Craftscapades

Some of you may know that I have been suffering from the craft bug this past month. Due to the sad fact that we aren't able to have everyone over for dinner to humor us about how great our crafts look(PS- yall have to come visit!) I thought I would show you a little bit of what I have spent too much time doing these past few weekends..

For the first time since we have been alive, our AU Tigers took it all the way.

How could we not show everyone on Iffley Road how proud we are?

We finally got rid of our brown-ish tweed door curtain (I cringe just thinking about it)

and made a new orange one out of fabric we found on clearance

War Eagle baby

Along with my sweet friends Leah and Claire wreath making came on the radar as Christmas craft but has since turned into a multi-seasonal joy...

We finally got around to taking down the Christmas wreath last weekend

and skipped right ahead to a Valentine's Day wreath.

With a little twine and felt, anything is possible

Growing up I had a chalk board wall in our kitchen &

Jordan and I thought it would be fun to make one here too.

We took a trip to B & Q (aka home depot) and picked up a piece of wood and chalk board spray paint

Please note Jordan is practicing his 'Super S' again.. haha

We have been meaning for months to get another bedside table for Jordan

But Jordan took things into his own hands

I knew I loved Jordan for so many reasons, but dang I had no idea 

I was going to love him for his carpentry skills too. Talk about a bonus!

Check out what he made

Last but not least..

I had been wanting to do something above our bed

With the help of my sweet mom, who sent us hankies from home,

We painted this canvas and mounted the hankies on it

It kind of makes up for the headboard, right?

Well those are all the crafts we have for you now.  But the best news yet is about to drop.... 

One of the porters at the Rhodes House, who is a great friend, heard that I enjoyed sewing.  Being the nicest person in the world that he is, he offered me his mom's old sewing machine on Friday! Seriously, I could have cried.  I told him I couldn't take it and his response was "Well, if you want it to keep sitting there for another 8 years you can walk away" haha.  So thanks to Bob we are about to enter a whole new era of crafting, I am so excited!

PS- last year, this weekend, Jordan asked me to be his wife.  Isn't it insane how much can happen in a year? God is so good.

Ooops... Valentines Day Came Early

So I'll give a little background first...

For Christmas, my sweet Aunt Pappy gave Jordan and I an i-tunes giftcard that we have really been looking forward to cashing in.  Being back at home at Christmas I was reintroduced to how awesome American music is, specifically Taylor Swift.  Being our first Christmas together and still being newlyweds, I knew in the back of my mind that I should take the higher road and get a CD we both wanted.  But selfishly, knowing Taylor Swift had a new CD out, and knowing we had 15 glorious dollars to spend at the i-tunes store, I have been dropping hints for months that we should use it on the new T-Swift CD.

I don't know what came over me after dinner... maybe it was missing 36 (my roommates) and all the times we belted Taylor Swift together in our kitchen, or thinking about Will and MF and the time MaryFran and I had a 13 hour drive to Roanoke accompaied by Taylor herself,  but something hit me and I HAD to buy her new CD tonight. I HAD to. (Sound like all the stubborn little kids you babysit? I'm not proud)  I asked Jordan, "Hey why don't we just split that i-tunes gift card that Aunt Pappy gave us?" and he replied "Ah, I don't know where it is..." with a very suspicious look on his face.  But for some reason I was determined and pushed and pushed him, "Are you sure you don't know where it is?"  "Uh yeah I'm pretty sure"  At this point, I battling wanting the new CD so bad and trying not to be frustrated he didn't know where it was.  Sensing this, he got up and pretended to go look for the gift card in his desk.  I heard some rustling and even logged on to the i-tunes store and started sampling some of her awesome new songs.  Jordan came back into the room and with a sheepish smile said "Happy Valentines Day, I knew how much you wanted it" and handed me the new Taylor Swift CD.

Ahhhhhhhh.  I am a dummy, my stubbornness totally spoiled his sweet surprise.

But dang, I will not complain about jammin to my new hott tracks next to the best husband in the world! How did I get so lucky?

Andalucia Part Dos

After reading journal articles for the past 2 hours while Katie napped on the "Big Green"(our couch), I decided to abruptly switch the music from Debussy to Bruce Springsteen and take a break to finish up the blog about our trip to Spain.

Following our tour through the mountain town of Granada we took a bus to Sevilla and stayed in a little Hotel near the downtown.

(Not our hotel haha, but pretty)

Knowing that our fellow American friends Jared and Leah would be joining us in Sevilla in two days we didn't want to tour too much of Sevilla without them, so we took a day trip to Cadiz to check out the Spanish view of the Atlantic.

(No disappointments found)

After returning to Sevilla from our trip to Cadiz we were surprised to find hundreds of thousands of people swarming the streets. While still in shock of the surreal experience of unknowingly walking into a massive celebration of something you have no idea about, we stumbled upon a huge parade going through the center of town....  Later we became aware of the Spanish holiday Epiphany, to celebrate the arrival of the three kings to deliver gifts to Jesus. This is the more commercial portion of Christmas holiday for the Spanish and they go ALL OUT!! The parade lasted 45 minutes complete with marching bands playing the world cup song "This is Africa", massive themed "Mardi Gras"-like floats tossing tons of candy, and kings riding horses with their faces painted black (a little strange)...

The Beethoven Float. 

We liked all the little kids' wigs. 

After the parade was over there was so much candy on the streets that you inevitably ended up with a sole of smashed candy stuck to the bottom of your shoes.

Our friends from Oxford finally arrived after a long taxi ride through all the parade traffic

We toured all over Sevilla, ate the tapas, drank the wine, tried to watch some flamenco dancing but decided not to after it was going to cost muchos euros and last 3 hours. However, we did find the Plaza de Espana which was one of the most beautiful buildings either of us had ever seen (that is besides Samford Hall).

The plaza was filled with intricate mosaics all over everything

Katie was more interested in sliding down the railing than the mosaic

The trip was awesome and tons of fun, a nice break from the cold of England. But we're off to some friends to cook some Mexican and Bread pudding (whoever heard thought of that combo?? I don't know but I am really excited about it)

Love Ya'll

Jordan and Katie

Andalucia part 1

So we took a New Years trip to Spain a few weeks back and then came home, tired and lazy, and never blogged about it. Thus, the long anticipation for the blog post has abated, for those who have already looked at the pictures on Facebook, you will see nothing new. Sorry.... But, you will get the insightful commentary to correspond with some of the pictures.

Welcome to Granada, the first stop on our trip

We stayed here for about 3 days and in between trips to the churro stand we got to tour the palace of La Alhambra and fight off gypsies and street scammers (Nothing too serious but a little bit unnerving at times)

I'm not going to try and give any kind of history of the palace because I'll screw it up and Wikipedia is just too easy. I will however say that it was an enormous castle with beautiful gardens and was by far the highlight of the trip altogether. Also, the great American writer Washington Irving (who also wrote stories like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and The Legend of Rip Van Winkle) while serving as a diplomat in Spain lived at Alhambra for a time and wrote a book called Tales of Alhambra. I bought the book and it provided some pretty interesting reading about the palace and its history.

One of many Palace Gardens

Some Arabic architecture poking out around my head. Also, reppin' AU, starting to get pumped for the big game. Furthermore, I should add that Granada offered our only War Eagle moment in Spain. While eating ice cream one night a man standing adjacent at the counter greeted us with a War Eagle. He was from Ohio and had come to Spain to work for one year as an engineering project manager, "that was 16 years ago", he sighed. We stood delighted, conversing in English for an hour with John who had no affiliation whatsoever with Auburn but knew about the War Eagle.  After countless miscommunications at restaurants and shops having desires and expectations lost in translation it was a nice change to speak in a native tongue for a while.

I have to go to class now, but I will finish the rest of this blog later with part of 2 of our journeys.

War Eagle and Love ya'll 

Mouth Full of Metal

I will never forget the glorious day I got my braces off.  April 19th 2003.  I crimped my hair the night before and made sure to wear my 'coolest' American Eagle shirt to go along with my new gums.  I can kinda remember my orthodontist that day talking to me about how I was going to have to wear my retainer at night in turn for having my braces taken off blah, blah blah... I wasn't listening (partly because I couldn't stop running my tongue over my new teeth) and mostly because I just wanted to get to school and show everyone how mature I was not to have braces.

Am I the only person in the world who still has to wear their retainers?!  Seriously, I would have never thought 8 years ago I would have to still wear them to keep my teeth from looking like snaggle teeth.  For the first few months we were married I wasn't wearing them to bed. Who wants to talk with a huge lisp and have purple glitter (because that was the obvious choice in 8th grade) spilling out of their mouth when they are newlyweds? Not me.... until I looked in the mirror and realized I was starting to fit in a little too well with the Brits :(

Sunday Morning Cravings

I just wanted to take a minute and let you in on some of  my random cravings that I have been experiencing since we moved here.  Jordan and I have had a lot of fun cooking in our flat.  Especially on Thanksgiving when we tried to replicate some of our families best Thanksgiving recipes.  Our pumpkin pie called for corn syrup, normal- right?  we had to resort to this weird bottle called liquid glucose.  Or when we were making the cranberry salad and the recipe called for cool whip and all we could find was 'squirty cream' (that is no lie).  But these next few things have found themselves to be irreplaceable, sadly no substitute can be found for them here. 

wouldn't you think chicken broth would be universal?! well, sadly the Brits don't know its wonders in casseroles and soups yet

how good does chocolate milk sound? yeah.. thats what I've been thinking for the last few months

This goes without saying.. but dang do we miss Mexican food!

But most of all, we miss Auburn.  Especially this week with the the football team bringing home the national championship and both the men's and women's swim teams upsetting Texas in their respective dual meets. 

Trailing by 2 points going into the last relay the men won the last relay to beat the Longhorns for the first time in 3 years

What a week to be an Auburn Tiger.

War Eagle!!!

Happy New Years from Spain

For the last four years I had pretty crummy New Year's Eves stuck in a hotel room asleep after long swim practices anticipating the torture that the New Year's day workout would bring. This year was somewhat different. The wild-and-crazy Andersons spent their first New Year's Eve together in a Holiday Inn at the Luton Airport asleep at 10 PM awaiting a 4 AM wake-up call to catch a flight to Malaga, Spain. Aside from our wild party antics to bring in 2011, the year of 2010 was a very good one to both Katie and I. Last night while drinking some wine together and discussing whether 2010 was the beginning or end of a decade, we went month by month through 2010 talking about some of the highlights.

January: Jordan pops the question

February: Auburn Men win an SEC championship

March: Wedding plans galore and soaking up the best roomates in the world

April: This is our favorite month of the year to be in Auburn, the weather can't be beat, swimming is over, and there is lots of time for brother's weekend

May: Graduation and a sad goodbye to Auburn, at least for a little while

June: Our first wedding shower hosted by sweet friends- our first cast iron skillet!

July: 4th of July singing Toby Keith on the dock, and Britty and Mark's beautiful wedding. USA all the way

August: Our last wedding shower in Roanoke,  and an epic trip to Busch Gardens 

September:  Got hitched, tasted a little bit of Mexico and packed up our lives (please note the AU themed luggage, War Eagle!)

October: Moved across the pond

November: Both became much wiser at the age of 23, went to Wales and watched Auburn bring back the Iron Bowl from our laptop

December:  Home for the holiday season, and Christmas in Devon

What an incredible time we have been blessed with these past 12 months. It has been a wonderful year and we are excited about whats in store for 2011. We are so thankful for all our blessings but none more so than our loving supportive families.

2011, here come za Andersons