Before and After Apartment Pictures

 This is our dining room in our old house with our laundry room.

This is our new dining room with our laundry area off to the side that you can't see.  This room is narrower but it is longer and our laundry room is smaller. 

 This is our kitchen in the old house the last day we were in it.  We came back to play baseball in the empty place and while the kids and Todd were doing that I was taking pictures for one last time.  Let me just tell you that playing baseball in the house took on a whole new meaning when the apartment was completely empty and they didn't have to worry about breaking the 5th picture frame!

 Our new kitchen.  Did you just do a double take?  Looks the same right?  Look at the cabinets- they are the same.  The one major difference is that our counters are about 10 inches SHORTER!  Yes this is standard height here... well I think these are even shorter than standard.  Every time Todd walks into the kitchen he calls it "the kid kitchen".  He can sit on the counter top like a bench and the kids don't need step stools to help me cook anymore.  They can even reach the faucet and wash dishes now.  But the kitchen is a little bit longer than the other one.  In the 3 apartments we've lived in here this is my largest kitchen yet. :) (It's probably as big as your walk-in closet)

Here's another shot of our old kitchen from last Thanksgiving.

 Old living room

New living room

It more narrow than the old one but it has a "sun room" as I call it in the back.  If that wall wasn't there this room would be the same length.  The "sun room" is one of my favorite parts of our new house. 

Home School Room Pictures

Kitchen

This is my KITCHEN!  This view is from the dining room.  When you enter our front door this is the first thing you see. We were lucky that our landlords let us pick out the color of the cabinets and the counter top.  Our first apartment had black cabinets , white counter tops and a bright blue floor.  When we asked our landlord what color she would have picked she said PINK!  We bought the island from IKEA to put in the middle there since I don't have a lot of counter top work space.

Welcome to my fridge, it is tiny but we make things work. 

My microwave and oven are the SAME size! 

I wanted to show you an up close picture of my oven, with the bottom and top heating elements it makes the inside even smaller.  I have to be very creative when cooking, especially a 12 lb turkey! 

Here's another view using one of the kids sippy cups, the sippy doesn't even fit!

To use gas in our house we buy so many units of gas on a card and when they are used up you have to swipe it inside this to get more.  You have to go buy your gas at another location. I do have HOT water in my kitchen and bathroom, not in my laundry room.  But some people don't have hot water in their kitchens.

Ev took this picture of us in the kitchen.  If you know how short I am you can notice how small our fridge is.... about the same height and width. 

I LOVE my bread machine!  I am fortunate to have a Jackie Chan George Forman grill, a nice blender with a food processor, a crock pot and a hand mixer.  This is my stove that sits on the counter.  In our first apartment I had a gas stove and now we have an electric.  It took some getting use to both of these. 

My kitchen is 4 1/2 tiles wide.  My first apartment was even smaller maybe 3 tiles wide, only one person could stand in it.  Our land lords also let us RAISE the level of the counter tops.  Usually here they are at least 5 inches or more shorter(maybe 10 in.?)than in America.  Our first apartment was that way.  We are thankful these are more normal height.

No dishwasher so I have a lovely two tier dish drainer from IKEA.  Have I mentioned how much I love IKEA?  We don't have an IKEA in our city but whenever we go anywhere we try to go through a city that does have one.  Then we ship whatever we buy to our city for a really decent price.

My sink is very small.  Some of my large pans don't in it but we do what we can. :)  Our landlords bought an even small sink and we decided to go buy the biggest one we could fit here.

 I love this holder thing from IKEA it is a wonderful space saver given to us by Kara when we first moved here since the city she lived in had IKEA! 

My dishes don't fit in my kitchen so they work well out in the dinning room.  Love this piece of furniture from the "old used furniture market".

Another shot of how small my sink is.  One thing I enjoyed about America was how big sinks are!

From the kitchen looking out at the dining room and our front door.  When you walk in our home you are immediately in our dinning room. 

I really like our dining room table.  It has 2 extenders so we can fit 10 people at the table.  Our first table was SO TINY.  We got this one a year ago right before we got Ian.  Thankfully we got this 3rd hand, it has been well loved and looks it but it was what we needed and cheap!  Also from IKEA about 10yrs ago.

Behind the curtains is our small laundry room.  I'll so you that more in detail in another post. 

Thanks for stopping by! Wish you could join us for a meal at our table. :)

We're Ready to MOVE!

We are more than ready to move. As with life here we have been just waiting for our landlords to tell us we can move into our new home. It has been over a month now and the deadline we were given has gone and past. That is just life here. We just have to wait and deal with it all as it comes. We have packed up almost everything. I left out a few clothing articles for all of us and it seems like we have gone through them all. We left out a few dishes and cups for the kids so we've been eating out a lot lately. Our house is a mess with boxes everywhere and we are waiting on cleaning until everything is out so the house is DIRTY! I am so ready to move it all and to finally be settled in our new home. In the mean time Todd and I have spent several days going to different places trying to find furniture and things we need. If only we could just go to a Home Depot, Bed Bath Beyond or a Target. It would be so much easier.

Since everything is packed I've been spending a lot of time on the computer trying to figure out how I am going to decorate our new place. I can't wait to do that. The kids are off their normal routine too. They can sense something is up and the fact that all our belongings are stacking in boxes all over the house. While Todd and I are gone Elijah has taught himself out to start his own bath and I realized that he and Ev have spent a few days this week in their pjs.

I guess it is time to move because it seems like this week several things are starting to break. You have to love the quality of merchandise here. Our shower started not working. I think there is a leak somewhere and we have little to no pressure. The curtain rod in Ev's room broke, ours broke a couple of weeks ago. We haven't had consistent hot water in the kitchen for the past month. I am sure I am forgetting something. We are crossing our fingers to hope to move by at least Wednesday.

We're MOVING!

Friday our landlord showed up unexpectedly and asked us how things were going and if we were going to sign another year lease with him. We hadn't really talked about it so we started to as he and our helper chatted away. The more we thought the more we decided to take a few days to look. We recently made the office into Elijah's room and for right now the kids need their own rooms. I will eventually need a room to home school and lately Todd has been spending a lot of time doing translation. With using our dining room table as a desk/study area the kids are too much of a distraction so we put our desk in our bedroom so he can shut the door. Since our lease is up around Todd's birthday we decided we either need to move now or next year. We really could use 4 bedrooms or a 3 bedroom apartment that we could divide part of a room.

Our former team mates are moving to another city in August so they have a 4 bedroom apartment a block away from us. We REALLY love our home. We love the location, the scenery, the things available around us - 3 grocery stores within 1.5 block, the community feel, the park beside us, and so on. So we have keys to our friend's apartment since they are in America right now and we looked at their place. That afternoon Todd went to a real estate agent to see if there were any 4 bedroom apartments in the area we currently live. He was able to see one but it wasn't in our neighborhood. Then Saturday as a family we saw 3 and the more we saw apartments and their locations the more we like our current one and our friends apartment 1 block away looked better and better. This apartment is convenient, the the same neighborhood we are use to, has good buses, and so on but we just were not a fan of it for some reason. It didn't feel like home to use and there were some things about it we would be giving up.

It ends up Todd saw a few more 3 bedroom apartments since we realized that 4 bedrooms are RARE. So we went again to our friends apartment to measure and look around. But we still were not sure about it. We felt like we were defaulting to it. So as a last resort Todd went out yesterday and saw another apartment and then was told about another one. As a family last night we went to check it out. Let me just say that places here are not what we would vision in America. So we figured after looking at various places we had a few things that were musts in the apartment but we knew that we would also have to sacrifice other things. But this place we would only have to sacrifice 1 thing. Location. We went to this apartment complex (this place is so big and not all of the buildings are built yet and if it was in America it would probably have it's own zip code.) It is located a little ways out from the rest of town but it feels like you step out of China. It looks like a really nice place in America. I could go on and on but if you only knew what it was like here, you would feel the same way.

We decided today after going again and searching out the surround area that we are giving the location we are currently. The amazing thing about these apartments is that they are cheaper/same price of what we currently are in and the ones we are looking at. It is cheaper because it is a little far away from the main center of town.

So after 4.5 days we have seen close to 10 places and found one to move into. We hadn't planned on moving so it is a little shocking to us to look and find so quickly. Now the fun job of packing and moving. :)

pictures: these are a few from across the street that Todd took when he went out on his bike. We think that there are about 30 buildings so far, their plan is to have 100.