Patience?!?

One of the things that I’m most struggling with in our new home is the fact that it takes FORever to accomplish the most basic tasks. Want to make pancakes? No problem, just whip up the batter using 12 different ingredients. Make sure you sift the flour to get rid of creatures. Oh, wait a minute...the pitcher of milk in the fridge is curdled because you’ve only had 3 hours of electricity a day for the last 3 days. So, just pull out the milk powder and mix up a pitcher of milk. Now, get out your maple flavoring and whip up a batch of syrup. Well, you get the picture.

Productivity looks very different here. I’m trying to adjust my expectations. Really, I am. I’m making progress. Little bitty baby steps of progress. I haven’t reached the point where it’s not maddening to me. But I will. Soon. I hope.

Anyway, one of the areas that’s been hard for us is getting our house in order. It’s no secret that our house has always been one of our hobbies. It’s been hard to see headway this time, partly because we are waiting for some of our house stuff that is on the crate. Partly, it’s because you can not just go out and shop for what you want. There is no Home Goods, no Rooms to Go, no Target. We have loaner furniture to use while we get our house in order. Our plan is to have our furniture made little by little. While we were trying to decide where to start, we found out that the bed we’re using needed to be returned sooner, rather than later. So, that made our decision easier.

We used a Pottery Barn catalog and Ryan drew a picture of what we wanted with measurements. Then, we met with a carpenter. After that, the carpenter had to purchase the wood. Then, the wood had to dry before the bed could be made. Finally, the bed was finished and the carpenter delivered it. Then, for 2 days we went around as high as kites from the smell of stain that permeated our entire house. Gotta love that Nigerian paint!

I have to say that we were satisfied with our first furniture order. Enough so that we gave him plans to make us a dresser and nightstand too. If those work out, we have a running list of “next” projects. It may take 18 months to gather what we could order in 2 hours at an American furniture store, but that’s part of the adventure, right? Oh, and just in case you're wondering (because I know some of you are) it cost us about 1/3 of what it would cost us to buy it from the Barn, so that's a good thing!

This was before we hung our mosquito net from those posts. It looks much more "Ernest Hemingway"ish now. I know you're jealous! Don't mind the little guy, this was his way of trying to get out of the way so that I could take the picture.