Friday Favorites!!!

Happy Halloween & Happy Friday y'all! This has been a ROUGH week, so I'm glad to see Friday finally here! Here are my favorites!

1) Family Visit - Some of my family got to visit this past weekend. My dad, sister, niece & nephew came down last Friday morning and stayed through Sunday morning. We enjoyed catching up with them all. I can't believe we hadn't seen them since MAY!!! We hung out around the house a bit and went to the park. The weather was beautiful, so it was really nice to get to spend some time outside! My back had been bothering me, so I was kind of useless part of the time, unfortunately.

2) Chiropractor - Since I had been having problems with my neck/back, I decided to go to the chiropractor. I have some issues with my spine that are totally correctable and I've started regular visits to work on those. I can already feel an improvement! 

3) Sunday Walk - Josh went in to work a few hours on Sunday. Since it was SO beautiful outside and I was feeling better, I took Bailey for a walk at a nature preserve about 10 minutes from our house. It was a very nice time to get outside and enjoy some sunshine! I let Bailey splash around in the water for a bit and she loved it!

 

4) Bailey's new friend - There's a small, fenced in area in our neighborhood that we let Bailey run around in every once in a while. Monday afternoon, I took her in there to run around a bit and she met a new friend, Loba! She got SO dirty, but she had a ton of fun, so it was worth it!

 

5) Birthday - My 28th birthday was yesterday!

 
I got flowers and cupcakes from my awesome coworkers!


And my awesome hubby got some new cookware for me! I have an unhealthy obsession with cookware and this is a beautiful enameled cast iron skillet that I've been drooling over for a while. I thanked him with a big, juicy that is patiently waiting in the Crockpot right now!

Josh and I went to Fogo de Chao, a Brazilian steakhouse, for my birthday dinner last night! The food was really good, but we ate way too much! Especially me. I was literally in pain from eating too much meat. It was a really fun experience and a great way to try lots of meats, but I don't know that we will do it again. By the time we left, I felt like I had overstuffed myself at a buffet. Ouch!

6) Jamicures - I haven't done a great job of posting these, but here are some of my latest Jamicures! 

 

Boysenberry Chevron and Icy Boysenberry Polka. This was almost a week in, when I FINALLY took a picture of them. I really need to start taking pictures at the beginning too!

This is my latest one on day 2! I LOVE this combo! It's Venus and Raspberry Sparkle. I'm really enjoying this one, but I'm already planning my next one...my gameday Jamicure for homecoming!!!

Friday Favorites!

Wow...I'm horrible at keeping up with this blog thing! I still have several posts to finish from our Spain trip and so much has happened since then!

1) Short work week - We had Columbus day off, so this was just a 4 day week for me. I'm SO glad, because it was a stressful one!

2) VEGAS - We took advantage of the long weekend and went to Vegas for Jen's 30th birthday! At some point, I'll have a separate post for this with more details, but we had so much fun! I'm definitely glad to have checked this off my bucket list and to be able to add another pin to our map! 

The birthday girl and I inside the Venetian. It's such a beautiful hotel! 

3) Granite - We finally updated our kitchen counters with granite! I also added some hardware to our cabinets and drawers. Our kitchen looks SO much better! 

This is our kitchen when we first moved in. Hideous EVERYTHING.

And now...

Basically the only original things in here are the cabinets and floors. SO much better!

4) Morton's visit - Andrew & Kristian were in town to visit some other friends and they all stopped by for a few hours one night! It seems like just a couple weeks since they visited, but it has actually been almost 3 months! Time really does fly! Even though it was a short visit, it was great to see them again.

5) Beer Week - This past week was Baltimore Beer Week. A couple co-workers invited Josh and I to go to the homebrew competition with them. We ended up going and it was so much fun! We were able to sample so many beers from local homebrewers! It's definitely an event we would love to go to next year!

6) Work Happy Hour - A few people that used to work at my company, but no longer do, organized a happy hour last week. I got to  see some old co-workers that I haven't seen in a long time and it was really great to catch up and see what everyone is up to now that hey have retired or moved on to other companies.

La Tomatina!!!

La Tomatina was one of the most fun parts of our trip! Josh told me a little about La Tomatina when he first started researching for the trip and I was torn. Sure, it would be cool to go to the biggest food fight in the WORLD, but how much fun would it really be? Do I really want to spend an hour in crowded streets throwing tomatoes at strangers? Why WOULDN'T I want to spend an hour in crowded streets throwing tomatoes at strangers? We kept putting off the decision and when we finally decided to just go, tickets were sold out! Of course, as soon as we found out the tickets were sold out, we HAD to find a way to go. I guess that's the way things work...

We quickly found out there was a way to go, if you were willing to pay a premium. You could still go with a tour company. They would provide transportation from Valencia to Bunol, where the festival takes place, include showers, transportation to Requena for the water and wine festival, lodging, maybe a meal or something...and charge around €200. It may be worth it to consider going that route if you're traveling solo, but €400 was WAY more than we were willing to pay! We e-mailed one of the companies offering the tours and told them we already had arrangements for lodging and transportation, but we would like to purchase tickets from them if possible. They sold them to us for the face value of €10, plus a convenience fee of €1. I was SO excited at this point! We were going to the biggest food fight in the world!

We got a rental car from Valencia and found our own hotel room in Requena where we went to the water and wine festival, paid for gas and grabbed a sandwich after La Tomatina AND bought our tickets to La Tomatina and we spent €120. MUCH better than €400 and we had more flexibility! It took more planning, of course, but it was totally worth it!

We didn't get any good pictures with our GoPro, but here's a short video. Josh left La Tomatina with a black eye...the video explains it all. Apparently, wearing a GoPro gives everyone a target. :-)

Friday Favorites!!!

I'm way behind on posting, so here are my favorites for the past few weeks!

1) Spain! - We had a great time in Spain! I have several more posts I need to get up here, and I plan on working on those this weekend.

2) Off Friday - This is my off Friday and I'm SO glad! There's a lot I want to get done over the weekend, so this will definitely help! It's also been a pretty rough week at work, so I'm glad it was only 4 days.

3) Football! - I'm glad football is back. My Wolfpack hasn't had a strong season so far, but we're still 2-0. I'm hoping we can get our stuff together before conference play starts!

4) Jamberry - I'm still loving Jamberry! I hit my first goal, which was to obtain my first Fast Start, now I'm working on my next! This is my latest Jamicure! I've had it on for 4 days now and it still looks brand new! My polish would have done some serious chipping by day 4!

Sugar & Spice with Diamond Dust Sparkle :-)

5) Home Improvements - We've decided to make some improvements on the house! These are things I've been wanted to do basically since we moved in, so I'm really excited to share more once we start to make progress!

6) Brew Day - We brewed our Punkinlaw (our pumpkin ale) last Saturday. Last year was our first year making it all grain and we really messed it up. This year, we tweaked the spices and used a different yeast. I think we finally have it exactly where we want it! I almost wish we would have brewed another half batch or so to bottle. 

7) Game Night - We had friends over after our football game on Saturday for games. We played Pandemic and Ticket to Ride. They were both a lot of fun and they're now on our list of games to buy! Hopefully it won't be so long before our next game night! They're so much fun and they don't cost a lot of money, so I really don't know why we don't do them more often.

8) Fitness - I'm on a fitness kick again. Haha. I basically had to force myself to start running again. We have a 10K in less than 3 weeks, so we should have actually started training much sooner. We ran 2.5 miles Wednesday night and I wasn't completely exhausted when we finished, so I'm confident that I'll be able to finish the 10K by the time it gets here. I don't know that I'll beat last year's time though :-/. I'll keep pushing and see what I can do though!

I've also started 100 Pushups! It's a 6 week training program. At the end of the 6 weeks, I should be able to do 100 good form pushups consecutively. I really like it so far! I just completed week 1 this morning. It's challenging, but It's been very doable so far. I downloaded the 100 Pushup app and it makes it really easy. I can set reminders for myself, it breaks the whole program down into weeks, then days. It tells me how many pushups to do each set and automatically times my resting periods between sets. I often overlook my arms when I workout, so I'm excited to be doing this challenge! Only 5 weeks to go!

9) Bailey - Y'all know I love my dog! I really missed her while we were in Spain. While I was not ready to leave Spain and return to the real world, I was very glad to see my girl when we got home. 

That's it for now! Hopefully I'll have more Spain posts and house updates soon!

Adios, Madrid!

Sunday was the last day of Josh’s conference and our last full day in Madrid. On Josh’s lunch break, we went into the city to see a few more things, take some pictures and walk around a bit.

This is 0 kilometer – the exact center of Spain.

This is in Puerta de Sol, another square in Madrid. This is a major metro stop and it’s always busy with all sorts of activity. There are shops, restaurants and street performers.

Speaking of street performers. I caught Mickey Mouse waking up from a nap...

This is a famous statue in Puerta del Sol. Bears used to live in the royal hunting grounds and the tree the bear is pawing at, the madrono tree, produces a berry used to make a traditional liquer.

We stopped for churros con chocolate – which is churros with hot chocolate with a pudding-like consistency. Very good!

Josh had a churro and sipped his coffee…

I devoured the rest of the churros.

When Josh went back to the conference, it was time for a siesta for me! I could really get used to those! After I woke up, I blogged a little and I started to pack our. Once he got back, we finished packing and hopped on the metro at Atoche Renfe to go into the city one last time. An interesting fact about this metro station: it was bombed on 9/11 a few years after the 9/11 attacks in the US. You can read more about it here. It was pretty crazy to standing in a metro station, knowing something so horrible had happened there.

We got off at a new stop this time since we had plans to go to an ice bar after dinner. We got off at the closest stop to the ice bar and started looking for restaurants nearby. I don’t recall the name of the plaza, but it was very swanky. I wasn’t in the mood for fancy tapas, so it really wasn’t what we were looking for. We were both pretty hungry. I was actually craving Asian food or a big plate of spaghetti. We left the plaza and started to explore the side streets for a good place to eat. We finally found a place to eat. We ended up getting the menu of the day at a restaurant on one of the side streets. We each got 2 different kinds of paella as our first course. For the 2^nd course, Josh got some sort of delicious beef and I got Dogfish (I really didn’t even know that was a real fish). The fish wasn’t bad, but the beef was SO good! We ate dessert then left for the Ice Bar. I was exhausted, especially after having a full belly, but I was excited to go into an ice bar just for the experience. We had a Groupon that was good for 3 drinks, but we agreed that really just wanted 1 each and we would go back to our hotel since Monday morning came early. Little did we know, the bar closed at 11:00 on Sunday night. By the time we finished dinner and got there, it was 11:30. That seems late, but it’s pretty normal to have dinner after 9:00 around here. I've kind of gotten used to it. I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to go to the Ice Bar, but I was also eager to get some sleep since we had to get up early Monday morning to catch a train.

This is me waiting for the metro to come take us back to our hotel in Madrid for the last time. I haven’t been in many metro stations, so I’m not sure if it’s typical or not, but the stations sometimes stink…kind of like sewage. That was obviously not enjoyable, but other than that, we didn’t have any negative experiences on the Madrid Metro. It was quite easy to navigate, even for me.

We had a great time in Madrid and there are still things we didn’t get to do. Leaving was bittersweet. I was comfortable there and we still could have spent a couple days there doing other things, but I was eager to see our next destination…TOLEDO! 

The Royal Palace

Saturday was a lazy day for me while Josh was in his conference. I went back to sleep after breakfast and basically did nothing until he got out. He skipped the session immediately after lunch so we could go visit the Royal Palace. The conference runs until 9pm the last two days and we leave Madrid Monday morning, so we don't have a lot of time left to visit things during the day.

We saw some interesting things along the way...

 There are lots of characters that we're familiar with in the squares. Most of the costumes are pretty horrible, but they're entertaining.

 Gepetto's shop!

 Pronovias! If I was still engaged while we were here, I probably would have spent a full day in this store!

The palace is amazing! It's so big, so there's lots of walking! We did the audio tour and it was pretty good. It's definitely a lot cheaper than going on a guided tour and we didn't have to be part of a group. Rick Steves has a great self guided tour in his book, but we thought it would be faster to be able to listen. The palace has over 2,000 rooms, but the tour took us through 23. The royal pharmacy was closed, so we didn't get to see it. There are SO many chandeliers throughout the palace, very old art of course, silk walls in some of the rooms, it's just crazy. To walk through a palace that so many royal families have lived in was an unbelievable feeling.

We weren't able to take pictures inside any of the rooms, but we did get one just inside the entrance.

More of Madrid

Thursday was the first day of Josh's conference. I was SO tired still, I went back to sleep after he left the room. I kind of lounged around the majority of the day. I did venture out to lunch and I definitely got a little more motivated to learn Spanish! My waiter spoke very little English and I speak very little Spanish, so it was quite difficult. I managed to get what I wanted and pay, but it definitely would have been easier if my Spanish was a little better. The food was delicious! I got a beer, paella, grilled tuna and watermelon (as dessert). It was all good, but the tuna was AMAZING!

When Josh got out of the conference, we went out with a group of people who are attending the conference. I had a big lunch, so I wasn't very hungry. We shared a small plate of patatas and pork. It was nice to get to meet some of the people from the conference. There were other attendees and speakers out at dinner with us and two of the speakers actually picked up the tab. SUPER nice of them! After dinner, we came back to the hotel for a happy hour reception. There are people from all over the world attending the conference, so it's really cool to chat with them. This is a great networking opportunity for Josh, too!

While Josh was at his conference on Friday, I slept in then went to the grocery store. I really like to go to grocery stores when I'm in a new country. It seems silly, but I like to see how their food is different from ours. 

Josh got out of his conference a little early and we went into the city. First, we went to the Royal Palace (Palacio Real de Madrid). We saw it from the outside since it closed in an hour and we wanted to make sure we had enough time to see it all. 

 Us from outside the palace gates.

 The palace and courtyard.

 This is the beautiful cathedral across from the palace.

 I don't know what this place was, but I really liked the door.

 A cute little pedestrian street. The yellow building is a restaurant, but it wasn't open.

Plaza Mayor at night. If you notice the arches at the corners, those lead to pedestrian streets with more shops and restaurants.

 

This is a close up of one of the arches. We ate dinner at another restaurant just outside the Plaza Mayor Friday night. This one was not as good. The deal was 12 tapas and a pitcher of sangria for €23. There were only 2 or 3 tapas that we liked and the sangria was just OK. 

After dinner, we went back to the hotel for happy hour with the other conference attendees. Josh may or may not have let one of the guys give him a mohawk that he forbids me to post and we did a group ice bucket challenge that I'm also not allowed to post because he may have said mohawk in the video. We're both so much more adventurous when we're on vacation!