Puerto Rico es muy bonita...(or bonito?)

This post is completely unrelated to anything house and is more a quick picture post of my trip to Puerto Rico with girlfriends in late July. So if you are not into beautiful destinations photographed poorly by an amateur with a point and shoot, you should probably skip this post.

At some point when all of us ladies that went on the trip compile our pics on the group site, I will do a photo book. (Photo books are about as 'scrapbooking' as I get.) For now, this is my way of remembering the key highlights of our trip until that time comes.

We stayed at El Conquistador in Fajardo most of the trip.

On our first morning we prepared to head to Marina Puerto Del Rey to catch an East Wind catamaran ride to Luis Peña Nature Preserve in Culebra for Snorkeling and Lunch. After that we pulled anchor and headed 15 minutes over to Flamenco Beach to visit the beautiful beach which is supposedly Number 3 on Travel Channels Best Beaches show. I was not able to find backing for that on the interwebs, but it was beautiful enough for me to believe it. I did not get to take pictures on the island because we had to swim ashore to get there. There was a decision to take my beer in the water instead of my camera (which by the way, is not waterproof).

That night we got ready and went to dinner off the resort at a local spot recommended to us by one of the crew members, La Estacion. Yes, it was an old gas station. The food was fantastic and you should not miss this place if you stay in Farjado. We tried a lot of local fare (mofongo relleno, pinchos the green papaya salad).



The next day we took the ferry over to the resort's private beach.

That night we took a cab back to the Marina Puerto Del Rey to do go on a crazy fun adventure to see one of the bioluminescent bays. There are three bio-bays in Puerto Rico. One in the SouthWest – "La Parguera", one on Vieques – "Mosquito Bay", and one in Fajardo – "La Laguna Grande". Out of all three, Mosquito Bay is the brightest, and La Parguera is the least bright and La Laguna Grande is in the middle. We did Mosquito Bay (where I did not get eaten alive by mosquitoes amazingly enough) because of the brightness and this is the only one that you can get in and swim and they did dinner. It was a cooperative trip between East Winds and Island Adventures. You can learn more about the entire experience here. The description is dead on. The school bus ride through the woods on dirt 'roads' that were not supposed to be roads was worth it in itself. I did not know school buses were capable of 4 wheelin! The local dinner was fantastic and the quiet, electric motor pontoon boat was also nice and relaxing. The bio-bay was like nothing I've ever experienced because the concentration of the micro-organisms is so great. I did experience them when we were snorkeling at night in Barbados a few years ago, but not of this magnitude. The only thing that could improve the experience is to take a dive mask. Seeing them underwater is more amazing then seeing them light up from above the surface. They look like little bright sparks from a fire. Truly Amazing. I did not get any good shots but I attempted and you can only see that the water is definitely brighter under us than it would be at night in normal water.

Toward the end of our trip we left our lovely resort and headed into Old San Juan. We walked around and took pictures and made a lot of stops for drinks. I can not get over how pretty Puerto Rico is and how easy it is to get there from the State. We are talking sign me up at retirement to head over and become a Puerto Rican!

Daydreaming -- Kitchen Style

I haven't met anyone who does not LOVE Pinterest. We use it for inspiration and for daydreaming and even room planning.

Today I am dreaming of our kitchen (and linking up). The one that SOLD. THE. HOUSE. for us. We love it in its current state for sure. But who doesn't love to put their own personal touch on it. We may be hosting the annual New Years Eve Dinner Party that we do with 8-10 other couples so I am pushing the hubs that we should have our kitchen done by Christmas.

Here is our kitchen in all of its move-in/cleaning madness (I'm so slack about taking pics that I haven't shot any of it as it looks all unpacked).

Here is what I am planning:

 I can not wait to pull this together. It probably does not seem like a lot, and it really isn't. The hardest part is pulling all the fabrics together and saving the money to do it. We plan to do the tile ourselves and the bench cushions and curtains. I am an amateur on the sewing machine (which is older than I am), so it will take some careful planning considering how expensive fabric is and how much we will need for our 129 inch bench!

Here are some images I have put in my Kitchen folder in Pinterest.

Color:

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Stenciling (and Curtains):



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Tile:



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 Breakfast Nook (Black Table, lots of pillows with touches of turquoise):



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There it is. Our monochromatic kitchen with its stainless steel appliances, charcoal concrete counters, blue slate tile floors and light gray walls with slightly metallic stencilling...topped off with touches of turquoise, or whatever color may strike us in the future. This post makes me want to get started right now!

You can follow me on Pinterest here:  http://pinterest.com/vcstrader/

Two Things of Note

First and very exciting, I am attending my first bloggers in person meet up. It's in my town and I can't wait to meet all of the talented Virginia bloggers that will be there. If you live in the vicinity of Richmond, VA you should come!

Second, I am going to update the look of my blog. One big task with that is capturing the blogs that I regularly visit on my sidebar. If you hear from me often or visit me often and you are not listed, please comment or e-mail me so I can add you. I follow a ridiculous amount of blogs, but I like to acknowledge the ones that I religiously look at everyday.

Hope to see any Virginians (or hey, if you want to make a road trip!) at the Sweet Tea Social next Saturday!!

Mood Board Monday

I just love when Sarah over at Pewter & Sage has her Monday Mood Boards (MMB).  For this MMB we were to choose a wallpaper that spoke to you and design a room around it. This is the wall paper I picked (you may have seen it randomly appear as a blogpost a couple of weeks ago):

Since we bought and moved into a new (but still old) home, the "Our" home, I've been overwhelmed with decorating ideas. This wallpaper struck me because it is similar to the wall color in our bedroom. We liked the wall color so much that we did not want to paint it to match our bedding. Thus, the idea of building a bedroom around this wallpaper hit me and I tried to stay true to our budget and the furniture we already had.

Well, that turned out to be No Fun and items that in reality matched our real room did not match this wallpaper, so I scrapped the idea and instead did a fun fru fru room that my husband would NEVER go for. I still used the bed and dresser that we already have. (The dresser is new and we LOVE it -- beats the heck out of Black Lacquer!)

I think I would only use the wallpaper on the focal wall below the bed and paint the walls the blue-green color in the wallpaper. Then to balance out the excessive use of blues (even in the chandelier!) that I have going on (my favorite color don't you think?), I would use gray in curtains and other accessories and the chair. I just couldn't resist a rug in front of the bed in the same scroll work pattern as the wallpaper (and let's just pretend it matches the wallpaper perfectly).

MBM 9-26 for Pewter & Sage by vcstrader on Polyvore.com