Summertime and my poor neglected blog!!

I cannot believe that we are now halfway through July, where does the time go!  I also cannot believe how neglected my poor blog is, I really do need to pull my finger out and get blogging properly again.  But we have actually had a very busy few months so I feel that I have a good excuse ;) 

Summer starts very early here and with it comes the intense heat and, here on the coast, very high humidity.  This years June seemed particularly hot and sticky but I admit that I love the heat....have I mentioned that before? :D  And I would take the summer months over the winter any day, despite how short our winter is!  But it does make me feel particularly lazy sometimes so I have spent my spare time just relaxing and reading, I've read loads of books.....but as a result my dolls have been seriously neglected too, poor things.

I had to buy a new eReader last month as my Kindle decided that it was going to stop working.  It wasn't particularly old but of course it was out of guarantee.  I looked around and finally decided on a Kobo Aura One with a nice 7.8 inch screen, and so far I'm very pleased with it.  In fact I've struggled to put it down sometimes!

My mum and brother came over for two weeks from the 23rd June and it was lovely to see them as I'd not seen them since Christmas.  We did a lot of eating out and more relaxing.....well in this heat you really can't do too much, can you!  On their first night it was the fiesta of San Juan which is celebrated in a big way here and denotes the beginning of summer.  In Torre del Mar, our nearest town, there was a large and colourful evening craft market which went on for several days, as well as musical performances, tastings of sardines, competitions, games on the beaches, in addition to the traditional bonfires that are lit at night on the beaches.  

I did a little bit of shopping at the market, well it would be rude not to, wouldn't it!  And having seen this stall, I had to buy my girls a guitar as they were the perfect scale for the MSD sized BJDs.  And at only 8 euros each, I couldn't pass one up!!

I was seriously tempted by the Beatles drum set and the violins too, and now I regret that I didn't buy anything other than one guitar from this stall!  Oh well, there is always next year!

Brian and John enjoyed the things that were put in place for the children!!!

Later, we ate in a nice restaurant called the Safari Lounge.  The food was lovely, but the portions were so big!!  Here's my mum and brother waiting for their supper.

We went to Nerja for a day and ate in a very nice Japanese restaurant.  I didn't take any photos in the restaurant but took a few on the Balcon de Europa which was busy with holiday makers.  I do like Nerja, but have to say it's much better in winter when it's not so busy.

 We also went into the church located at the Balcon de Europa, called El Salvador.  The interior was so lovely and cool and peaceful, after the heat of the street! 

Afterwards, a welcome drink in a bar...

We did lots of other things and ate many more meals in restaurants, but I didn't take my camera out with me at all, I have no idea why!!

As well as my family visiting, I have been working on my fitness because over the years I've got lazy about exercising.  After a whole bunch of tests over the last 3 months, I've finally been told that I have bone degeneration, so thankfully nothing too serious.  Anyway, I decided to start walking as I love to walk but had been putting it off and putting it off using the excuse that I wanted someone to walk with.  So for the last 6 weeks, Lucy our Miniature Pinscher and I, have been getting out of bed at 6.30am and walking from 7am for a minimum of an hour.  We head out into the campo and just walk!  It is a wonderful time of day, the sun is only just rising and there is a real freshness before the intense heat of the day.

We just climb higher and higher until we are able to look back down towards the sea, it feels like being on top of the world!!!!  

We've met some lovely people, Pepe and Maria, who, along with their little Yorkshire Terrier, are walking in the opposite direction to us and always stop for a quick chat about life as we pass, as well as a farmer who gave me nine of the most delicious freshly picked tomatoes that I've ever tasted!!! 

We've spotted quite a bit of wildlife too, including Hoopoe birds, which I've tried to get photos of as they are so pretty.  Unfortunately my iPhone doesn't zoom in far enough to get them but I plan on taking my proper camera out with me soon.

We also discovered a snake!  Unfortunately for the snake, but perhaps fortunately for us, it was dead, having been flattened by something.  But it was a biggie!  I have put my foot in the photo to show you the scale....I would put it at about 5 foot long including it's tail which was separate!!! (That's the snake, NOT my foot!!!)  Lucy was very interested!

Finally this morning, on our walk back along the beach, I spotted some dolphins swimming not that far out from the beach!!!  I rarely see them because they are quite 'elusive' but today there were at least three of them....oh to have had that camera with me....but you can just see the fin coming out of the water in the blurry photos below:

 As for the walking, well it is starting to pay off as over the last four weeks I have lost 11 pounds in weight, I'm walking between 5 and 8 kilometres per morning and am actually getting quite addicted to it!  And next week I'm starting Yoga classes!!!!

Finally a photo of the beach at 8pm on Thursday...and yes, the water was lovely!!

Well I hope you all are having a lovely summer and that the weather is good where you are.  I hope to post more often now and hopefully will remember to lug my camera with me (which will mean that all the local wildlife will take their summer vacations!!!)

Big hugs, Sharon xx

Good old Cockney Fare!!!

Yesterday we went to Nerja for lunch in a sports bar called OLAS. OLAS means Over Land And Sea which is the name of the West Ham Utd football club fans magazine, and as hubby and son are big WHU fans, we had to go there.  However, my main reason for going was that they have started to serve good old traditional Cockney Pie n Mash with Eel Liquor!!!!  And that, I have to say, is my all time favourite food! (And you thought it was chocolate!!!)   Sam, my 20cm Elfdoll Hana Angel, also came along....here she is showing you the menu!!!

 

And here is the meal prior to splitting open the pies and adding Sarsons Malt Vinegar....and traditionally Pie n Mash is eaten with just a fork and spoon.

 

The minced beef pies were excellent, the pastry had just the right amount of flakiness to it, the beef was really tasty and the bottom of the pies was just the correct consistency.  The potato had been mashed with butter, whereas the traditional way is for it to be just mashed without any butter, spread or milk, but the taste was nice and it was good and fluffy.  The eel liquor was tasty but could have done with being just that little bit thicker, and maybe a bit greener.  Apart from that, it was lovely!!!  Plus it really was the only time I've ever eaten this traditional East End meal in full sunshine with the beach and sea in front of me!!!!

In other news,  I changed the eyechips on Heather Sky for her new handmade glass ones...they are really pretty and easy to apply.  I like them a lot!   Here you can see she's stolen Baileys beret!!

Heather was one of my earlier Blythe customs and I can't decide whether I want to redo her a bit, maybe give her more of a philtrum and carve her lips a little more.  I am always worried that anything too drastic will change my favourite dolls to the point that they are no longer the dolls they were....I've found in the past that even a new faceup can change the 'personality' of a doll to the point where I no longer want him/her.....so I'll have to give it a lot of thought.  But she really could do with some more work I think!

And finally, I removed all of Baileys hair, she is now a little baldy again!  Well almost bald anyway.  I realised once I'd tried pulling the plugs out, that I really had done a great job of the knots inside her head! :)  I thought I'd try the Prince Gregor wig on her because I'd seen Sarah Williams' (Vintage Sasha) little wider faced ex Gregor wearing it as a girl and she looked so incredibly cute!  Well I think Bailey looks so sweet too that now I'm wondering if I might save myself the job of rerooting her again, and might keep her as a wigged girl!!!!!!  I've not quite got the wig on her right yet, but will keep trying and see how it goes!!!! 

A bit of sewing and a stroll on the promenade...

We are at the coast again, having come down here on Monday, and as usual I have brought with me all of my sewing gear and lots of fabric to work with.  I think my husband despairs of me sometimes because when we left here to go home the week before last, I said "I'm leaving this big bag of fabric here so that next time I won't need to bring any!" Yeah right!  I brought another large shopping bag full....he'll have a fit when he sees how much will need to go home again!!

Oh well!  So I've been sewing on our deck, I am much more 'productive' here as I love sewing outside rather than in my sewing/dolly room which, being a typical old Spanish house in a town, is quite dark....and rather cluttered with all my 'stuff'!!  I much prefer to sit here in the sunshine and sew to my hearts content.  I have made two outfits so far.  But I also spent quite a bit of time making some patterns from scratch.  I wanted something simple but that I could make as plain or as fancy as I wished.  I ended up with three different patterns....a simple A-line tunic/dress/top, a pair of capri trousers with openings on both sides at the waist, and a dress pattern to use with knit fabric. 

I used the capri pants pattern and the A-line one to make this very simple outfit for Gabrielle, my brunette with the Shelly repainted eyes.  I think this girl has a slightly more 'mature' look than my other girls, so she along with Ellory, my 'waif' redhead, might end up wearing different styles of clothing to the others. 

Today we went out to lunch in Nerja and I decided to take Gabrielle with us.  She wanted to wear her new outfit and have some photos taken.  It was very hot in Nerja, touching 40C, so I kept her well covered up whilst we were in the town, except for a few photos taken of her in front of the massive bouganvillia plants growing wild in the carpark there.  You'll see I added a headscarf to keep her head covered in the sunshine!

We then drove towards home, taking the scenic route along the coast.  As we drove through a small town called Lagos, I decided to stop the car and take some more photos of her by the sea.  It was sooooo quiet because it was during the siesta and in the summer months, most people do indeed take a nap inside in the cool instead of staying out in the sunshine...like us crazy Brits!!

Tomorrow I will take some photos of Jojo in her new outfit too!

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer! I love the summer, it is my favourite season!

Visitors from the Motherland!!!

My mum and brother have come over to visit us from the UK, and staying until the 13th June, so there won't be much dolly time for me whilst they are here!  

Today we went to Nerja for our lunch which was lovely, we love Nerja, but it's starting to get quite busy there now that the summer months are almost upon us. I can't believe that in about three weeks the Spanish schools break up for their almost three month long summer holidays!!  

So in the absence of any dolly photos, here are some of the views from el Balcon d'Europa in Nerja....enjoy!!