tues, 19th - 46/52....

the 52 project: a picture of the girls once a week, every week, in 2013.

day 1378 / 477:

a stunningly bright, Autumn day......in one of our favourite parks

Limi: watching planes overhead.....(with Zozo)

Claya: crunching acorns underfoot.....happiest when she has plenty of space to roam....

i'll be back with ones that caught my eye, next week.

nov, 17th - portugal: alcácer do sal....

day 1376 / 475:

we fell in love with the town of Alcácer do Sal in Portugal.....with it's pretty, crumbling facade, river promenade, interesting restaurants and history.....it had us completely intrigued.

it seems to have passed through many hands: Phoenician, Roman, Arab, Portuguese, it strikes you as the type of place that keeps getting reborn. it looks like it's ripe for regeneration once again....

nov, 12th - tales of trips gone by......

day 1371 / 470:

back to Portugal this week and lots of pics of pretty buildings coming up......

(playing serious catch-up in all areas at the moment!)

nov, 10th - 45/52....

the 52 project: a portrait of the girls once a week, every week, in 2013

day 1369 / 468:

Limi: happiest when climbing trees and trunks......

Claya: her own version of climbing a tree trunk....

ones that caught my eye this week:

• sleeping
• a halloween face
• lalie and her new sister, marguerite

nov, 9th - broken doll....

day 1368 / 467:

Halloween is long gone and I'm still playing catch-up.....

after a disastrous first year trying to make Limi's costume from scratch.....i now stick to customising. this year, we chose a 'broken/ forgotten doll'.....i used what we had in house and tried to make her look like she was stitched up with stuffing coming out. she was game for the whole outfit except the messy hair and couldn't understand why there were leaves and twigs in the wig......

Claya was meant to be stripy with a pumpkin head but as expected....she was just stripy!

nov, 4th - halloween pumpkins....

day 1363 / 462:

i will still finish off our adventures in Portugal on the blog but just wanted to drop some Halloween posts in between. we had such a great time this year....Halloween is fast becoming my new favourite celebration.....

Limi helped me with the pumpkins again this year. she scooped out the pumpkin flesh (well, i did most of the hard labour and she did the easy scooping) and then i asked whether she wanted to draw the faces on.....to be honest, i had a moment of thinking that the faces would be a disaster and did i Really want her to do the drawing but i had to completely 'eat my thoughts' or, whatever the equivalent is to 'eating your words'....as her faces were better than anything that i would have thought up and she loved being part of the process. it was such a good lesson for me.

i found that the easiest way to do it, was to lie the pumpkins on their sides and let her draw on them with a thinnish black marker pen......the first set of eyes were a little too close for carving so we rubbed them out with a wet wipe and she drew them again.....by the second pumpkin she had it down pat.

i absolutely loved the end results, especially the off centre growl on the second pumpkin.

Limi (and Claya when she's able to) will definitely be our pumpkin face creators from now on.......and i'll happily stick to the menial tasks of carving and heavy duty scooping......

Happy Halloween!

oct, 29th - portugal: roadside shopping....

day 1357 / 456:

on a drive along the coast in Portugal, we stumbled across a roadside stall selling amazing pieces just begging to be shipped home and restored. the shop owner and i communicated via sign language and the calculator......i really wanted the sewing machine table and chair above....the rocking cradle below was just beautiful (if only I had a baby to put inside it).......and even the doors and windows propped up against the building, we just perfect for a renovation project.....

i could have spent ages there but we had two hot and cranky kids with us so I settled on a pair of rusty scissors and vowed to come back one day with my van.....

oct, 27th - portugal: the beaches.....

day 1355 / 454:

i might feel differently if i visited Portugal in high season......but i loved the beaches in our area......they were wide and sandy (not always the case in Europe) and all seemed to have wonderful restaurants right on the sand......

on our very first, full day in Portugal, we went to the beach in the afternoon and then just wandered up the wooden walkway to sit on couches and beanbags, on the sand, for drinks and snacks....

such a great way to start a holiday with friends....

oct, 23rd - portugal.....

day 1351 / 450:

last month, we visited Portugal for the very first time......our destination was all about the house that we had hired. we went with two other families and all three of us had stumbled across the same property and fallen in love......

the place is called Casas Na Areia and is an hour and a half South of Lisbon.....it's in a rural spot near the beach and captivated us with its rustic and relaxed, yet chic, beauty. 

the land used to belong to fishermen and rice farmers and you are still surrounded by rice paddies and sand dunes......

the layout reminded me of going to game reserves in South Africa where there are individual sleeping huts and one main communal house for cooking and relaxing......

  

each family had there own thatch roofed hut, with a gigantic sandpit in the middle....the main hut, made of reeds and wood has a kitchen, large linen covered chairs for lounging in and a big communal table........the main feature of the main hut is that it has a fine sand floor table....made cosy with underfloor heating.....

in the sleeping huts, there are king size beds, slick bathrooms and cement floors.....this is rustic living with serious style.....

 

 the kids were obviously blown away with being able to play with buckets and spades in the living room and it has to be the first and only time that I will ever say.....'try and keep the sand inside girls'.....

i will share some more of our trip (and the area) over the next couple of days but we came for the house.....and certainly, it was a big part of what made our visit to Portugal so spectacular.

casas na areia