SCOTTSDALE QUARTER SPLASH PAD

Have you ever dreamt of a place where you can sit down and relax, watch your children play with water, get tan, eat the best food from amazing local restaurants or have a picnic in a grassy area, window shop from the comfort of a lounge chair, watch limousines and your dream cars drive by, and watch the most fashionable people walk right in front of you? It sounds like a 5 star resort, right? Not really! You can experience all of the above at the Scottsdale Quarter Shopping Center Splash Pad in the heart of Scottsdale, AZ. A place where comfort, elegance and fun go hand-in hand.

The Scottsdale Quarters Shopping Center  is located in the heart of one of the most exclusive communities in Phoenix, North Scottsdale. Scottsdale is well known for their unique elegant boutiques, exquisite restaurants and a large community of exclusive people. 

What I absolutely love about this incredible splash pad is the location.  Located in the heart of an outdoor mall where you can easily spend the entire day without having to go anywhere, how convenient! See, I have the whole day already planned for you!  You can  arrive at 10 am when the shops, splash pad and the restaurants open, let your kids play in the splash pad, walk a short distance to your favorite restaurant and then go shopping in their exclusive boutiques or recognized stores like H&M, Apple, Restoration Hardware and Armany Code , just to name a few. Sounds like a dream place! 

When I think about summer all I want to do is to be surrounded by water. The best part is that these splash pads, also called water fountains or water parks, are completely free to the public and it offers a fun unique experience for your entire family. Not bad for a free outing! 

By far this is my favorite splash pad in the North Phoenix area. I like it so much that I celebrated Logan's second birthday in this location. Want to see more pictures? Click here. 

Hope you make this incredible place your next fun destination. I guarantee you will love it and the best part is, your kids will enjoy it too! There is something for everyone and its unique design will make you feel like you are in an oasis in the middle of the desert. 

I added a combination of pictures taken during the day, from a different occasion, and at night, so you fall even more in love with this place. With the reflection of the light on the palm trees, the colorful lights installed in the splash pad and the nice comforting warm breeze from the desert, this place can offer a romantic evening for all of you love birds out there! I'll let you experience it for yourself! 

Pictures of my nieces and nephew visiting from Texas having a blast!  Logan couldn't miss all the fun!

I give all the credit to my friend Liz Daniels for taking this gorgeous picture while she was on a date with her hubby.

My  friend Fabi sent me this picture of her hubby and baby playing at the splash pad at night.

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And if you are getting ready to spend a fun day at the Scottsdale Quarter splash pad and are wondering what are their policies, problem solved, please see below! 

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Here is a sneak pic of the Desert Ridge Splash Pad which will be featured next week! 

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If you would like more information about free water parks or splash pads around the valley, click here. 

If you would like me to take pictures of the entire shopping center, please let me know. I will be more than happy to create a separate post and publish it just for you,

Hope you enjoyed looking at the pictures and reading about this beautiful splash pad. If you live in a different city, state or in a different part of the world and would like to share with us pictures of your favorite water park or summer activities, please send me an email or become my friend on Facebook. 

I love hearing from all of you and appreciate all of your sweet comments. 

See you soon! 

PAOLA'S COTTAGE PIE

The thought and the feeling of comfort food is something that reminds me of winter time, which is so far away. But yesterday was one of those days where I spent all day thinking, what should I make for dinner? I didn't have a lot of ingredients, forgot to run to the grocery store and just the thought of opening the refrigerator and preparing food didn't sound appealing to me at all. A very wise man once told me (my dad, who is an amazing cook), " A good cook do not always follow recipes, you work with what you have in your kitchen, smell your ingredients, close your eyes and let your imagination do the rest. Everyone can cook, you just need some motivation and inspiration." It sounds so simple, right?

To make the story short, I went to my regular Mondays Zumba class, came home took a nice long shower and the thought kept on bothering me, it's 6 pm and I'm still thinking about what to make for dinner! I put my pj's on came down stairs to hug my family and noticed our house was really cold. Oh the thought of winter and the  desire of having some warm food to warm my soul crossed my mind immediately. I'm preparing some comfort food!

With the little ingredients I came across, I was able to create this smooth, easy to digest, but yet nutritious and warm dish. Being born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia and preparing Colombian dishes everyday, I usually try to follow my dad's advice when I'm not in the mood of cooking for hours or having a really heavy dish and try to simplify and  invent new dishes. I'm grateful for my husband, who was born and raised here in the United States and has more experience with different kinds of food other than Spanish dishes. I always brag about how good my new creation was and after eating all of his dinner, he always reminds me, Sweet Heart dinner was delicious but that dish has already been created. This time he called it........................Cottage Pie! 

Oh well my amazing friends, this is my version of a wanna be a really good amazing Cottage Pie. I'm not going to feel sorry for myself, instead I am giving myself a little pity pat on my back and some credit and calling it Paola's Cottage Pie. 

Bon Appetit!

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INGREDIENTS 

Serving for 6 people 

Mash Potatoes

1 1/2 pounds of Idaho potatoes or your  favorite white potatoes (about 6 medium size potatoes)
1/2 cup of whole milk
4 tbsp of butter about 1/2 stick of unsalted butter
Salt and ground black pepper to taste

Filling

1 Tbsp of olive oil
1 pound of ground beef (85% to 95% lean)
1 cup or 1 medium size chopped yellow onions
1 1/2 cups of frozen veggies (Buy the bag of frozen veggies that contains peas, carrots and corn)
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 1/2 cup of ketchup
2 Tbsp of Worcestershire
Salt and pepper to taste
2 cups of grated Mexican cheese or Mozzarella if Mexican is not available

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DIRECTIONS

• Heat your oven to 400 degrees while you prepare all of the other ingredients
• Set aside 6 small individual baking dishes and grease the bottom with butter, set aside for later. 

Mash Potatoes

• In a large pot, boil the potatoes in water with salt. You can tell when the potatoes are ready when they are soft and tender. (Hint: While they are boiling try cutting through on with a knife, if the knife cuts the potatoes with no effort, like butter, then your potatoes are ready.) I boiled mine on high heat for about 20 minutes. 
• Once the potatoes are completely cooked, drain the water and put them in a separate bowl to mash up. Mash the potatoes, add milk, butter, salt and black pepper to taste. Set aside to use later.

If you need step by step visual direction on how to make mash potatoes, please refer to my Stuffed Green Pepper recipe.

Filling

• Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the ground beef and cook until brown. 
• Once the ground beef is cooked all the way add the onions and garlic, mix for about 1 1/2 minutes. Add the frozen veggies and cook for  another 1 minute. 
• Stir in the Ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper to taste. ( I added 1/2 tsp of salt, and 1/4 tsp of pepper).

• Time to transfer all of your ingredients to the baking dishes. From the bottom to the top start by one layer of the ground beef filling, one thick layer of cheese and one layer of mash potatoes. I like spreading a little cheese on top of the mash potatoes to add some color to it. 

• Bake uncovered for 20 minutes 

Note: This pie is extremely hot when you take it out of the oven. Please make sure that you let it rest for about 3 minutes before serving. Warn your family about how hot the dishes are to prevent getting burned. 

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Here is a picture of my sweet bambino eating mommy's pie. This is a very simple dish with a very soft texture that will fill your toddlers tummy and fulfill all of his nutritional needs. Logan is a really picky eater but he loved dinner tonight. So I'm calling it a total SUCCESS!

Hope you enjoy making this recipe for your family, yourself or how about your date! I would love to hear from you.

What is your favorite winter dish? If you would like me to make your recipe or try it please contact me. I would love to make it and give you all the credit!

Contacting me is very easy. Comment on this post, send me an email or visit me on Facebook.

SUPER HERO T-SHIRTS!

Hi friends, it has been a while since the last time I wrote a post on this blog! Life has been very busy, specially with a little one that is getting older and more energetic everyday. I'm so happy to be back into the blogging world. It was about time! I missed all of you and I hope you missed me too! 

Logan has been very popular lately and my little stud has a very demanding social life! To make the story short, Logan had a birthday party at the Desert Ridge AMC movie theater to go to, and the theme was super heros. All that I could think about was, oh goodness, where am I going to find him a last minute super hero T-shirt? It is challenging to find one specially when you get an invitation in the mail a week before the party!

 I'm sure many of you are extremely creative and are probably thinking, well Paola, just buy some fabric and make him a T-shirt, it is very easy! Well, I thought about that too my friends, but the problem is that, I can be extremely creative, but one talent I'm lacking in is, sewing!  So I decided to look online and, bingo, I came across a company called Jack Of All Trades Clothing. I completely felt in love with their T-shirts being a well known shop-a-holic, I thought, mm maybe mommy and daddy can wear one too, even thought we were not invited to the party!!!! So I found exactly what I was looking for...... one for mommy and one for daddy!  

I have to be honest with all of you, I never buy anything online. I'm the kind of person that has to see it, hold it and try it, and like to buy. So I decided to try it and.......... I LOVED IT! My husband and I had so much fun trying them on. We were counting down the days for Logan's party just so we could wear them. I know this sounds silly but we were giggling and felt like a super hero family walking Logan to his party. We dropped him off and went next door to watch the new Wolverine movie that just came out. I'm surprising my hubby with a new T-shirt when the new Thor movie comes out. Maybe I'll plan a really cute date and will give him his new T-shirt right before the movie. 

My hubby loves this Wolverine T-shirt on me and I love that Captain America T-shirt on him. It will definitely become one of my favorite fun shirts!  Click here if you want to see their inventory, there are tons of shirts to choose from.  

Here are some pictures of our lovely super hero family after the party, hope you enjoy them, we were having a blast taking them. 

             

And the rest is history! 

I hope you enjoyed our pictures and as always thank you for stopping by and spending sometime reading my blog. 

BLOG UNDER CONSTRUCTION and HIGHLIGHTS OF MY WEEKEND

Hello friends and faithful followers. I have great news for all of you! I will be taking a little break from blogging while my blog is going through some fun changes. I'm sure some of you are wondering, why? What changes? Here is the short side of the story......... I never, ever, would have thought about starting my own blog, but with the encouragement of my friend Kimberly, I decided to start one! I was so excited to start blogging right away that the last thing on my mind was to think about templates, background and a presentation overall. Well, I learned the hard way!! So here I'm worrying about the presentation of my blog! In two weeks Love Always, Paola,  will have a new chic look to it! You will love it!

Please do not be discouraged to continue following me! I promise that the new look of my blog and content will worth the wait.

For now I leave you with some highlights of my weekend. Please continue to send me emails and write comments. I will be checking my blog periodically. I love reading them and they mean the world to me!

My weekend was very uneventful. We all have been sick with a very bad cold and decided to take it slow and had a very low key weekend. For all of you who don't know me that well, I'm a social butterfly and I take every opportunity to invite friends and family over for dinner Fridays and Saturdays, and I always have our weekend activities planned in advance to keep my two active boys happy! Yes, I have a nick name among my family and friends, I'm the energizer bunny! Honestly I get tired but I push myself hard to keep everything under control and my little family happy! A big huge smile and worrying about making everlasting memories is my secret! I'm a happy gal, what can I say!

FRIDAY

My little man took me to watch his FIRST movie called RIO! Logan loves music and dancing, mm I wonder were he gets it from? Perhaps, Me?! Logan watches Rio at least once a day. He calls it Birds TV and starts dancing.

 So as soon as  I heard that the Paradise Valley Mall was showing Rio on Friday for only $1 per person, I knew I had to take him no matter how sick we were feeling! I was congested with a really bad sinus pressure, but it didn't matter. I absolutely love watching all of his facial expressions, and how excited he was to watch it on a  GIANT screen! He lasted longer that I expected! It was  a great experience and we both enjoyed every moment! 

We are still smiling!

After the movie we went to the mall kids play area and had some fun running around chasing each other!

Living in Arizona during the summer is challenging. Not only is over a 115 degrees outside but we are the second place in the world known for having huge Haboobs. Unfortunately I was so nervous when I took this picture that I'm not sure if you can see the huge sand wall right underneath the clouds behind me, that's a sand storm.  The sand is so thick that is covering the mountain behind it.

After having a fun morning, we were driving home when I suddenly get this sand storm alert on my phone. I thought , Na its probably far away! Next thing I look out the window and there it is, right behind me.  Luckily I was only 5 minutes away from my house, so I hit the gas and made it home safe. Phew that was scary and close! 

And I ended the afternoon reading this book Nanny 911, hoping to get some good creative ideas to discipline Mr. Logan, and help me not to loose my mind with so many tantrums lately! I love watching their show!

SATURDAY

Saturday was all about running errands during the day. Logan finally got his second hair cut!  Here is my happy boy and daddy before his hair cut. 

                  

This happy boy is looking good. 

And our Saturday ended with a fun well deserved date night!

So how was your weekend? I would love to see pictures and hear all about it!

 Also I'm reading Teaching with love and Logic. What books do you recommend for me to read regarding early child development and tantrums? 

Also I would love to hear some fun ideas of what you would like to see on my blog, more fashion, more recipes, more local sponsoring? My ears are open my friends and would love hearing some good suggestions!

I appreciate every single one of you and I'm grateful for the love and support that all of you have given me as I start this new chapter in my life. Blogging is not easy and it is time consuming, but I'm loving it.

With lots of love and many Colombian Kisses from Arizona,