Sights, Sweets and Sidewalks of Nazare

Yesterday, we took a family trip to Nazare, about 45 minutes north of our home. We’d heard great things about it, but had not been in our near 2 years of living here!

We started at the top. There is a elevator car that takes you up and down the hill. You can see the track on the far left of the cat. 

My husband checked things out while the girls rummaged for good shells.

I caught some great wave action photos—a first for me!

Not only was the scenery spectacular, the people were quite unique. To see traditional garb being worn along side current day fashion was really surprising. We took a pic of the lady selling nuts and her 7 skirts {the story goes that they would take off one for every day their sailor was out to sea fishing that week}, but she may have just been dressed up for a sale I think.

When we kept seeing other ladies in a version of that traditional dress, we realized this was the norm! 

My husband had to keep me from trying to take pictures of each of these ladies we saw--just something I didn’t expect to be a reality in “our” country!

Seems like this type of dress might no longer be seen past this generation—unless you’re a vendor!

Also, I had to show you some Portuguese sweets and not so sweet.

BIG meringues!

Lots of shredded candied egg yolk {that is NOT cheese}, filled with egg yolk pudding, or iced with egg yolk pastries along with some chocolate and apple items. A recent guest commented that one of these reminded him of a Twinkie but better!

Drying fish on racks on the sidewalk.

An old timer convertible with Alaska plates on the sidewalk—what?!!!  NOT normal to see in Portugal!

And lastly, what we picked up on the sidewalk! {next to a dumpster} All the parts were there except the obvious missing spindle. We’re not sure if we like it or think it needs a happy color of paint to make it less oppressive. Thoughts? 

Thanks for sharing our journey with us!

Silhouette Subway Art

So I received the most amazing machine for Christmas called the Silhouette.

It can cut paper, vinyl, and fabric and draw if you have the pen inserts. It’s a little different from other cutting machines because you don’t have to purchase fonts and graphics from a store. You get a set with the machine and then you can download more for about 99cents each. Plus the online store offers a free graphic each week! I’ve been working on learning the program that comes with it and am continually amazed at its functionality!

I think my most favorite thing I’ve made so far was the cut vinyl to decorate a tray I painted for a gift, sort of the “subway art” genre.

Transferring the vinyl in one piece was way trickier than the instructions made it seem. Therefore some of the words and letters were not in line and worse, I left too much space at the top. In the last  minute crunch to complete it, it had to be okay. Learning curve again! I do feel I’ll know what to do a little differently next time I make something like this.

Can’t say enough good things about it still (and no one’s paying me to say this)! I feel SO blessed to have one!

Homemade and Learning

With a chance to sit and write a post tonight, it seems a few projects have flown by that I didn’t get to share. I’m hoping to get to them, especially the ones using my new Silhouette! Just wait…I’ll fill you in later if you don’t know what that is. But first, the last minute/late homemade Christmas presents! {Yes, I am that behind on what I’d hoped to blog!}

My first attempt at decorative dishtowels, using materials I had on hand, including the chair fabric from an old garment I couldn’t throw away!  I learned a lot through this and with the next set I made using vintage fabric {sorry, no pics on those!}.  The next set two attempts of dish towels were DISASTERS as I attempted to use printed fabric as I did with the Thanksgiving pillow hoping a special rinse would keep it in the wash…and it didn’t and then trying transfer paper which is like vinyl on a dishtowel---nope.  Yes, we all hit walls at times in the out workings of our creativity!

My other homemade gift ideas were covering wooden frames with paper. Another learning curve for me! I did not do the best job cutting the paper neatly around the edges, so I sanded the edges more to give it an “intended” shabby look. Getting paper to lay down flat with no bubbles was also challenging for me, so much so that I covered over my first attempt with some sticky chalkboard paper! Since you could see the first paper underneath on the edges, I decided to add an embellishment to pull the unintended colors together. When you’re doing things last minute (as in, all the stores are closed because it’s Christmas Eve!) you have to use what you’ve got, even if it’s a mess-up!

So maybe this post should be called “Make Sure You Know What You’re Doing When You Plan On Giving Homemade Gifts” or “Start Your Homemade Christmas Presents in July”! Thankfully I can grin in retrospect.

Growing Up

I’ve been reading The House at Pooh Corner with the girls. It’s been a new thing for me, reading “classics” in their true form. Books like Ramona are what I remember from my early years and we’ll probably have to find that one to read too! Anyway, we were starting Chapter VI when the first paragraph really made me think:

By the time it came to the edge of the Forest, the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, “There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” But all the little streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late.

Part of me wants to believe I’ve grown up like the river, and I think I have quit living for the next big thing more and more. The other part of me doesn’t want to NOT jump and run and sparkle (who doesn’t want to sparkle or hold on to pieces of youthfulness?). Having purpose, steadfastness, and maturity may hold more value on the balance.

Thank you Father for growing us up.

Birthday Blooms Again

It’s been several weeks since my birthday, but I thought this year’s birthday blooms were worthy of a post (similar to last year’s). When my husband brought home one very tall stem of orchards, I wondered how would I display such a thing. I needed a heavy vase to hold up them up and let them not topple over. Then I remembered my fun vase set!

The orchids cut up in the little vases along with a flea market tablecloth I had made a great new table setting!

The challenge of coming up with new table settings more often with the amount of guests we’ve had come through lately has been fun for me. {I’ve decided my table cloth stash isn’t just for occasional decor, and our placemats need to be used rather than stored for years!} When we’re eating on the table cloths and such, the need to wash them sooner is paramount. Thus a chance at a new table setting versus one per month or holiday like I used to do. I’m going to err on the side that our guests are blessed by a nice table set for them—and hopefully good food too!

We had Hawaiian chicken stack up for dinner this week with our guests so the flowers fit right in with that meal. This time I used my brown and pink floral melamine plates from Hobby Lobby. Last week I used our basic off-white Mikasa plates with my apple green napkins from the Pottery Barn outlet. {I forget to take photos in the midst of the preparation and meal.} So fun when things come together…enjoying it while these flowers last!

Happy New Year’s Planning

Happy New Year from Portugal!

Now that all the smoke has cleared from the holidays (pun intended!), I am excited about my new planner and hopefully--system! I loved my desk calendar from the Target dollar bins last year, but I’ve not found anything like that in Portugal. Most of the calendars I’ve seen here are hard bound weekly planners—very nice looking  but not so practical seeming. I’ve been eyeing some “binders” for a homemade calendar at an etsy shop called Crown Bindery. She has beautiful binders of all sizes and practical printables. I decided to give a try at making my own.

I took my favorite scrapbook paper out of my limited stash here, cut it to fit the laminating sheets I have and put them through our laminator. I used different pages front and back if the page was not double sided. I used our 3 hole punch and jump rings (from Staples here) so I can easily add more pages rather than using a binding machine.  There’s room for A LOT of pages! Currently I have one divider to separate my monthly and weekly calendars. I may add another to put other lists in the back.

For my calendars, I downloaded the 2 page monthly calendar and 2 page weekly calendars from Clean Mama’s etsy store. I think I’d like to try making my own next year, but this is a project I decided to wait on for now. She has amazing sets of organizational printables and some free ones on her blog, Clean Mama. 

Another blog I enjoy, Life as Mom, also sells a thorough set of printables in an e-book called Organizing Life as Mom. Looking at these and others have given me ideas for ways I can plan, like making future gift lists or things to remember for future holidays (before I forget!).  I’d also recommend a couple “guides” to help you plan and set goals for the new year that have been helpful to me:

Setting Reachable Goals by Simple Mom

Tell Your Time: How To Manage Your Schedule So You Can Live Fulfilled by Amy Andrews

Blessings on you and yours in this new year, and may all your planning be efficient and effective!

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Christmas Fun School

I have been motivated by all the Christmas ideas for curriculum, crafting and fun that I’ve seen online this year that I have tried to put many of them into the schedule! Here is a rundown of some of the photographed fun we’ve had the last two weeks:

 

We made the Christmas Tree Sun Catcher from Itsy Bitsy Learners. I loved the simplicity of no glue! Contact paper, sequins, and tissue paper circles instead! They look great on the window—just didn’t get that picture taken yet.

The girls enjoyed playing the “S is for Santa” game with a Portuguese version of M&M’s and dice. I like to use pages like these for their Do-A-Dot Paints too. There are tons of great Christmas learning printables at Making Learning Fun.

I read somewhere about a Christmas ornament count (let me know if it was you!), but we didn’t have Christmas stickers. So I decided to cut out a tree and have the girls add ornaments with their Do-A-Dot Paints. I encouraged them to make each ornament distinct so they could count them later. Next we graphed how many of each color. The next day they practiced writing their numbers next to each row.

Please don’t miss all the great Christmas curriculum at 1+1+1=1! She has lessons plans--a great compilation of ideas from many great blogs and sites I frequent. Here my 4.5 year old has written the first letters of these names (after tracing the letters on the back side). She was doing great until she got to S for Star!

Putting the alphabet ornaments in order has been great practice for her too. I am reluctant to print and laminate a new “theme” of alphabet every week normally, so this was nice to have a theme we can use for 4 weeks! There’s much more in 1+1+1=1’s Christmas Tot Pack and Nativity Preschool Pack—you have to see!

We came up with a fun new way to practice our sight words (those we’re learning with 1+1+1=1 RRSP curriculum).  With us doing Christmas fun this month, we’re including Christmas songs in our start time every day. The girls have been holding the various sight words (on a popsicle stick) that may be in the song. When we get to that word, the girls hold up that sight word. They LOVE it and laugh a lot, and I think they are learning the words the best this way!

I’ll be checking out Homeschool Creation’s Gingerbread Baby unit and Confessions of a Homeschooler’s Christmas unit next, along with other creative and resourceful moms at