Puerto Rico Day 4: Bacardi Tour

Wednesday was our last day in Puerto Rico. We had a mid-afternoon flight, so we had time for one quick trip before we left. Puerto Rico is home to Casa Bacardi and they have free tours. We thought it'd be something fun (and cheap!) to do on our last day. So we took a taxi to Old San Juan and took the ferry across the bay to Cataño where the Bacardi distillery is located.

Although we're not really Bacardi drinkers, it was fun to go check out the distillery.

Waiting for the tour to start...

Aqua colored tour bus

There were bats all over the place...The bat symbolizes good health, family unity and fortune.

I made Gil take a picture of the palm tree on the left...squiggly trunk.

On the tour bus (the tour bus ride lasted approx. 2 minutes haha)

El Morro across the bay

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Back at the hotel for the last time- had to get one more picture!

Sad to be leaving, but a fun trip!!!

And the brown continues...

Moving from the living room to the dining room, you will find *gasp* more brown! We bought our dining room table and chairs knowing that we would probably re-upholster the seat cushions. But guess what, that hasn't happened!

Although I would love to be a DIY-er, my skills are severely lacking. However, re-upholstering seat cushions does sound like something I can handle. Baby steps.

I think that doing the cushions in a fabric from the red family would look good.

Here are some award-winning shots taken by the iPhone:

Here's a picture of the back of the chair, 'cause I like it (picked out by the husband!). You can see the chocolate-ish brown colored seat cushion.

And one more shot:

I was trying to figure out how to photoshop the cushions to look red. I don't know how to do that either...

Patterns on Furniture

We have these chairs from ikea:

I love the shape of the chair, but the color & pattern has been hard for me to work with in our living room. There's a website called Bemz which makes slip covers exclusively for Ikea furniture. I think I am going to tryout this color scheme:

in the living room or something close to it and I'm deciding on what color to do for the chairs. Would it be better to stick with a solid? What color? Have you heard of the 60-30-10 rule for using color in a room? I'm going to have to think about this, as in the past I have haphazardly bought furniture and items & didn't not like outcome!

But I love this pattern and color for the chairs....

I've always been of the opinion that it makes more sense to buy solid colored furniture and then decorate with patterned throw pillows to mix it up. That way you can change things when you get tired of it. But...I really like this pattern! Our last patterned-purchase did not end well, but I did not particularly love the leaves to begin with. So what do you think, solids only or are patterns okay for furniture?

To paint or not to paint?

I feel like I've posted about this before, but I can't remember. Our living room is really dark and one way that I want to lighten it up is by introducing pops of color with turquoise and red and painting the walls another color (yet to be determined).

But the darkest part of our room is the fact that all the trim is dark wood, as is the floor, and blinds. Add in the dark red brick & it's one dark room. Not to mention, this room does not get tons of light.

I've mentioned to Gil in the past that I think it would look great to paint the trim and the fireplace. He was not a fan of this idea because these are original features of the room (as far as I know). I totally get that. But...I don't particularly love these features as they currently stand. It's just a whole lotta' brown.

Other rooms on the same floor, like our kitchen, already had the trim painted white before we moved in and I like how it looks much better.

My biggest concern would be to paint the brick fireplace. Here's an example of how it can change the look of a room from younghouselove.com:

Before:

After:

They have similarly colored floors and the light-colored fireplace looks tons better in contrast.

To paint or not to paint?

Day 3 Puerto Rico: Exploring Old San Juan

On our third day in Puerto Rico, Gil and I walked into Old San Juan. This may have been the hottest walk of my life. The views were worth it though!

The Capitol building

Heading into Old San Juan

We loved looking at all the buildings- They are such fun, bright colors.

After finding a shady spot & recovering from what felt like a 200 degree walk, we explored the main square and surrounding streets. We ended up heading to a place called Mojitos for lunch. Although we probably should've ordered mojitos, we ended up getting sangria which was delish. We got a half pitcher to split and the whole time we were thinking, "Is this really a half pitcher? Cause it's huge!" After lunch, we did some more exploring.

Even the post office building was pretty!

Fort San Felipe del Morro in the distance

All these people were flying kites...what a pretty setting.

Beyond the cemetery, you can see La Perla. This is a slum neighborhood set just outside the city walls. In the late 19th century it was the setting of a slaughterhouse. I was fascinated by this neighborhood because it's an entire group of people who seem to be ostracized by the rest of the community. Tourists are warned away from this area because apparently violence & drug activity is high. It was quite strange to be right on the ocean in the most gorgeous setting and then to see the dilapidated houses along the shore.

Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery

Tótem Telúrico- commemorates the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of the New World

Plaza del Quinto Centenario

After walking around all day, we headed back to the hotel for dinner. Old San Juan was beautiful! As a side note, I really want to learn Spanish now. This would've come in handy in a couple of instances! Rosetta Stone??

Pinterest

I have a new favorite website called Pinterest. The Pinterest website describes itself this way:

"Think of Pinterest as a virtual pinboard — a place where you can create collections of things you love and "follow" collections created by people with great taste."

I'm a big fan of using Pinterest to find great home decor images. To be honest, I don't like the color scheme that's going on in our house. We have a lot of brown going on in the living room, but not a lot of color accents. I found this mood board at Young House Love and I'm a fan of the color scheme because it incorporates my favorite color combo- red and turquoise.

younghouselove.com

The turquoise & red color scheme first made an appearance in my life at our wedding. You may remember seeing our turquoise & red details:

And by the way, I got the color inspiration for our wedding from this photo from marthastewart.com.

Since we have a lot of brown in the room already, we could keep a lot of the same things and just add to the room. I think I'm going to work off this mood board to add some "pops" of color to our room.

I think the first step is going to be painting the main floor. As of now, it's a soft sage color which really doesn't go with the color scheme. Our house was newly painted when we moved in & we haven't touched a paint brush since we moved in. Now may be the time...

So maybe my summer project will be to spruce up the living room!

Puerto Rico Day 2

Our second day in Puerto Rico was a pool/beach relaxation day. We pretty much did not move all day. And it was perfect.

There's nothing better than laying at the beach all day & reading. It's my favorite.

Puerto Rico Day 1

On our first day in Puerto Rico, we got there around 2:00 and luckily we were able to check in to our room early. After that, we checked out the grounds and I swooned over the pool. We decided to walk around and see what was around our hotel. From our hotel, we had a view of Fort Geronimo and we were very close to some pretty public beaches.

After walking around a while, we got ready for dinner.

Not a great picture, kinda grainy...Take two.

Gil: "You think you're soooo funny." Hehe, yes I do.

Still not great, but whatever...I'm hungry for dinner!

All in all, the first day was relaxing & uneventful. Why is traveling so tiring? All we did was sit on the plane & yet we crashed pretty early that night. We slept with the door open every night so that we could hear the sounds of the ocean. Awesome!