Making a "Home"

I know that "stuff" does not define who we are and most of it is not worth very much, but when you are halfway around the world, away from your dear family and friends, "stuff" sure does help make a house feel like a "home". For the first 8 weeks of living here, yes MP, I felt like I was living in a hotel. We had our clothes here, but nothing else was ours. Now, I have put up all of the pictures (with the help of the "engineers"), unpacked and organized all of the toys and kitchenware, and even found a home for my fake tree that travelled across the ocean! We have definitely added our touch to this place and it is nice to come "home" after a long day of sitting in traffic and racking your brain on how to say plastic bag in Chinese!! I will attempt to show you the before and after pictures of most of the rooms in the house. I'll skip on the bathrooms because all 3 of them are a lovely black marble - need I say more!! There's not much I can do with that!!!! The office is housing a few boxes and very little furniture, so I'll save that one too! We are hoping to buy some antique Chinese furniture to put in that room - that means I must continue shopping!!



Here is our family room...you can see our handmade custom made wool rug and the red wall! This room is totally out of synch with my typical decorating patterns and colors, but it is growing on me day by day! Plus, I had to work with very modern furniture - not really my style!

The next room on the first floor is our dining room. Really all we did in here is to paint and fill the cabinet! What a difference a coat of paint makes!!

On the second floor is our bedroom and the office. In our bedroom we had the entire room painted a soft cream. Then we added "big red chair" and family pictures, now it is a cozy escape for us!

On the third floor I made a makeshift playroom for the kids!! A couple of those Target cubical units and voila - the toys all now have homes and the kids have a place to play! They call it their "basement"!! I'm pretty sure they think basement means place for toys!!

Eens and Coop share one of the bedrooms on the third floor. I had one wall painted blue and then I painted a yellow road (just for Eens) and added some sticky cars (thanks Jenny!!) to the other walls! They love all of the cars and trucks!

Ellie's room is also on the third floor! She gets the smaller of the two rooms, but I'm pretty sure she is happy she doesn't have to share!! She, of course, wanted a pink room, so we once again had one wall painted pink! Then I had shipped some Wallies so we put up flowers all over - El helped put all of the flowers up - it was quite a chore!

That's our house...it's not perfect, but everyday it feels more and more like home!!