To make a house a home...

If you know me well, you know that I am a nester.  I like to get settled.  I like to make a place home quickly- even if it's a temporary place.  For example, when we go on vacation (even a quick weekend trip), I nest.  I unpack bags, I put things in their "place" and I tell the girls where their things will go.  I just like feeling settled.  This probably makes my parents laugh.  Maybe a lot.  Let's just say I was not exactly a neat person while living under their roof...  Anyway, I'm no psychiatrist but this whole nesting thing is very likely a symptom of the fact that our lives are quite often unsettled.  We move around a lot.  We go to the states for long periods of time and live with family or in furnished housing provided for us.  We move a lot while overseas.  We are currently in the midst of what has been going on 15 months of transition.  We packed up all our belongs in August of 2010, lived in the states for almost a year and are now back in the Middle East in a different country, living in a friends house while we prepare to move into our own apartment.  Yikes.  But yah that my sweet little girls have proven to be so resilient and so flexible- much more so than me it seems!!  In all of this we have truly learned that home is not about the walls that are currently housing us but about the 6 people living in those walls being together and being family.  See, the nester in me needs to hear this, because I am truly about at the end of my rope when it comes to transitional living.  I. need. to. be. settled.  And I know that stuff is only stuff, but I happen to like my stuff.  In my house.  With me.  I know I'm totally contradicting myself with the home is where we all are line (I promise it's really not a line) and then two seconds later I want my stuff (also true).  I'm obviously conflicted.  And quite emotional these days so be warned.

Anyway, all that to say, a few months ago (yes, months!!- we are slow at getting settled) we found an oh so great apartment.   We're really excited about the neighborhood, the community feel, the fact that it's in a new building and has never been lived in, the quiet streets, the awesome view of the sunset from our kitchen and living room windows...

Yeah, so it's a great place and I think is going to be super for our family and I'm very excited.  So, knowing that we had crates coming both from Beirut (big truck with most of our stuff) and from America (small crate with things we accumulated over the past year), I was happy to get our lease started at the beginning of October before any of our things arrived so that we could get painting done and other things BEFORE all of our stuff arrived and created a huge mess.  I was very excited about being all accomplished and organized BEFORE unpacking so that they whole process would be neat and orderly and easy.  HA. HAAAA!  BIG FAT STUPID HAAAA!!!  Are you getting the idea that things did not exactly go as I planned?  Well.  As we knew it would be, October was quite a busy month for us.  Not having a car to easily get around the city also makes things a little more complicated.  We started out on the right track.  Apartment that we really like found- check...

Walking in front door, looking through to kitchen and down to bedrooms..

Looking back towards front door- see, I'm experimenting with paint colors while Anabelle watches...

Kitchen...

Doesn't everything look all nice and shiny and clean?  It was!  See, this was back when things were moving along like I wanted them to.  We hired someone to come over and give everything a nice thorough cleaning (unless you've lived here and experienced the dust you might not understand the need for that in a new place...).  Anyway, she cleaned while I started painting- very happy to be getting all of this done before furniture...

Abbey and Anabelle's room is a lovely shade of LIME green- Abbey chose it and it's going to be very cute!

Maddie and Naomi's room is PINK!!  (I believe the name of the color was Flamingo Fun...)

It took a few tries but I finally decided on the perfect color for our living room.  It's kind of a grayish/greenish/blueish.  Very peaceful.  I need tranquility...

Ok, so now I need to explain a few things about moving into an apartment in this part of the world.  As neat and shiny as everything may appear, things aren't exactly move in ready.  First of all, you may or may not have noticed, but there are NO closets in the entire apt.  None. Nada.  Zilch.  So, you take a trip down to the downtownish shopping area and buy "hizanis" (Arabic for closet).  This is something that I truly hoped to get done before our things arrived.  I did not.  You see, we were told by the storage people in Lebanon that it would probably be a few weeks on our shipment.  Apparently there was a potato issue.  Yes, potatoes.  Apparently lots of potatoes are grown in Lebanon and sent all over the Middle East so even though our shipment was cleared to be sent across three countries to us in Jordan, there were no trucks to bring it because they were all delivering potatoes.  However, the potato issue resolved itself much more quickly than we anticipated and we got a call that our shipment from Lebanon was leaving and would arrive within three days.  Yah!  but yikes.  This news, although good sent me into a painting frenzy and as you saw above the painting was mostly finished.  The hizani's however did not get purchased before this truck pulled up....

Yes, my friends this lovely OPEN BED mercedez truck delivered most of our worldy possessions across three countries....

(you can't tell in this picture because it's right where the streetlight is, but the little man that drove the truck had a little coffee stand that pulled down from the side where he sat and drank coffee the whole time the guys worked to unload it...)

Can you imagine that the boxes and all the furniture from this truck that came up into our nice clean, shiny apt were just a wee bit dirty?  Umm, they were...

But in they came in a flurry of craziness in which about 10 national men unpacked and unwrapped all of our furniture in a matter of about 2 hours.  It made a little bit of a mess....

And, as I knew I would, I definitely had a few moments of "why in the world did I pack THAT??!!"  Case in point- this plastic lego container filled with plastic easter eggs...

Let me remind you that when we packed our crate in Lebanon I was newly pregnant with Anabelle and busy with the craziness of packing for our year in the states.  Another funny example of "what in the world?!"  came when I was unpacking kitchen boxes and kept unwrapping one particular bundle and as it got smaller and smaller (they used A LOT of paper) I become more and more puzzled about what it was....ketchup packets.  They had wrapped up ketchup packets.  Good grief.  Well, at least they were thorough!

So, even though I was a wee bit stressed about the timing of the arrival of our crate, we're oh so thankful to have our stuff again.  And this sweet little girl was SUPER excited about finding Buzz lightyear and Mrs. Potato Head.  She absolutely adores Toy Story and most of her Toy Story friends made the trip to America with her but Buzz and Mrs. Potato Head stayed behind.  We've talked about them all year and we were very excited to find them...

Ok, back to the process of moving.  I was telling you about all the things that must be done.  Hizanis.  Sadly did not get purchased before the crate from Beirut arrived, but the next day I was able to make a trip downtown with a friend and have them delivered and put together.  

Here's the one in the pink room...

And in the green room...  They really do thankfully provide a lot of storage...

Ok, so another moving issue- kitchen cabinets.  You saw my nice big kitchen and in that one picture you also saw the only storage I have in my kitchen.  So another trip is needed to a friend who has a friend who is a carpenter and can build kitchen cabinets.  Oh wait.  Before cabinets can be built they must be drawn.  By me.  Because of course the carpenter needs to know what he is building.  So I designed and drew out the kitchen cabinets and island table that I want to have added to my kitchen.  Those are currently under construction so I'll have to keep you posted on how that turns out!  

Heat.  We need it.  Yes, we live in the Middle East, but holy schnikies, we are discovering that it is incredibly cold in Jordan. And it's only November.  We may be in trouble.   I still don't understand how things are heated.  We have to buy a large quantity of diesel to use if we want to use the radiators in our house.  This can also be used (by figuring out the correct combination of switches in our home that turn on and off various pumps located in various places in the apt building) to heat water.  I don't yet understand this system and my sweet husband in a somewhat joking way (I think/hope) has warned me about the wrong combination of switches (something about turning ON the switch to pump the diesel if you don't actually have diesel in your tank) causing an explosion.  Yes, we have been married over 16 years and yes, there are still multiple times a day that I don't' know for sure if he's kidding or not.  I'm going with this being a joke though since it didn't seem to phase him and I'm assuming he would be more concerned for my safety is this was actually a possibility...  Anyhow, you can also buy an electric water heater to install in each bathroom is you don't' want to use the diesel option (which is apparently very expensive) for heat.  So we did.  Buy an electric heater that is.  But it is still not installed so therefore we have no hot water.  For me that's reason enough why we can't move in yet!  We also discovered after spending all day at the apt today that we need to go buy some space heaters- it was SO COLD!!!   Anyway, I digress.  So getting our electric water heaters installed is a big thing on the list.  

Strangely, apt's hère don't come with light fixtures and mirrors in the bathrooms.  So we have to find and install that.  That's a small thing but still something that must be done and small things can turn into big ones pretty quickly.  We also had to figure out where to install our washer.  We first tried the hallway bathroom but it didn't fit so well.  We ended up putting it in the bathroom off the living room (I use "we" loosely- Jason and his buddy took care of this for us...).  From what I understand it required several trips to the hardware store but is now in place and only leaks a little.  Hoping that won't be an issue.  Here's a look down my previously nice and neat hallway- the big green white and red box is the electric water heater that has to be installed and if you look closely you can see the bidet sitting in the middle of the hallway that they removed in an effort to make room for the washer....  

I'm actually glad to have the bidet out.  They take up lots of space.  Hopefully our landlord will let us store it downstairs....

Anyhow, back to the moving process.  Obviously, there are many things that must be done to make it move in ready.  I haven't even mentioned furniture assembly yet.  Jason had quite the job ahead of him in putting together the girls massive bunked and accompanying furniture but he was my hero and got it done easily.  AND, oh I forget this little gem- Jason and I scored big time on finding a bedroom set for us. (we sold our old one when we left Lebanon).  There's a used furniture market here that gets things delivered regularly and we found a king sized bedroom suite including mattress for a great deal.  Our biggest concern was that it wouldn't fit in our somewhat small room.  It didn't completely- one of the bedside tables will have to find a new home elsewhere in the house but we're still excited about it.  I felt a little guilty because I typically set up a home by doing the kitchen and the girls rooms first but we couldn't pass this up!  

Now we just have to find king sized (flannel! have I mentioned it's cold?) sheets..

Poor Abbey is the only one left without a bed and I'm thinking we're going to have to use our trusty carpenter friend which means I'll have to design (or find a picture of what we want)...  Hoping to find a picture of a loft bed that we can have made for her.  But that will come.  She came sleep on a mattress on the floor for a bit...

Anyway, back again to the moving process.  A few days ago Jason and I were both planning to spend the morning at the new apt, let Anabelle nap in the pack-n-play and try to get the rest of the Beirut boxes unpacked and things cleaned up a little before the crate from America arrived.  No such luck.  That morning as I was literally unpacking the last of the Beirut boxes (and I am being very loose in my use of unpacking- don't' let it fool you into thinking the items were being unpacked and put up.  Oh no, simply taken out of the box and piled around the interior of the apt...), anyway, unpacking the last Beirut box and our contact from customs in Amman calls and says that our crate from America is cleared and they will be delivering it within the hour.  Again, yah but ahhhggg!!!   So excited that our stuff is in the same country with us but oh so overwhelmed!!!  I still had several projects that I hoped would get done before the next wave of stuff came through.

For example, we have a couple of bookshelves that we brought from Lebanon that weren't in the best shape but I knew we would need all the storage space we could get.  I didn't get them painted before everything else arrived but I have finished them this week.  This one has sentimental value to me.  My grandfather made it for my mom when she was a little girl and it was also in my room and in Abbey's baby room.  When we moved to Lebanon I painted it white and periwinkle to match my kitchen there...

I painted it tomato red to match all the color we're bringing to our kitchen with our polish pottery and new fiesta dishes.  Yah for color!

This is just an old shelf that we bought used from someone in Lebanon- not in the best shape-

Since I'm not sure exactly where it's going to go, I painted it a neutral taupe so it can go anywhere...

Speaking of not knowing where anything is going to go you can pray that Jason and I don't kill each other in our efforts at communicating about how our home should be arranged...  We seem to have slightly different opinions.  We have a pretty large living room that is going to be arranged in two seating areas, and eventually a dining room area.  Also, we have to put Jason's work space somewhere.  Also, we have some random extra space in our kitchen.  I keep telling him that I won't know how I want it until I SEE it various ways.  Which will require some arranging and re-arranging.  But before that can happen furniture must be put together, things must find their way into closets etc.  We have to actually be able to move around before we can rearrange furniture!  Here are some parting shots of the progress we have made so far....  (and believe it or not this IS progress- maybe you can understand a bit of my stress....)  For this girl who likes to nest, it literally looks like my old home just dumped itself into my new home shaking everything out into random piles.  Imagine if someone came to your home and literally emptied all the closets into the middle of the living space, took apart the furniture and scattered the pieces about, well, you get the idea.  Hopefully, there will be even more progress soon...

We have gone from this...

to this...  (see, progress?!)

This room is stressing me the most right now since there is no where for the girls to sleep!  Working on that...

So hopefully by the next post, you will see more progress and more homeyness...  In the meantime pray for my sanity!!