One photo per week: week 15 - Porto and seagulls

Good morning and happy Monday!How are you? How was your weekend? 

Last week we had a photography of a bunch of spirea flowers and today we have a seagull in one statue in Aliados Avenue in Porto. Porto has a lot of seagulls, I mean a lot. There was a time that I slept listening to seagulls and I was not even close to the river or the sea!

Have a lovely week!

Porto

Images: Maria Miranda

One photo per week: week 15 - Spirea an Easter flower

Hello friends and happy Monday! How are you? How was your weekend? We worked on our urban garden by planting summer vegetables. Let’s see how do they growth. After that was such a cold and rainy days that we were cozy at home and finally got the chance to organize my entire fabric stash. 

Last week we had a beautiful photography from a Lycianthes rantonnetii  and today I want to share with you an image of spirea blooms that I used as a flower arrangement for our Easter Sunday tabletop.

Have a nice, creative week!

Images: Maria Miranda

Our Urban Garden: Early Springtime

Hello friends!

Do you remember that we luckily had the opportunity to have an urban garden near our home? If you want to recall go here. Well, we received it late October and the first time we work on it was in the mid of November. Turnip greens didn’t grow further than a finger! We were quite expecting that as they should be seeded in August and we were doing it in November. After it was so rainy that it was nearly impossible to the plants to grow. Nevertheless we could harvest some cabbages and lettuces.

During wintertime, we kept working on the garden and planting more cabbages, leeks and onions, and I couldn’t check it for a couple of weeks. This week I went to see how things were growing and I had a big pleasant surprise.

We already have snow peas! and big cabbages. Now we can eat a propper cabbage soup ("caldo verde", a typical Portuguese soup) exclusively from our garden. The onions are doing good and the spinaches, there they are growing. We might even have hydrangeas flowers these year! I love hydrangeas for styling the living room, they always look so nice and give such a happy mood.

 snow peas

and a big cabbage

hydrangea blooms and onions

For the record, do not this mistake: I planted this cabagges way to close! Unless, you want to have tiny cabbages don't do it!

After taking photographs I spent a long hour taking out all that weeds. What a mindfulness task! This weekend we are going to plant tomatoes and more summer vegetables.

It feels so Springy here and I love it!

Images: Maria Miranda

One photo per week: week 14 - Welcome Spring!

Hello friends! How are you? How was you weekend? We had pretty rainy days here so I decided to bake: cookies and tried for the first time “bola de carne” (hum, how would I translate this to English? No idea! It is somehow kind of focaccia with different meats inside, really yumnny!) 

March has gone and we are already in April with days with more daylight. Love when this happens, and with warmer temperatures feels so Springy. Last time we had a photo here it was the last winter week. And here we open the Spring season welcoming the sun with flowers.

Have a nice week!

Mafra

Images: Maria Miranda

Spring walk in Porto: Bolhão Market. Come along with me!

Happy Wednesday everyone! How are you doing? Today we have a walk in one of the most traditional Porto markets. In the last years, our Easter routine, if we can name it like that, includes a walk on Holy Saturday morning to Bolhão Market in Porto for buying a bouquet of white flowers for offering as a gift. As a plus we tend to buy sausages and spices also. It is always one of a kind experience with vibrant scents and colours from flowers, vegetables, fruit, spices, wine, you name it.

Bolhão Market is located in Porto downtown and is a must go (or it used to be) for locals and for tourists. Indeed, this time of the year is crowded with tourists. You can find anything in there and when I say anything I mean it!

Do you want a peek of what Bolhão Market has to offer to you? Let’s go! 

Images: Maria Miranda

Gravitational Waves: Fridays here at the blog

Happy Friday everyone! How is your week going? Do you want a brilliant update on the most recent confirmation in science? So what’s new?, you may ask. The confirmation of the existence of gravitational waves! Did you follow this on the news on February? This is pretty amazing. 

Gravitational waves were predicted by Einstein 100 years ago. Last September something happen in the detector and was confirmed independently. News come out this February. And this is a brilliant explanation said in such a way that anyone can understand. This is a must watch! The mathematical calculations behind this are understood only by a very restricted group of human beings but the whole concept we can understand for sure! And this explanation is a really good one.

Have a lovely weekend!

One photo per week: week 13 - The last winter week

Happy Monday everyone! How was your weekend? Good, relaxing, inspirational?! We had beautiful sunny warm days around here. Let's go for the photograph of this week? Do you remember last week photograph of the cute yellow bird adding some color to a grey sky in Linz? If you don't click here. I looked to the calendar and realized that whitin one week will be equinox and officially we will be in spring time! So, I was looking and found this seagull flying over a snowy Danube and I thought "maybe this is a good one for saying goodbye to winter time?" What do you think?

Have a beautiful week!

Linz

Image: Maria Miranda

One photo per week: week 12 - Water droplets (3)

Happy Monday everyone! How was your weekend? Good, relaxing, inspirational?! Do you remember last week photograph of water droplets in a cruciferous leaf? If you don't click here. This week a bunch of water droplets in the solid state and a cute yellow bird adding some color to a grey sky in Linz.

Have a nice, creative week!

Linz

Images: Maria Miranda

One photo per week: week 11 Water droplets (2)

Happy Monday everyone! How was your weekend? Good, relaxing, inspirational?! Do you remember last week photograph of a water droplet? If you don't click here. This week, as it was pretty hard to select only one water droplet image, we have again an image on this topic: a bunch of water droplets in one cruciferous leaf.

Have a nice, creative week!

Sobrado dos Monxes, A Coruña

Images: Maria Miranda

Sweet treats with lemon and making me happy!

If life gives you lemons... you make lemonade! Right?! Well, you make lemonade, lemon curd, flavored corn cookies and lemon tart with blueberries. No, lemons were not in promotion at the grocery store! It happens that I got a nice organic batch from my Dad. These lemons have the best scent and taste that I know. I got a break while our sweetie was taking a nap and the first thing I tried was lemon tart with blueberries. I got the inspiration from Emma Duckworth lemon and thyme syrup cake for Decor 8 here, but changed some ingredients accordingly to what I had in the pantry. Instead of vegetable oil I used coconut oil, for the flour I used chickpea flour, for the sugar used 1/4 cup of raw sugar and 2 tablespoons of honey, and did not use any thyme. It was too late when I remembered I did not add any raising powder...  We loved the lemon rich flavor!!

Have a lovely weekend!

After lunch...have to repeat this recipe!

Images: Maria Miranda

One photo per week: week 11 Water droplets (1)

Happy Monday everyone! How was your weekend? Good, relaxing, inspirational?! Do you remember last week photograph of water reflections? If you don't click here. This week, I thought it would be nice to keep going on the water theme and I chose one photograph of water droplets. It was pretty hard to elect only one, so I will on this topic for the next ones. And this one is almost, almost dropping from that nude branch tree.

Have a nice, creative week!

Sobrado dos Monxes, A. Coruña

Images: Maria Miranda

Creativity and socks: Fridays here at the blog

Happy Friday everyone! I have found some pretty interesting articles and shared them on facebook but forgot to do it here. Today, we have creativity and mental health and socks. 

Yes, you read it well socks and what they say about you. Are you wearing neon polka dots or with some comics on it? Do I hear a yes? You are intriguing and rebellious. It is what John Haltiwanger says in his article. I have already gone through my stash of socks and family knows that I always like a pair of socks as a gift. Yes, socks! 

The second one is related to how any form of creativity is good for your mental health. Yep, any form it may be knitting, art, photography, crochet, gardening, cooking... These are good for stress relief and getting relaxed. The author of the study explains that :

“Using knitting to achieve a meditative state of mind could enable a much wider population to experience the benefits of meditation, as it does not entail having to understand, accept or engage in a prolonged learning period of the practice. It happens as a natural side-effect of knitting.”

Have a lovely weekend and see you Monday! I will be preparing myself for the Kid's Clothes Week, starts on Monday.

Winter outdoors, a walk at Sobrado dos Monxes and making me happy

Hello everyone and happy Wednesday! How is your week going? Around here we had one warm sunny day for the last week and rain again. Lovely rainy days, let me enjoy them making plans for lemon curd, cuddling with my sweetie, having an herbal tea while listening Mozart lullabies. Well, most of the times I make a huge effort to not fall asleep before her while we are listening lullabies but that is another story!

While organizing photographs folders I found these from Sobrado dos Monxes (Galicia, Spain) taken February last year. I believe it resembles pretty much the same now as the weather has been the same as here. I love the dramatic grey skies contrasting with the lush greens. Let's go for a short walk in the lake (that was built by the monks) area.

Images: Maria Miranda

One photo per week: week 10

Happy Monday everyone! Last week we had a gorgeous magnolia bloom photographed. Today, we have a photograph of Winter reflections in the lake. Another way of watching around us through water reflections. Pretty nice, hum? Gives a different perspective. Optical physics that explains these phenomena behind this is pretty complicated, but who cares about physics when watching this beauty?! Those long, long branch trees waiting for the new Spring leaves.

Have a nice, inspirational week!

Bom Jesus, Braga

Images: Maria Miranda

Winter outdoors, a walk in the park up in the hill and making me happy

Hello everyone! How are you doing? We are almost in the middle of February, are you keeping up all your new year wishes and goals? Days here are lived at the pace of our newborn sweetie and being enjoyed with all of what that means. She started to smile intentionally this week and we were delighted!

On the opposite of this week, last one we had some lovely sunny days so I took the chance to walk with my sweetie in the park nearby and the one situated up in the hill. I placed her in the baby carrier and off we go enjoying some nature sights. Luckily, I took the camera and shot some images. Here are few: the camellia flowers, the mosses growing on the trees branches (humidity is high here), the light opening space through the vegetation and the lake with its colorful boats. It was such a relaxing, inspiring afternoon!

Images: Maria Miranda

One photo per week: week 9

Happy Monday everyone! Last time we had a "one photo per week" we had a tree with multicolored leaves that I spotted in my neighborhood. Today we have a photograph from a gorgeous magnolia bloom. I love to watch magnolia blooms this time of the year. What about you? Can you already spot blooms around you?

Have a nice week!

Images: Maria Miranda

Sweet treats: Holidays Season

Hello everyone!

This year we started the Advent with a special treat for our sweet tooth and since then we haven't stopped. Hmm where will this lead..! When we reach this time of the year I always have a desire of having "rabanadas" (french toasts in English, I think). Changed the milk for almond milk and they were delicious. I forgot to take pictures so no images at all, but there are testimonials that they were yummy!

A few days later, another desire come up: Aletria, a typical Portuguese desert for this time of year. Aletria... hmm how would it be named in English? Sweet pasta, maybe. It was my first attempt ever and I made it with almond milk also. Next time I will do it more creamy, for sure!

For the second Sunday Advent we tried a not Christmas season desert but incredibly delicious. For the first time we made tiramisu and we loved it. That mixture of coffee and chocolate! We followed the recipe from Jamie Oliver that you can find here, with some minor changes: we did not had any alcohol and we bought pasteurized eggs. We already have some ideas how to improve it for the next time: maybe a double layer?

And you? What sweet treats are you making this time of the year?

Images: Maria Miranda

Our Urban Garden: Our most recent creative project

Hello everyone! In the past years, urban gardens have become common in Portugal. That I am aware there are quite a few in Lisboa, in Porto but where we live there were not so much and mostly located in small villages outside the city. This is not such a big urban city and the countryside is just around the corner. 

However, last October for our complete surprise our parish council created an urban garden with 16 different sections with nice areas. When we saw we couldn't believe and applied immediately for a section. Luckily, we were given a nice piece of land and it is all for free. Yep, the land and the water, no rent at all. It is awesome for us to have this chance so close home, specially because we are so picky with food buying as much as we can organic vegetables and fruit. We didn't know exactly how to start so we had the luck to have the help of my Dad. Great! So far we have planted or seeded, snow peas, turnip greens, different varieties of cabbages and spinaches, lettuces, garlic, leek, a lemon and a specific specie of mandarin orange.

As herbs we have lavender, oreganos, thymus and rosemary so far. We planted hydrangeas hoping for a nice fence with flowers next Summer. And we still have a big wishlist for the next weeks! 

 Here you can spot lettuces, spinaches, leek, onion, cabbages

 Snow peas with 15 days old

 Rosemary plant

 Turnip greens with 15 days old

A close-up of our lemon tree

Hope you are having a great weekend!

Images: Maria Miranda

The Norwegian Secret to Enjoying a Long Winter : Fridays here at the blog!

Hello everyone. The other day I came across an article, written by Laura Vanderkam, based on a study done by Leibowitz, that I found quite interesting specially if you do not like days getting darker as I do this time of the year. Approximately, in one month and a half time we might start to see a slight daylight increase. Until then, there is some valuable ideas in the article. Don't forget "have a positive wintertime mindset". 

The conclusion from Leibowitz study is that: "But overall, mindset research is increasingly finding that it doesn’t take much to shift one’s thinking. "It doesn’t have to be this huge complicated thing," says Leibowitz. "You can just consciously try to have a positive wintertime mindset and that might be enough to induce it." 

Have a lovely weekend!

Images: Maria Miranda

Autumn Outdoors (2)

Hello everyone! After the first signs of Autumn in this post, we can spot other nature changes. The vineyards leaves that turn in stunning red colours, the birds nests that were unrecovered all of this time and the appearance of these "berries" on the trees in my neighboord. Quite nice!

,

Have a nice late Autumn day!

Images: Maria Miranda