The mom stays in the picture

I love the wisdom of Allison's words when she wrote a piece for the Huffington Post urging mothers to stay in their children's pictures.  I AM so guilty of the opposite.  Having taken hundreds of pictures of my daughter with my camera and cellphone, I went looking for a decent picture of us among them after reading her article, and it made me sad to realize I was only visible in less than 10.  This is a dismay.  I'm correcting this right away.  I want my children to see me in pictures.  To see their mom, young, vibrant, tired, overwhelmed but perfectly part of their lives.  I went browsing through my childhood albums, and my own mother was absent in many of them.  She was the picture taker, yet she could have easily handed someone else the camera.  So I went and dug the only pictures I have with my baby daughter to show you here.  I'm not perfect, in fact, I don't like how I look in them, but they are the ONLY pictures she'll see of me at this age.

A new beach in Sosua

Remember when I told you our vacation destination was a relatively new beach in Sosua?  A quiet and relaxing beach, with yellow sand, blue-green waters surrounded by gentle mountains. If I close my eyes, I can still hear the waves purring at night. The trip was also a chance to snap pictures with my new Nikon D3100. Discovering photography has been a fresh of breath air in my domesticated life.

Emilu's first birthday

Yesterday we celebrated Emilu's first birthday.  It was to be a Spring fete in the cozy yard of my family's home in Miami, but instead we ended up indoors due to a severe rain and thunder storm that flooded the streets for several hours.  But it turned out well, we enjoyed ourselves and it became a more intimate get together. 

She was very shy at the start of it, waking up from a long afternoon nap.  But then she got to play with my in-laws and her cousins.  We prepared appetizers and small plated dishes, which included Argentian empanadas, mediterranean salad, hummus and casava, peppered cheese mini sandwiches and a lorraine quiche.  The cake was prepared by a Dominican baker.  It was a vanilla/almond cake with hazelnut and vanilla frosting and a creme filling. Very yummy!  Emilu had cake for the first time, and she of course, loved it.  We are so grateful for a healthy and vibrant one year old in our lives.

Fresh flowers

I love fresh flowers, I got these on Sunday and they are still pretty intact. The problem is I forgot to ask what type of flower it was, and now I'm trying to identify them in the internet with no luck.They remind me of peonies, but in a smaller version. Do you know the name of this flower?
{All photos by me}

What I had for lunch

Maybe I'll start a series entitled What I had for lunch or maybe not, regardless what I end up doing, I can't promise much these days, but I will commit myself to take more pictures of the foods I eat for lunch.  We always do lunch at home.  My husband works nearby and he comes home most days to have lunch with me.  So that means I'm in the kitchen preparing food twice a day, most days.

Today's adventure started with a beautiful vine tomato. I usually add tomatoes to everything; they are so delicious and so good for you, packed with vitamins and antioxidants. Sometimes when I don't feel like eating bread, I just prepare a huge tomato and basil salad, dressed in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, with a few pita chips on the side.

Our go-to sandwich consists of multigrain bread with spring mix greens, light french dressing, tomatoes, and Swiss cheese, and of course, a few kettle cooked chips (my guilty pleasure). Sometimes I do an improved version with a French baguette and arugula greens instead spring mix, add pesto dressing, and also some rotisserie chicken slices. And of course, some espresso to seal the deal. Do you prefer tea or coffee after lunch?

 
Buen provecho, friends!

Our weekend in pictures

Hi friends! I hope you all had a nice weekend. We had a great one too. I was busy wrapping some gifts for my husband to take to Miami.  We ran errands, had lunch, even Piki got some nice sunny, long walks, and we also watched Ides of March. (it was so-so). This week I have a few fun posts planned, I hope you all like. I have been having trouble with the LinkWithin plugin, ever since I switched domains. They never really updated my new address, and it looks I'm not the only one either. I'm disappointed because the plugin is a really attractive, no-cost way to attract more readers. So I have signed up with an alternative, called NRelate, but it seems they take forever to build the plugin to your site. So, please excuse my bare posts with no related thumbnails at the bottom, I'm diligently working on fixing this.


I also baked chocolate cupcakes and bought a few craft materials to finish a project (for the dining room bunting), which I can't wait to show off here, and stopped at one of my favorite home goods shops, World Market, to pick up some gifts.  How about you?  Did anything fun?

Home redecoration

Remember this post when I said I was redecorating our space to fit our growing family's needs? Well, this is how the living turned out. Since I don't own a photographic camera, these camera phone pictures will have to do. The objective was achieved: We decluttered, and now have more space.