Day Trip to Cataño, Puerto Rico

   Last Tuesday I had a day trip with my partner, we went to Cataño, Puerto Rico. I had the idea because I really wanted to go to their Salvation Army Store. When we got there we felt comfortable enough to stay and spend a few hours walking around the square in the center of the town.

   The store was nice but didn't have much variety, I only brought home one item which I'll tell you about in another post.

   We sat for a while in one of those benches next to the Monument to the Taíno Culture. What you see across the bay is Old San Juan, the colonial area of San Juan our Capital. There is a ferry that for a small fee comes and goes through the bay to the other side.

   We saw a couple of houses that were so cute we had to take pictures. These might even be antique, I'd dare to say that both houses were built in the early 20th century.

    This one had this gorgeous pink tree that we spotted as soon as we got there.

    We were there for a few hours, so when we got hungry we browsed around for our trusted street food that never disappoints. We found a cart selling hot dogs, hamburgers and a puertorican favorite; tripletas. Tripletas are one of the most loved street treats in Puerto Rico so we couldn't let them pass.
 

   It is a sandwich made of a sweet and soft bread ("pan sobao") with 3 different types of meat; the most common are pork, beef and ham. They are chopped in small pieces and thrown together to a grill, when they are almost done a generous amount of mayonnaise, ketchup and mustard are added. When the meat is ready they cut the bun open and add a slice of Swiss cheese, shoestring potatoes and pickles, then they put the meats inside of the bun. Normally when you buy a tripleta they serve it tightly wrapped in foil paper so you don't spill the goodness. I must warn you, it is a little bit difficult to eat this without making a mess of your hands, face and clothes. It is a professional art to eat one and keep your dignity throughout the task. But know for sure that I recommend it wholeheartedly, it is DELICIOUS.

   When we were heading back home, we spotted this Volkswagen Van. I LOVE these kind of vans, so much that I have one tattoed on my chest. I need to take a good picture so I can show it to you.

What about you? Have you had a day trip recently? I'd love to hear everything about it.

Blooming Flower Pillow - Progress #2 + Happy Birthday to me!

I have too many things to show you in the upcoming days. There's a little bit of everything, thrifty finds, day trips, you name it, but today is my birthday and I'm going to celebrate. So you get another progress picture of my Blooming Flower Pillow. The original plan was to stop at 30 cm; I'm way beyond that.

   If you are interested in making your own Blooming Flower Pillow you can find the free tutorial here.

Fabric Crush Monday #1

   I think it was a matter of time before I developed my first post series. Fabric Crush Monday will be posted every week. I decided to do this because I think it is very cool to know the tastes in materials and notions of other crafters. So here I present my first Fabric Crush Monday post.

Sophie by Chez Moi for Moda - Nosegay Blue Fiesta

   I love the color combination in this fabric and the soft rounded lines of the design. I'd love to make a big rounded bag with this as the focus fabric with a red contrasting band at the top and yellow lining :D. I fell in love with it the first time I ever saw it, on Keyka Lou's Blog. You can find it here: CottonBlossomFarm.

Garage Sale Find - The 80's Polaroid

   A couple of weeks ago I discovered another Garage Sale close to my house that is being held by 3 nice ladies. I saw it a few times before I decided to go take a look at what they had. They had clothes, shoes, plates, cups and many other things. Plus they had this SUPER CUTE Polaroid Instant Camera that I spotted when I was selecting other items.

   As soon as I picked it from the table the lady that was selling it told me that it still worked. So I opened it and discovered its gorgeous color combination. Then pressed the shutter to find out if everything sounded right and the flash was still working. I brought it home, cleaned it and started to research about it and its film. I found out, among other things, that this particular model was produced in 1988 and that Polaroid discontinued the production of the film around 2008. As I kept on searching I found out that there was another company producing 600 film for Polaroid instant cameras; Impossible Project.

   I was thrilled when I found out about Impossible Project until I saw their prices. A pack with 8 exposures was almost $30 with shipping.

   I decided I would buy the film anyways because I REALLY wanted to see if the camera was working and I was very curious about how the pictures would turn out, here is the result.

   I enjoyed taking these pictures, they brought back those times when my grandma would bring all the family together for a Polaroid Picture. My favorite is the one in the middle, it has the soft colors and focus that is characteristic of Polaroid and is at a nice exposure level. I think the other 2 pictures are overexposed, even though I shot them all in the same way. I must say that, even though I liked my pictures, I'm a little disappointed with the quality of the film. I thought that for more than $3 a picture they would have taken better care in the production. I'm aware that they make the film very sensitive so you can manipulate lighting and colors, but some of the pictures show a hideous blot in their upper area that doesn't seem to be part of its charm.

   Finding this treasure brought back memories of when I had my first instant camera, a Polaroid JoyCam. Since my interest in instant photography was renewed I started to research about other cameras for which film is easily available and found a really good one, but that's another post.

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   Do you like reading about thrifty finds? Visit Coastal Charm! You'll find links to this and many other thrifty finds on their Nifty Thrifty Tuesday Linky Party.

Low Quality Photos, High Quality Taste

    In the past few weeks I've cooked many new recipes. The thing is, I'm a night owl, so most of the good food I make is long gone by dawn. The biggest downside of this fact is that I don't have the resources to take good pictures due to the lack of natural light. I sometimes take a couple of pictures with the best lighting I can get in order to document the existence of those dishes. I decided to share them with you because even though they don't look pretty in the pictures, I still think these foods were delicious.

Clockwise:

1. Breaded Chicken Breast with Hasselback Potatoes and Avocado.
2. Marbled Bundt Cake
3. Sorullitos de Maíz (Cornmeal Fritters) with MayoKetchup.
4. Monkey Bread baked in a loaf pan. 

The links above point to the recipes that inspired me. You will notice that in most cases my finished results are very different from what the original cook did. Sometimes I make variations on purpose, but other times I'm forced to improvise because halfway through the recipe I notice that I'm missing some of the ingredients.

"Inherited" Stash (kind of)

   This week something unexpected and sad happened. My great grandmother died almost certainly because of natural reasons, I don't know for sure, no one told me, but she was 90 years old.

   It was not her stash which I inherited, but it was because of her funeral that I visited my ex step grandmother (is that a valid relationship?) who has always sewn, a lot. My step sister, who lives in her house, told her a few times that I was learning to sew and making many things. I went there to wait for my step sister to get ready for the funeral. While I was waiting, her grandmother started to browse her stash for unwanted stuff, things she is not going to use because she is not sewing as much as she used to. She gave me a bag full of notions. There is a LOT of lace, fabric, ribbons, zippers and velcro. Now I'm searching for crafts to make with scraps of lace. Do you have any ideas?

Garage Sale Find for a Blogger Friend

   A few weeks ago I went to a Garage Sale that is held in a store close by and got a couple of cute items. The lady that runs it gave me her phone number so I could call her whenever I wanted to go see the other things she had at her house, so I called her on Friday. I found out that besides the little store she has 2 houses and a storage space full of Garage Sale material. I know many of you would be happy to find such a treasure but I must say I was not thrilled. Everything was too cluttered and dark in the first house so I couldn't really see much and what I saw was kind of overpriced.

   Then I spotted this treasure in the second house, an 80ish blouse (it even had shoulder pads) that I knew my friend Miss Lou would like. She is a very cool person and we are "real life" friends from before we had blogs. When I gave her the blouse she styled it very quickly so I could snap this picture before sunset. If you are interested you can find her daily updates in her awesome blog Elousions.

   Don't you just love that blue hue peeking from her hair? If you do you should go follow her NOW. She is a very colorful lady who loves to make changes to her hair. She also blogs about photography, lomography, thrifty finds, inspiration and if she gets inspired enough she also blogs about diy crafts and tutorials.

Crochet Inspiration from Flickr

   These last few weeks I've been retaking my crochet hook and with it finding a lot of new inspiration. In this mosaic I show you a small pick from my most recent muses.

1. Crochet Shoulder Bag 2. crochet bag - hexagons 3. Multicoloured Crocheted Bag 4. Blooming Flower cushion WIP 5. crochet granny bag 6. Japanese Flower Scarf 7. çiçekli yelekler 8. crochet pillows and quilted blanket... 9. Bag

   I also wanted to let you know that we are expecting another tropical storm (Maria) tonight. As always I don't know what will be the results tomorrow morning. Electricity could be off for a couple of days again, since this one is a little weaker than Irene I hope nothing major happens. Have a nice day!

Blooming Flower Pillow - Progress

   I've been making progress on my dream pillow. I'm so happy and excited I couldn't wait any longer to show you.

   I'm using as many different colors as I can successfully coordinate so it brings life to any room. Until now I've only repeated the purple from the center but I think this is as far as my stash gets. From here I'll be repeating some of the colors in no particular order and wait until it reaches a good size. I want it to be big as I'm going to be making the pillow insert anyways. I'm using 100% acrylic yarn with a size G (4.25mm) hook.

Double Chocolate Zucchini Cake - Review

   I made this delicious cake a couple of weeks ago and wanted to tell you about it. I won't show the recipe here because I used exactly the same recipe that JULIEVR posted on Babble's Family Kitchen. I just halved it because I didn't want to have 2 of these babies hanging around. I must tell you how dense, rich and moist this cake was, REALLY! This thing is scrumptious, very full of flavor and so dense that you could grab a slice and feel satisfied, but who said satisfaction was the goal? I just want to eat the whole cake myself. I recommend you try this, Oh! and don't tell your kids that there's one cup of vegetable in it.

   You're welcome!

Crochet Pillows - Inspiration

   A few days ago I was scrolling down my reader and I spotted one of the cutest pictures ever. Besides the awesomely gorgeous wall art there was a nice sofa with 3 round pillows, 2 of them were velvet and the other was a crochet one. It was a picutre from Danielle Thompson's Blog, when she wrote about the curtains she wanted to buy for her living room.

By Danielle T.

   I think I don't need to tell you that I fell instantly in love with said pillow. I started to search about crochet round pillows because I realized that its roundness was one of the main things that contributed to the cuteness. I saw many ideas and patterns, then I found Royal Sister's Blog. They have awesome patterns and inspiration

By Loving The Vintage

   Isn't that stunning? I thought that my dream pillow could come to life and was super happy, but then  I found out that their shop is on vacation, so I kept searching. I saw a few hundred more ideas until I stumbled upon Attic 24's Blog.

By Attic 24

   Too cute and the pattern/tutorial was free, super score! I already started to crochet this beauty. It took me a while to understand the UK terms but everything is fine now and I have a few rows of my dream pillow that I'll show you soon. :D