Let me introduce you to 675 square feet {Kitchen}

I'll start with the kitchen. :)

Kitchen in Hong Kong

675 sq. ft. is actually the size of our entire apartment, not just the kitchen. I'm not sure what portion of 675 sq. ft. the kitchen takes up, but it doesn't really matter - it's still small. To be fair, the space itself is not terrible by Hong Kong standards. It is actually much more similar to standard Madrid kitchens, however we were super-spoiled in Madrid with a huge kitchen.

I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that every person who came into our apartment in Madrid made a comment about how large the kitchen was.

Kitchen in Madrid

It was awesome! And now I regret speaking any harsh words against it. :)

I've decided that living abroad wouldn't be nearly as meaningful if I didn't really get stretched out of my comfort zone...even in my own home. Well, God is sure stretching my homemaking abilities here. Not just by the small size of the kitchen, but by what is missing from it.

The two big items missing from our kitchen - and most kitchens in Hong Kong - are a dishwasher and an oven.

After living here now for a few months, I am getting use to living without these appliances that I have taken for granted my entire life. I have learned - and am continuing to learn - to adapt my cooking to stove top and microwave dishes. We also have a little toaster oven which works pretty well despite it's small size.

And the dishwashing...my dad is probably laughing at the fact that I must wash all our dishes by hand everyday! Dishwashing has long been my most hated of household chores. Here's a view of my little dishwashing station...





I do have a nice little view out the window, don't I? I have done my fair share of grumbling and complaining about this dishwashing situation, but God is giving me contentment in it. Instead of dreading it, I am trying to view it as a normal part of my evening, an important way to serve my family, and to make it more enjoyable (listening to music, talking to Brendan, or just praying or thinking about something). I also have a wonderful husband who has known about my dislike for washing dishes since we got married. He likes to serve me on occasion by doing the dishes for me. He's pretty awesome!

I also hope that when we do have a dishwasher once again, I won't be nearly so bothered by washing a couple of pots & pans each day. We'll see. :)

I do need to be completely honest and share with you that our kitchen here in HKG does have something we missed in Spain - a dryer! Yay! It is a washer/dryer combo and it's great! Sometimes I kinda miss hanging our clothes out to dry...maybe we'll do that again someday by choice...but having a dryer again sure is nice.

Hope you enjoyed the view of our kitchen in Hong Kong. I'll introduce you to the rest of our apartment another day!

Mommy Makes Toys {Dyed Pasta}

Things have been a little quiet around the blog this month. Sorry about that. I've had blog post ideas bouncing around in my head, but since I haven't organized the Blog Plans section of my Home Planning binder it's hard for me to be purposeful about getting those posts written. My desire is to have this little planning section in my binder so that I will be more consistent in my blog posting; however, we don't have a printer at home or a local FedEx Kinko's so I've got to send Brendan the files to print off at his office...and I'm just lazy and haven't gotten around to doing that.

Anyways...this post is not about my desire to plan blog posts better, but about a fun little activity Charlotte and I did together recently.

One of my goals for this year is to plan more purposeful learning activities for Charlotte since she is now at an age (currently 17 months) where she is much more engaged with the world around her. One blog I follow [Totally Tots] recently posted instructions for making dyed pasta. As soon as I saw it, I knew it would work great for us. I could easily find the needed supplies, and I knew Charlotte would enjoy playing with the little pasta shapes.

Dying the pasta was super easy! I was also pleasantly surprised with how quick the pasta dried even in our crazy humid climate. The finished pasta...




There are really LOTS of different things we could do with the pasta, which I'm really excited about. The first thing we did was to keep the different colors separated in small plastic containers. Then, I just set Charlotte up at the table and let her do whatever she wanted to do. :) Well of course the first thing she wanted to do was eat the pasta (I even did this right after a large snack to avoid that)! So, we established that this pasta was not to be eaten, and then she just had fun playing with it.







Charlotte played with the pasta for 30 minutes and would have kept playing longer if I hadn't decided to move on to something else. This really gave me a great confidence boost as I look to plan more activities for Charlotte in the future. Dyed pasta = Success!

[If you're at all interested in the instructions for dying pasta, here's the website.]