This is not what my house looks like. This is what my house would look like if it were clean.
Here's the sitting area in the living room, in the front of the house next to the entryway. I like the floor pillows. The orange you can see through the window is the wall to the side garden, which in our case is just a bricked walkway. If we were staying longer I would pull up a couple rows of brick alongside the wall and plant creeping vines like bougainvillea so we would see some green out the windows... one neighbor did that last year and the effect is really nice.
Here you're looking from the couches at the entertainment console and its mass of wires. We've more recently spruced up that area with family photos on the shelves.
Here's the dining room - an open plan from the front of the house to the back. You can't see the door to the back garden, just past the right edge of the picture.
The kitchen is the only small thing in the house, complete with metal cabinets and an exhaust fan that draws steam from the stovetop and vents directly out the top side; I have no idea what use that might be. You have to light the oven with a match, which adds a nice element of danger to cooking. The kitchen is only connected to the house by a door off the hallway that leads to the laundry and maid's room. It's really hard to hear anything that's happening in the rest of the house when you're in there. I've been spoiled by my Pittsburgh kitchen; I really miss being able to talk to people while I get the food ready.
Here's the master bedroom.
The boys share this room now; A is in her own space using the maid's bed which we carried upstairs. For the past week the boys have had a camping tent pitched between their beds (a birthday gift for C) which really adds to the effect of the room as you might imagine.
And this is what a bathroom looks like. No shower curtains or rods. Never quite got around to fixing that in the kids' bath...
Hopefully my mood funk will pass today. I'm doing all the things that usually work for me: getting exercise, planning family outings, cooking meals. Yesterday really stunk and if my job is to keep the family happy, balanced and functioning we can't have much more of that...
