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

Master Bedroom and Bath

This is our bedroom.  It is a pretty decent size, part of it is our bedroom and part of it is our office.  We have a very nice balcony that we like to enjoy too.  And even though our room is the biggest it is the warmest room in the house.  We used to have the room arranged differently.  I like where are bed is now because if I am working on the computer little people often join me either by playing on our bed or on the floor beside me. 

 We are the only ones who use our balcony.  People think we are crazy for sitting out here!  Most people in our complex will use it as storage or they will hang their clothes out there. 

 This is the view from our balcony and bedroom.  It is amazing to see trees and grass.  Living in a city like ours you usually don't see grass and no one sees trees. 

 When you first walk into our room the bathroom is to the right. 

 We don't have any built in closets in our apartment.  So for storage we found this book case at our used furniture market and cut off the bottom part and fit it over the toilet.  Also our landlords didn't want us drilling ANY holes in the bathroom tiles so I had to have some place to hang a hanger for our hand towel and toilet paper holder.  We drilled into the book case. Since they wouldn't let us put up a medicine cabinet or anything due to holes we have to have extra storage like the wicker draws you see to the right of the sink. 

 We bought a bamboo ladder and had it cut to size so we could use it as a towel rack because we couldn't put a towel rack in either.  The kids towels are lighter so I use Command hooks for their towels and amazingly with all the condensation they haven't come off yet. 

 The sink is micro mini size.  And since the only light fixture is over the bathtub we had to put a lamp in by the sink.  We make things work. :)

 That is Todd's area if you can't tell.  I guess I can let him decorate a tiny part of our house!

 I made the small pillows as well as a few other large pillow cases.  The small ones are all made out of Todd's old button down shirts and one of his old blue t-shirts for the ruffles.  I love this way of making pillows since the buttons are already there. 

 I finally got one of Evangelia's masterpieces!

This is our closet.  It looks a lot bigger than it really is.  My side is to the left and in the top 1/3 of it I have all of the kids medicine, adult medicines, birthday presents and other random things.  One thing that is really hard is not having any closets, no hall closet for coats, no pantry for the kitchen, no closet for the kids clothes, no place to store our vaccum and other things,  and no linen closet. 

We really have to use storage under our beds and where ever else we can.  So not only is all of our clothing in our closet so is our coats and winter wear.  For the time being we really do have a second bathroom but it is just a tiled room right now.  We are using it to store all of our luggage (remember we brought 11 bags with us) and other random things like Todd's bike, our stroller, extra blankets and other things. 

Updated Kids Room

Update..... I rearranged rooms

This week has been a week long holiday so I haven't had a full week of class only a few days of class.  Todd has been in and out this week so that have given me some time to do some things I have been wanting to for a while.  I finally got around to sewing curtains for the kids bedroom and when I put them up I decided to rearrange their room.  If you know me you know that I am notorious for rearranging furniture when Todd is gone. :) The week before last we had a local visitor staying with us so we moved our twin futon into the playroom and so I moved the rocking chair from the playroom into their bedroom.  I also moved our bookshelf into their bedroom too and put their toy bins on the shelves.  Moving these two pieces of furniture freed up some space in the playroom/homeschool room.  Here are some pictures of the playroom/homeschool/guest bedroom. 
The last pictures are of the balcony.  The kids love to play airplane out there as well as hang out there together when the weather is nice.  The view is really nice too.  It is RARE to see green grass, trees, flowers and large waterfountains!

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. :)