Mexico’s beaches welcome us to the tropics.

After traipsing around Europe, feeling cultured and historic, it’s nice to move onto a beach where you can just–relax! In our tour of destinations to inspire your own summer decorating projects at home, we’ve now moved onto tropical climes. Our first stop is rather close to home–particularly for you Californians! But the style of Mexican living is completely different from what you find here at home and can provide great inspiration for easy makeover projects to capture the spirit that can be found south-of-our-border.

Color is a major part of the Mexican mood–bright, happy, vibrant, cheery. And you can mix the bright colors together in ways that you might think a bit loud, a little overwhelming. But just remember all those bright flowers of the Mexican landscape that co-exist happily. On our fabric and paint board, the excitement of the patterns is inspiring. Bold florals are a key part of Acapulco Style, balanced by multi-color stripes and smaller geometric inspired designs. The paint chips we’ve used are only a starting point. The paint colors you utilize depend on the fabrics you’ve selected. Purples, reds, bright blues and greens, electric yellows–it all works together, somehow.

Vibrant colors in fabrics and paints in Acapulco Style.

In creating two mini-vignettes for this Acapulco mood, Mexican food played its own part. A table setting with salsa, chips, lemons and limes (again, mixing many colors together) utilizes a number of Mexican style icons–blue glasses (actually plastic for great summer use), a bright gold ceramic dish to hold the chips, a similarly colored container (actually outdoor use plastic again) to hold our salsa and cut-up fruit, and striped dish towels used as oversized napkins, all sitting atop a bright striped vinyl tablecloth. A little Sangria or some Margaritas and we’re ready for a snack.

A very colorful Acapulco inspired snack.

Finding a bit of Mexican style for your own outdoor space is easy. Look for colorful and bright cushions for your outdoor furniture. And outdoor serving pieces–pitchers, glassware, dinnerware, etc.–come in a variety of exciting and tropical styles today, many of non-breakable plastic perfect for barbeques and picnics on your deck.



A deck capturing that Acapulco mood

To capture some of that Mexican spirit for yourself, just think color–lots of color. And don’t get concerned if it looks like too much. It will be fine. Next, we head east to the West Indies, Antigua specifically. The British brought so much of their style to the Caribbean area and that’s what we will focus on in our next installment–British Colonial style.