TheBeBlend's Profile

I have a hammock very similar to #8 on the list above. I bought it in Nicaragua, and it's really fabulous! Highly recommended. The shipping price on them is high, but realistic.

The house, the art, the outdoor space. Love!

We enlarge and frame our travel photos, and collect small art objects (e.g., a ceramic bowl from S. Korea, cone-shaped wide brim hats from china, and a hand carved sandstone elephant from Angkor Wat). I've also purchased fabrics, specifically silks from Vietnam that we've hung on our walls with batik hangers from Malaysia. I agree with loolabelle about making the decor personal. Our strategy to keep all these collected items from looking like clutter, is to keep the paint colors neutral, choose furniture with clean lines and solid colors. We have a white couch, mostly mahogany colored woods, and white/beige on the walls. As boring as that sounds, it works with those brightly colored silks, lots of plants, and all of our photos. We keep many of our little objects in a large Expedit shelf from Ikea.

I had been trolling the thrift stores for towels I wouldn't mind staining during my planned home birth, but I hadn't collected enough of them by the time I went into labor. I had to send a friend to the closest store in a hurry. Although I usually avoid Wal-Mart completely, my friend found 100% cotton towels there for practically nothing ($2 each, if I remember correctly). Two years later they are stain-free, and still the softest, fluffiest towels we own. Even better than my fancypants $20 Pima Cotton guest towels! I still avoid Wal-Mart, but I do love those towels.

We do cloth diapers, and we don't have a diaper pail or a smell problem. We just got a trash can with a lid and a foot pedal opener. We also use washable bin liners so we're not using tons of plastic bags.

We do rinse the poopy cloth diapers before tossing them in the bin (we have a diaper sprayer attached to our toilet). When we do use disposables, we always flush the poop before tossing the dirty diaper in our kitchen trash - which also goes out often.