Everyone's Favorite Room - The Kitchen

When we rented this house, it had no closets or cabinets of any kind. This is not an unusual situation here in Brazil, but it forced us to make some furniture purchases right away. We are still doing some shopping, and that is why it is taking a little longer to get everything permanently situated in this house.

This counter top with the corner sink is the only thing that was in the kitchen when we moved in.

We began to shop around for cabinets of some kind. We found one kind that we really liked, and it happened to be one of the cheaper choices. It was really hard for me to decide what kind of cabinets I needed...how many, how big, etc. We finally decided this was the best choice, and they have turned out to be great.

I never planned to buy black and white cabinets, but that was the only color option for these, and they just happen to perfectly match the black and white floor, as well as my stove that we picked out before we even found this house!

Now, remember that counter top with nothing under it? I really felt like it was an eye sore, and anything that was stored under it always looked messy to me, so (with a lot of help from my husband), I made a curtain to go around it. This was tricky with nothing there to hang it to, but super glue and velcro can work wonders!

BEFORE

AFTER

Glad you stopped by! I'll leave you with the view from the kitchen window. I like the fact that we can look out and see a good portion of this city, and be constantly reminded of the people who are living there in need of the Truth!

My Birthday

It is not my custom to blog pictures of myself, but I wanted to share how great my husband and kids were to me on my birthday this year!

Jeremy has been building up my birthday to the boys for several weeks, and they were more excited about it than anyone else. They were even more excited when Jeremy showed them the gift they were going to give me. They knew for maybe two days and were about to burst! Jeremy gave me right after breakfast so no one would slip.

 Speaking of breakfast...In our home we have made it a tradition for the birthday boy/girl to pick the menu for the day. Of course I am usually the one who makes the menu, so that wasn't too big of a deal, but not having to make the food was great! Jeremy made me homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and they were delicious!

I helped a little with lunch, but he did most of it, and all the cleaning up so it was a great treat for me. And he also made one of my favorites...peanut butter pie. YUM!

 

To top it all off, we ordered pizza for supper.

 

We had a fun day playing together and I'm so grateful for the wonderful family that God has given me!

A Look at Our New Abode

We are still working on getting things the way we want them, so I've hesitated to take many pictures of our house. However, since I know how anxious you are {Mom}, I'll go ahead and show you a little of what we have already made presentable!

Here is a view of the front of our house. 

From the street you see mostly the wall that surrounds our property.

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Inside the front gate we have our front "yard." 

(Not sure what these people were thinking when they picked that tile!)

The driveway goes to a garage-type area under the house which also houses my laundry area.

 (Please excuse the mess!)

And one of my favorite things about this house...the back yard! 

 I'm not sure it's Jeremy's favorite, though. 

He has to mow it with a weed eater!

A view of the back of our house.

Next time you come, I'll let you come inside!

Finally Unpacking!

Moving is never an easy task. I feel like we have been moving for a year now! Our things have been stored and we have been moving from temporary place to place, but FINALLY we are unpacking boxes for good!

We arrived here in Ouro Preto do Oeste on June 22. As always, there is a lot of work involved in packing and unpacking, organizing and arranging (and rearranging). Thankfully, our things survived a year of storage quite well. The kids were so anxious to open up boxes and get out their toys.

We have been without internet since we arrived, but now we are finally hooked back up and able to stay in contact a little easier. We sure do appreciate modern technology, and really miss it when we don't have it!

I have many things to blog about, and want to post pictures of our house and other things around us.  Be patient and don't give up on me!