Our New-ish Furniture

For some of our loyal readers, you will remember a time when we took pictures of our new apartment. Well, the furniture that we had purchases from our predecessors, was, shall we say, less than ideal. So we took our living room furniture to a re-upholstering place. Below are our new chairs and couch.

It took a great deal of comparing color swatches, but we decided on a colorful red couch, and two off-white couches. They have brightened up our dark apartment quite a bit. They are comfortable, and cheaper than brand new ones!

Thanksgiving Part II

I don't know why, but Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Most people say Christmas or Halloween, but for me its Thanksgiving. I think its partly because its my mom's favorite holiday and it wore off on me, but I just love having family and friends around, talking, laughing, and eating fantastic food without any other pretenses. Its just about being together and being thankful for what wonderful lives we have. Last year, was my first Thanksgiving away from home, and it was quite difficult for me. My roommate and I made a makeshift meal of chicken and au gratin potatoes on Wednesday night, and then we had gone to Utila for diving and had a pseudo Thanksgiving meal there.

This year however, I knew that I wanted to give my favorite holiday its dues. Realizing that most people travel over the Thanksgiving holiday, I had invited neighbors and friends to come over to our house the weekend after Thanksgiving weekend to celebrate. Even though Jesse and I had a Thanksgiving Japanese meal on Thanksgiving, I still wanted to celebrate the day traditionally.

Everyone I invited was excited, and they were all really happy that someone had come up with the idea. I went out and bought two turkey breasts (there is definitely not enough freezer space for a full bird) and told everyone it was potluck style- so bring your favorite Thanksgiving dish. Everyone brought such amazing food! We had brussel sprouts with bacon, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, real mashed potatoes, potatoes with crunchy onions, stuffing, homemade bread, carrot cake and apple pie. I'm probably forgetting something, but it was all amazing! It really made me happy to have friends over to celebrate everything that we are thankful for. For many of our neighbors, they have never been in our home, so it was a nice way to bring the apartment complex together. It finally feels like the holiday season has started and it helped me realize that holidays away from home don't necessarily have to be sad. Everyone that came over tonight brought with them a piece of their Thanksgiving tradition and it was a fantastic evening. I'm very thankful to have such supportive friends, without them I wouldn't have had this wonderful Thanksgiving meal.
Jesse, carving up the turkey breast.

The table with all the delicious yummies on it.

Ryan and Alex scooping up their food.

Dan and Katie watching soccer. I suppose it makes sense to watch futbol on Thanksgiving in Honduras!

Alex, Kim, Caitlin, and Jesse sitting at the table, enjoying dinner.

I felt like it was a great evening. Thanks everyone!

An Actual Full- Size Mattress Anyone?

Jesse and I have been noticing lately that our bed appears to be a little bit smaller than a normal full size mattress, which face it, Jesse is too big for a full size anyway. Well, we recently acquired a key to our spare bedroom, which the school is using as storage for extra household items, including mattresses! So Jesse, using the broom as an accurate and precise measuring system, determined that our bed was about 6 inches smaller than the other mattresses in the spare room. So we switched them! An hour later, after moving two other mattresses out of the way, ripping plastic off of one boxspring, we had the bigger mattress in our bedroom. Then we start making the bed, only to discover that our sheets don't fit this mattress- its too big! We switched the mattresses back, and are defeated in our attempt at getting a slightly bigger mattress to sleep on. We have no idea what size the one mattress was, because it definitely wasn't a queen, but it wasn't a full size either. One and a half hours later, nothing was different in our apartment, except that we were really sweaty and exhausted!

Cable-Sula

During the last week and a 1/2, since moving into the new apartment, there has been a lack of entertainment options in our apartment, due to the non-existent cable that we had. Well, that has been remedied today. The cable company pulled up, with a foot long drill bit and a ladder. They drilled a hole through our wall, climbed up into the ceiling through the opening in the laundry closet, and apologized for drilling a hole, two hours later they left. Very Honduran, to show up at an apartment building and not knowing how to hook anything up and just start drilling holes in walls!

New Furniture

So Jesse and I have now been living in my apartment for officially one whole week. It took only a few days for it to feel more homey than Jesse's apartment, and we did add a few things.

This is our living room/dining room. Notice the great lawn chair in the corner! We are waiting for our recliner to show up.

This is our wonderful kitchen! I'm a fan of the countertop on the right and the cupboard space.

Our dining room with the wonderful painting from Nicaragua on the wall. I like the cut-out area between the kitchen and dining area.

Now finally, the addition! Stools!!! I love countertops like this, and as soon as I walked into this apartment, I knew that I wanted to get stools for the countertop. Now these stools are handmade from a guy in San Pedro. The lovely cost for these stools?? $15 for the pair! I felt I could spend the money to have stools to sit on at the countertop.