Casa Nuevo ( Our New House )

Ok you asked for it, so here it is the long awaited post on our new place. I don't mind telling you that this one took me forever to do, pictures not in the right places, some I had to delete and rotate them ( not paying attention to the details ) The website was not working right. All kinds of things went wrong this morning, but I managed to forge ahead and finish this! So I hope you all enjoy this post. I would have had this post done sooner but I was waiting for our couch and chair to be done, but this is Mexico and that might be awhile! This is what a Mexican gentleman told me yesterday about how things work here and I quote , "When you want something done here they tell you I can do it: Cheap, Fast, or Good. Pick 2 of them!" I really didn't think it was funny as I have been waiting now for 5 weeks, and I was told it would be done in 10 days. I knew it wouldn't be, but I am getting tired of waiting, one of the many things you have to get used to here.

Blame it on HGTV: Ok blame what on HGTV, the place we chose to rent, while living in Florida I used to love watching how they could transform a place, from a hole in the wall to a beautiful

place to live. When we saw this place for the first time it was dirty, all the lights were just blubs hanging down from the ceiling, the refridgerator and stove were frightful. The place didn't have any personality, but I knew with some paint,elbow grease, and some decorative touches we could make it ours, and that is just what we did. We picked out tile for the kitchen, some light colored paint for the walls to brighen it up, we chose a nice yellow for the bedroom, that room gets the morning and early afternoon sun, so it is nice and bright in there. Our friend made us the quilt that is on the bed. I just need to buy some wall art for in there. We decided that the fireplace needed an accent color to make it really stand out, we brought in a tile chip so they could match the paint to it, and we are really happy with the way it turned out.

Tile going up

All the cabinets were refinished.

Our bar we had built to give us more counter and storage space, we love it!

Kitchen all done

Fireplace painted and looking good.

Fireplace before, very uninteresting

Dining area, looking into the den.

Dining area looking towards the front doors.

Dining area, was in the den. We got rid of the table & chairs.

View of dining area looking at the den
I think Billy did a great job painting this wall.

Accent wall being painted

Master bedroom before

Master bedroom looking at our doors, Pancho on the bed!

The beautiful quilt my friend, Jeanne, made us!

The master bath before

Master bath after

Master bath window, I think it is so pretty

Guest bathroom all cleaned up, just waiting for a guest, any takers?

Guest bath before. Not very inviting.
The tub was a mess I was using it for storage, and just keeping the curtian closed, well that got old fast, so I decided to put everything away,and scrub that tub, I used bleach, ajax, and for the stubborn spots very fine sandpaper, it worked, looks great. Now it is a tub that I would use !

Pancho, the newest member of the family
5 months old and so cute, very friendly and playful

A picture our son painted 25 yrs. ago.

The pool area.

The pool area and the view of the mountains.

View from our front patio.

Some plants we planted by the patio.

Our front patio area.

Before we planted.

Shopping, & feedback from my readers !

Last Saturday we took our friends, Jeanne & Eric, to Tonala to do some shopping. When you have a new place you need to decorate it, at least that was my excuse for going. Tonala is an hour drive from here, and it is well worth the drive, of course I'm not driving so it is easy for me to say that. It was a beautiful day for shopping, but then when isn't it? LOL Nice and sunny out, and not to hot, just right. We left here at 10 and didn't get back till 5:30 ! Needless to say we were all tired! In Tonala there are so many shops, and so much to see, if you go wear good walking shoes! We bought a new light for the kitchen, some pictures for the walls, a dish towel holder, and some dishes. We plan on going back, to get a ceramic grill. They have all kinds there, even some in the shape of a pig. For some reason grills here are very expensive, the one we have picked out will look nice on our patio and when it is not in use I could put a plant on it. As I am writing this I realize that I do not have any pictures of what I bought, but that's ok they will be in the post that I will be doing on our place, I am still waiting for our furniture to be done, we are having a chair and couch recovered, and we were told it would be ready in 10 days, well this Thursday it will be a month since they told me that one. That is one thing you have to get used to here, nothing gets done when they say it will. Rather than tell you what will really happen they tell you what they think you want to hear and it takes awhile to get used to this. We do have a couch, so I am waiting patiently. Ok back to our trip, besides all the shops that are there, they have a huge flea market set up, all kinds of things in there, too. Billy tried to bargin with one of the vendors over a sun & moon that he liked, the woman told him how much it would cost him in CA, so Billy said to her well that's nice but we are in Mexico! So she lost a sale. Sometimes they don't want to bargin with us gringos because they think we all have money, but guess what, the vendors that did bargin with us got our money. We took a break from all our shopping and had lunch, which our friends treated us to, thanks guy's! They even have a KFC there, for all of us who need some NOB food. Speaking of NOB food I do miss subs from Publix, and when I visit Florida I will be getting one or two !! Ok enough about shopping enjoy the pictures! Don't forget that if you click on them you can make them larger.


They sell alot off these, you put them in containers or vases

This was in the sidewalk I thought it was interesting

This is someone's garage door, pretty neat

Billy standing in front of a florist shop

A church on one of the side streets

A very interesting wall mural

One sexy looking fairy, I just noticed the one laying down, she's nice too, if you are into fairies !

I love these chairs, you can buy the tables too, very expensive!

More things to help you decorate!

Thought this was to cute to pass up

Me being silly !


Feedback from my readers:

I love hearing from my readers, it makes doing this worthwhile. I try to write a blog once a week, usually on Sunday, but not always. Somedays I start out with good intentions of doing a post and then I get busy and it just doesn't happen. I find that I usually post in the morning, I guess the old brain works better at that time. I don't get a ton of comments but I notice on other blogs that they don't either. I do like how they have the check marks so that you can use those if you don't want to write, one of my friends tried to comment and it wouldn't take it, I told her to use anoyomous. I know I didn't know how to comment on other peoples blogs at first, but it is easy to do. I usually check for comments every couple of days or so, I think there is a feature that will tell me when I have a comment maybe I should check that out, no that would be to easy! LOL So thank you all for when you do leave a comment, to Mr. Moore, I will be emailing you, would love to meet you and your wife, looking forward to answering your questions, someone asked about our new place, it is an apartment, it came with some furniture, some that we didn't like, we had the kitchen bar built on our own, we needed more counter space, it came out great! Yes they were great letting us pick out tile, paint, lights etc. We really like it here, nice and quiet, and I love the pool, went in it yesterday, and to Pat thank you for all your comments, and get better soon.

Random Ramblings

Today I sat on the patio and wrote the post I thought was going to be written this evening, but I changed my mind. I had already uploaded my picutres for my post and what I wrote about didn't have any pictures to go with it, so I changed my mind, which is a womans God given right!
Anyway, it was a beautiful day today, starting out with clouds on the mountains, (there is a picture of that in here) and then the sun came out! The temperature was in the 80's, I love the weather here.

Starting over: It is really strange to be starting over, it is almost like being newlyweds, well almost, but without all the sex! LOL!!! There is so much to buy to set up housekeeping again. One thing we did that was really smart was to bring our pots and pans or should I say Billy's pots and pans. I had to go out and buy clothes hangers, which I hate doing only because I had to leave a ton of them back in Florida. Lucky for me that they do not cost that much here, as a matter of fact I have made it a game to see where I can get them for the least amount of money, yes life is slow here! So starting over has good and bad points to it, but mostly good.

Our New Place: We really like our new place here, not very big, but just right for us. It has been fun getting it all together, they let us pick out the paint and tile, they even had the curtians cleaned for us and have been really great with all our requests. I am looking forward to doing a post with pictures, which will be soon. I am just waiting to get some new things for the walls, and a kitchen light. We plan on going to Tonala on Tuesday to buy a painting and to see if we can find a light that we like.


The following two pictures were taken on the grounds of LCS here in town, they have beautiful gardens there.

Clouds on the mountians this morning

This dog was posing for me, this was shot in Chapala at the market

It took me three tries before I got the picture that I wanted from this guy. It was worth it.

This is Billy's favorite place for lunch, when we go to the market

Flowers at the market

Fresh produce everywhere

When you go to the market in Mexico you never know what you are going to see, that is why I always carry my camera with us. This day was St. Francis of Assisi Day and they had a band playing, they were really good, and of course LOUD!

This little guy was keeping time to the music, he was really into it!

I couldn't resist taking a picture of this little one, look at all that hair.

Our friends Gill and Mick. They moved here from Florida for a few months to see if Mexico will be where they will settle, they were living in Ajijic, but their dog couldn't handle the thunder storms that would roll through, so they moved to Manzillo where they are very happy, and of course right after they moved the storms stopped.

Our friends Jeanne and Eric, another couple from Florida. They are living in the village for the next 3 months and if all works out for them you might seem them make the big move.

The Happy Couple!

The sun is just starting to set.

I don't usually go to the pier at night, so I was really happy to capture these pictures.

Red skies at night sailors delight, red sky in morning saliors take warning.

Men fishing while the sun is setting.