Sunday, May 26, 2013

Not your "Southern Living" home

House pictures! Here are a few shots to show my mom (and you reader friend) what our home here looks like. Be forewarned, this is NOT your next Southern Living magazine home.
 


 
 
Here it is! The whole yard is enclosed by a 9 foot high wall, which affords us great privacy. This is the view from the front gate.
 
 Love that tile? good! it is EVERYWHERE in this house.
 
Fun cultural factoid: the stairs on the right lead to a room locally known as the Mejlis. Guests typically enter through this door and don't see other parts of your house.
 
 

Our formal living/dinning space. We don't use all of the rooms exactly as a local family would because we don't have the same needs. In most homes, this would be a private room for family.
 
 
Here is the view from the front door.
 
 
 
And now looking into the hallway. The door on the left is the master bedroom and through the hallway straight ahead we'll find the kitchen and the Mejlis. The stairs just go straight to the roof; they are only utilized when a repairman has to tinker with the compressors for the A/Cs.
 
See, I told you that tile wouldn't disappoint!
 
 
 
So here is our mejlis... not exactly fit for receiving guests (we use the other rooms for entertaining obviously). We use it to dry laundry right now.
 
 
 
My pink kitchen. You can check out a recent post for more detailed kitchen tour.
 
 

 
Here's the master bedroom.
 
 


One interesting thing to adjust to is that there are no closets. No clothes closet, no broom closet, and no linen closet. The gigantic wardrobes that serve this purpose are assembled in the room - and I can't imagine the headache of getting it out if you had to move! We actually bought this set from the previous residents so there was no moving or assembly required.
 
 
 


 
Master bathroom/Laundry room. Same tile as the kitchen only blue instead of pink. Believe it or not, this is actually one of my favorite rooms color scheme wise. I think its the yellow shower curtain I brought from TJ Maxx. $5 well spent!! (sorry the picture doesn't show it well)
 
 
 
Mirror art, marbled sink and purchased shelving to make it functional.
 
 
 
Guest bedroom. We are ready to host whenever you're ready to visit!
 
 
 

 
And finally, the office/family room/gym space I creatively call "the red room." Inspired by our love of our college and favorite football team, I knew we needed a special place to spend our first fall away from Bryant-Denny stadium. It's a little crazy, but hey, why not?
 
 

 
Another view of the couch, and no, we did not custom order this couch. It was sitting in the showroom like this and happened to measure perfectly for our room. Someday I will do a whole post on couch shopping here and you'll believe me that this actually looked tame.
 
We recently had the opportunity to purchase a new couch set from a family leaving the area, so we actually will be changing to a normal, western-style couch set soon (read: "normal American-looking", not "cowboy").
 

The desk with awesome bookshelf attachment
 
 


And the home gym :) The treadmill is situated directly under the A/C, thank goodness!
 
 
 
And here we are with new friends, helping them catch the Roll Tide spirit and enjoying some BAMA football around 4 am. 
Roll Tide!
 
 
 
So that is our house! thanks for taking the tour! 
 
 

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Birthday in Dubai!

This week we celebrated my 25th birthday! My sweet husband accompanied me to a beautiful performance of Swan Lake by the Royal Moscow Ballet. Given my dance background, I am quite partial to the Russian style, so I was pretty thrilled they came so close to us the weekend before my birthday. How could we miss that?!

To make it even better, I was on the hunt for something to wear and lamenting the fact that I left my "dress-up" clothes in a closet on another continent, and also that I am that far from the sisters and roomates I have borrowed from regularly over the past 25 years. Then I thought I might be able to find a friend here from whom to borrow something appropriate. It seemed like longshot since there are few Westerners in our town, no one has much opportunity to wear something like this, so who would even make space in their suitcase for it? And I wasn't sure anyone else would be my size. I went to ask the first group of ladies I thought of and for some reason, one of them had a long gown, in my size with her, just sitting under her chair! She passed it to me and said, "here you go! Have a great birthday!" We decided it was one of the quickest cases of "ask and you will receive" we had witnessed in awhile! Of course I tried it on right away when I got home, and it fit pretty perfectly. I was pretty thrilled.

 
With some of the company members before the show
 
 
 
And after the show we headed down the street to check out the Dubai Mall and grab dinner. Check out some of the gorgeous architecture!
 
 
 
Beautiful fountain in the Dubai Mall
 
 
Camel Statue!
 


Recognize any of these names? 

The local pronunciation of the Arabic script here would be "Jess" or "Yes"
 
"Coach"

"Jimmy Choo"
 
This one is harder out of context - "Banana Republic"

4 floors of high-end retail and restaurants


 
The Dubai Mall is also home to the Dubai Aquarium and the famous Dancing Fountains
 



 
The fountains are situated between some of the world's tallest buildings!
 


We had a great time being tourists in Dubai and look forward to exploring more there in the future!


 
 

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Yard Work

This is the way we mow the lawn,
mow the lawn
mow the lawn
This is the way we mow the lawn
when we live in Oman!
 
 
(sung to the tune of "Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush")
 



Yes, this is how city yard work is done around here: by hand. This round about isn't actually grass, it is a succulant, but still, a weedwacker would be a lot faster than a pair of scissors. Labor is less expensive than equiptment, so you can often see men doing the tedious work of trimming the plants by hand.