Skip to main content

Our house, in the middle of our street

Finally, the long-awaited house photos. Having family to visit provided an incentive to get the place both organised and tidy, and therefore in a decent state to have its photo taken.

Yes, we are now a two-car family. Toby and I get around in the tinted-window gangsta-mobile.

Thought we might as well take the opportunity to have a family shot. Toby enjoyed meeting his aunt and uncle very much.

The front door is at right angles to the street.
And we've got a nice L-shaped porch area at the front.
Coming inside, we really liked the open layout with the archway through to the kitchen.
The kitchen-dining area, with the back door just visible on the far left.
Looking back towards the front door, with the study mid-right and the entrance to the corridor on the far right.

Toby and Graham surfing the web. The built-in shelving was another plus point for the house. This room was previously dark green which made it very gloomy, so we made it a painting project pretty quickly.

Our bedroom is off the kitchen, with nice big windows on to the back garden.

Toby shares it at the moment, in a bassinet. That's the door to the bathroom, and beyond that the door to our walk-in closet.
The bathroom, and me taking the photo.
The other bedrooms are reached from the corridor off the living room. This is the guest room.

This will be Toby's room, but got pressed into service as a second guest room, hence the airbed.

The crib was generously donated by a friend of some friends, whom we had never even met.
Our back porch. We moved in just in time to enjoy some al fresco meals while it was neither too hot nor too cold.

The back garden. Being the middle of winter, the grass is not at its greenest. Then again, it's pretty dry in summer too.
The house is about five years old, in a modern housing estate (or subdivision as they call them out here). A little more suburban than I pictured myself, and we feel very American now with our walk-in closets and automatic garage door. Still, it's a lovely house, and a nice quiet area for a certain little boy to play in, so we're happy here for a few years.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...

California: Beside the Sea

What comes to mind when you think of California?  Surfing!  So we strapped Toby to a surfboard and pushed him out to sea... Actually, it's pretty difficult to engage in watersports when holidaying with a toddler.  Sometimes it feels like it's pretty difficult to do anything when holidaying with a toddler!  But one thing they do tend to enjoy is getting lovely and wet and sandy.  So a beach is a good place to be. Toby was delighted to discover an apparently endless sandbox, and amused us by running in circles, rolling around and even acquiring a sand goatee!  His favourite game was for Graham to bury a small ball in the sand so that he could dig it up again. One of the most relaxing afternoons we had was at Goleta Beach Park, just north of Santa Barbara, where we were staying.  The air was cool but the sand was pleasantly warm, and the sky was partly cloudy, helping to mitigate the panicked impulse to slather on as much sunscreen as possi...

Preparing

Graham and I have a small difference of opinion when it comes to cleaning for visitors.  He thinks I have perfectionist tendencies.  I think I'm doing the bare minimum.  After all, I have to at least pick up all the toys and clean up that pile of crumbs that keeps appearing under Toby's dining chair, don't I?  And while I've got the vacuum cleaner out, the living room and hall always need doing.  And there's no way our guests want to see all that dirty washing up, so I'll just do that.  And wipe all the counters.  And file all those pieces of paper that have been sitting there for weeks.  And... what?  Perfectionist?  Me? Of course, this may be one of those male/female divides.  Most of my female friends regard having guests over as an opportunity to make the house look reasonable for at least a few hours.  Because all that clutter just builds up.  A pile of paper there, a stack of laundry waiting to be put away, those o...