Our Kitchen.....

It's coming along. The kitchen guy showed up on Tuesday with his men to start putting in the cabinets.  Then he hasn't showed up since....so what would typically be done, is still only halfway finished.  Welcome to the Middle East!  And you know, the standard just isn't exactly the same as mine, but who cares.  We're not living here forever, but why can't there be some standard of excellency or at least good work?  Instead there are a few knicks and dings on one of the cabinets already, the granite sticks out too far in one place and a few other things like that....but I'm happy that we'll have a clean, functioning kitchen!

We ended up switching to a wood cabinet since the white was more cream and looked odd next to the white tile that is in the kitchen.  It's normal to have a fully tiled kitchen here as many other cultures fry lots of their food or use a lot of oil, so it helps make the clean up a bit easier.

I found an island at Ikea that I liked but was double the price than what this man quoted to build it himself, so we went that avenue.  We'll put high stools here.  We put the stove in the island so we'll see how we like it. 

We made some of these decisions so quickly and with the thought that we aren't here forever, so some things aren't perfect or ideal but we're thankful and glad we could make this change rather inexpensively.  The kitchen is a very important room to me and I love hosting people in our home, so we'll get lots of use out of it!

Etsy....

I love Etsy.com.

I just went crazy on there.

I can't wait to see the things I bought.

I won't get to see them until August but I'm so excited!

You should buy from there, too.

Support a local artist.  

Browse, you'll find a lot of neat items.

Tonight is church for us, but I'm at home lying on the couch not feeling so good for a sinus and ear infection.  I went to the doctor yesterday (it's nice to work at a hospital) and she gave me antibiotic and ear drops.  As the evening went on, my body started to hurt more and more....and still does.  By the time Trey got home last evening from visiting with a man who is a customer at our hospital, I already had myself diagnosed, dead and buried.  The internet is really not a good thing sometimes.  I knew that self diagnosing myself would never be good.  But I have so much pain in all my joints and especially in my leg and arm.  I marched myself over to the doctor this morning determined to ask for blood work just to make myself feel better.  I got an appointment and went to see the doctor.  When I tell him how I'm feeling and my self diagnosis he just looks at me. He was trying to be as nice as possible but I knew he thought I lost a few cookies somewhere along the way.  So he proceeded to make me feel better--felt all my joints and where my pains where but he found nothing.  He did a bunch of blood tests to rule out anything which is what I really wanted so I was happy.  Tonight Trey comes home and says that he went to talk to the doctor.  He said to me "What do you think the doctor said."  Realizing that I might have overreacted just a tad, but still legitimately feeling pain all through my body, I sheepishly said "Nothing".  He said yes and that my blood work was excellent and that he specifically ruled out Lukemia.  I was happy and ate a bite of Twix.  Trey told him that maybe I needed to see a different type of doctor (he was pointing to his head as he mentioned this to the doctor).  It's funny how you feel better after you know that a test result came back clear.....but I still have pain (probably from the fever) but hope this goes away soon.

The internet can be good, though, too.....my sister just bought us a Netflix subscription so we can now watch movies on demand from the website. Pretty nice.

So days like this when I have lots of time to think when trying to rest, I dream of the nice summer weather back home and wish I owned a Bed and Breakfast.  I've been watching Gilmore Girls as I fall asleep at night and I love the Dragonfly Inn and it's a little New England town.  I would love that.  I have thought about it for years actually but then never think it will really come to be.

Saying good-bye....

Mary Kate, a good Gordon alum used to work at Oasis and came back for a couple months this summer before she starts med school. It was a blast sharing an office with her for a bit and we had a great time.  Our office is hidden and lots of people don't even know where it is....so it's nice. We can party and people don't even know.

So we had a Cinnabon Party for Mary Kate to wish her well.

And we gave her lots of CERTIFICATES to reward her for her good work.  This place (and maybe this part of the world--who knows) gives lots of certificates to people as they come, go, leave, work for 2 days, intern, intern for 1 month, etc....anybody can get a certificate.    We knew Mary Kate would be dying for one before she left.  So instead we rewarded her with 5 so she could feel proud!

In Living Color.....

So they've painted our house.  I picked out some colors but then we tried to finding the matching color through a cheaper company but two of them didn't turn out EXACTLY as planned.

Take a peak.  The house is almost done. The kitchen floor turned out even better than I expected! I love it.  But the color in the kitchen and living room....mmm.....BRIGHT!

Alright...so remember how I said that I wanted slate blue---yeah, well what do you think of this BABY blue.  It just looks funny. I think the paint company forgot the Grey color in the paint. Small problem.

They painted one of the bedrooms this color, too but it looks different in a dark room that doesn't have much light compared to our living room (above) that gets tons of light.  So I'm keeping it in the bedroom. Who cares. It's for guests and y'all can stick it out for a week if you come to visit.

And on Day 4, God created the SUN and moon and said it was good.  

BUT hmmm....I don't want my kitchen to look like the sun.  Soooo we need to change this pronto.

But can you get a glimpse of the floor through the door.  Nice, huh?

I love the green and how it turned out.  Just what I wanted.

And the Brown, turned out better than expected!  I thought it might make the room small but it hasn't. It was a great choice and I'm so happy with it!

They ripped out the wall between our kitchen and the eating area..you can barely see because my husband was a horrible photographer today (I think he lost some skill).  You can sort of see the yellow on the left.  Where the yellow and tile meet, there was a big wall going across the room with a little door. Not so good. It's free to tear out a wall so we asked if we could do it. You can sort of see the orange/red tile floor from here.

So first thing after work, I ran to ACE and bought new paint. They are going to paint the new colors tomorrow morning and it should be done by tomorrow afternoon.   I hope we didn't go overboard with the new slate/blue color.  We are hoping it doesn't end up too dark but we figured that the blue turned out so much brighter than expected, that we needed to make it a few levels darker.  So we'll see tomorrow.  And we found a dark mustardy/goldish yellow. Here's hopin'!  

Goal......

Trey's enjoying the watching the World Cup with some buds.  These are a great group of guys from Syria...2 of them work at the hospital.  The hospital also was kind enough to order the channel for 1 month that gets the World Cup so I'm sure there will be some parties going on for the finals!

I'm reminded often that this only happens every 4 years so nothing gets in the way of these games...especially when there is a good game on!

Pizza Pie....

Around the corner we have an oven that makes bread from Afghanistan.  They make it in a round shape or a long shape like this. Usually we get the long shape.  It all tastes the same. It's so good hot with a slice of cheese.  OR lately we've been getting it and making pizza.

Add a little sauce, cheese and any toppings and bake it for a bit.  

Wa-la!  Tastes good.