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.]

February {Month in Review}

I cannot believe that February is coming to a close, and yet, with it's 28 days, February always does seem to be a month that flies by.

As I've been making little (and big) changes to our blog recently, I've also been thinking about changes in what and how often I post. Since this blog is purely a personal blog about what God is doing in our little family, I know there will be dry times when I am not motivated to post or time is better spent on other things. Thankfully, there are also times when the opposite is true! I thought that a good way to balance that would be to do a {month in review} post just to highlight what has happened in the past month.

I've also decided not to post my gratitude journal weekly, but I wanted to find a way to include part of my gratitude list into my blog posts. So as I review a month in the life of our family, I think that's also the perfect time to share with you how God has been blessing me during that month.

So, February for the Kinne's looked something like this...

We experienced our first Chinese New Year. The "Year of the Rabbit" began at the beginning of February, and Brendan had a few days off work so we enjoyed some nice time together as a family. As the month progressed, we realized that Chinese New Year is actually celebrated for about 2 weeks. The decorations around Hong Kong were amazing. I was a little sad to see them taken down but it freed up LOTS of space...I couldn't believe the transformation in our local grocery store - I actually didn't feel claustrophobic while shopping in there!




During Chinese New Year, Charlotte received some lai see. These are red envelopes which are given to children, unmarried juniors, service people, and employees. We thought it was quite sweet when a lady on a bus gave a 'red packet' to Charlotte because Charlotte had been friendly to her. We equated the red packet tradition as similar to giving a generous tip at Christmas to your postman, newspaper carrier, hair stylist, etc.




During Chinese New Year the weather was great, but then we hit a spell of cold, wet weekends that didn't offer us much in the way of exploring Hong Kong. But last Saturday that changed and the weather was clear and warmer. We found ourselves hiking up the Peak with some friends. Yep, Brendan pushed Charlotte up the paved trail in her stroller! Too bad we weren't prepared with her jogging stroller. Instead she was in her lightweight umbrella stroller and it wasn't intended for use on a rugged, although paved, trail. Oh well! We were excited to get outside and see some new areas of Hong Kong, and now we're really motivated to set out exploring more outdoor areas around Hong Kong - hopefully we'll have that to share with you next month!

And what about our little family? How are we all growing together?

Charlotte is now 16 months old which means she is constantly testing us to see if we really are in charge or if we'll finally give in and let her run the house! :) As trying as this is, we know that if we stay the course of disciplining our child it will reap rewards for her and us later in life. Her language has finally taken off a little bit in the past week or so. So while "bow", "ball", "bowl", "box", and many other "B" words sound like the same word out of Charlotte's mouth, she is intentional about giving them a name rather than pointing and grunting (which was driving me crazy!). She also demands Brendan and I to sing nursery rhymes to her and her absolute favorite books right now are Mother Goose by Gyo Fujikawa (this book has the BEST illustrations!) and Dr. Suess' ABC's (which Charlotte will bring to us and say "A, B, D!").

"Not Getting What I Want" Face

God has also opened up a new level of communication between Brendan and I that has been very exciting for me! We often find ourselves discussing something we've been reading or listening to (Brendan has an hour or so everyday to listen to podcasts while he commutes to work) which in turn leads to us figuring out that it applies to our life today too. I have been reading a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and sharing with Brendan some of what sticks out to me. He was excited one day when one of the podcasts he listens to was interviewing the author of this biography about the book! Brendan is not a big reader, but to listen to some of what the book was about was a great way for him to then be able to discuss it with me.

The other book I have been reading this month is One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. Finding her blog a year ago is what lead me to begin my gratitude journal. I am only five chapters into the book but it is definitely helping me better understand my need for expressing gratitude to God and the role my gratitude journal plays in that. I highly recommend you pick this book up!

I hope you can rejoice in some of my gratitude over the past month:

624. an afternoon with new friends getting a foot massage
625. long holiday due to Chinese New Year
629. Pizza Express on the promenade at Stanley - yum!
630. blond-haired, blue-eyed girl in her red Chinese outfit
633. American friends coming over for lunch and games
634. online grocery shopping and delivery
635. routines developing
637. homemade cookies from friends - when you don't have an oven to make your own
642. making Valentine's Day cards with Charlotte
643. the Spirit giving me insight into my husband's heart/emotions/response

Blessings!

For the Zaxby's Fan

If you've lived in the Carolinas - or, heck, even driven through - you've probably seen and maybe eaten at a Zaxby's. If you've never even heard of Zaxby's and therefore don't know how yummy their dipping sauce is, then just trust me on this and try the following recipe.

I love perusing blogs and other recipe websites like AllRecipes.com and MyRecipes.com for new recipes to try. Not long ago, I stumbled upon a recipe for a Zaxby's-style chicken finger dipping sauce. Yummm!

Brendan and I really enjoyed Zaxby's when we lived in North Carolina, and we really liked the sorta spicy sauce, so I figured I would give the recipe a try. We LOVED it, so I thought I'd share it with you! Here goes...

Homemade Zaxby's Dipping Sauce

• 1/2 cup mayo
• 1/4 ketchup
• 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp. Worchestershire sauce
• black pepper

Mix first 4 ingredients together. Sprinkle on a layer of black pepper, then stir into mixture. Repeat. (I'm a black pepper lover so this makes me happy!) Let sauce chill for at least 2 hours. (This is SO important. I tasted the sauce right after I mixed it together and was NOT impressed. However, when we pulled it out to eat with dinner, it was really amazing...like I licked the bowl clean kind of amazing!)

Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

The Rain in Spain...oh wait, we're in Hong Kong now!

For the past week that's really felt like forever, it has been cold and rainy. During Chinese New Year the weather was beautiful and we were so spoiled. We had great ideas of going on outings to explore Hong Kong on the weekends, but there's not a whole lot to do when it's raining, so our plans changed.

Last weekend, we did venure out in the rain simply because we were all going a little stir crazy. But the only thing to do in Hong Kong when the weather's bad is shop...because Hong Kong is like one big shopping mall!

We live on Hong Kong Island, but decided to venture across the harbor to Kowloon to go to the appropriately named, MegaBox.



We had no other goal for shopping but to eat at IKEA for lunch...such yummy Swedish meatballs!

When we made it back to our apartment, some friends stopped by for games. We taught them (and Charlotte) how to play Skip-Bo.







These are the most exciting things we've found to do in Hong Kong when it rains - go shopping and play games.

Do you have any fun rainy day activities?