Home, Sweet Home (part II)

Well, what do you know...we got our apartment cleaned up faster than expected! Or I just moved a few things to other rooms for photos... Either way...here's the rest of our place!

When you walk in the front door, almost immediately to your right is the kitchen.

The view from the kitchen door, looking to the left.

A close-up of our counter. I hate counter clutter. It drives me insane. Unfortunately we always have some (like the homemade bread just sitting in ziplocs...there's nowhere else to put it!). Notice the sign on the top shelf? It originally hung here. And we have a shelf for all our medications, coffee, hot chocolate mix, vitamins, etc.

The view from the kitchen door looking right. Dishwasher (which is currently broken...sigh), my KitchenAid mixer, our sketchy table with ultra-sketchy chairs (one day maybe we'll buy stools to sit on but it just hasn't been a priority...so the step stool alternates between the bathroom and the kitchen, and the folding chair alternates between next to the front door and the kitchen). The cross-stitch my sister did for me and Shannon for our wedding is hanging above the table. See that door? Here's what's behind it:

An enclosed balcony with our bags, recycling, cleaning supplies, granny-cart, and miscellaneous stuff.

Standing near the sink and looking forward-left. The vacuum has a new home right there, because it seems I need to vacuum the kitchen/entry/hallway/bathroom every day, and I just don't do it if I have to actually get the vacuum out of the enclosed balcony. So there it sits... The cabinet thing holds bags, aprons, keys, extra dishes (down below) and...

Spices! I love having all (ok, most ) of my spices in these jars! Here spices come in bags and it drives me crazy to have them all floating around in my cabinets, spilling everywhere...so I really like this system. I don't even need labels for them...I know which is which. And I'm out of baking powder...

Standing near the balcony door and looking toward the hallway. Refrigerator, oven, microwave (yes, we finally bought a microwave after five months without one!), cabinets.

And the view out our kitchen window for the last week: it looks like a snow globe over here!

The second door on your left when you walk into our apartment is Shannon's office:

The view from the door to his office.

It's a man cave and he refused to let me help him decorate. Hence stuff like this:

I mean, really...could those wall hangings get any more...unaesthetic?

Or check out the photo on top of the scarf on the bookshelf...

Shannon's desk. He makes fun of his dad sometimes for all the piles his dad has of stuff in his office, but...I think Shannon could be well on his way to the same fate. =)

The view looking back towards the door: the lovely chair that matches our living room set. Originally the recliner was in here and this chair was in the living room, but we moved the recliner into the living room while I was pregnant and decided we liked it better out there. And this photo is a great example of how apartments over here have very few outlet plugs. This room has one, which you can see in this photo. So we had to run an extension cord all the way around the room to plug Shannon's computer, printer, scanner, cell phone charger, etc. into. I don't think that any of the rooms in our apartment (including the living room) have more than two outlet plugs. I will never understand why they do it that way...

And then, the third door on the left of our hallway (before the bathroom and finally our bedroom) is our Turkish toilet (otherwise known as a "squatty potty"). Now, we don't use the squatty, and since we have two other toilets, we turned this room into a much needed storage room:

All our trunks and suitcases are piled in the back, right on top of the squatty potty. We have a toddler bed that we bought sight-unseen that we've never used and are trying to sell, but for now...it's sitting in here. And usually what ends up happening is that as Lane (and now Noel) outgrows things, I bring them in here and put them on that sink/shelf. When the shelf gets full, we go in, pull everything out, and put things in their appropriate trunks.

And lastly, the view on the way out:

Our front door, umbrella stroller, and closet for coats and shoes and hats and backpacks. We'd much rather have something with hooks, but this wardrobe was free, so for now we'll just use it.

And there you have it. Our much appreciated apartment, after living in others' homes for almost two years. It definitely has its problems and quirks (hello, water problems!), but we are so, so thankful for it!