Getting settled.

Well, I finally got everything put away around here. It's really hard to make it feel like home when you don't have your own furniture and the furniture you are using is not to your taste. I'm not a huge fan of covering everything up with tablecloths and slipcovers, because it reminds me of those table tents we made as kids and I don't like my furniture looking like it's harboring a criminal or a creature. Or worse, another kid. So, here's what I came up with (for now, suckahs!).

The entryway, before:

And after:

The clocks show west coast time and Brasilia time. So certain people will stop waking up their nana.

The living room before:

And after:

Chess corner underneath the lovely folk art whale my old man picked
up in an antique shop for me one Valentine's Day.

These pics would have looked much better with lovely lighting, but the electricity isn't working in parts of the house today. See how blasé I am about that? I'm totally becoming assimilated to living in Brazil. And yes, I have slipcovers on the couches, but I had no choice about that, as I'm sure anyone would agree. And yes, they're also white. But cotton and washable (I hope?). I had both red and white slipcovers that I'd gotten when we were in Virginia in anticipation of receiving ugly state department couches, but only one of the red slipcovers made it to Brazil. I put it in the TV room.

Before:

After:

This room is still snoozeville, but I never go in here, so I probably won't do anything more to it. It's where the kids play video games.

The bedrooms are pretty boring, and I only have a before shot of the girls room, so here it is. It seems to have developed some sort of pink and green fungus on the wall.

Before:

And after:

Not too easy on the eyes, is it?

I'd love to show you a before and after of the kitchen, but it would sadly look the same. And finally, the dining room.
Before:

After:

Of all the state department furniture we received, There were two things that I thought were really heinous. This china cabinet is one, which is mirrored and lights up:

There's really nothing I could do to change it up that much, but I did paint a huge piece of paper the same color as the wall and cover the mirror with it, as you can see above. We spend a lot of time in the dining room as a family, and the lighting was really harsh and bright, so my long-suffering husband changed out the light fixture for me. We'll change it back when we leave. The new one is shown above. Thank you, good, old, reliably cheap IKEA!

The other uber-heinous items that we just sent back to the warehouse were these pineapple lamps. Nothing I can say about them that the picture doesn't already say.