Everything is going swimmingly....

PIGSY Art Merch is now available!

Our day to day routine here in Malaga is generally to get up and go swimming first thing in the morning. Yesterday, however, we had an appointment for the vet and groomer at 6pm with Bones so we decided we would go for our swim later in the day after we dropped the dog to the vet. 

We cycled to the Vet and locked our bikes outside. After leaving Bones in with the vet we then walked to the beach (about 2/3 mins away).

The beach was so quiet and practically deserted. No one was in swimming so we had the water all to ourselves!

It was really pleasant. Although the water was icy cold, the temperature outside the water was warm and the sand was hot underfoot which felt so good. 

The area that we swam in was just in front of the upmarket Gran Hotel Miramar. To me the view of the hotel from the beach is very LA with the palm trees and the stylish looking hotel.

In the morning time we worked on the PIGSY website. Pigsy has been designing a range of "Art Wear" merchandise over the past while and we finally got it added to the merchandise store on his website.

It's a curated collection of lifestyle products printed with Pigsy artworks.

I particularly like the tote bags (the black one is a "Big Shopper") - they will make great stocking stuffers this Christmas! Another idea to be more eco friendly this Christmas is to forgo wrapping paper and instead put gifts straight in to a reusable tote bag like these ones.

Take a look over on the Pigsy website at the "merch" and let me know what you think. Also if you have a favourite Pigsy artwork that you would be interested in buying as a printed t-shirt version, drop a line to pigsy.art@gmail.com and if the demand is there we can introduce it to this new "Art Wear" range!

10 reasons why your own home cinema rocks!

Easy social distancing with an outdoor home cinema

We have set up a projector on our balcony to screen films on at night time. You can read all about how easy it is to set up your own outdoor home cinema over on Ciaran's blog - click here.

Here's my top 10 reasons why a home cinema is awesome:

1. You get to choose what to watch and not have to pick from whatever is showing in the local cinemaplex
2. You can eat whatever snacks you want!
3. You can talk during the movie :-)
   
4. You can have an adult beverage
5. You can switch off and watch something different if you don't like the film
6. You can watch the film under a blanket to get all cozy
7. Your dog can watch the film too - yes Bones likes to do this!
8. You can enjoy looking up at the stars if the film is boring
9. You can binge watch a whole series on Netflix
10. You can press pause when you go visit the bathroom!

Can you think of any other reasons why a home cinema rocks?! Leave a comment below

What I've been working on: PIGSY website

PIGSY Art Website 

The big project that I'm currently working on is PIGSY's website. Ciaran gave it a major overhaul and design upgrade when Ireland went in to lockdown at the start of the pandemic.

The piece of work that I am now doing on it is I am going back over all of the content and optimizing it for search engines (SEO). Along with all of this I am amending and adding to current content. I recently added a new page which shows PIGSY artworks on walls in homes. This is a really great way to showcase the artwork and it also emphasizes how contemporary they are and what a feature they become when hung in a space.  

Importantly the website is both desktop and mobile friendly. From looking at stats I can see that more people visit the website using a mobile device than on a desktop computer. Sign of the times and this really doesn't surprise me. I'm open to suggestions or critique on the website so get in contact with me if you can offer any advice for improvements - particularly if you excel at SEO as I am a newbie to it!

Additionally I would like more backlinks to the PIGSY website so that's probably the next stage of this project. Get in contact with me if you have any helpful suggestions on how this can be done.

The most beautiful bookshop I've ever visited...

Mapas y Compañia
Calle Compañía, 33, 29008 Málaga

I've visited lots of nice bookstores on my travels.... but I think this one is the nicest! 

I was planning on visiting a second hand shop on the same street but it did not open at 5pm as was indicated on the internet. I sat outside the shop for a couple of minutes to see if they were opening a little late but there was no signs of life within so I left. 

As I walked towards home I passed this beautiful independent bookshop and decided to pop in for a visit. I was wowed when I stepped in. It felt like being on a film set. The books and other small items for sale were displayed in the most beautiful cases. It is mainly travel related books that are for sale but other selections too. There was a big collection of Tintin books in different languages along with Tintin merchandise - I wanted to buy it all!

As this was an impromptu visit, I did not stay too long - but I plan to visit again soon to enjoy it's charms. I may also buy a Tintin book in Spanish as it may help with my language study as I can follow along with the story using both the pictures and the text.

Sea glass

Collecting Sea Glass 

One of the things I have been enjoying lately is looking for sea glass after my daily swim. I spend a couple of minutes when I get out of the water taking a wander a long the shore and pick up a few pieces if there is any to be found (sometimes the waves are very close to the shore and they pull all the stones back to sea so there is no chance of finding any glass.)

Generally I only find orange, white and green glass but I was hoping to find a blue piece. Well guess what?!

Today's the day - I found a blue piece!

Here's the blue piece that I found today (see below). It's a gorgeous colour. 

Look also at the little green piece that I have put to the front on the white pieces. It's in the shape of a heart!! I found the heart shaped piece on my first day of collecting sea glass so it spurred me to keep going with the collecting. 

I am now on the look out for a nice glass bowl or jar to put the sea glass in. Watch this space!

Coffee time in Malaga

Tassimo Coffee Machine 

As I wrote before, we have got in to a nice routine of going for a swim every morning and then going for coffee and a little breakfast (pitufo). I was enjoying this except for the fact that we had difficulty finding somewhere that served good coffee. The first few times I ordered a Cafe con Leche and I ended up with a short coffee (which seemed hopeful) with lots of milk. I was hopeful about it as it was short so I reckoned it might taste strong, but unfortunately it just tasted like warm milk with a barely there taste of coffee. I then moved on to ordering a Cortado which was better but still not great in some places. 

So after a lot of mulling it over I decided to get a coffee machine for here in the apartment. I've always had Nespresso machines at home in Ireland but after talking to a few people and getting recommendations I decided to order a Tassimo machine as they have a much broader range of coffees - for example you can buy pods to make cafe au laits and machiattos and even chai lattes and hot chocolates!

And here it is our shiny new Tassimo Suny

With our breakfast we had a L'Or Espresso which we both really enjoyed. Short, strong coffee - just perfect.

I look forward to trying other flavours and will order some online as when the machine arrived it also contained a money off coupon for when you place your first coffee pod order.

Lunch in Malaga Market

Yesterday I wrote about buying food in the market in Malaga and today I am going to let you know about another fun thing that you can do at Malaga Market.

Lunch!

You can stand at a counter inside the market have a drink while looking at different fresh fish and order what takes your fancy. We didn't even look at a menu but instead ordered what everyone around us was ordering.  It was typical tapas style, so we ordered one or two and then a few more after we had eaten them. Some items needed to be cooked while others were served to us cold with some salt and lemon juice. All were delicious!