Home base

I've been asked several times about housing, so here's the first of two posts about our temporary home. Welcome!

The street is walled, as is typical in this area. House fronts come to the sidewalk and walls are built between homes. To access ours, one comes from the street through the door shown in the back of this photo, which enters into the narrow courtyard. (It was this door where Josiah and William were standing for their "first day of school" photo.) Our house is along the left here. Big, dark grapes are ripening in the grapevine over the doorway/wall, and maybe you can make out the leaves of the fig tree on the right, which has a lot of fruit coming along too. Nice surprises when we arrived!

Standing in nearly the same space but turning around to the back, one sees the small grassed area with laundry line. The washer is small so I find myself doing a little load (or two) many days of the week. There are a few herbs planted in this area, and the trees at the very back are bay trees, so it's been nice to have bay leaves at regular disposal.

Down through the little gate are steep steps that enter the basement of an outbuilding. This is the "spooky room" Josiah and William were excited about the first day we arrived.  A full week later, it was they who also discovered a door inside the spooky room, which turns out leads into the owners' wine cellar.

For perspective, here's the view walking in the front door, so now the house is along the right. The building at the back is a sort of garage / shed with several entrances and rooms (the spooky room is below it). There's an entirely unfinished area up above that the owner uses as a painting studio, but the stairs and upstairs floorboards are rickety at best.  

Despite the steps and limited space, the boys enjoy playing outside every day. Approved activities include hitting small foam balls and badminton birdies, neither of which will yield a broken window...hopefully! And lately the kids have enjoyed kicking a soccer ball up and down that narrow run. (Someone guards the door, which is the goal.)

Another approved activity is throwing light stuff from the upper windows. We made parachutes for a couple of fuzzy friends, and we've thrown a lot of paper airplanes out too. 

Now let's go inside for a cup of tea!   :) 

The entrance to the house itself is through the double doors you can see open in the pic above with William, entering into the kitchen. The other set of double doors enters the living room, although they're on a different lock so we don't have them open as often.

Here's the view in from the doors. The back left leads into a combined bathroom and laundry. To the right are stairs going up and the opening to the living room.

This was a recent morning view from the stairs. I've organized and reorganized several times, trying to eliminate clutter and stashing away anything we won't be using, since initially nearly every surface was taken with miscellaneous kitchen supplies. We're quite happy to come down to this each morning, now! The space is working out well our family. The one drawback is the relative lack of counter area, which makes it tight for prepping family meals three times a day...and between each meal the table gets covered in papers and bags and projects, naturally.

Goodness I'm spending a lot of time standing here at the sink. Without a dishwasher, and with all four of us having every meal and snack at home, it seems that there is *always* a pile of dirty dishes on the right, a pile of clean dishes drying on the left...or both!

Ancient tile is on the kitchen floor. It's lovely in an authentic, original sort of way, but I don't know whether to adore or loathe the fact that it always looks crazy-awful-dirty regardless of whether it actually is dirty or not...  

If you go past the stairs, this is my typical view into the living room: Jesse having a meeting with folks back in Lancaster or elsewhere in the world, via internet with his headset. It's his "look" for a good number of hours each day. He paces nearly nonstop when he talks but is tethered to his computer, so it results in a bit of a staked zoo animal vibe...don't tell him I said so.  :)  The desk is kind of his command center, and the window looks out on the street. He's amazing at totally tuning us out no matter the chaos nearby, and for our part, we're getting pretty good at tuning him out too!

Of course it's not uncommon for the living room to look like this. Or be covered in paper airplanes, etc. 

And...I think that's more than enough for now. I'll work on an upstairs post in the coming days. 

Thanks for stopping by!  :)