Feeling like Fall

The weather has changed! We had an overcast day all day, (maybe Wednesday, they all run together) and then the next day we knew, it was Fall. Summer has come to an end. Kids went back to school on April 20th, and it has been very quiet around here. We have turned off the fans, and Mike actually put pants on! I had to dig out my shawl to wear while we watched sunset the last couple of nights, Veronica requests to be covered up while sitting on a lap, and the breeze, was well...chilly. So Summer was from mid to late Feb thru mid/late April. Good to know, not so bad. We can handle that, now on to some projects.

Picked up some cool pieces of wood on our walks, and finally got out the paint. This was my first one.

A sign for the house. Mike found an old oar on the beach with a broken handle, and I'll make another Casa Pescadores sign for the inside of the house on it, there's a perfect chunk of wall it'll fit beautifully on.

I'd like to replace my tired front door wreath with the Bienvenido sign (that means Welcome) I'm just not sure how the starfish will weather, but I know where we can get more...

My first "non word" sign, now mind you, I am NOT an artist! I can be CRAFTY, but my painting skills are no Bueno. Still may work on this octopus, but I do like the beach found marble I gave him for an eye. I have quite a collection of boards, some I'll do words on, and others I may practice some more sea creatures, of course I'll show you as I go.

Still doing smoothies everyday, Mike has cereal in the morning, but I don't require anything but coffee til about 10:30 am, so I've been doing smoothies, breakfast for me, mid morning snack for Mike, anyway, with smoothies everyday, I have an abundance of yogurt bottles, and I can't just throw them away!

So I covered/wrapped them in colorful twine. Next I'll cut some down and use as tea light holders, maybe paint, who knows, like I said the supply is abundant, and the possibilities are endless.

I've been playing with embroidery thread, learning, or should I say RELEARNING how to make friendship bracelets and lanyards, takes me back to summer camp and junior high. Still trying to learn some more macrame knots.

So' there ya have it. This week in the life of Paige on the coast of Ecuador. Thank you for the positive messages from the last post, I Recieved a couple comments, and a couple private emails regarding the "is it blog worthy", so in response...I say, stay tuned! The adventure continues!! 

Is it blog worthy?

Every couple of days or so I think "I need to write for the blog", but then I look thru the camera roll and decide I don't really have anything new to share. This blog started out as an information highway, sharing our experiences about researching the move, moving and now...into our 10th month here, I find I'm writing more for our family and friends, because, well, the information highway seems to have come to an abrupt end. I have no info, I'm not informed...I think I never was! The early part of this blog can surely read as a "what NOT to do when moving to a foreign country" haha, no really! At this point, 10 months in, I can honestly say everything is still not hunky dory, our residency paperwork is still not finalized, and of course there is STILL the issue with the container. Progress is being made, but I can't say to what end, the roller coaster is still doing its ups and downs, loop de loops, and making me sick at times, but whatcha gonna do? I didn't sign up for nice and easy, I signed up for adventure.

And THIS is part of our adventure, Shadrach, our little salty dog, loving his new Ecuadorean life, his beach life. We've met new friends, who make our new life fun and fulfilling, both human and dog.

Our "otra perro" Dulce/Ariel in her favorite spot, and Veronica putting up with her. And our friends Marty and Jaime, who we feel like we've known for much longer than the 7 months. Here the "boys" (Mike included) doing a "see no evil". Good times!

So, our adventure lets us relax by the beach, play with dogs and friends a couple times a week, and of course my crafty projects. A new project is in progress, the first one is always a learning experience, because I'm usually "winging it". I've seen a picture, maybe a tutorial, but usually it's fumble thru it.

Circles cut from plastic bottles, the blue are gorgeous (rather expensive water bought by some of Marty and Jaime's guests, just called out to be repurposed and recycled) and the lime green are a 7up green bottle that just weren't quite bright enough to be paired with the blue, so I painted them. All these strings of plastic rounds are tied on the lid of a broken blender (thanks again to Marty) and will be a hanging light fixture. More rounds need to be cut, and then Mike will figure out how to wire it, the finished product will be shared at a later date, stay tuned.

These fish are made of plastic bottles, I think we have a lot more collecting before we can accomplish something like this...but with all the time we have...it just may happen, lol! 

Our Ecuadorean life is such a mix, we have "American" stuff, like the Baskin Robbins whipped cream we had on our Jello Poke cake made for Easter dinner by Jaime

And the pound or so of fresh caught shrimp gifted to us by our friends Fernando Father fishermen and his sons, who park their boat infront of the house.

Marty and I had just got back from the market in Charapoto Sunday morning, the fishermen asked for a couple bags to share the catch with the workers, then they asked for another one, but this one was for us. Little did Fernando know I was inside cutting pineapple to share with the group. And that's how we roll,  we take care of each other, we are all vecino bueno, good neighbors.

So, is it blog worthy? Maybe not for some of you, but I'll keep it up, because for the rest of you its a way that you can join us in our new Ecuadorean life. So...stay tuned, the adventure continues!

Good Friday

Yesterday was a great day. Most of them are, and we are so glad we moved here. It is "summer" and pretty hot, especially when you are used to being in AC, AC in the house, AC in the car, AC at work, or AC when shopping, it's pretty standard in much of the U.S.

Without having our techo (roof) built yet, we've been doing some hiding in the house, sitting infront of the fans, but we decided we had to do something with our umbrella, and make it a stand. We took one of our stand up fans off its stand and found the umbrella post fits it, it just proved too unstable in the wind. So I went out to the beach to see what I could find, and I found a chunk of cement that had once been poured into a large coffee can, it was heavy, but not too heavy that I couldn't carry it home, and voila, problem solved!

So the last couple days have been spent outside under the umbrella with the beautiful view of the ocean and the breezes that come with it. Thursday evening our fishermen were cleaning up the beach around sunset, they start a pile and then they light a fire, and everything goes in it. They do this every two weeks or so, so I didn't think anything of it...but the next morning they opened their pop up restaurant, yippee! 

We went for lunch there yesterday, had to have my favorite ceviche camaron (shrimp) and we split a breaded fish, super good! We met the brother in law of Fernando, he's a policemen, and felt every bit a part of their family. After lunch we went back to the shade of our umbrella enjoying the afternoon, listening to podcasts and about five o'clock, Fernando came bearing a gift, fresh cheese empanadas and fish conviche (think breaded hush puppy with flaky fish inside). Seemed the perfect time to open a cerveza and start happy hour.

What a perfect end to another perfect day. We shared a couple beers and watched the sunset...

Yes, it was a Good Friday, indeed. Stay tuned, the adventure continues!

Mud and Macrame

The last couple of days I've been playing with macrame, that's what this post was going to be about, but while on our walk this morning, we saw some amazing mud, so they'll share a post. I saw some macrame pot slings, plant holders on Pinterest, the pictures looked pretty descriptive, so I gathered twine over the next couple days and decided Tuesday to set to work. My first problem was remembering the length of twine wrong, I cut 8 pieces of 40 ft, what a mess, they were tangled all over the place! Mike remembered as a child, his mom doing macrame, and she had her ends of twine in bundles, that then could be woven, knotted whatever without tangling with the others strands. So, I did that, but I couldnt knot the strands, something was wrong. I checked Pinterest again, and found the error, A TOTAL OF 40 FEET, 8 strands of 5 ft each, that's much easier to maneuver.

My first attempt. Not bad, tried to play with the distance between knots, and found I can change the shape that way, tall and skinny, etc. For my next attempt I brought in another color twine, and added, what else? Shells...

Now I just got to get to Sosote and get some plants!  On Wednesday I decided to try a wall hanging, I collected my twine, a piece of wood, and some shells and sat outside under the umbrella. I hung the wood on the fence to work, the breeze was nice, the fishermen were fixing their nets, and I was happy playing with another project.

The finished product. Quite large, the top wood piece is almost 3 ft across and it probably hangs 4 ft long. Some close up pictures...

I've been wanting to do something with hanging Sandollars, it could use a little tweaking, but not bad for first attempt. 

Now for the mud! Low tide was this morning at 8:30, a wonderful time that still has some marine layer for coolness, and a nice time to take coffee. While heading to the ruins, we noticed a lot of mud, mud we hadn't seen before, LOTS OF MUD. Look back a post and see the pictures of the ruins, in comparison to these we took this morning.

In the recently posted pictures, all this mud is covered with sand, we never knew this mud was under there! It's slick and slippery and sometimes stinky, I wonder if it isn't decomposing plants from when this used to be neighborhood...I can't imagine.

Crazy! It'll be interesting to see when the sand comes back, just another "seasonal" thing we get to experience. Hope you enjoyed the post, Stay tuned, the adventure continues!