I typed this response below before I realized that you don't live in California, but Oregon! You can still have a mediterranean inspired garden further north, but will have to adjust your planting choices to reflect that you are still mediterranean influenced in climate, but too cold and often too wet to slavishly emulate a California mediterranean style. It can certainly be done, even so, as there are classic mediterranean style gardens even in Vancouver, BC, or along the East Coast, where maintaining drought tolerant mediterranean plants in east coast summer heat, humidity and rainfall takes extra work. Adapting a plant palette that emphasizes gray foliage, and avoids the lush and green will go a long ways towards establishing the look. If you are set within tall conifer woods or surrounded by lots of big deciduous shade trees, it may be a stretch to pull this off visually. Most classic mediterranean gardens are washed in bright sun, and would typically rely on overhead screens or everegreen trees to create some relief in summer. If you have a situation where you can create a walled courtyard, it might be far easier to create a landscape within to suit your theme, and relate the outside to the surrounding neighborhood if the mediterranean theme/illusion can't be sustained. If you ahve your heart set on a palm as part of the theme, a Mediterranean Fan Palm/Chamaerops humilis or Windmill Palm/Trachycarpus fortunei are two that would take your climate. The following is what I had started to reply before I realized you are so much further north... The remnant gardens of all of the California missions are but fantasy recreations, with little basis in fact. You probably wouldn't want to emulate the real thing, it would be too sparse, utilitarian and devoid of plants. Mission gardens were for work and agriculture, not aesthetics. Michelle has pointed you in a good direction as to books and info. You will probably find that it makes much more sense to design a mediterranean inspired garden full of plantings that reflect your climate. If you stay true to this, you won't include a lawn, or insist on the garden being at its peak in mid summer, when a mediterranean garden would be resting for lack of water, and waiting to revive with the fall rains. (This is probably true even for your location in Oregon, where most gardens still need some supplemental irrigation in summer and early fall, even with your reputation for so much more rain that here in California). Winter and spring growth and bloom, lots of plants that are naturally designed to conserve water in summer and survive would be the majority of the garden. I personally would not recommend a Mexican Fan Palm for the entry; too large and messy, there are many other more suitable palms. I'd consider using rosemary, lavenders, santolinas, phlomis, as backbone perennials in the garden. If you want to take a cue from moorish/spanish themed gardens in particular, then inlucing a few classic courtyard more water loving plants to be used as accents might include an orange or lemon tree and a small fountain within a walled courtyard. Using tile, saltillo pavers or decomposed granite fines as paving/non planted surfaces would also give a classic mediterranean feel. For me, there are several public gardens that exude this feeling. Visit the buildings and surrounding gardens of San Diego's Balboa Park, or State Street in Santa Barbara and especially the County Court House Complex. If you wanted to design a mediterranean inspired garden using California natives, the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden above the mission further up the canyon is another great place to visit and get ideas. Also in nearby Montecito, the Casa del Herrero Garden is open to the public by appointment, and has great spanish detailing to the house and gardens. I would recommend seeing as much as you can, and formulating your own style based on what you like, rather than trying to emulate a formula for your new gardenI'm willing to bet there are plenty of good examples of "mediterranean style" gardens in your own community, especially if you live somewhere like Pasadena or San Diego. Well, as you can see, alot of the references will not apply as you don't live anywhere near Southern California, but taking in the sights and paying a visit might still be good for generating ideas to recreate the "sense" of a classic mediterranean garden. Planting things that can survive and still look good on your seasonal rainfall also makes good sense even if the style isn't medit in feeling. You won't have to work as hard to keep it alive in the next drought, nor spend as much time pruning things back that are encouraged to overgrow by too much regular watering out of the natural rainfall season.

*pthtbthphht* Teacats ;-) ;-) ;-) If you really don't want to decorate in A&C style with Mission furniture, you most certainly don't have to! The Decorating Police are not going to descend upon your home and arrest you for violating some "law" that a couple of pieces of furniture trap you into a style you don't want to follow. Mission furniture goes quite well with many contemporary pieces, for example, as well as with primitives, not-too-spindly Shaker pieces, pretty much anything that continues that simplicity of shape. Some people like to mix in Asian things - some of the most prominent designers of the period were heavily influenced by Asian traditions, like Greene & Greene and Frank Lloyd Wright. Especially since it's natural cherry instead of something dark and "classic Mission" like fumed oak or mahogany (the Stickleys used quite a bit of mahogany) your furniture already has a less "conventional Arts & Crafts" look. Handwoven textiles or vintage embroidered linens (eBay and Touch of Europe has some great vintage stuff at pretty reasonable prices) are perfect for tablecloths/runners. Think about a faux-sisal carpet in wool or polypropylene, or to go in the other direction, a braided rug. LLBean has nice ones and a lifetime guarantee on their products. Although Betty is IMO on a good track with a suggestion of pottery, you are not restricted to period pieces - since you like primitives, putting a collection of primitive pottery jugs and pitchers on the buffet would be interesting and attractive, and still compatible with the furniture. It's undoubtedly a little bit of a cliche but I still have a fondness for a pottery jug or chunky vase filled with pussywillows! (Although I am totally over the whole curly willow fad. LOL) Actually, pretty much anything handcrafted would play nicely here - baskets, folk-art paintings, etc. Wrought iron would be very good for lighting to merge your liking for primitives with the Mission items, but you're not limited to A&C style things at all. Hubbardton Forge makes a lot of really neat iron lighting. With the natural cherry furniture and painted trim, you may want to try lighter colors than you would with stained trim and dark oak/mahogany furniture. Sorry, I don't agree with Teacats' color recommendations, because IMO deep color does not work as well with light painted trim and light wood tones - too high contrast - and by the Twenties the Colonial Revival style was coming to dominate over A&C anyway. The strong, muddied A&C colors were being replaced with lighter, softer tones like soft green, slatey blues, pale peach/coral, and such, and white trim was actually coming to be the norm. Probably a revolt against the last few decades of dark stained trim! :-) (If you have a Finneran & Haley paint dealer around by chance, they have excellent pamphlets with paint chips for their Historical Colors lines. Don't go by the dealer locator on their site, call them, because I don't see the dealer nearest to me in their listing.) Many of the colors in Bradbury & Bradbury's Arts & Crafts II wallpaper frieze line are appropriate as well - their samples are pretty cheap and might work nicely for color-scheme inspiration. Hope this helps some.

"what I object to is trying to convert people from their "home" religion to something else..." I understand this view, though fundamentally that's what missionaries do. In Central America, I'm not sure what you pick as the starting point. The indigenous people didn't have a Western religion until the Spanish conquistadors came, at which point the padres introduced Catholicism. The Protestant missionaries came later. What do you call the "home religion" under such circumstances? What I find a bit more puzzling - if the desire of the congregation in accumulating donations and doing fund raising, etc, is to help impoverished people (which is of course a most noble cause), why waste the funds on airfare and travel? Send down the money instead and make sure it's spent honestly and wisely. Allow a few people to go to supervise and let the others go on another trip. Apply as much money as possible to spend locally on whatever projects are identified. That would do a lot more good, wouldn't it?

Nosoccermom - thanks for posting the pretty beds. I'd love that last one with different finials. Looking at that one makes me realize I really need to check the ceiling height of the bedroom in the new house though - it's so tall! 1929Spanish and outsideplaying - that might be a good idea to take our bed with us and decide later once we get settled in. I'm just on a purging binge and trying to decide what we need to take since we have so much furniture to move and I've read about movers charging by the pound! Really the bed disassembled won't take up much space itself compared to the rest of the furniture, although it is heavy. Pinkmountain - I haven't showed him pictures yet but DH is actually onboard with getting a new bed and he likes the modern, country look that I like. I think he'd be fine with switching out just one piece, just not with spending so much to replace everything with similar quality furniture. He doesn't care for iron beds as much as I do but I think he would like any of the wood ones posted. Upholstered is an interesting idea too.