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. :)

Play Room/Homeschool Room

Today you get to see our play room/ home school room.  All of the pictures but the last one were taken at night it seems like I forget to take pictures when it is light out.  When you walk into this room you immediately see a large window door with enclosed balcony where the kids love to play in.  Now that it is getting colder they will be using it less as it isn't heated.  The disappointing thing about our apartment is that this room is the coldest than any other in the house.  Originally this room was the kids sleeping room but it was just too cold (on average at least 10 degrees colder!) we got our landlord to enclose the balcony hoping it would seal the room better but it only keeps the condensation on the wall of window/door from damaging the floor. 

You may be wondering, why would the room be cold, why not just turn on the heat.  Good question!  Our heat is controlled by our apartment complex and apartments in our area of the country all have their heat turned on at the same time - October 15th and then it is turned off May 15th.  No matter how cold it is before October 15th they won't turn it on until then.  Our first winter here it snowed the first day of October, you can imagine how cold it was or can be which isn't easy to not have heat.  Even though it is cold we don't have heat until that day every year and last year we didn't have heat until November.  In the meantime we have large space heaters in every room sucking up a lot of energy as we wait for our floor heating to come on. 

Ok back to the play room.  The majority of the kids toys are in the playroom.  They enjoy the small tables and chairs that they use often and I have most of their small toys stored in color coded fabric boxes- each kid has their own color. 

When we were in Tulsa I went to a Home school Consignment store and got some great deals.  One book I bought has craft ideas for each letter of the alphabet.  I included a few pictures of Ev's artwork, her handwriting and her artistic abilities have really taken off lately.  I love how she draws herself and how she writes her name.  :)

Small table and chairs- Ikea (part of it was bought 2nd hand)
Brown table and chair- local high chair that transitions into a table and chair
Rocking chair/ bookshelves- local
Easel- Ikea (bought 2nd hand)
Books, school supplies etc- all from America! (almost 2 pieces of luggage worth)
Play house- Thailand ToysRus
play kitchen- local
Colored Canvas Boxes- Target
READ sign- JoAnns

Apartment Tour

When we were in America some people asked me to describe things from our daily life.  I think it is easier to do that with pictures.  I really can't explain to you how small my oven is unless you see it so I thought I would give you a tour.  So over time I will take pictures and post on each room of our home. 

 I'll start off with the kid's bedroom.  All three kids share a room.  It works out pretty well and for the time being we adjust sleeping arrangements due to one of our kiddos who is an early bird and wakes up the others in the morning which really throws off the rest of the family members.  Currently he sleeps in the playroom at night in his portable crib. :)

I wanted to give each kid an area that is theirs so for Evangelia I have decorated with a plastic mirror, some picture frames, one of Ev's masterpieces, embroidery hoops with fabric and a fabric bunting I made for her.  I also attached some paper lanterns above her head which she loves.  I made the blanket for her bed out of dresses and clothing from when she was 2 years old.   The quilt over the couch is made out of her baby clothes. 

For Elijah I selected special pictures of him relating to baseball.  A couple of pictures from him at his first Texas Ranger's baseball game for his 3rd birthday, and a few other ones.  Todd found small pennants of all the MLB teams so since he loves the Rangers so much I gave him all of the American League pennants over his pictures.  I found some sports sheets at Target when we were in America to add to his blanket that I made out of his baby clothes and recently added a special baseball pillow that I made for him.  He also has some of his favorite Ranger's players baseball cards displayed in a picture frame display I made for him. 

And for Ian who just wants to do everything his big brother does I have given him the National league pennants to have over his area.  When he eventually moves out of the crib the couch folds out into a twin bed and it will go under the wall with the pennants. I also bought him a the same sport sheet set as I did Elijah so he will have that and I am creating (in my head) right now Ian's blanket for his bed.  I hope to get his blanket made before we move him out of the crib!  I will also include some pictures for him and I am trying to figure out how to incorporate his love of trains into his area. 

I have hopes to make new curtains for their room too, right now the green curtains are left over from our first apartment and happened to fit their window for the time being.  Whenever I have time again I need to sew their curtains. 

Bunk bed:  Ikea (bought 2nd hand)
Crib:  hand made locally
Orange shag carpet/dresser: local
Sheets:  sports- Target, pink- Walmart
blankets/quilt /orange pillow/bedskirt- made by me
small white picture frames- Ikea
White mirror/pink lanterns- Hobby Lobby
3 White under the bed storage- Ikea (bought 2nd hand)
Yellow rose pillow- gift from my mom (Pier One)
MLB pennants- Academy
2 Baseball rugs- Target dollar section- SCORE!
Red Ranger's World Series bat- 75% off at the Ranger's gift shop!

Funny Conversations

This was a conversation I had with Evangelia the other week.

Ev- " Mom, Ian's eyes are getting bigger."
Me- "what do you mean?"
Ev- " The longer he is in our family the larger his eyes are getting."
Me- "Well, they are really not getting bigger but as he grows he gets bigger."
Our babysitter was in the room with me and I explained what Ev said, she and I have a good laugh. 

Conversation last week
Ev and Hobs- "Mom on that new CD there is Chinese!"
Me- "What?"
Ev and Hobs- "really mom there is Chinese on there."

Conversation tonight - I had turned on the CD player before I tucked them into bed...
Ev- "mom the next song is Chinese!"
I listen to the song it  was Frere Jacques .... 
Me- "oh it isn't in Chinese it is in French."
Ev and Hobs- "we still think it is in Chinese"

They think anything they don't understand is Chinese.  That is pretty funny to me.  

Planning

School was suppose to start this week however for both Todd and I that didn't happen.  We were still working out our schedules with our teachers.  Every semester we go through this and it seems like every semester each of our schedules is different.

Our first year here we both took 14 hours from the university.  Evangelia was 8 months old and I was pregnant with Elijah so I went to class in the morning and then would have class again in the afternoon.  Somewhere overlapping my schedule Todd went to class too.  Our next year my class was in the later morning which threw me and the kids for a loop as they would be up for a few hours and start the day with me only for me to leave them for several hours in the middle of the day.  The next year I tried a different approach since it would take the kids about a month to get use to our new schedule, I had my teacher come to my apartment complex and meet me in another building so I wasn't spending 30 minutes on a bus to get to school and then another 30 minutes to get home from school on top of my 2 hours in class.  Thankfully my teacher came to me so I only had to walk 5 minutes to get to class.  It saved me a whole hour of time spent away from the kids.   This year it looks like my class time is changed again.  I will have most of my class time from 3pm until 5pm.  I was a little uneasy about changing from morning to afternoons but there isn't much I can do. 
But with having class from 3-5 that use to be my only free time to do things for myself.  I didn't want to give that time up.  Having class that late will also make me have to make part or all of dinner ahead of time as that was usually my dinner prep time.  I can take up to 2 hours or more to prepare dinner so I am now having to prepare earlier in the week/or day so that we can eat at our normal time. 

So how do I do this? 

After it took me a year to figure out how to be a student, mom, wife and manage my house I realized I needed to be intentional with meals.  My second year here I had a one year old and a baby who was nursing so I had to have specific time laid out for me.  I created a 6 month (yes 6 months!) food calendar where I had planned out meals for those months.  If I didn't have an idea of what I was going to make each day it was just way too frustrating to get to meal time and hearing the members of my family asking me, "what's for dinner?" and then sit and try to figure out how to get a meal on the table at a decent time. 
The past year I plan a month's worth of meals and have it posted on my fridge where I see what is planned for that day in the morning or even the day before so I know how much I have to get done.  I even gave each day of the week it's own type of food for example: Sundays are always Breakfast for dinner nights, Mondays are Meat meals, Tuesdays are Mexican food, Wednesday are my Crock Pot Meals, Thursdays are Italian food, Friday we try to eat out and Saturdays are left overs.   Now with having class late I am taking a day at the beginning of the week and making all my breads or anything in advanced so all I will have to do is either cook the meal or reheat it.  Since we don't have biscuits, rolls, other breads available in refrigerated cans I have to make it all from scratch.  So I try to look a week ahead and spend a day making up pizza dough, biscuit dough and other breads and tortillas before hand to put in my freezer. 
I've also realized that since coming back the kids seem extra hungry so I am having to triple my recipes so that I have enough for everyone to eat.  I am a little scared what life is going to be like when the boys are teenagers!  And even though I am trying to do this all Todd has still managed to be losing about 2 lbs every week. 

Latest Baseball Videos

I officially wanted to start school this week but Evangelia had other plans so today I finally got a few pictures of her.  And yes that is a name tag for her desk and one over her back pack hook, she loves them!  This morning I attempted to do homeschool in the morning which was very hard due to the fact that the little boys wanted to join.  We also had to contend with the loud noises upstairs as they are fixing up the apartment for someone to move in. I had to give it to Ev who stuck with it through the sledge hammer through our entire time (in the first picture you can see Ian behind Ev with his hands over his ears.)  The girl loves to learn.