Our front door is actually the store front looking doors (Richard wants to hang an open/close sign on them for giggles), but they use a special key and don't stay shut without said key....so it is a little high maintenance for everyday usage. So we just use the side door through the laundry/mud room which is good for dropping off dirty shoes before going into the house anyway.
We have an normal size embassy issued washer, but a mini local landlord provided dryer. Luckily, we air dry a good bit of our clothes but we still have to split loads to fit into the dryer. There is also a good bit of storage in the laundry room, as well as, a small folding shelf and a sink.
Continuing on in, you find the kids' bathroom. Which works out well, since after the take off their shoes they can immediately wash their hands after school before being distracted by toys or snacks (which as I have mentioned, hasn't appeared to help keep them healthy...lol).
Sharing sink space is quiet "enjoyable" after them both having their own bathrooms in Tbilisi.....
The shower windows vent to the laundry room....so if I am ever feeling extra mischievous/someone is the in the shower too long I can throw ice on them....muwhahahaha....
In the main hallway, we have some of our travel posters displayed. We also have a nice set of cabinets that have provided us a good bit of space for storing our consumables.
We split the main living area into two areas since it is quite a large room. A den type area and an office type area. Note the front door in the corner.
Another angle of the main room. GSO came by last week to do our one time picture hanging. We have a couple new pieces getting framed currently, so we went ahead and had some nails placed on the wall to hold their places. (If I'm feeling extra motivated, I may update this photo with the map of Fiji that we plan to hang above the printer).
As you can see the main room opens into the kitchen. The kitchen is quite large as well. Counter space is a tad limited, but we make it work. We would love to open the lever windows to let in more light, unfortunately it tends to be rather humid most days. I did open up the house this past weekend and Clarissa seemed surprise to notice there were windows along that wall.
From the opposite direction. The kitchen/dining area nicely holds our Drexel heritage issued dining set. Richard plans to get another tiki mask to balance the one we have.
Clarissa's room is cozy but cute.
We put her bed in the corner to give her a bigger play area. The kids discovered what we called poster putty growing up (it is called sticky tack here), so they have both taken creative lead on their personal wall decorations.
She has a nice built in closet set up. One side is her clothes and the other side is dress up clothes. We are definitely utilizing over the closet space for extra storage. Note the recycling of her birthday lanterns as room decorations.
I took photos of Mason's room the moment I finished unpacking/straightening up....because I knew it would never be this neat again....so he does have a few framed photos hung on the wall now....but the rest of the room now has more of a tween disheveled look.
Mason has a queen size bed this post, the Master bedroom is issued a queen bed, but since we ship our king size bed with us. We let him use the extra queen bed once ours arrived. I used command hooks to make a hat rack....
Like I mentioned, the kids used sticky tack and took the creative lead on wall decorations....I guess we should enjoy this before it comes pictures of bikini clad women......(and I can't really talk...I may have had a poster or two of a 21 jumpstreet/top gun heartthrobs on my walls back in the day).
The master suite was able to accommodate our king size bed....as I mentioned before...best decision to bring with us ever!! Much to Richard's disappointment, I nixed his idea of putting the tiki masks over our bed. (Call me weird, but I have issues with faces looking at me when I'm sleeping....I remember seeing faces in the wood knots of my grandmother's closet door and my bestie's dad mounted deer heads always freaking me out when I spent nights away from home as a kid...so creepy tiki faces, no thank you).
His and hers dressers.
So we lucked out and have a house that has a bath tub (apparently it is pretty common to not have a tub here). We only have one tub and it is in the master bath....so lots of bath toys are the norm.
It's pretty small compared to Tbilisi, but we don't really need to do yoga in the bathroom. It is completely functional for what we need.
So in Suva, bookshelves are at a premium (whereas we had a plethora at our last post). Outside our room we put the majority of the kids books on one combined shelf to make a little library.
Last but not is the bonus room we got due to our last minute housing assignment change! We are so grateful for this fourth bedroom! It provides a guest bedroom for visitors.
But if you turn the other direction, it also functions a bit as a game room with our board games stored in one of the closets and the Xbox hooked up to the other TV, as a craft room for my dabbling into sewing (I'm planning to make some bedskirts to hide the fact that we are using the space underneath mosts beds for storage....debating getting fun Bula fabric or something more plain that can be used at future posts also), as an attic to store our luggage and empty boxes, and as our basement storing all our holiday things. We do not have any outdoor or attic/basement/garage storage. So I apologize to our guests...but when you see all the other things....just remind yourself....you are in Fiji!
Guests can also head out that door next to their bed onto our lovely back porch. It runs along the entire back of the house from the kitchen to the back bedroom.
There is also access to to the pool from the porch.
Where you can sit on a chaise lounge and relish the view of palm trees (unfortunately we can't see the Pacific Ocean from our house....sigh).
You can also wander around the yard through the flowers,
meander through the banana trees,
check on the pineapple tops to see how they are growing,
and traverse through some more flowers.
So that's it.....hope you enjoyed your tour. It looks much better in person, so you will need to come visit to get the total effect. :)
The house looks great. And a pool! Love it.
ReplyDeleteIt's almost the first day of winter, so the pool water is pretty chilly right now!
DeleteI laughed at the yoga in the bathroom comment. The bathrooms in Tbilisi were kind of nuts. Looks like you guys have a nice set-up - pineapple tops in the garden, how cool!
ReplyDeleteThey were crazy huge....I never did yoga in the bathroom....but knowing I could if I wanted to was awesome!
DeleteWe've planted 1-2 pineapple tops a week since we've moved in. It looks like it'll take about 2 years for them to fruit, we extended our tour a few months so hopefully we will get a couple before we PCS.