I can feel the quietness out there. More importantly I can feel the quietness inside me.
After the craziness of wedding planning,
after the magic of the day itself,
after moving house,
after some traumatic events that  I'll tell you about another day,

... everything is back to normal. And this is a good thing. For now.

I'm enjoying autumn, quiet evenings. The peace, the stillness. Soon I'll be restless again. I can't stay still for too long. And I'm already looking forward to the madness of Christmas, the excitement and possibilities of the New Year. But for now, this peace is all I need.

We're moving!!

We thought it would be nice to come back to our own place after the wedding. Living in a shared house was supposed to be a temporary measure after we came back from South America, but somehow we stayed in this house for almost two years! I think it was meant to be as it means that we'll start our married life in a completely new place that will be only ours. Of course, and despite everything we have to do, I couldn't resist starting looking for inspiration on decorating the new place. These are some of my Flickr favourites. I'm going for a relaxed vibe and I seem to be drawn to white, blue and yellow (of course yellow!)

1. IKEA_Armoire_Cleaning_Closet, 2. Hip Home Offices, 3. Butterfly Bathroom-Elle Decor So Chic, 4. Hip Home Offices, 5. Hip Home Offices, 6. Strawberry Tart on Tray, 7. Living Room, 8. Silver Leaf Lamp, 9. Blackberry Sorbet, 10. HUGE soap dispenser!, 11. main guest room , 12. Jen's Corner, 13. mom's pillowcases - finished, 14. breakfast, 15. Corner of my home, 16. Kitchen shelves, 17. IMG_2569, 18. Untitled, 19. IMG_2616, 20. my redecorated entryway, 21. New corner, 22. muted metallic, 23. Spring Cure 2010: kitchen inspiration, 24. inspiration, 25. books on stairs

Missing Spain...

I spent last week in Barcelona on a business trip. It was a week full of meetings, school visits, seminars and work dinners. Interesting, inspirational but truly exhausting.

As it sometimes happens (but not always!), I felt instantly at home and enjoyed every minute of it even though I was working most of the time.

The food, the sun and the people made up for the early starts and the intensive meetings. And how can you not love a city with a bicing scheme (Bici is bike in Spanish)?

I'm now back in Oxford, trying to remember why I live here and plotting how to take the boy (and the job!) to Spain. This will pass... it always does and I'll be happy once again to live in this wonderful city.

It'll take me a little bit to catch up on your blogs, but I'll get there! And the lovely people who are still waiting for my thank you gift, bear with me. I'll send them soon! :)

Salamanca

I really love my hometown. It's one of the most beautiful and friendly cities I know. It's full of nice independent coffee shops and great tapas restaurants. There are historical buildings everywhere you look, and a story in every corner.

Even The Independent UK thinks so.

From home to home, making things on the way

I’m back in Oxford from Spain and happy to be home. I’ve come to realize that this is home, after all, even if it may be a temporary one. But I've been thinking a lot of what my ideal home would be like, and will post a list soon! You know we love lists...
Spain was fun, but chaotic and more than a bit stressful, so I’m glad to be back and into a routine that doesn't involve meeting friends for dinner at midnight. I'm exhausted!
My routine will from now on include some dressmaking! My dressmaking course started today and I loved the first class! We are a small group of girls, most of us complete beginners and I think the class is going to be fun. Today, the tutor gave us lots of information on patterns and fabrics (we have to get some for our project for next week), all very, very confusing. We also learnt how to measure ourselves and we all chose what we wanted to make. I want to make something fairly straightforward for this class as I don’t want to get frustrated with it and give up the whole idea of dressmaking (yes, it has happened before). The tutor thought making a skirt would be a good idea, so I’m going to do a full length skirt that I can use for my belly dancing class; the rationale for this decision being that I may not end up with something that I can wear in the street but I hope I’d end up with something that I can show to those who have seen me struggle with my belly dancing moves. We’ll see.
Oh! And my rules for life are up in the Five rules for life blog! Yay!

Where is home?

I'm writing this from Spain, where we've come to spend a long weekend. I should be happy to spend some time with friends and family (and I am) but I'm seriously tired and, probably as a result of it, feeling a bit weird and lost. I thought I'd got to a place where I was at peace with being a Spanish in England. I like leaving in England (yes, despite the rain) for lots of reasons and I enjoy spending some of my holiday in Spain.
During the 8 years I've been living in England, I've gone trough different phases. At first, it was hard to live in another country, specially one where I didn't speak the language, and where I didn't understand many of the customs or personality traits. Then, I started to really like England, feeling at ease there, to the point where so many "Spanish things" started to seem strange or even wrong to me. Finally, I enjoyed having two so different homes so close to each other and the fact that I could easily switch from English to Spanish (most of the time).
Now, I'm starting to feel a bit lost in both countries, missing one when I'm in the other, and never completely happy where I am. Where is home? I keep asking myself. I've always thought that at some point in my life I'd go back to Spain and settle down, as my Mum puts it (I think I'm pretty settled in England but this obviously doesn't count for her, since it's in "another country" which means I'm "traveling"), now I'm not so sure. But I don't see myself staying in England either.
I read somewhere that "Home is where my books are", something I completely agree on (because you know that books are my friends). The problem is that at the moment, my books (and many other of my possessions) are in two different places.