recently purchased - zara home & zara

A few weeks ago when my mother-in-law and my grandmother-in-law (is that right? In spanish there's even less of a word for what she is to me.  Seems wrong, seeing how sweet she is.  But I digress...) were here, they got us some gifts from Zara Home.  My suegra got me this amazing little basket for me to store my crochet and other craft projects.  Now I can have it all easily accessible in the living room, but it doesn't look like a hot mess.

My grandmother-in-law got us a beautiful set of sheets but sadly they didn't fit our bed.  This is just another one of those things I don't understand about living here.  In the States you know what size your bed is; it's twin, queen or king.  Maybe California twin if you want to get crazy.  But that's it.  Here it's in centimeters, and it's not standardized.  So she got me a set that was 150 cm wide, which seemed right, but it turns out our bed is 160.  Zara Home does not carry 160.  Which means we can never have sheets from there.  Makes no sense, right?  In any case, we had to return the sheets.  Yesterday I went and picked out a few things for the exchange.

The cushion on the stool pops off and inside is storage space, which is perfect because, let's face it, everybody needs more storage space.  The air freshener sticks are a repeat purchase for me, and I highly recommend them.  Green herbs is my favorite scent for the kitchen and back area of the house, which sometimes is overwhelmed by that plumbing smell you get in old buildings in europe.

And what, you may ask, is that splash of pink in the first photo?  Well, I just had to stop by Zara on my way to Zara Home (makes perfect sense, doesn't it?), and I finally got some hot pink pants.  I'm actually glad I held out because these bad boys are wide legged and drapy linen.  They are about 3 miles too long for me, but I actually think they look best rolled up.  If I change my mind I'll just hem them, but I kind of love them as is.