New Home

It has taken us two weeks to unpack, sort through, clean and discard our past life. It has been a marathon of note. I have lost a little weight, a little of my mind and a lot of belongings. Things I thought I needed but didn't. We, as Westerners, really do have too much stuff. What we are left with falls into two categories;  things we need and things we love. It's the things we love but don't need that are so difficult to discard, but I think for Darren and I (both supreme hoarders) we have done well. What we have now is a small but functional (and hopefully still beautiful) space. It is a very cathartic exercise, getting rid of stuff, especially when most of it has been donated to charities that can make use of our excess.
Here are some happy snaps of our little home. I will post pics of my studio tomorrow.

I finally, after about ten years,I got around to cleaning our little fifties kitchen unit. I have always been torn between renovating it and loving the worn history of it. Now that it is clean I am no longer torn. History trumps renovation. So this is our dining room / homework room / sewing room. There is a lovely flow of space from the kitchen and the boys' rooms into this space and we seem to be spending a lot of time in here. 

I know it does not look like it from here but I really did get rid of a lot of things. I could not part with my Fisher Price  music boxes though, they really do make me happy when I look at them and after approximately 40 years they are all still functioning perfectly. I wonder whether the boys' toys will stand up that long? 

This is a small corner of Leith's room. He has a lovely large window which gets the afternoon sun. I think both of the boys' rooms will be great in winter. 

This is Kian's little room. He is so excited to have his own room and is getting really good at tidying up. 

I have set up my tiny collection of globes in our room,  and they all still currently face Africa in a nod to where we come from. 

This is our little TV watching room. Mostly Darren and I spend time in our respective work spaces so we thought it  was better to give Darren the "lounge" as his office / studio and we would make the little covered in balcony our wee sitting room instead. We have ordered a beautiful olive green 50's style couch for where the borrowed chair is sitting now, cant wait for it to arrive. 

Darren wont let me into his "bat cave" yet but I will show you my studio tomorrow.