Welcome to Our Home Sweet Home! (part 1)

Since several of you have asked to see what our new apartment looks like, and since I've posted pictures in the past week of both my older boys' room with piles of clothes and my kitchen with lasagna on the floor, I thought this would be a good time to share with all of you what it is supposed to look like, starting with those two rooms.

I'm not sure what to call this "room." It basically connects the foyer, dining room, Josiah's room, and the kitchen. The phone you see on the wall connects us with our 24-hour doormen, who call us if we have visitors, deliveries, or if we've received a package that won't fit in our mailbox.


Here I'm standing in the dining room doorway, looking through the no-name room into the kitchen. Where the wall comes out on the right is the pantry. I plan on putting in another cabinet next to it for more pantry space. The door on the left (beside the phone) is Josiah's room. Since our building was built in 1926 when I suppose it was common to have live-in maids, Josiah's room is actually the maid's room, which is pretty tiny and has it's own (also tiny) bathroom.


Closer to the kitchen...Josiah's door on the left, pantry on the right.

Here is one of the biggest adjustments I've had to make, as far as our actual living space is concerned. This is my little kitchen. For someone who loves to cook and feeds 7 people three meals a day, the tiny space is taking some getting used to!

From the side...

This is the part on the other side of the refrigerator...I suppose if we had a "normal-sized" Manhattan family, we could put a little table and chairs over here...but we don't, so this nice butcher-block topped cabinet from Ikea gives me both extra storage and another much-needed counter top. Excuse the random stuff in and around the window...I'm not quite fully organized yet!

Standing between the sink and the stove, looking toward the opposite wall. Since I wanted more than the two drawers currently in the kitchen area, we bought this dresser (also at Ikea) for the wall opposite the butcher-block cabinet. I use this for rolls of foil, etc., dishtowels, sippy cups, spices, paper plates, napkins, measuring cups & spoons, etc. My 18 qt. roaster oven, my Kitchenaid mixer, and my blender sit up on top, as well as a few other random bits who have yet to find a permanent home.


We're skipping the common areas of the apartment for now, since I haven't thought to pull out the camera at the same time as they were actually tidy yet, and heading back to the boys' room. We have a nice hallway closed off by a pretty glass-paned door at the back of the apartment, and off that hallway are the two big bedrooms and the main bathroom. The hallway itself is being used as our homeschool library, with two side-by-side 7-foot bookcases lining the wall.

Looking from the hallway into the boys' room. The bunkbed in the foreground belongs to Jonathan and Jordan. The bed has a built in desk at this end which is Jonathan's school desk. We still need to find him a chair...lest you think his school work is suffering for lack of a chair, I'll inform you that most school work is actually done at either the dining table or the coffee table in the living room. The far bed belongs to Joshua and Joey. We haven't done any decorating in here yet, although I plan to. I want to start by getting them all matching bed coverings.

Looking from the corner back to Jonathan's and Jordan's bed. The edge of Joshua's desk is on the right. The bookshelf you can see on the right is actually out in the hall...you are looking through the open bedroom door.

Looking from Jordan's bed towards the closets and Joshua's desk. We actually have a lot of closet space for a Manhattan apartment, although a good bit less than we're used to. Joshua and Joseph share the one on the left, Jordan and Jonathan share the one on the right.

I'm scrunched down on Joey's lower bunk to take this picture. Here you can see the door and out into the hallway, as well as Jonathan's and Jordan's dresser and Joshua's desk.

We really are enjoying our apartment, and feel like we've been blessed with a great place! Now that we're pretty much settled in, I'm looking forward to adding those finishing touches that will make it feel so much more like "Home Sweet Home!"