Successful move!

It's done! We managed to get moved with a minimum of trouble, thanks to Sebastian Espinoza Moving. This is our 4th or 5th exposure to him, a couple moves of things we bought from others and our two major moves. Highly recommended!

We sold our refrigerator and bought another (bigger) used one from friends and we also sold a lot of smaller stuff that we couldn't use (painted bench, rug, heater, dishes, etc). Now we have a bunch of little things left to sell.

An addition to our apartment!

Everyone knows how we love the views from our apartment, I mean the photos we share say it all. (Have you ever peeked at our SmugMug album, just for the views?) The light and views are a big part of this apartment and we hated to obscur that with curtains, even sheers.

When we moved in, we bought a room-darkening roman shade for the master bedroom from the former tenant. It has worked out well since the morning sun, especially in summer (NOW), a 6:30 sunrise can be a bit bright.

Well, we got a visit from the gal renting on the third floor, same apartment layout as ours. She is heading back to the states and wondered if we would be interested in buying her window coverings.

Although we still weren't sure we wanted anything, the bright afternoon sun was drivin us away from our desks every day. So we went down to her place to look. As soon as we saw them, we were sold!

When pulled up, you can't even tell there are window covers, other than the beaded drawstings. When you pull them down...that's where the magic begins. They work like roman shades but they have alternating panels of light and dark. Thus you can let some partial light in or not. Hard to explain and harder to show in photos but we LOVE THEM!

There is a smaller blind for each of the windows that open and a wider one for the rest of the window. Now the all the rooms except the kitchen have blinds AND a view!

A week? No, it can't have been a week...

Yes, it has been a week since I last blogged and I'm not sure where it went. I'm no longer sick, I did get in some reading and that I REALLY enjoyed, we didn't go out much other than for groceries and a few lunches with friends (old and new), we got our bathroom mirrors hung (thank you to Emilio) and we went to an outing in a neighboring town (more below).

Blog? Who has time to blog? LOL! But I do have a few photos to share. We continue to be amazed with the beautiful views. All day long, the sun and clouds provide us with a kaleidoscope of ever changing views.

Our bathrooms had inexpensive, plastic framed mirrors and before we moved in our landlord told us we could change them out. We found nice mirrors for around $20-25 each at Coral. Since we have tile walls in our bathroom, we knew that Stu's cordless drill was going to struggle with mounting them. We put a call out to our friend, Emilio, who has all the right tools. In a little over an hour, the three new mirrors were hung. What a difference! We love them. The two in our main bathrooms have a glass shelf that helps us get stuff off the counter - a good thing.

[click any image for larger photo]

Here are some fun views from our windows - I managed to snap a fuzzy shot of Stu heading out on his first bicycle ride.

And here are some of the kids playing at the day care center next door as well as some of the adults playing volleyball. The final shot is fuzzy but it is one of the buses with the newly added bike rack on the front!

A Few Apartment Photos

Everything is unpacked, the boxes and packing material have been returned to our expat friends, ready for someone else to borrow and thinks are settling in. Today we hung a few more wall decorations and I snagged a few photos.

Still a lot to do but we need to buy a few more things for the walls first. At least the walls aren't completely bare in all the rooms. LOL! The dining room table still has the little baskets that I've bought for decoration, the bookcase is stuffed and needs to be spread out a bit, we want a wall hanging to put above the television and we want to put up a family wall behind my chair (oops, forgot to take a photo of that corner).

We plan to put sheers in all the windows except the master where we already have a Roman shade, purchased from the previous occupant. But no rush, it's not like we have folks peeking in our 6th floor windows.

Living - Office - Dining - Kitchen areas


Master Bedroom - Master Bath


Guest Rooms - Guest Bath

So that's a little peek into our new place...enjoy!

Getting settled, slowly but surely

We are moved, semi-settled, got DirecTV and phone line installed and hopefully Internet will come next Monday. Phew! We love our apartment and the views area amazing and ever changing. Till next week...

From our kitchen window, early morning clouds.