That might also be an issue, but it isn't the issue I'm calling out here; the variable declarations here shouldn't interfere with any mixins etc. The [bootstrap variables are declared with `!default`](https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap-sass/blob/master/vendor/assets/stylesheets/bootstrap/_variables.scss#L106), so if you define the variable before importing bootstrap, our values should stick. If you do this:

1. define variables to be used with bootstrap
2. import bootstrap
3. do any other theming you couldn't do by changing variable values

you should be in good shape. Moving the import from `application.css.scss` into the middle of `_bootstrap3.scss` (below variable declarations, above everything else) should work.