Our Home...

Eric found our apartment his first week in Germany.  Finding a place here can be tricky, when you find something, you take it!  He did such a fantastic job; He picked the most perfect place for us!  I am so in love with our little piece of Germany!!

Our “apartment” is actually more like a duplex, except being side-by-side with our landlords, we are above them.  We have the top 2 stories of a 3 story house and are the first tenants this apartment has ever had.  Our apartment is 1900 sqft (HUGE for Germany).  We have 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, and an extra room that we use as a utility room, but could have been used as a 4^th bedroom. There is a good sized back yard but we do not have access to it, only our landlords do—most yards here are small and it seemed that finding a place with a yard made the process of finding a rental more difficult- this was one of the reasons we decided not to bring Brew.  We don’t mind though- no yard means no mowing!  

48 hours before Isabelle and I landed in Germany our household goods were delivered!!  After I survived jet lag, I kept busy by unpacking.  I hadn’t anticipated how unnerving it would be to be without my things for 9 weeks- unpacking my things took the last bits of stress away…to sleep in my own bed was spectacular.  

So for all of you looky-loo’s out there, here are pictures of our apartment!  It’s hard to show the floor plan through pictures but you’ll get the idea:

Here are the steps going up to the front door to our apartment.  The landlords front door is next to the stairs.  We share one entrance into the house- it's basically a fortress- the main door is extremely heavy and the lock is tricky- we feel very safe here!

These are pictures of the small entry way.  {The first picture is looking at our front door}  Standing at our front door, there is the main floor bathroom straight ahead, Isabelle's bedroom to the left, and the kitchen and main living areas to the right.

There are 2 bedrooms on the main floor.  Isabelle's is the slightly smaller one of the two, but it is still bigger than her room in Omaha (plenty of room for her to make a mess and drive my OCD insane)!  Isabelle decorated her room all by herself and decided where to hang everything- I think she did a super job!  

Different colored cabinets are the style and considered "modern" here.  I never would have thought that I'd like orange in any room of my house, especially the kitchen, but I am totally diggin' it!  

The kitchen layout is awkward to me.  I guess because the way the plumbing is worked throughout the house, the kitchen was the only room we could hook-up a washer and dryer.  I spend most of my time in here so it's actually pretty handy to have it like this, it just took a little getting used to.

The living room and dining room are right off the kitchen:

I can't handle clutter so I can't stand having all of my magnets on the front of my refrigerator...

Here's the thing with my living room.... I hate the rug!  Eric bought it while serving in Iraq and I have tried my darnedest to decorate around it for the last 7 years.  If I had my way our living room would look a lot different!  But my guy is pretty amazing, and rarely has opinions about style choices and almost never says "no" to me- if he loves the rug, I can deal with it.  

Our dining room is pretty plain since we decided not to bring any of my Grandma's artwork- two large pieces of her art would normally have gone in here.  We felt that her art was safest at my father-in-law's- I couldn't handle the thought of them being on a boat- they are priceless and all I have left of her.  

There is something a little off about this room.... I don't know if you can tell from this angle: 

....I'm not sure if you can tell at this angle either but it is totally shaped like a trapezoid!  Eric and I had to set the dining room table at a diagonal so that it would go with the shape of the room and be able  to sit at all four chairs.  It's a quirk- this room has character!

Next is a room that we use as a utility room.  I'm sure it could be used as a 4th bedroom but we use it for storage and such.  This is where I wished we could put the washer and dryer...

So that's the main floor for ya!  
Back to the entry way... there is a long hallway that goes to our balcony and another bedroom (I don't have pictures of the bedroom because it is a disaster!  We're using it as a catch-all right now and I have a lot of organizing to do in there still).

The door on the right is to the stairs that goes up to the 2nd level of the apartment:

Up here we have an office, the master bedroom, master bathroom, and loft area that we're using as a closet.  Most of the 2nd level isn't unpacked yet.  

This is the office... I still have a lot of organizing to do in here too.

With the A-frame ceiling the master bathroom is a little difficult to get pictures of.  There is no mirror which drives me nuts!  And I'm not sure why the landlords picked that toilet seat (it's identical to the main floor bathroom too)...  But this is a typical German bathroom.

A German toilet.

And now for my most favorite room in the entire house, and my most favorite room ever!  Our master bedroom....

...It's huge!  I am so in love with the different colored wood and the romantic feel to it!  Along with my Grandma's art, we decided not to bring our queen sized bed and mattress.  Most German houses can not accommodate that size of a bed....obviously, this bedroom can, but the stairs could not, it turned out to be a good decision.  

Yes, I know that picture on the wall is sideways.... I'm ordering a picture from our recent photography session that will go in that frame.

So that's our house!  I get the feeling that people back home think we live in a hut without modern amenities.... Germany is not much different from home.... well, I guess there are lots of differences, but that's another blog.  Anyway, we live in a modern home and have not dropped off the face of the earth!