our house

Since none of of our family in the US has ever been to our house in Belgium, i decided to do a little snapshot of our house.
It is not really 'our' house, since we rent it, but since we live here, i am referring to it as our house. It is a three level townhouse, four if you count the basement (which is VERY MUCH an unfinished basement). I guess it is about the size of Tammy's town house, except we have more room in the living room area, because there was an extension build on the ground floor, and less room upstairs where the bedrooms are.

This is our bookshelf. We love our bookshelf. It doesn't hold all of our books yet, but it is a start. The bookshelves are one of the few things we actually bought new in Belgium. (Ikea) Most everything else we either got for free or bought second hand for very little. Yet we have been blessed with a house full of furniture.

One of our second hand purchases is what we call "our vanishing cabinet".

Anything and everything will appear and disappear at random in this cabinet. It is not a reliable place to put your things. You never know when it will show up again.
We kind of ended up with this cabinet by accident, and since it was kind of ugly, we decided to paint flowers on it. Unfortunately we did not have the presence of mind to sand it down first, so the painted flowers are slowly flaking off.

This is our desk. I rather not talk about it. It is our dirty secret (dirty as in very messy)



This is our TV. This too we ended up by accident. Some people we knew were moving to Taiwan and were trying to sell it. But they asked a ridiculous price for it, so no one bought it. So in the end, they were leaving and hadn't sold it, so they just gave it to us.
I would have nevr bought a TV of this size. Leland says it is not THAT big, but according to me, if the cartoons are larger then the kids, it is TOO big.



This is our money wall. Now to avoid misunderstandings, we are not rolling in the dough. Most of this money is worth very little or nothing. There is money from several European countries before tehy switched to teh Euro, Italian, Dutch, France, Luxemburg. Other countries: England, Sweden, Norway, The US, Ethiopia, Ghana, Hong Kong, China, Romania, Afghanistan... I think that's it. We are still missing a Japanese bank note (hint, hint)



This is our game cabinet. It is full of BOARD games. I straighten this thing out every other week, and yet the first time the boys touch it, it turns into a disaster. It is really amazing that we didn't buy a single one of these games. Most were hand-me-downs from my family or people in church. A few were gifts from Santa or gifts from friends at birthdays.

Like many European houses we have rather steep stairs. These are the stairs to the attic, they are not quite as steep as the ones to the first floor.


This is our laundry room, except, is it really a laundry room if it also hath a bath...?

But then, it has a bath, but no toilet. There is a separate "toilet room", Which i believe Americans call a half bath. Which doesn't make a lot of sense either, because it does not have a bath, let alone half a bath (half a bath, all the water would run out!!) So any way, it is a never ending question. Do we call the laundry room with the BATH the bathroom, or do we call the toilet room the bathroom. It is a point of continuing confusion....