Owning a Vacation Home in Caribbean

ignore my knee Man, I am having fun decorating our casa.  I don't have this much fun decorating State-Side because we all like rather subdued color palettes to match with our subdued life-styles?  I would never choose orange and teal as my main decorating colors in Michigan!  Check out this bright orange couch! Thomas was reluctant, but gave way to my vision! I haven't as of yet decided what colors to paint select walls, but I'm thinking maybe more muted teal...and paint can always be changed.  I had a pinterest inspiration and actually pulled out my sewing machine and sewed together with minor space-relations mishaps hanging pillow case headboards. One long one for the queen bed and two separate ones for the eventual twin frames that will replace the bunk bed...but that can be put together including pillow headboards to create a king in the second bedroom. Our gardner cut down some fresh bamboo and with a couple of brackets voila! A cool DIY headboard adding a...

Typical Restaurant With Holiday Lights This was my third Christmas season in the DR and I can't speak f or all parts of the island, nor for all expat rock-dwelling transplants, but I LOVE that it's still about family and not about presents! ( Don't get me wrong. I would not shop in Santo Domingo or other big cities during the week between Christmas and Three Kings Day for a million pesos...a million dollars maybe...a million pesos is only like $20,000 US $ mind you. ) There is still a lot of frenzied shopping going on, but I feel it might be the holiday import tax break for bringing items from the States combined with some really awesome Black Friday like deals.  And in the countryside where we live on the North Coast far from the big shopping centers it is easy to completely ignore that side of the holiday.  We were invited to a Dominican family dinner on Christmas Eve where they served us al fresco in the large palapa they had for family dinners and evenin...