Our new house/job

First, before we get into the pictures of our new house can I just say how grateful I/we are. When we decided to manage an apartment complex we thought we would be taking a step down in the living conditions bracket. Well that is not the case here. We feel so safe here and very blessed. Second, do not ask me what city I am living in. I'd love to tell you (my friend) but I don't want to tell the crazy person(s) that might be looking at this blog. Especially now that I'm managing an apartment and have to meet strangers all the time. So if you really know me eventually you will find out where we are. Just know it's in the Portland area, how's that for vague! Okay, onto the pictures.

Now when it comes to managing an apartment most places have an official office for the manager to work in. This is nice and all but with the girls it was not ideal for me. This building was remodeled a year ago with a plan to sell the condos. Well the market totally turned and the owner realized he should rent the units and turn the building into an apartment complex. So they never built an office and my apartment is my office. When tenets need something they come to my front door. They might see a bit of a mess from time to time but at least my kids can always be by my side.

When we thought about managing we figured we'd have a normal kitchen and would've been pumped if it had a dishwasher.

Well, we got the dishwasher and stainless steel appliances. Plus, porcelain tile counter tops with a bar. It's an amazing kitchen.

When I packed up are old house we didn't know where we were moving and assumed we'd have to downsize (cabinets and all). So I packed all our mug cups (we're not coffee drinkers and rarely use them) and many appliances thinking we wouldn't have space for them.
There is plenty of room in our huge pantry. I've never had a pantry before and it's great. Tons of place for my food and now my cabinets are super spacious.


Here is our family room. It's beautiful and I love that the walls in this place are already painted in beautiful colors.

We thought we'd have a decent sized family room at our new place.
We got the family room and also a dining/living room. As you can tell I have yet to figure out what to do with this space. It's full of boxes that I need to unpack and we don't have any furniture to fill it with. I think it will be the wrestling room for now.

We never even considered having a fireplace in our new apartment. And this place has a double sided fireplace. It's in our family room and in our living room. The best part is we don't pay for the gas to run the fireplace, so we use this fireplace to heat half of our apartment.


We figured in our new place it would be so small that I wouldn't have to worry about decorating a hall way.

Our hallway is long, if you look closely you can see how it goes on and on. Plus, the hardwood floors is a great touch. Remember, I really feel blessed and am so grateful.

I just had to throw this picture in here. This is a Santa that my Aunt Kathy made us for our wedding gift. It's amazing and I'm so glad I got to put it up this year.

Just look at that face!!! (she is very talented)


We really wanted a three bedroom for our new place but figured we'd get a two bedroom.

Well, we got a two-bedroom but this room is huge. This picture only shows part of it. Bailey and Addie could be in this room for quite a while. There is plenty of room to grow here.


We knew we would be downsizing when it came to bathrooms. The last two places we've lived in had two bathrooms so the girl(s) always had a bathroom for their toys and soaps.

The girls have their own bathroom in our new place too. They are very lucky girls.


We thought we'd have a normal sized room for ourselves.

But our bedroom is big and is a functioning master suite. With a balcony and built-ins. I love the paint colors.


Since we thought we'd only have one bathroom in our new place we never considered having a master bathroom.

This is our double vanity (I've never said that before). Tons of storage, so great. Too bad the girls empty every cupboard and drawer while I'm getting ready in the morning. Seriously, today I couldn't find a bobby-pin for my hair because Bailey took them all out of my drawer.

This is my shower and Addie in her normal spot. Every time I shower she crawls into the room, pushes back the curtain and gets sprayed with water.

This is our "throne" (and Bams). Have you ever seen a toilet this pretty?


Okay, so here is the big clincher. I had started saving my quarters for our new place because I just knew that where ever we ended up managing it was going to have a coin-op laundry room and I was going to have to haul loads of laundry back and forth every day. I had accepted this fact and was creating quite a collection of quarters.

We not only do I have washer and a dryer in our new place, I have a laundry room!!! Have you ever heard of such a thing? It's amazing and a little piece of heaven in my books.

So that's the grand tour of our new place. We love it here and don't see a need to move for several years or until baby #3 comes (which should be several years away). We know managing is going to be a lot of work. And we've already been "broken in" so to speak. I'll tell you about our first 3 days here later, just know it was exciting.

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Oh, and did I mention that we feel extremely grateful.

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PS. With the economy being so horrible a lot of condominiums are being turned into apartment complexes and the company I work for might be acquiring more properties like this. And they'll be needing more managers. Let me know if you are interested.