Our New Home!

Hello from Gibraltar!

It's been nearly a week since I arrived in Gibraltar and I'm just about settled into our new home.  I love it so far!  It's so nice to finally be able to start nesting and of course to have to Jay and all my stuff in one place again.  We've managed to unpack everything which is quite a feat, though we haven't been able to hang any pictures yet - almost all of the walls are solid exterior walls so putting nails in is going to be an adventure. We've ordered some of the sticky picture hangers we've used before so here's hoping they work well. (With limited shopping options here Amazon is my new best friend - they deliver to our BFPO address and refund the tax since Gibraltar is tax free; Jay brings home nearly a package a day...it's getting a little out of control, lol).

Here's a little tour of a new home...please pardon the mess!

That black car there is ours (which Jay drove all the way from England...it only took a 24 hour ferry - he had a room with a bed - followed by about 10 hours of driving through Spain).  Directly to the left of the car is the gate to our back patio (our patio is right under that satellite dish).  The far two windows on the left wall are ours - that's our bedroom and baby's room.

From where the picture was taken, if you turn around this is the view!  (That land under the clouds is Morocco!)

If you come in the back door, which we often do because that's where the car is parked, you walk through our patio and into the kitchen.  Here's the view when you walk in the door.  I love all the counter space, the big fridge, and that the sink came with a mixer tap!  Another of my favorite features of this house is the huge utility room off of the kitchen for our washer and dryer.  It's so nice to have so much space for laundry - and I know I'll be doing a whole lot of it once the baby comes! 

 Views from the other direction:

The kitchen leads into the living room/dining room (which we've also made a little office too).  There's an archway that looks into the dining room area from the kitchen which we love.  To the right of the couch is the sliding glass doors that also lead out onto our patio.

Off of the living room is the front door hallway and stairs.  There's a great under stair area that is perfect for stashing the stroller and shoes and across from that is a huge coat closet with lots of storage space.  If you walk out of the front door and look left you can also see the sea!

 

When you get to the top of the stairs the bathroom is directly in front of you.  It's a nice enough bathroom - the big draw being that we have a tub again, hooray!  The only real annoying part is that the ceiling in the shower is a bit sloped so poor Jay has to duck a little.  Thankfully, I fit just perfectly!  On the plus side the pressure is great and there's plenty of hot water!

Also upstairs is a big linen closet and another large closet - right now there's nothing in the second closet but we're hoping to pick up a hanging rack and some shelving from Ikea this week.  There's also two bedrooms. The baby's room isn't quite finished yet - the crib is due to arrive tomorrow though! - so I'll post pictures of that once I've had a chance to get it all set up and decorated (I'm hoping to use some of my time off to get a bit crafty...this could get interesting!).  Our room is quite large and has a nice big window on two opposite walls so we're hoping to get a solid cross-breeze when it gets a bit hot.  We also got to bring our own bed (so lovely!) and found a lovely second hand swinging cradle that fits nicely next to it.  

I also love the closet (the baby's room has the same thing) - the two sides have a hanging rail and a shelf above and below it and then there's shelving in the middle.  There's three doors that slide across so you can have zero, one or two sections open at any one time.

And that's our little house!  We're still getting used to it but I think I speak for both us when I say we're really happy here so far.  We're looking forward to having our first visitors soon!!  If you're ever in around southern Spain or northern Morocco, definitely come on by!