My Other Passion and Life in Mexico

I wanted to take a little break from BeBe Baby business to share with you my other passion.  When I first entered a Mexican fabric store I was both disappointed as well as delighted.  I was disappointed because the fabrics I had come to expect were not available.  For example, they only carry fleece here in the winter and even then it is only like 5 colors and of a very low quality.  There is rarely any flannel, and hardly any choices for children's prints.  However they do have a huge variety, and beautiful selection, of Mexican style fabrics.  These fabrics are woven and vibrant.  They are a pleasure just to look at.

  

Magenta and Multi-Colored Striped Cambaya Fabric

Even though I primarily purchase fabric for dolls, before I moved to Mexico I had a very large collection of fabrics I had hoarded through the years.  If I saw a beautiful, unique, vintage or cute fabric I bought it with the intention of some day making something with it.  Most of the time I never used it, which is why I had so much fabric to get rid of when I moved.

Decorative Throw Pillows

So when I first saw traditional Mexican fabric, called Cambaya, I immediately wanted to buy all of it.  I resisted until I moved into my first apartment here and realized that I could use the bright fabrics to make things for my home.  The problem was, I liked buying it more than I had time to use it.  There were two factors that went into the creation of my other shop Mexican Fabric and Fashion.

White and Multi-Colored Cambaya Fabric

First I wanted to take a break from dolls every now and then to create other sewing projects.  I started making dresses for myself, scarves, and pillows.  I wanted a shop where I could share these creations with others.  I never intended to be the model for the shop, and in fact it embarrasses me regularly, but with no money to hire a model or photographer, we have made do with what we have.

Rosa Pasion Ruffle Scarf

Second working in Mexico is hard.  The salaries are staggeringly low and the hours long.  With no university degree it is even more difficult to support yourself even by a minimalist's standards.  This is the situation for my boyfriend.  I was shocked to discover that the best job he could find required him to work 8-10 hours a day (with an additional hour of bus travel each way), 6 days a week, for about the equivalent of $600 a month.  It became blindingly obvious that if we ever wanted to have a family, a car, or even furniture he would have to do something drastically different.

With my knowledge of Internet sales and his willingness to work hard at something that might give him (and myself) a real future we decided to start or fabric shop.  We decided on the name Mexican Fabric and Fashion because we wanted to sell fabric as well as creations I make from the same fabric.  There is a lot of work to do, and many ideas for this shop, but as you know I already work as a teacher and run my doll business.  I'm squeezing in time where I can to work on items for this shop, as well as teach my boyfriend everything I know about running a successful Etsy shop.  I want this to be our business, but more than that I want to give him the chance to have a profitable career with reasonable hours.

Roja Sangre Infinity Scarf

The biggest challenge has been our relationship.  We have a lot of relationship issues that stem from our personalities as well as cultural differences.  We have a strong love but as we are learning, that isn't always enough.  I'll tell you more about the personal side of it later in future posts.  For now, we are both very committed to this business and continue to rise every day so that we may some day be able to have all the things we want in life.

Rustic Napkin or Dish Towel

Check out our shop and if you like it please share it.  We would be so thankful for any help and support for this shop's success.  Our future depends on it.

Ipod or Cell Phone Pouch

Find us all over the internets, Pinterest, Flickr and Facebook.

Life in Mexico

Hi everyone.  Today I'm just going to share with you a little about my life in Mexico.  I have a lot of business post ideas but I don't have the energy to work that hard at writing a post.  A lot of you probably don't know me personally but if you do, you know that I get sick a lot and always have.  This of course is no exception in Mexico.  It seems that every month or two I have some sort of infection.  Right now it is a throat infection.

These two papayas came from the tree in front of my apartment.  So amazing to walk outside and pick fresh fruit.

I'm not sure if I have strep throat or what.  The way the medical system works here, is that you can see a regular doctor but it's expensive.  It's not as expensive as a doctor in the US when you have no insurance, but still too much for me working for pesos.  Instead you can visit a free doctor who has a little office on the side of the pharmacy.  They don't do any testing, or much of an examination.  They listen to your symptoms and then prescribe you something.  You take your prescription next door and buy the medicine.  Instead of counting out your pills they just sell you a box of them.  This is not economical because sometimes you have to buy two boxes to have enough and then you have left overs.  For my throat infection the box has enough pills for 5 days but I need pills for 7 days.  It's frustrating.  This is why I don't know what I have.  He did no culture.  He just looked in my throat and said the equivalent of "yikes!".

Lucky for me it was the weekend so I was able to rest without missing work.  However yesterday my new roommate and I had planned a potluck for some of the teachers at my school.  My roommate is also a teacher at the school.  I've never had a roommate before, and was skeptical of the idea for a long time.  I like my space.  I like being alone.  But when I met J. I knew that we would be great roommates.  He has been living here now for about 3 weeks and everything has been peachy.  The amount of stress he removed from my shoulders by moving in here has been phenomenal.

One thing that is difficult about moving to another country is leaving behind your friends, family, and comfort zone.  You have to make friends and connections fast, and you don't have a lot of options, especially if you don't speak the language fluently.  Fortunately for me the school that I work for is full of compassionate, amazing people that I would feel blessed to know where ever I live.  We share similar experiences like; making bi-racial and bi-cultural relationships work, finding comforts from home, celebrating holidays from our home countries, and giving general support to one another.

Living abroad is a constant struggle.  I don't know if it will be for me in the long run, but for now I'm building a new life in a strange country.  The small joys make it worthwhile.