Our Rotterdam home

I heard recently that the Dutch equivalent of our American phrase "Home sweet home" is "Oost West, Thuis Best," which translates to "East, West, home is best." I like it.

I wish I knew how to better manage my time and make a weekly space for journaling. If only I could just transfer my brain's contents into this blog and have entries on everything that has happened over the last six months! (Someone please invent something that does that. Like a memory-transcription machine. I'd buy the heck out of that.) 

So - seemingly out of nowhere, if you're going off of my journal's contents - we are in Rotterdam! And everyone is asking to see pictures of our apartment. So, I took some. :)

The general layout is the front door opening into a central, rectangular entry hall, with every room leading off of that. 

The first door on the right is the entry to the living/dining room:

Ollie on the floor as if dead is not a super common occurrence but it happened this particular morning.

Turning to your left you see the rest of the entry hall and doors leading (from left to right) to Oliver's room, the kitchen, and the master bedroom.

Looking directly into the kitchen. ^^

The left-most side of the entryway has two doors - one to the restroom and one to our laundry/shower room. I was, and still am, super stoked to have both a washer AND a dryer, totally separate from one another. Not always the case in NL. It has me feeling spoiled! 👑

 Next is Ollie's room!

 His Royal Cuteness had a relatively put-together room before anyone else in the house did, all owed to a wonderful family from the previous school year of Ryan's MBA program. They have two kids and were so kind to sell us basically every piece of furniture you see in Ollie's room.

 Ollie's room has a door out to the back balcony, and so does the kitchen and our bedroom.

The cute gardens out back belong to the tenants on the ground level, but we've been making friends with the darling Dutch woman who owns this one, and she's invited Oliver to play in her garden any time he wants. He always gets his way, little stinker. I'm just along for the ride.

 Kitchen next:

 I love our kitchen! It's one of my favorite things about the apartment. The layout is thoughtful and it's spacious while being really compact. We have a fridge and a freezer (freezers are not always a guarantee in a Dutch kitchen) AND a dishwasher too!

 Also side note, the huge, bright windows all throughout our place are THE best. I love them.

(Breakfast time. ^^)

The master bedroom! Out of sight on the right side of the room is a wall-length closet, and on the left is a TV mounted on the wall, and a desk in the corner. The windows run the full length of the room.

Last is the dining and living room!

The door over there in the middle leads out to the front balcony.

Those poor sad bookshelves. Since we moved here only with what we could fit in a reasonable number of suitcases I brought just a handful of books. So they are kinda naked. Also this little nook is where we'll throw down an air mattress for guests (come see us, ya'll)!

 So, those are the digs! My favorite things about the place are the compact but still super roomy-feeling layout (I love that if we are in separate rooms we still feel "together" and can hear each other), the windows and balconies that make the outdoors feel part of our home, and the washer and dryer. :)

Coming soon - my favorite things about our neighborhood and location!