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A little home tour- the kitchen

1/27/2012

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I did this when we first moved into our home, because we had changed so much in our house, and I wanted to share our living space!  Well, I don't know what it was, but after returning from the US, I got the itch to move and change things around again, and since we needed a nursery in addition to a big girl room for Riley, plus a more appropriate living area for our growing toddler, we changed things up.  And we're still changing things.  AND, we've done a lot of work on the outside of the house as well.  We're of course still not done with many of the rooms, or the outside, so I'll have to do this in stages, but here's what we've got.

We'll start with the kitchen.  Here's the BEFORE, first when the old owners were living there (so with all of their furniture), and then all cleaned out.
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This was taken literally the day we moved in.  We didn't even have a microwave yet.  The "accent wall" was sort of a teal blue/green color (which, why would THAT wall be your accent wall?), the hardwood floor ended before going into the dining area, the counters were laminate, the curtains (you can barely see them) were so puffy and an odd shimmery color, and there was no window treatment on the kitchen window.  Here's what it looks like NOW:
kitchen1
First we painted... and you may notice that the wall on the left is light blue, and the wall on the right is grey... yeah, we haven't quiiiiiiite finished.  Also, I REALLY wanted new white wooden cabinets, but that wasn't in the budget, and you can't really paint these cabinets, so we had to work around them.  We added a roman blind to the window, replaced their old curtains (you'll see that more in the dining room later), extended the hardwood floor into the dining area, AND my most favorite, most recent addition- granite counter tops and tile back splash!!
kitchen2
Now, in the US, granite counters are THE thing to have.  All the newer houses likely have them, or something fairly comparable.  In New Zealand, I have not been to a single house that has granite counter tops.  Some of the newer built houses are putting them in (that I've seen in pictures), but they are so expensive to get!  We actually brought granite tiles over from the US when we moved here (crazy, I know), so all we had to pay for was installation, which wasn't really a big deal, and I think it will definitely help when it comes time to resell our house.  We also already had the blue glass mosaic tiles, we just had to decide on the design for the back splash.  We contemplated doing the whole back splash out of those tiles, but decided it might be a tad too bright and bold, so we just bordered a plain gray tile back splash with them.

And one more view (baby's fridge magnets removed for the sake of pictures):
kitchen3
Now, is this my dream kitchen?  No.  There are a lot of things I would change if funds would allow.  But, it's perfect for us right now!  And I'm still trying to figure out what to put on those shelves, they are pretty narrow so we're a bit limited in what they can hold...  Work in progress, I suppose.  Anyway, a side-by-side before and after:
kitchenb&a
So that's the kitchen!  Dining room and lounge, coming soon.  I hope.
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Adventures...

9/6/2009

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Ok so today we decided it was about time to tackle the large project of mowing our front, side, and back lawns.  One problem... we didn't own a lawnmower.  So, a friend of Mark's family kindly donated a push mower towards our cause.  And for those of you who don't know what that is, it has no motor, you literally push this big metal spiky thing and it sort of cuts your lawn.  Well, Mark decided to give it a go...
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So far so good, although it was quite an effort to haul that thing across the lawn... and then, apparently Mark didn't know his own strength, and he managed to snap the handle off after about 30 seconds...
Luckily for us, our neighbors were outside and took pity on us, and let Mark use their gas-powered lawn mower.  That thing is one powerful machine!  Our lawn is now looking trimmed and beautiful, I must say.  And I had absolutely no part in it other than taking some pictures. :)
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Our container has arrived... let the unpacking begin!

8/30/2009

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First of all, our floor is done!  And it looks wonderful, I must say.  I was a little concerned that we were spending too much money putting it in, but it makes the house look SO much better that I think it will be WELL worth it when it comes time to sell this place.  See below (note, still without any furniture or the newly painted walls, color TBD)
Now fortunately for us, not even 24 hours after our floors were finished, our container arrived at our house!  Literally right after we paid the customs fee, they brought it over!  And, the best part?  They unloaded EVERYTHING.  Carried it into our house/garage, and that was that.  Easy peazy.  I was all ready to get a good workout in unloading our thousands of pounds of items from the container and then carrying it all up our mini mountain driveway, so this was quite a pleasant surprise.  Now I thought I did a pretty good job labeling all the boxes so we knew what was inside before opening them, but I had one major oversight... I forgot to label the box with all the PARTS in order to rebuild all of our furniture.  So 6 hours and 70 opened boxes later, we managed to come across everything we needed.

So at this point, we have taken a whole bunch of stuff out of boxes, and not really put much of it away.  We still can't put our furniture on the hardwood because we need to clean it and seal it (which won't happen for another couple of days).  Basically our house is a mess, we can barely walk through the hallways and bedroom, BUT, we are so so happy to have all of our stuff!
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Work work work...

8/24/2009

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Today was Mark's first day of the long road to becoming Dr. Bartlett.  And I enjoyed sleeping in and lounging around the house in my PJs until 1pm.  And then of course realized how much painting and housework I had to do, and so the work began.  Tomorrow looks to be another day filled with painting walls in our house.  But it will be worth it!!

On another note, I tentatively got a job!  So ever since I got to NZ, people always ask me and Mark the same thing: "What are you going to be doing here?"  And Mark goes on about his pHD in chemistry  and blah blah blah, and after people are thoroughly impressed, they turn to me and ask what I am going to be doing.  So I sort of stare blankly and say, "I have no idea."  Which is completely true.  I don't know what in the world I want to be doing as a career.  I love love love kids (particularly babies) but that doesn't automatically lend itself to a particular career...  but, I have been getting more and more interested in photography, and I have just started a photography course, and would like to someday have a career in photography.  Key word: someday.  So what now?

Well, I was a nanny back in California, and I loved it, so I thought I might try that route again here.  I can work with little kids, and get paid for it... can't complain, right?  Well I had an interview with a family last Friday, and they tentatively offered me a job!  Kind of cool because I am working part time, so I have plenty of time for photography and other interests, and I will be watching two 6 month old babies.  Yup, two of em.  They are gorgeous baby boys, and I will certainly have my hands full, but I can get a start on my photography career with two new subjects!  Anyway, my new job would start in the beginning of October, so I have one more month to get our house organized!  And we have heard that our container has actually arrived in NZ and is now just going through customs, so I will actually have some unpacking to do hopefully early next week!
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We made it!

8/5/2009

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So day 1 of our life in New Zealand begins!  Our trip over was pretty uneventful actually, which is somewhat of a change for us.  We made it to the airport in plenty of time, and we managed to have only one of our bags exceed the weight limit.  Then of course we had to take stuff out and put it in some other extremely full bag, which was quite a task... lucky for us, the weight limit for each bag is NOT 50 pounds like we thought, but rather 32 kilograms (which translates to roughly 70 pounds I believe).  And yes, one of our bags did weigh over 70 pounds.  Oops.

Anyway, we said a sad goodbye to my mom and dad, and headed on to the airplane.  We felt pretty lucky because there were no crying babies, no vomiting women, no broken TVs, so all in all, it was very successful.  Although, we were sitting in front of possibly the loudest talking man in the whole world.  Mark and I could barely hear each other talking over him, and we were sitting right next to each other!  We even had to turn the headphone volume up as high as it would go, and even then we could still hear him blabbing away.  But he fell asleep after a while, so we got some peace and quiet eventually.

Then our connecting flight was delayed a bit in Auckland because some idiot drove a truck into a plane.  Uhhhhhh.....  Like one of those airport workers driving around just accidentally rammed into a 747... not really sure how that even happens, but okay.

So now we are hanging out in Mark's parents' house, about to go shopping for some things for the new house!  We get to move in next Thursday (the 13th) and we will upload some pictures so you all can see where we will be living!  
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We bought a house!

6/16/2009

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It's official.  We bought a house in New Zealand!  After many open houses, a few failed offer attempts, and some major disappointments, we finally found "the one."  It's a fairly new house, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom.  We're living in Whitby (which is a suburb in Wellington), and I am sooo sooo excited to have a place to live when we move back! So our new address is 18 Botany Lane in Whitby, Wellington New Zealand!

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