I swore I'd never do that again!

Last year around this time of year , I had this ridiculous idea that it would be fun to make a quilt for my boy.

And for some reason, even though I realized quickly at that time that quilting is excruciatingly repetitive and should be left to those of us who like exactitude and monotony, I found myself gathering up left over pieces of fabric from different projects I've completed since I moved to Rio.

This time around, I made my life a wee bit easier by cutting out 6X6 squares which were much bigger pieces than before and right away the boy gleefully realized that the fabrics were the same as his shorts. This quilt was also a lot easier to make before I didn't use any cotton filling given that anything thicker than a sheet is way too hot here.

The quilt was the launch pad for the "make the kid's room kid-friendly" project I took on this month. As you can see from the walls in the picture below, Brazilians are very, very fond of the "Chalk- White" paint color and use it on all interior walls in their homes. I jokingly pointed this out to an expat friend of mine when I noticed her place was the same exact tone of white. I've not even seen shades like "sweat-yellowing-pillowcase-white" I said with a laugh! To combat the coldness of the white I thought about painting his room, but decided against this messier option and put up a map instead.

The map was a big hit. My mom gave it to my kid when we were in Halifax and once I remembered to put it up, this resulted in a lot of bed jumping and squealing excitement . We've spent a lot of time looking at it,  put stickers on the places where our friends and family live and talk about where were going to travel next. I'm going to France and he's going to Russia!

The biggest splash for the kid though was the little blue light I put in the corner. It's one of those lamps that has no "on-off" switch, you only need to touch the base and it lights up brighter and brighter the more times you touch it until it switches off. He LOVES wacking the light to set the mood for story time!

I'm pretty happy with these simple changes, and I'm thinking it needs a little something else, but I'm waiting for the right thing to jump out at me.