Mexican Matchbox Wedding Favours

After eighteen months of planning, relaxed and intense all at the same time, our wedding went wonderfully. We tried to mix the Mexican details in with the very British setting of the grand but cosy Highbury Hall in Birmingham. These were some of my favourite parts – papel picado, tequila on every table, Mexican music and singing and dancing all night long!

Mexican Lotería Matchbox Wedding Favours, with Muñequita

One of the first things we got excited about was the favours, little glittery matchboxes with Mexican lotería cards for decoration (a game a bit like Bingo). Daniel had seen them on Etsy and they were so lairy I loved them! Of course, in full-on money-saving mode I decided to make them myself. I took it slowly, starting them in July while I was off work, and finished them in February. By making them myself we paid about £40 for the eighty matchboxes. They were about £90 for 80 matchboxes so with postage from the US on top I basically saved a bomb. You could save even further by printing the lotería pictures out from Google Images onto card and filling them with sweets or little printed out notes.

Materials we bought :

• Matchboxes – 50p for 20 from the Bullring Market
• Glitter card – £1 per value brand pack from Hobbycraft, you’ll need maximum three for eighty matchboxes
• Glitter glue – £1.50 per colour, I used five colours from Hobbycraft
• Glue – £2.00 from Hobbycraft
• Guillotine – £24.99 from Amazon

Materials we had sent from Mexico :

• Muñequitas – 100 little dolls
• Lotería – 3 packs

• Measure your matchboxes and cut your glitter card with the guillotine. Our matchboxes were bright orange, so it was really important to get the sizing right so that it couldn’t be seen around any edges. You should also be able to measure the paper to get the best number of pieces out of it so there’s as little wastage as possible. As an exporter it reminded me of my CapePack days trying to work out the optimum cartons per pallet for transport. Also, cover your work surface with newspaper because the value card leaks glitter everywhere!
• Cut your lotería cards with the guillotine. Filter out those you don’t want, for example we took out El Negrito, and the ones with boring pictures like La Campana and La Mano (the Black Man, the Bell and the Hand). I also tried to get a good mix, there will be more Estrellas than Ranas for example (Stars and Frogs), so I did a bit of sorting and counting to get more or less even numbers of each design.
• Stick the glitter card to one face of the matchbox, once that side is dry glue a different colour to the other side and leave a couple of days to dry completely. Mine were left to dry next to a sunny window for about two days in the middle of Summer, then transferred to a Tupperware box with a sheet of kitchen roll between each layer. I checked them every three or four weeks to make sure that the glue was sticking and that they weren’t rolling up at the edges.
• Glue the lotería pictures onto what will be the top of your matchboxes and leave to dry. I put my piles of pictures in order so that I used the most exciting pictures, like El Borracho and El Nopal (the Drunkard and the Cactus), and went along them in order. I also tried to get mine contrasting, I would not glue a picture with a yellow background on to a gold glitter side, or with pink background onto a red glitter side etc. These were left for two Wintry days to dry by my sunny window.
• Glitter glue around the outside of the lotería picture to hide the edges, leave to dry. I left mine one week at the sunny window in January, to be completely sure they were dry. Again I used contrasting colours, eg., gold glitter side with blue picture background with pink glitter glue / blue glitter side with yellow picture background with green glitter glue.
• Fill the matchboxes with all your goodies and enjoy your guests’ reaction to the colours and the little surprises inside!

Matchboxes

Tools

Glitter paper

Lotería

Muñequitas

Glitter glue

Finished!

Wash hands

English Breakfast in Nörjske

Tucked away in leafy Edgbaston are three little restaurants that look like they should hardly get any footfall, and yet they stay open. They’re too near to drive, but I wouldn’t want to walk the 20 minutes home in the dark of midnight. The first is Simpson’s, one of Birmingham’s Michelin starred restaurants where Daniel and I celebrated our engagement and the Michelin star makes the trip worth it in a taxi. Next is the Highfield, Roz at TheFoodieCouple has reviewed it and it’s also lovely for a slightly special occasion, a true gastropub where we sometimes take the car to have a drink and a chat on weekday evenings. Finally is Nörjske, one of the strangest little bars there is in the city.

Yummy breakfast

On Saturday, with the stress and emotion of the wedding six weeks behind us, life began again relatively stress-free, a normality that I haven’t had since last Summer. It was a sunny morning so we walked down to Nörjske for brunch. The whole place feels like it would be beautiful in the winter! Downstairs is a bright little rustic-style deli that’s perfect for the lunchtime take-away crowd, a big selection of British and Scandinavian themed sandwiches and paninis, with Scandinavian products for sale in woven baskets and wooden pallet shelves. An outdoor seating area is ready prepared with patio heating and blankets. Upstairs is very clean, floor to ceiling windows allow so much light in – the white wooden booths look so welcoming. Everywhere is white and bright, with faux-fur blankets and wintery woodland animal cushions.

The brunch menu is not altogether Scandinavian, we had an omelette and eggs benedict. My dish was two little halves of bread roll that were the perfect amount to mop up the two poached eggs, together with crumbled ham hock with a beautiful hollandaise sauce. The omelette was perfectly runny in the middle and looked enormous but tasted so light. It was an indulgence but with our wedding six weeks behind us we basked in the delight of knowing that we didn’t have to be anywhere or talk about anything specific, enjoying an hour and a half of delicious food, laid-back music and a lovely view over St George’s Church.

A Grown Man Crying

We bumped into some friends in one of the new vintage-style hipster bars in the city centre, three friends grew to five, and five to seven, laughing and chatting and enjoying the music and some continental beers on one of the first sunny afternoons of the year. The road is full of new little bars attracting the late 20s to early 30s crowd, a craft beer pub, a sheesha lounge, a Caribbean restaurant and our vintage café-cum-bar. but it still hasn’t quite shaken off the seedy reputation from just two or three years ago when all these places were strip clubs.

One man catches my eye, in among all the men with perfectly kept beards chatting about the football savouring the newest craft beers in the rotation, the women in over-sized cardigans and miniskirts swapping tips for the newest baking fashions, and the stag party and the hen, I see a tall blond man in an Adidas tracksuit. He stands out with a short beard and a tiny sports bag. And he’s crying. I grab my purse and search out what coins I can find. I run out of the café using the open floor length window rather than the door, it’s too urgent for the door. But he’s gone. My friend follows – we find him standing slumped against the black-painted door of a disused office building, crying. I ask if he’s OK, he tells me that he’s just looking for something but everyone is refusing him. His accent and use ofrefusing rather than rejecting tells me he’s Eastern European. He reaches out with a dirty hand, his fingernails are yellow and brown and torn. I drop my three gold coins in his hand and go back to my friends and the beer and the music and the laughter, passing back through the café window again to my world.

As far as I remember I have believed that you shouldn’t give money to street beggars – they will only spend it on booze or drugs or something else that “doesn’t help them”, but this grown man is walking in the street and he is crying. Yes back in the boom years there were some people on the street who are there by choice, but since the economic crisis there are more and more people who are there by circumstance alone. I saw a documentary once that included a British business man who had been hugely profitable in Spain but made some bad decisions and left his family desolate, he scraped together the money for a flight to the UK, and returned with only the suit on his back and a small bag. He had nowhere to go, no family and no friends, I don’t remember if it was he or they that were too ashamed. And my friend told me about a father, left penniless through divorce, who was living on the streets begging for enough to buy his kids a McDonald’s every Saturday so they would never know his real situation. There’s a lady that reads a book outside the train station, I keep meaning to take her something but never think when I walk out of my house. Everyone on the street has their story and their own circumstances for being there.

And so what if they are going to buy booze? Their lives must be pretty tough if they’re on the streets in the first place, nowhere to sleep, being ignored in the street, people looking away, pretending they don’t see. If I what I give them buys two cans of lager, then for me that’s fine, it will either keep them a little bit warmer tonight, or they drink to forget their troubles for an hour or two. If what I give them buys a minuscule bag of poor-quality whatever, then that’s not really fine by me but once that money has left my hand I have no say, it becomes their decision and if that hit will make Sunday-afternoon-Adidas-man stop crying and feel better for a little bit then that’s fine by me.. If it brings them comfort in their hours, weeks, months of need, then so be it – I’d rather be the person that gives them that tiny comfort in a life of despair than the person that makes them feel like they don’t deserve to walk on this Earth. They deserve to be here just as much as me and that is why they are crying.

Love Letter to Barcelona

This post is adapted from one of my writings on the course at Bournville College. The task was to write about the structure of an interesting building. I remembered my first visit to Casa Milà in Barcelona, in December 2003 ::

“Undulating” is the word most used to describe the roof of the Casa Milà, along with the staircase at Casa Batlló and the beautiful balcony at Parc Guëll. Use it too many times and it becomes boring, Gaudí wouldn’t like that. Standing on that roof, undulating it is not. The bones are on the outside, grey under the clouded sky, and Casa Milà towers over Passeig de Gràcia, not ready to give up his secret. Climbing the stairs, don’t stop to take in the mahogany doors and green-tiled floors on the headphones, it’s not important, it’s not a feeling, keep going, the roof is the prize.

Out in that crisp Barcelonín Winter, they look at first glance like luxurious swirls of ice cream, dancing in the sun, but the chimneys don’t welcome you, with menacing faces and soldier-like regiment softening with every step you take. Touch everything. Lose yourself in the maze of the patterns and the sunshine and the cold and the golden city. The yellow is misleading, it looks warm but the soldiers on the roof say otherwise, staring down at these invading tourists, like the guards of the Milà family tomb, tolerant until they are alone again.

This was the first piece that I actually got positive comments on, before this I was told I write angrily – but my love-letter to a building showed a sense of belonging there rather than here. How can a building make you feel?

Super Bowl 2015

So normally I would write a little about how great or terrible the Super Bowl was. However last night this was all I really got, Vernon Kay (dickhead), Man vs Food guy, ex-Blue Peter presenter. Channel 4 coverage began straight after Dragon’s Den on BBC2, and I was falling asleep during that last Dragaon’s Den pitch. I understand the Patriots won – despite them being bastards, I’d much rather them than Richard Sherman after he slaughtered the Bronco’s last year.

Just before going to bed

Apology from Steve Emerson and Fox News : Birmingham

London in Winter

Borough Market

Curiosity in Regent Street

Covent Garden Reindeer

Somerset House

Street food in Covent Garden

20th Century Fox

Queen Victoria Street

Merchant Navy at Tower Bridge

Piccadilly

Borough Market

Apothecary in Blackfriars

Bethnal Green

Fortnum & Mason

THE DARK SIDE OF PEÑA NIETO (TRANSLATION)

Discussing with some Mexican friends yesterday, we originally thought that the cancellation of the railway deal was a good thing because it would promote more competition among Mexican companies, but with the “Casa Blanca” revelation, it’s is either a distraction tactic away from Ayotzinapa investigations, or more likely – as it came to light just days after he cancelled that deal on the railways – that as the head of the railway company funded it, it was given as a bribe and the cancellation of the contract was a way to save face, like “we know this thing about the house is going to break, let’s try and divert the real story.”

Then we talked about his government, he’s young and he’s surrounded by young advisers, they don’t have the political experience and knowledge to advise him properly, someone should have said “No, you need to actually go to Ayotzinapa, not meet them half way, these families are grieving and they are angry, don’t make them come to you”. He needs to be made accountable, the Financial Times has mentioned that he needs to take responsibility, word is getting out there but he’s doing his usual trick of side-stepping the important issues that affect his people.

LATIN AMERICA FOCUS

Tomorrow Mexicans will again take to the streets in mass protest against the disappearance of the 43 students, the government response, absence of justice and indignation towards the Mexican state.  Pressure is surely mounting on president Peña Nieto, including in the form of this article I have translated into English below.  The original from the Mexican magazine Proceso can be found here.

Since he was the governor of the State of Mexico and now as president, Enrique Peña Nieto has tried to hide – placing the blame onto others – several scandals from his political and family life which, with the passing of time, have become a burden, a dark side to his career, which like a shadow follows him everywhere he goes and keeps growing bigger and bigger until it overtakes the original figure.

From memory, one can recall at least three episodes that tarnish his political and personal biography…

View original post 863 more words

Todos Somos Ayotzinapa

The students are declared dead, Mexico is in mourning.

Shortly after I published Vivos Los Queremos, my suegrita told me of the announcement that three informants from Guerreros Unidos confessed to receiving the students from the police, killing them and burning their bodies. The three hitmen, Patricio Reyes, Jonathan Osorio and Agustín García Reyes confirmed their involvement in the disappearance. They were taken from the police cars and bundled into a truck, fifteen died from suffocation. Those that survived were taken to a rubbish dump outside Iguala, where they were interrogated and shot. According to the Aristegui article, the bodies of the students were then surrounded by tyres and wood, and burned for 15 hours until there was barely anything left to identify them. The order from their boss, El Terco, was to crush the bones and throw them in the San Juan river near to Iguala. Last week the river was a cordoned off according to The Telegraph, but no significant finds were made.

Murillo Karam, the Procurador General de la República is now the new focus of Mexico’s anger. I’d like to say it’s the equivalent of our Attorney General. His speech detailing the fate of the students excluded a key point in the events leading up to their death, the involvement of the State, the people that were elected and that we were supposed to trust. Karam then ended with a flippant reaction about the questions he received from the press : “Ya me cansé” (“I’ve had enough”). This off-the-cuff remark has snowballed into an internet phenomenon “If you’re tired, then resign” and the Guardian reports other people using it to vent their frustrations with messages such as “Enough, I’m tired of living in a narco state” or “Enough, I’m tired of corrupt politicians.”

Quien no ha hecho justicia no tienen derecho a cansarse – Nobody deserves to rest if they have not done justice

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion-mexico/2014/velada-muestra-descontento-ante-resolucion-de-la-pgr-1052567.html

On Saturday night the capital burned. A peaceful flashmob was organised in the Zócalo at 17h00, Un Minuto por Ayotzinapa, protesters united and lay on the floor for one minute, remembering the poor students executed by the state. The peaceful protest was interrupted during the evening by anarchist groups seizing their opportunity, El Universal reports that they burned several cars and trucks, and made their way to the government buildings, successfully setting fire to the main door. Anarchists may also be to blame for a fire on the metrobus a few days ago, an attempt to distract or to justify the government’s (in)action.

http://www.24-horas.mx/1-minuto-por-ayotzinapa-flashmob-en-el-zocalo-vine/

Where is the top man in all of this? President Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN) has not postponed his state visit to China, his country is in mourning and he has left them, there is no support from the one man that is supposed to speak out for these people. The social media demands his resignation, how dare he desert his country in crisis! He’s a master of political distraction and future promises, the United Nations have even passed comment on the president’s behaviour and so far ineffective security policies. Mexicans abroad have staged mini-protests around the world, Netherlands, Brasil, USA, China, UK, international media is taking notice and with the President out of the country he’ll find it difficult to defend himself. News has also broken recently, of a hugely expensive mansion owned by EPN, is this another attempt to distract us from the real problem here? If he’s seen to have an expensive house then it might just make us forget about the atrocity of Ayotzinapa.

The Mexican government is losing, the international press is gaining knowledge and a voice, my Daniel tells me that even the journalists that usually defend EPN and his government are struggling to find a way to support his action and convince their readers of his control over the situation. With his visit to China I feel he’s left his country to cope by themselves, he’s shown he doesn’t really care about his people. Perhaps he hopes that in a country with stricter media laws he might be left alone while he formulates his empty promise official response.

Vivos Los Queremos

It’s not on the news, but six weeks ago 43 Mexican students were bundled into a bus and taken away, handed over to a local drug cartel, and nobody has found them yet.

On 26^th September the mayor’s wife was holding a campaign event in the southern city of Iguala. At the same time, around 80 students arrived in the city from university in Ayotzinapa to hire a bus to take them to a peaceful protest in Mexico City, also in Guerrero. As they were leaving the city, they encountered a municipal roadblock – armed state police. Shouting and shooting at their feet to control them, the police killed six people at the scene, the rest cowered in their busses or in nearby undergrowth waiting for it to be over. Forty-three were forced into police cars and taken away. Later admissions tell that they were handed over to the Guerreros Unidos, a local drug cartel. Their fate is still unknown.

http://cosecharoja.org

The main offenders :

• Alcalde José Luis Abarca – It’s well known in Mexico that most anti-government protests in the country are led by leftist thinkers, and as the college that the students were travelling from has a history of left-wing activism, it was little wonder that the mayor would want to stop them disturbing the event. The Daily Beast recounts a previous incident from 2013 where Abarca and his men intercepted a group of activists, and violently murdered them himself, and buried them in a pit outside the town.
• María de los Angeles Pineda de Abarca – The mayor’s wife and really the main offender here, she and her husband had been missing since the day of the disappearance. The event she was running on 26^th September was building up to a campaign trail to replace her husband as mayor of the city once her husband’s term had finished. It has since become known that her brothers are part of the Guerreros Unidos and Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, the local drug cartel, and that her influence on all criminal activities in Iguala is extensive. Whether these students came to Iguala in protest or in peace, it was María de los Angeles that gave the order to “take care of them”.
• Guerreros Unidos – The local drug gang related to the Beltrán Leyva cartel, their calling-card is described by the Huffington Post as a gory murder leaving the victim with no face and no eyes. A banner has appeared, a narcomanta confirming their involvement in the disappearance : “Release the 22 or else we will reveal the names of all the politicians who work for us. The war is just beginning”.
• El Estado – The Director of Public Security in Iguala, Felipe Flores, has been missing since the news of the disappearance broke. More than thirty civil servants have been arrested in connection with the operation. Governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero was forced from his post, and on 1^st November, some would argue that the state government  of Guerrero unequivocally admitted their guilt. Some students protesting over the disappearance had spoken to friends and families of the missing, and have reported via Aristegui that the municipal government had offered 100,000MXN (4500.00GBP) for their silence on the issue. “Llega gente del gobierno diciéndonos: ‘sabes qué, ¿necesitas algo?, ¿te podemos ayudar en algo? Mira, firma estos papeles, te vamos a dar 100 mil pesos’. ¿Para qué? Para que nos calláramos – The government said to us, ‘you know what, do you need anything? Can we help you in any way? Look, sign these papers and we’ll give you 100,000 pesos’. Why? To shut us up.”

Fue el Estado – It was the State

True to form Mexicans across the country are turning out in protest at the State’s handling of the situation. Why has it taken a month for the national forces to step in and help the search? Why is information suppressed to the point of paying people to be quiet? Why were the mayor and his wife allowed in office knowing their ties to the cartel? There are so many questions here and the people want answers. Graves have been found, but state police tampered with the evidence in the early stages so there’s no way of knowing if the bodies found already are indeed the students. Slowly slowly, across the country, other stories of similar abductions are coming out of the woodwork, Aristegui recently reported on over 300 students missing in Coahuila during the last three years, and again – nadie ha dicho una palabra.

While in office, the mayoral couple had political immunity against any crimes they may commit, but on 30 September they fled their posts, renouncing this privilege. The mayor and his wife were arrested on 4^th November, they had deserted their posts to hide out in a working-class area of Mexico City. As time goes on, Mexico are losing hope on their cry of “Vivos se los llevaron, vivos los queremos”. They were taken alive and we want them back alive. Government buildings have been burned, protests grow in numbers across the country, their slogan ringing out across the country. But the government doesn’t listen, not sending federal forces into Guerrero until late in October, and even then the support is minimal.

Yet another tragedy in the Mexican War on Drugs. To date around 110,000 people have died since Calderón’s gung-ho declaration, a copy-cat reaction to the US War on Terror. In a society that lived in blissful ignorance of the cartels action, the deployment of the army has led to a sharp increase in civilian involvement. This student disappearance is political corruption hung out for the world to see, but the world doesn’t want to, and the government is actively working to cover up the messy part they have played.

The whole of Mexico is shouting into a void, newspaper articles on page ten, buried deep in regional news on the global websites, nobody is talking about it in office canteens or in school staffrooms – it’s front page news in this country that’s shouting to the world to recognise and act. These poor souls can only be resting in the hills around Iguala, given to the cartel by two petty little people intent on furthering their own influence over the people they are supposed to serve.

http://sexta-azcapotzalco.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/ayotzinapa-solidaridad-desde-colombia.html

Most of my information and reaction on this subject comes via articles that my suegrita shares on facebook. Some further reading : Aristegui, The Daily Beast, Guardian, BBC, La Jornada, El Proceso, Huffington Post, Yahoo MX, El Universal