A Peek Inside

Oh my gosh, y'all.  I'm so sorry it's been so very long since I last posted.  Lucky most of you are on Facebook with me to stay somewhat up to date. 


So, we moved.  And that has been huge.  There's just so much involved with a move, right?  Especially without a car.  Plus there's still all the day to day stuff of getting the kids to and fro, buying groceries, making food, laundry, cleaning . . . it's a lot even without throwing a giant international move into the mix.


We also had visitors for parts of 11 days.  Hooray!  My mom, baby sister, and grandma were all able to come stay with us over my mom's (and our!) Fall Break.  And it was wonderful and too short.


Also the enormity of what we've done has finally started to catch up with me.  At first it was novel and fun and we had a furnished place.  And now, it's finding all our furnishings, beginning German classes, finding a school for Autumn, dealing with issues at the boys' school, and continuing to cook and clean and be a mom and wife and all that.  So, I'm embarrassed to admit it, but, finally the stress has caught up with me and I'm having health issues.  Not enough to keep me from doing things, but enough to where I'm like, "I need to just not add one more thing--blogging--to my To Do list". 


But I'm here now.  Briefly.


To show you a few small peeks inside our flat now that we're living in it and all.  It's so far from done, though.  And my best camera lens broke long ago (like a year and a half now) but anyway, I don't have a great lens for photographing the rooms.  I'll do it all again when more is done around here and I'm ready to show you a more complete "tour".


Oh...side note.  We heard from House Hunters International.  Like, for real.  We had emailed them way back in May as Dalton was on an HGTV kick and asked if we could be on the show since we were moving internationally and all.  Then a couple of weeks ago I heard from one of the casting guys!  We emailed, we Skyped, and now that I understand all that's involved, I'm not so sure anymore.  I hate being in the spotlight, does my family really need our 15 minutes of fame?  Do I want exes and other people we don't have in our lives able to just flip on the tube and be all, "OH. MY. GOSH.  My first wife!"  Plus, there's this big ol' questionnaire I now need to fill out.  Do I want to spend all that time "selling" ourselves and our story to maybe get picked?  Then, if we did get picked it's five 10 hour days of filming.  Jason would have to take off work.  We'd have to hire help for the kids.  They would move everything out of the flat.  Everything.  And they'd move it all back in.  I'm sorry, but I just got all this stuff in here.  I'm sure they know what they're doing and do it all the time.  But goodness.  Where would we stay while all our stuff is out?  Would they patch the holes in the walls that Jason was finally able to drill for our curtains?  Anyway... I'm really not so sure.  And yesterday "Joe" (the casting agent) emailed again being all, "So did you get my application?" 


Ugh.


Oh yeah.  Back to the flat.  Okay, here is just a brief peek. Our dining table.  This is the same "dining room" table we had back in the States.  It used to be my sister's.  We used to use it in our more formal dining space being that we were in America and we do things like have 2 dining areas.




This is looking into the living room.  The turquoise graffiti door is to the boys' room.  But, this is our new IKEA sleeper sofa.  And a chair.  The rug is from home and was meant to go under the dining table like we always had it before, but it no longer fits in our smaller space.  The "wood" pieces are also from home.  From Target.  I like them as that first one on the left is also a filing cabinet (we have no "office" here like we once had). 




This is the view into the living and dining areas as seen from the boys' door.




And this is the boys' door on their side of the doors.  You may remember these doors were glass.  Clear glass.  Not good for privacy or for light.  So, I bought this perfect wallpaper (it both matches their bedding AND is sort of "Berlin-y").  It was a little narrow so I also bought some teal Washi tape to tape it up there with. 




On the living room side of the door, I found the perfect wrapping paper at Woolworths (yes! a Woolworths...how long has it been since you've seen one of those?!)  Anyway, it was only 1 Euro per roll and it perfectly matched the décor I had been going for.  HAD.  Yeah, I ended up going a different route after I struggled to find matching curtains.  So . . . yeah, I need to fix that.  Eventually.




See how nicely it would've worked with my original plans? 


I still really like the light aqua color combo, but truly, I struggled to make it work.  And I really loved the purple stuff we ended up going with.  Yes purple is my favorite but I don't have to talk Jason into it.  He likes purple too.  Remember, LSU is purple and gold. ;)


So, the curtains need to be hemmed.  And I need to find more sheers...currently I only have 2.  I have been to 3 locations of the same store to find 2 more.  And, well, it's not going well.

But, hanging the curtain rods didn't go well either.


SO. HARD.  These walls are seriously concrete.  You need, like, a jack hammer.  Jason had to borrow a drill and each bracket requires 2 holes, right?  And each window needs 2-3 brackets, right?  And then each hole took like 20 minutes.  PER HOLE!  He stood on Autumn's bathroom stool on top of one of those high dining chairs and vibrated himself nearly to death trying to get the holes drilled.  And you can't drill (or make other loud noises) on Sundays in Germany.  Or after 6 pm.  Or from 1-3 pm.  So, from 8-9 he'd drill.  Come home at lunch and drill.  Come home and drill from 5-6.  For days.  Days.  Needless to say, we don't have curtains in our bedroom yet.  We have IKEA wardrobe boxes blocking out the light.  And I put up an adhesive curtain rod in the kitchen.  Which have fallen down 3 times now.  And we back to a hotel and I can see all of those people in their underwear, I don't need them to see me in mine. :) 


So, yeah.  We also have no light fixtures.  Because we'd have to drill.  And it's a total nightmare.  I went to the grocery store on the corner and when I came out I went, "Oh, Jason's home." BECAUSE I COULD HEAR HIM DRILLING.  I couldn't even see our building and yet I could hear him drilling into the stupid made-of-diamonds-or-something wall. 


Okay.  Well, I'm all frustrated again and now I have to go.  It's time for German class.