Willkommen

Welcome to our German "castle." Houses in Germany are constructed from cinder blocks, and I imagine them standing in ruins in a few hundred years much like the castle ruins we love to wander around. They are very sturdy, but somewhat cold and damp. And those blinds on the outside of the windows are called roladen. I love them. They can black out a room at high noon, making naptime much easier for little ones. They also come in handy in the summer when it doesn't get dark here until 10 pm.

Come on in . . .Like many single family homes in this area, our house was built as three separate apartments. There is plumbing and electric on each floor to accomodate a kitchen, but only on the main level do we have actual appliances and counters. As you enter our house, you have the choice of going upstairs or downstairs. Let's start up on the main level, shall we?I show you this picture reluctantly, because it was taken quite a while ago, and doesn't look so cluttered now. This is our conservatory. I'm not kidding. That is what the landlords called it, and so we like to call it that in a snooty-sounding voice. Usually we just refer to it as our library. We have two desks for the kids to do homework, our piano, and bookshelves in this room. We also keep our guitars and other musical instruments in here. There is a sliding glass door (that is what the kids' pictures are hanging on in this picture). From this area, if you turn left you enter the main living area, walking directly into our kitchen:Most German houses don't have kitchens like this. They are usually separate from the living area. But we have a more open floorplan. Everything is black and gold and shiny -- not what I would choose if I were decorating, but I can't complain. It is a nice big kitchen with lots of space. Except for in the oven. German ovens are notoriously small. I can't fit most of my pans in it, and roasting a turkey is out of the question. German refrigerators are also very small, and ours doesn't even have a freezer. The base gives us American appliances, so we have a refrigerator in our basement as well. But the part of my kitchen I love the most is behind that slightly opened sliding door:

The butler's pantry! (I know, I know . . . conservatory, butler's pantry . . . don't worry, we haven't forgotten our humble roots. But we can probably host a pretty fun "Clue" themed murder mystery party). Seriously, though, I love this pantry. It doesn't have a lot of shelving for food storage, but I love having the extra counter space. I don't like keeping small appliances on my counters, and usually keep them in cabinets and take them out when needed. But in this house I have them out on a counter and ready for use, but I don't have to see them.

From the kitchen, if you turn around, this is what you will see:

Turn slightly to the left:

Keep walking past the fireplace and you enter our dining room:
The armoire to the left is my computer desk. I love it, because all of the wires, bills, electronics, office supplies, etc. are hidden by the lovely mahogany doors.

Also on this floor are the master bedroom (which is rarely picture-worthy), Liam's room, and two bathrooms. Here is our tub:

Come with me, back out into the stairwell, and up to the top floor. I am not going to show you all of the rooms upstairs because we have recently rearranged some rooms, and they don't look the same now. But to give you an idea of what the upstairs is like, here are a few pictures:

This is the upstairs living room. We use it as our toy room. It is a great space, and I love having a room just for toys. To the left of this room is the "kitchen" for the upstairs, but we use it as our craft room. And just off of the craft room is our laundry room. Through the arched doorway is a hallway where Braden's and Lydia's rooms are, along with a bathroom. Braden's room:This floor also has a guest room with its own bathroom.

The basement is finished, but we don't use it very often. It is a small apartment with a living room, bathroom, kitchen area, storage room, and bedroom. We have used this space for many things. When this picture was taken, I had it set up as an indoor playground for the winter with a slide and ball pit. I have since moved those toys up to the toy room. We completely emptied this space so it could be used as the Jedi Training Academy for Braden's birthday. It was so nice having a separate party room. Right now, it is set up as my photo studio with my backdrops and a tripod.

All in all, we are very happy here. It is fun to have space to spread out. We know that we won't always have such a big house, so we are trying not to fill this one up.

I hope you enjoyed your tour. It was fun to be able to share with you a little bit of what our life in Germany is like.