Pictures of our Jordan house

View of our house from the front.


I couldn't get this side of the house in the other picture so I took this one to show the balconies off the kitchen and the girls' bedroom.


This is the side of the house and there's a dog house all ready to go. Unfortunately moving around with a dog is a bit of a hassle so despite pleas from the childen, we never got a dog that could use this house. Instead the gardener stores some of his supplies in there so it still serves a purpose.


This is the other side of the house which is a garden with grape vines and plum trees. The season had just ended when we arrived late last summer. We will miss all the fruit goodness again this year. Bummer.


Back Yard. The green stuff you see are weeds. It's the greenest it's been since we moved in. Before it was just rocky dirt. Originally this area was meant for a swimming pool but for whatever reason it was never put in. Just as well, in my opinion, because the kids can go out to play without me worrying about them falling in a pool. I do wish though that they had put in grass but oh well.


Back yard from another angle.


Back yard--or here it's called the "garden."


These stairs are in our back yard and lead up to a street behind our house. As is it's really not all that exciting but I want you to envision the trellis thingy full of bright pink/purple flowers. It was like that late last fall. I should've taken a picture then. It's my favorite place of the whole yard.


This is the downstairs entrance to the house aka the "maids entrance." Since we don't have a garage, this becomes the place for keeping our bikes, strollers, and other various paraphernalia.


This is a room on the very bottom level. On this level is this room, another small room and a small bathroom. This is considered the "maids room" but we don't have a live in maid. The idea here was that we would make it into an office for Todd. We started down that path. From this angle you can just barely see his desk on the left. However, the office idea never came to fruition because we couldn't get an internet signal down here. Instead it became a storage room. Then this winter the walls started developing efflorescence. I didn't know what that was either til we lived here. Apparently it commonly develops in cold seasons on concrete walls where there isn't enough ventilation. It's like a white mold looking stuff but it isn't mold. It makes the paint bubble up and you have to wipe it down, destroying the paint job. It comes off pretty easily but it grows faster than you can keep up.


This room is between the maids entrance and the maids room. The second piano has come in handy although it is in need of a good tuning. That is a bathroom just to the left of the piano. I've never actually used that bathroom as it's nasty. The fixtures are old and there's just grime and dirt in there that you can't just clean. As it turns out we've hardly used it anyway since we never really got that bedroom/office down there in good order. Before we moved in we asked for new fixtures for this bathroom but instead we got things like a refaced fireplace and water softening system.


Here's the view from our front door.


If you walked in the front door and looked to your right, this is what you would see--our dining area. I love the color they painted this room. The sliding door leads off to a balcony and the doorway to the left in the picture goes into the kitchen. When Todd's in town this is where we eat dinner. When he's not in town we eat chicken nuggets as they come out of the oven.


If you walked in our front door and looked to the left, this is what you would see. The yellowish walls look nice as you go from the maroon dining room to this room.


This is the fireplace in the front room. The reason I included this picture is so I could tell you a little story about it. Before they remodeled the house this fireplace was basically just plain white. Firas hired someone to come and fix it up. That top circle thing looks kind of like a clock.

The 4 blocks painted white were actually much longer than the other blocks. The owner of the house came and saw it and demanded that it be changed because those long white blocks looked too much like a cross and he wouldn't have that in his home. So they made the white blocks shorter so it wouldn't look so much like a cross. I don't think the intention of the designer was to make a cross but evidently the owner thought it looked like one.
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This is the whatever room. It started off being known as the "internet room" because it was going to be an office type room. It is located right off the front room. But Todd thought he'd need more privacy so we put the family desktop computer in here. Unfortunately the desktop crashed a few months ago and so it's just taking up space. The closets in this room are great for storage. We've got holiday decorations, games, scrapbook stuff, etc. in these closets. The door leads out to our back yard.


This is the kitchen. I'm taking this picture from the doorway between the dining room and kitchen.


Another angle of the kitchen. The doorway leads out to the laundry room which leads out to the back yard. You may notice on the right is a stove top. There is a full stove/oven on the island thingy in the middle of the kitchen. When we saw this I thought having so many burners would really come in handy but I've never had the need for both stove tops.


Another angle from the kitchen. In that back corner is my little corner of the world with my computer and such. I'd like to apologize and tell you it rarely is that messy and the kids had been using my computer for homework and then T got into things and . . . The reality is though that my desk is always messy and usually worse than what you see there.


In every house there are things you inherit from previous owners that make you wonder "What were they thinking?" For me, these kitchen wall images fall into that category. This is the main image located above the kitchen table. The bathrooms and kitchen are ceiling to floor tile and these kinds of images are part of the tile decoration. They're not painted on but very carefully placed. I see them and wonder "What were they thinking?"

And you can't just easily hang a picture over them--it's tile. Besides you'd have to hang several pictures as their are smaller versions of this motif around the kitchen. You can see them in the pics above.

Also, notice the white lawn chairs around our kitchen table. These have been the chairs for this table since we moved in. I've thought several times about replacing them with "normal" chairs but why? These serve the purpose. (I know all my fabulous decorator friends are cringing right now wondering why I haven't learned anything from them. I think there was a conference talk a while back about making things beautiful. Maybe I should go back and reread that one.)


Here's a better close up of the image above the kitchen table. So Middle Eastern! Take note of the shadowing effect. Makes it 'pop', don't ya think?


This is a view from the balcony off the kitchen and dining room. When the weather was warmer we ate out here a few times. Once we ate pizza here but were swarmed by bees so had to move the pizza party back inside.


I took this in tribute to my friend JoDell who once made a comment about colored bathroom fixtures. Check out the color of this bathroom, JoDell! This bathroom is on the main level with one bedroom (Petey's), the kitchen, dining room, front room, and whatever room. So this is the bathroom that guests get to use whenever they come.


I took this picture as an example of the light fixtures they put in when they remodeled last summer. The kids' bedrooms used to have fans, if I remember correctly, but have been replaced with these types of lights. The hallways outside the bedrooms also have these light fixtures. I really like the look of them but the function gets a big thumbs down. They hardly let off any actual light.


This is our family room on the top level. I'm taking this picture on some stairs that lead up to our roof. On the top level is this family room, 4 bedrooms (including ours), and 2 bathrooms. Nic is doing what she does best--watching videos.


Another viewpoint of the same room. I'm taking this picture from standing in the doorway of my bedroom. I mentioned in an earlier post that when I want to sleep and the kids want to play Wii early Saturday morning it causes a bit of a conflict if they get too noisy.


This next picture is of mine and Todd's bedroom. You will notice that we are master decorators. It's our hobby. It took a lot of practice and forethought to throw that quilt over our bed. In reality it just got cold and we needed some extra covering.


Another angle of our bedroom.


This picture is of the bathroom off mine and Todd's bedroom. I guess you'd call it a "master bathroom" but the only thing that makes this any different than the rest of the bathrooms is that it's bigger. No jet tub or double sink or anything.

I took this picture so first you could admire the color. No, the color isn't some funky problem with my camera. It really is a grayish brownish color.

The second reason I included this picture is so you can spot the problem. Need a hint? Notice the line up of the fixtures. From left to right you have the toilet paper holder, the beday, the toilet, a soap holder, and the shower/bathtub. (Ignore the scale and garbage can as they aren't permanent fixtures. So what's the problem? There are actually a couple of problems.

First, the toilet paper holder isn't by the toilet. ALERT! ALERT! DON'T NEED THESE IMAGES IN YOUR MIND ALERT! STOP READING NOW! In fact, it's so far away that once you're "using the facilities" you can't reach the toilet paper holder. So we don't use this toilet paper holder. Above the toilet is a window with a sill (is sill with one or two l's?) and we keep a couple rolls there because its much easier to reach. The second problem is with the soap holder. Why is that even there? There are plenty of places to put soap inside the tub. Who would put soap there? If you're using it while you're bathing/showering then you'll drip water on the floor and who wants to clean that up? We have some friends (Hi Leavitts!) that use their beday as a sink for the small children. It's a great idea. T crawls all over the bedays so we don't use them either. So if it were me, I would've switched the toilet paper holder and soap holder around and it would've solved all sorts of issues.


This is the balcony off of our bedroom and the family room. Last fall when the weather was warm enough this was my favorite place to nap. Now that the weather is turning warm enough I'm sure my Friday afternoon naps will take place here again.


This is Cricket and Nic's room. When they were remodeling the house last summer before we moved in, they let us pick the colors of the bedrooms. Nic and Cricket picked this color. It really fits them. Their closet also holds lots of stuff so we have luggage and stuff stored in the top cupboards.


This is a sliding glass door in Nic and Crickets room that leads to a narrow balcony. I wish we were going to be here longer for them to enjoy it more in warmer weather.


This was one of the features of the house that I loved. This is in Batman and Critter's bedroom. This bookshelf is attached to the wall and holds lots of things. Love it! I wish all the rooms had one of these.


This house will soon be only a memory. I will really miss this house. It has been my most favorite house that we've been in. True, the location is far from dear family and friends but the actual physical house has been my favorite. I love the set up--even with the drawback of lots of stairs. Even with the problems with water, electricity, etc. it has been my favorite house. That's because whenever there was a problem, all we had to do was call Firas and he was on it like blue bonnet. House problems are much easier to fix when they are someone else's problem.

We're planning a trip to Egypt in a couple of weeks to start looking for places there. We'll keep you posted.