceilidh (pron. kay-ley) band (folk band) but nowadays it's only for special occasions. I think he looks very smart in his kilt. I have this photo from a family wedding and have been wanting to make a scrapbook page of it for a while.  

I've used the lyrics of 'In My LIfe' by the Beatles. I love this old song. It’s from Rubber Soul, the album I have many sweet memories from.... I heard it the other day and thought the lyrics are so appropriate for me. 

So I’ve had some fun over the last few days making this layout from the CSI (Colors, stories, inspiration) challenge. This was their ‘Case File’:

 I used all the colours in their palette.

Then from the ‘Evidence’ I used a solid black background, a circle, and used a sewing machine and a heat glue gun (Using electricity). I thought that the song lyrics would count as a music element. I only needed to choose two pieces of evidence but I got more....

The ‘Testimony’ I used (only one is needed)of course was using song lyrics to inspire my page.

Here are the lyrics, written by John Lennon:

There are places I’ll remember

All my life though some have changed

Some forever not for better

Some have gone and some remain

 All these places have their moments

 With lovers and friends I still can recall

 Some are dead and some are living

 In my life I've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers

There is no one compares with you

 And these memories lose their meaning

When I think of love as something new

Though I know I'll never lose affection

 For people and things that went before

 I know I'll often stop and think about them

In my life I love you more

Though I know I'll never lose affection

For people and things that went before

I know I'll often stop and think about them

In my life I love you more

In my life I love you more

In My Life is a song from 1965. For those who weren’t around then and for those who can’t remember, here is the link to listen to the song: http://www.last.fm/music/The+Beatles/_/In+My+Life

I hope you enjoyed that song. 

That's it for today. Thank you for looking.

God bless and keep scrapping!

Lisca

What's on my desk?

Happy Wednesday everybody! Only two days to go to the weekend ! (but not if you’re a nurse...sorry).

In the vein of ‘Workspace Wednesday’, I would like to show you what’s on my desk:

I'm still practicing making paper flowers.  I'll be doing my first craft workshop on Monday which I’m very excited about. There will be 12 ladies. They want to learn to make paper flowers. I’m still struggling with paper flowers. Because I haven’t been able to make a flower without using a heat gun. I only have two heat guns. (and there are 12 ladies) I could buy some more of course but I don’t know if the venue has a decent power supply....  If I’m going to invest in contact glue, what should I get? Any suggestions? I’ll have to order them in the UK which would take a while to get here, but that might be the answer. 

I received a few more birthday cards (belated as the Spanish postal system isn’t that fast). And a mother's day card (lovely aren't they?). One of them came in a pretty polka dot envelope which will definitely be recycled  for crafting of course. My daughter-in-law also sent me a packet of Marimekko napkins (Marimekko is a famous design company from Finland) and a drawing from DGS (nearly two).

As you can see I’ll be busy this week. Next Wednesday I’ll tell you how it went (the workshop) and I hope I’ll have had time to work on a lay-out for CSI too, which I will up load over the weekend.

Take care, God bless and .....keep scrapping!

Cave house bathroom

Hello again.

It’s the first of April: April Fool’s Day! But I’m not going to play a joke on you. I’m going to tell you about my life living in a cave house in Andalucia (Spain).

The good thing about living in a cave house is that if you need more room, you can just hack out some more space out of the rock (within reason). 

Of course we have a bathroom in our cave house, but I always thought that an en-suite bathroom would be the ultimate luxury.  I’ve never had one and dreamt that one day I would. My lovely husband Graham promised he would do me one (Yes I am so blessed to have a handy hubby). 

  Last year he began digging into the bedroom wall and drilling to get all the services in (water, drainage etc). We moved the bed to another room of course.

 

 Then one day he got his Kango hammer out and started digging in earnest. A little bit every day, bless him! It took him months!

 But eventually I got the space. I chose the tiles (They are a typical Andalucian design) and not long after that I had my bathroom. Hey ho good ol’ Graham! Beautiful it is too. I’m very pleased. (And that’s a very British understatement!)

As yet we had no door in it. As a married couple we are not too fussed about having a door in the bathroom, but when we have guests, I guess they would certainly appreciate a door. Not long ago we picked up an antique door and I bought some chalk paint (Annie Sloan). Last week I painted it a duck egg colour and the next day I waxed it. It’s now up to Graham to make a frame and put the door in. I’ve done my bit. (lol) I’ll show you all the result when the door is in.

Thank you so much for looking. I’ll be back on Wednesday to share with you what’s on my craft desk....

Until then good bye and God Bless!

Lisca