photo tour: guest room

It's been awhile since I've given you a photo tour of one of the rooms in our house. In fact, I've only given you a tour of one room... and that was almost four months ago! To be honest, I had been putting off any more photo tour posts until I had "finished" another room. I wanted to be done re-arranging furniture, hanging and re-hanging art on the walls, etc. Like I mentioned in the first (only) photo tour post, it's hard to make a fully-furnished rental feel like ours but I was going to try. And it's been harder than I thought! So I kept putting it off and putting it off... but I realized that the point of these photo tour posts (and this blog in general) is to give our friends and family back in the US a glimpse into what our normal, day-to-day life is like... and I guess that includes our un-"finished" home. :)

So... I'm going to take a deep breath, swallow my pride, and start posting pictures of our not-Pinteresty-enough-for-the-internet home for all of the internet the seven readers of this blog to see. 

We found our house on ecayTrade, which is a Craigslist-type site for the islands. When I first saw the ad, it looked way too good to be true: three bedrooms + an office, for the same price as many of the two bedroom places we had seen! And with Brett working from home, we were hoping to find something with an office. I figured there must be something glaringly wrong with it, such as no air conditioning or just really dumpy inside... but we had a friend check it out for us and she said it was great! (And it is!)

We feel so blessed to have so much space. I especially love being able to have a dedicated guest room so that we can host visitors. My mom stayed with us in January and we have Brett's parents here with us right now. It is really fun to have people stay with us in our home since we get to see so much more of them. (And Joshua loves the extra attention, too!) 

Here's a quick tour of the guest bedroom, which is on the first floor.

It kind of doubles as Joshua's "play room" a lot of days. One of my great fears about having kids was that their toys would slowly take over our home... and it's slowly coming true. So in the guest room we keep all of his books and the overflow of toys from the living room. 

The kid LOVES books. Sometimes he'll sit with me and read for 45 minutes! Often, it's the same book over and over and over again, but I'm just glad he's interested in reading. :) 

Which, I guess, shouldn't be a surprise considering how much his dad likes books. We keep Brett's overflow of books in the guest room, too. (Technically, this is his "Biography and Fiction" section... so if you come visit, you can feel free to browse the "library" in your very own room!)

This is also the part of the room that most screams "UNFINISHED!" to me... the empty white wall. One of the trickiest parts of decorating this house is that the outside walls are concrete... so it's a HUGE pain to try and hang anything on them. What I've been doing in the rest of the house is just using the nails/screws that are already in the wall - so just swapping out something they had hanging on the wall for something I brought/made. But this wall didn't have anything on it... and it has stumped me.

Here's a view from the other side of the room (I think the reflection in the mirror helps to give perspective, but the doorway out of the room is to the right of this picture.)

The room has a full bathroom connected to it, so does that mean I can call it a guest "suite"?

So that's a quick look at my very un-decorated guest room. It might not be the prettiest, but it's still functional... so come visit us! Maybe I'll rope you into helping me decorate. :)

the whole30

This is one of the rare posts on this blog that has almost nothing to do with Joshua, but we figured some of you might be getting sick of all the Joshua pictures. (Just kidding, who could possibly get sick of pictures of that kid??) 

Brett and I recently completed a 30-day diet/challenge, called the Whole30. For those who are unfamiliar, it's 30 days of no added sugar, no dairy, no grains, no legumes, no white potatoes, no alcohol, no processed foods. (See? I said "diet/challenge" for a reason!) I had been thinking about it for a few months, and ultimately decided to do it for a few reasons - I finished breastfeeding Joshua in December, and was looking for a way to get rid of the rest of my pregnancy weight; I wanted to work on some healthier eating habits; and ultimately, I wanted to get rid of (or significantly reduce) my sugar cravings. And Brett kindly went along with it so I'd have some extra accountability.

It was definitely a challenging experience. I spent a lot more time making dinner than usual (I couldn't have any "easy" nights of pasta, pizza, or take-out) and our grocery bill skyrocketed. But overall, we're glad we did it! I think it's something I might do once a year. (Brett is not sold on that idea.) I thought I'd share some of our favorite meals from the Whole30... all of which are now in "regular diet" rotation. :)

1. Pork Chili (adapted from It Starts With Food)
Ingredients:
2-3 tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 green peppers, diced
1 lb. ground pork
1 can diced tomatoes
1 tsp. cumin
2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. smoked paprika

Directions:
Saute onions and bell peppers in olive oil until softened. Add ground pork; drain excess fat after cooked through. Add diced tomatoes and spices; simmer 10-15 minutes. Serve over bed of raw baby spinach, with diced avocado on top. 

2. Chicken Sausage, Cauliflower Rice, and Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Ingredients:
4 chicken sausages (Note: If you are doing the Whole30, make sure to find one that is compliant. We found this Chicken & Apple sausage at our local grocery store which we LOVED.)
1 onion, diced
1 head cauliflower
1 lb. brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved
coconut oil, olive oil,
salt, pepper, garlic powder (to taste)

Directions:
Heat oven to 425°. Toss brussels sprouts with 1-2 tbsp. olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Spread onto baking sheet and place them in the oven for about 25 minutes, shaking the pan halfway through.
Meanwhile, make the cauliflower rice. Start by chopping a cauliflower into similar-sized chunks. Dump them into a food processor and pulse until it resembles rice. Satue the onion in coconut oil until softened. Add the cauliflower, stir, and then simmer, covered, for about 10 minutes.
Heat the chicken sausage. (We usually dice it up and heat it in a pan for a few minutes, since it's already cooked).
Serve sausage over cauliflower rice, with brussels sprouts on the side.

3. Slow Cooker Pulled Pork with No Sugar Added BBQ Sauce
Unfortunately, I can't describe this recipe as quick or easy, but it is delicious! Find the recipe here.

Just typing this up has made me hungry! Hope you enjoy them!

playing outside in the "winter"

Now that the weather has gotten cooler (yes I know… most of you hate me for that comment), we have packed up the baby pool that used to sit on the back deck. (Okay, by “packed up” I guess I really mean “threw it on top of the never-used-and-super-gross sandbox next to our deck to collect dirt and rain water.”) Joshua still loves being outside, and we love being able to “confine” him to a small space so we aren’t constantly chasing him, so we’re still out on the deck quite often. And to be fair, since he recently learned to walk, he probably wouldn’t want to be sitting in a pool for very long anyway.

He brings us his shoes as
his way of asking to go play outside. :)

For Christmas we gave Joshua a toy lawn-mower that he can push around.

We keep that on the deck along with some balls and sand toys (mostly just to keep those out of the house, but he plays with them anyway). He likes to push the lawn-mower back and forth, and he loves to carry the ball to the side of the deck and throw it in the grass. And then watch us have to fetch it.

But mostly, he likes to look at, chase, and try to catch the little lizards that are back there. 

I’m showing my ignorance of reptiles here, since I don’t know what kind of lizards they actually are. I usually default to calling them geckos, but that’s just because they’re small. Whatever they’re called, Joshua loves them. Once he spots one on the deck or the side of the house, he’ll just stand there and point at it for a few minutes. Sometimes he’ll creep closer and try to touch it. Of course, the lizards always scurry away before he can reach them… I’m not sure what he’d even do if he caught one.

On another note regarding our backyard wildlife, a few Cayman parrots were hanging out in one of our trees for a few weeks. They hid themselves pretty well, but we tried to get a few pictures. Can you spot them? (There are two.)

It’s like an “I Spy” game. Brett looked them up online and apparently this sub-species of parrot is only found on the island of Grand Cayman! So it was fun to see them up close a few times.

visitors: my mom

My mom recently came to visit for a week - her first time in Cayman. It was so, so wonderful to have her here to see our new home and to get some quality time with Joshua. He warmed up to her very quickly - we were worried that he might not recognize her and would treat her as a "stranger" for the first few days, but even by the next morning they were best buds! I guess all those Skype calls and Google Hangouts have really helped him know her. :)

Brett, Joshua, and I got to the airport a little early so we could watch my mom's plane land. The Grand Cayman airport has a small deck above the airport which overlooks the runway and the pathway the travelers will walk to the airport. We also thought Joshua would like getting to see so many airplanes... and boy, were we right.

The plane he's pointing at is the one my mom flew in on.

And here she is!

Mostly, Mom just hung out with us while we did normal things - I think we even ended up at three different grocery stores throughout the course of the week! - but we did take her to do some tourist-y things.

At the Observation Tower at Camana Bay...

Standing under a palm tree in January... (When I asked her what she was excited to do while we were here, her first response after "hang out with Joshua" was "take a picture of me under a palm tree in January"... check!)

And here she is making progress on that first thing on her checklist...

We went to Spott's Beach... we didn't swim, but even just standing on the pier we could see several turtles.

And Joshua had a blast walking around in the sand.

Is there anything cuter than baby footprints in the sand??

We also visited the Turtle Farm (that was the third item on her list). No, Joshua didn't hold any turtles... but he liked seeing Brett pick them up!

We also visited the Botanic Park.

We bribed Joshua with snacks to behave while we were there. That's good parenting, right?

The Botanic Park is home to the Blue Iguana. Since it's endangered, there's a Recovery Program centered at the park. One wandered over to us and got very friendly.

Thanks for visiting us, Grandma! Come back and visit soon. :)