The Settlers of Catan Crew

One of my good friends Charity invited me to play Settlers at her house. We are all obsessed with that game. I got the hang of it only the second time I played and was determined to win. Wendy Nielsen introduced me to the game and I just had to get my own, I ordered it by mail because they only sell them in Utah, from what I understand. It can get a little crazy because we're all so competative, but it's so much fun. Everytime I get a chance to go play I get so excited. After being used to playing with these competative ladies, my family thinks I'm a weirdo for being so obsessed with the game, they'll say things like "gosh Rosalia, it's just a game", but they don't understand who I've been playing against. If they played with this group of ladies they would think I was tame. Haha. From left to right: Wendy, Jackie, Me, Amy, Lori, and Charity.

La Misma Luna

Matthew and I went to our favorite movie theatre (The Fine Arts Cinema) and saw La Misma Luna (Under the Same Moon). We were crying the whole time. It's a Mexican movie about a mother who passed the border illegally to give her son a better life and after his grandmother died, his only gardian in Mexico, he set out to find his mother. It was so sad, but very good movie.

Botanical Gardens, Caguas

Matthew and I woke up this morning planning on going to Old San Juan, nothing new, then I remembered someone telling me about the new botanical gardens in Caguas. I heard they were really nice, so I told him we could at least try to go and if it was lame we could just go up to Old San Juan and have lunch. When we got there some guy told us to go park like two blocks down the street and a trolley would pick us up and bring us to the gardens. We were a little skeptical at first and then we finally saw the trolley come our way.



When we finally went into the gardens we were both amazed. Just the entrance was beautiful. It wasn't free, like the one in Rio Piedras, but it was worth the money.



We got lucky because they had a Taino Presentation, which I think was the reason for the high entrance price. They had little gift booths as well with Taino suvenirs.






The garden has this beautiful pond and a small stream that surrounds the entire garden.




The thing I loved the most was that these botanical gardens have way more flowers. We found some really beautiful ones.





This is a little video of a different group of Taino impersonators.

They even have a butterfly farm here but it wasn't open because the butterflies weren't in season. These are just other pictures of our walk around the garden.





We got a little hungry after so much walking and had some piraguas (snow cones) and hamburgers. I, of course, dropped half of my snow cone on the floor...never fails.

The rest of the gardens. We had a blast, I wouldn't mind coming again.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

One of Matthew's classes was cancelled yesterday so he played baseball with his classmates, but I had to drive over to Bayamon and take him all of his gear so he can play. Luckily one of my friends (Emily) was able to come over and watch the game with me. Her husband was playing as well so it worked out perfectly. After a while we started to get hungry so we left the game and got some good sanwhiches at a little deli by her house.

Here's Matthew at bat

Craving Something Sweet?

My buddie Rachel gave me this recipe a while back, when she was still living in Puerto Rico, and I just tried it yesterday. The recipe is Key Lime Squares and they are to die for. Here's the recipe if anyone is looking for something new to bake.

Key Lime Squares


Ingredients:
6 graham crackers (to make ¾ c crumbs)
2 cups pretzels, ground (to make ¾ c crumbs)
6 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
2 tbsp sugar

1 cup sugar
3 tbsp flour
½ cup sweetened condensed milk
4 eggs

½ c fresh lime juice
Finely minced zest of 2 limes

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees; coat a 9 “ square baking pan with nonstick spray.

Process crackers in a food processor until fine; transfer to a mixing bowl. Pulverize pretzels, grinding until almost fine (some small pieces should remain). Add pretzels to crumbs, and mix well with butter and 2 tbsp sugar.

Sprinkle the mixture evenly into the prepared pan, using a measuring cup to “tamp” down the crust. Bake for 15-18 minutes, or until golden around the edges.

Whisk 1 cup sugar and flour together in a mixing bowl while crust bakes. Add condensed milk and eggs; whisk just until blended. Stir in lime juice and zest.

Pour filling over hot crust, and bake 20 minutes, or until filling is set and no longer jiggly in the center. Cool bars completely, then cover and chill until firm, at least four hours.

Optional white chocolate whipped cream

½ cup heavy cream
2 oz. white chocolate, chopped

Heat cream in a saucepan until bubbles form around the edge. Off heat, add chocolate, whisk until smooth, then chill until cold. Just before serving, whip cream to soft peaks. Cut cold bars into squares and transfer to a platter.

Garnish each bar with a rosette of whipped cream, or dollop some on each bar. Finish with a slice of lime.

Just painting away

It's been a little slow with school lately and yesterday it rained all day here in Hato Rey, plus I was stuck at home because it was Matthew's turn to drive to school...leaving me without a car, so I took out my painting supplies and painted one of my favorite tropical flowers I've seen here. Today I start a new semester though, so it was a good way to give myself a little break.

Home Studio

Like most of you know, Matthew has a great passion for music and this Saturday a buddy from school (Howard) came over to record a song with him. Well there was no way to record music with such loud noise comming from outside so Matthew made his own little recording studio in our pantry. I know hilarious, but if you lived here you'd know what I mean, specially cause we have shudders...no windows, you can hear everything that goes on outside and living on a busy street doesn't make it any better. So our pantry was the only "room" they could use. It's so funny, but so creative.
Here's Howard in Matthew's homemade studio.

I felt so bad for Howard, though, because it was so hot in there, he had to keep taking breaks to catch some fresh air. We didn't give him a fan because Matthew said it was too loud so he had to suffer, poor thing.

Matthew set up right outside our pantry and controlled the music from his computer. However, despite the lack of space and equipment the song came out really good. Very professional, I'm very proud of them.

The things we have to go through...

I was having such a dandy day today–I went to my friend Emily's house, we baked the yummiest banana-apple bread, we talked, and just had a nice time together. THENNNN...as I'm getting ready to leave, I step outside to hop in my car, when I see a white SUV parked SOOOO incredibly close to my car it was ridiculous. I'm not kidding the SUV was parked like 6 inches from my car. I could not even crawl through to open my door. I couldn't believe how much of a jerk that person was to do that. There was seriously like 20 parking spaces all around my car and they just had to pick the one right by my driver's door. Ugh, It ruined my whole day. So of course, I had to crawl through the passenger side to get in my car. I wish I would've taken a picture so you could've all witnessed it but I was so shocked that I completely forgot. So by the looks of it, I'm pretty sure that person did that on purpose. Why? I don't know, because this place is crazy, I guess. And those are the little things we have to go through everyday.

Finished Product

I just finished painting the San Diego Temple and I must say I think I like the pencil sketch better than the painting. It's hard to include fine details when painting. I think it'll look better once I put the matting on it and fram it.

My Painting Hobby

I was speaking to my mother this past weekend and she told me she really wanted a picture of both the San Diego and Los Angeles Temples because we were sealed as a family in the LA Temple and all my siblings have gotten married in the San Diego Temple. So I thought maybe I could paint them for her. My painting hobby began 2 1/2 years ago when we first arrived to Puerto Rico; I decided I needed things to keep me busy here. I bought myself an easel I saw at Cosco and began to experiement with different types of paint. I was not the best artist at first but then began to learn simple techniques by trial and error. I kept improving each time I painted something new. Anyway it's been a while since I've picked up a paint brush so I thought I could surprise my mother by painting her both temples. This is what I have so far.

Some of my other paintings