I admit it, I have a new addiction to Pinterest.  Unfamiliar with Pinterest?  It's an online pinboard to collect the things you find online and share them with others- decorating projects, DIY craft ideas, recipes, wedding and party ideas, Christmas wish lists, you name it.  Basically it's just one more online social network to suck up your time.  But I've actually found some useful ideas and tasty recipes there.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was looking at some home decorating ideas and showed Dave a picture of a bed with a headboard made out of old shutters.  We commented that it would be fun to try, but we would never actually find any old shutters to try it with in Mexico.  One week later, I came home from the grocery store and tada someone had left an old set of shutters by the garbage.  We're not known to be crafty people, but we grabbed them up, made a trip to Home Depot (yeah, we have those here too) for paint, and went to work.

I think the results turned out pretty nicely.  There's still plenty of decorating work to be done, but it's starting to look a bit more homey around here.

So we made our big move to Mexico with only what would fit in/on our Rav4.  The only furniture this included was our son’s crib and changing table, and as mentioned previously his crib mattress had a sad demise in a flood at Dave’s brother’s house.  The plan was, and is, to buy inexpensive furniture here in Mexico, because:

 

1)      There’s no definite plan, but we’ll probably only be here two years.

2)      We have a whole storage unit full of furniture etc. back in the states.

3)      We have an increasingly active 10 month old baby boy who likes to leave slobbery banana fingerprints on all that he can reach.

4)      My husband is a teacher and I’m a stay-at-home mom.  Although we’re quite comfortable we’re not exactly rolling in the dough.

So, we’ve been living in a lovely, but rather empty apartment for about a month now.  Although camping chairs are a wonderful invention and greatly appreciated when one is actually sitting around a campfire, they start to get a bit uncomfortable in the living room.  Needless to say we’ve been on the lookout for a couch.  Unfortunately, Ikea has not made it to Mexico, thrift stores don’t exist here, and Craigslist is not nearly as popular as it is in the states.  So, when we heard that a friend of some teachers at Dave’s school is moving back to the states and selling all his furniture at reasonable prices we jumped on the chance to have living room furniture that doesn’t fold up neatly into a bag that you can carry over your shoulder. 

Wahoo! We now officially have a couch, chair and ottoman. The amount of furniture in our house has doubled.  They are really quite comfortable and in good condition.  What’s the problem?  Well, my decorating aesthetic back in the states was kind of “beachy” – muted blues and browns.  And our new furniture still fits this, but it’s not so much a reflection of the sand and sea, but more beach balls and beach towels.  The couch, chair and ottoman are basically Crayola crayon blue and the pillows are snazzy patterns made up of this blue and a lovely shade of neon green.  Help!  I can handle the blue, but the pillows are definitely going to have to be recovered.  Currently sitting on the couch feels like I’m sitting in a clown car.  But what color do I cover them in to, in the words of Project Runway’s Tim Gunn, “make it work”?  Plus, my sewing machine didn’t make it on the essential item list and my hand sewing skills are less the fabulous. 

Anyone looking for a sewing project?