Living Green

It's been 1 month since our contract started for our apartment and it's finally starting to feel like a place we can relax and feel at home.  Last weekend was the first that we didn't drive to Dubai and/or make big purchases (furniture, cars, etc.).  We basically spent the weekend fixing up and cleaning up things around the apartment.  We installed some drop lights in our living room (all the ceiling lights in the apartment were just bare bulbs mounted to the ceiling.  It really did make a nice difference.

We had 2 couples over for dinner on Friday night which was really nice.  Originally we had just invited N & T to celebrate their engagement, but I went to Paul's basketball game on Wednesday night and we found out that this other couple I & E (I is french and his fiance is american) are going to be living in the same building as N & T so we invited them as well.  (It seems like all of our friends are moving into this building...it just goes to show you what the housing market is like out here--if there's a nice place with decent pricing, everyone that is looking for housing at that time ends up moving there).  I made tacos (big surprise, I know), guacamole, and rice.  N & T brought a delicious Baskin Robins ice cream cake :)

My favorite purchase so far may be the area rug under
the coffee table.

While we loved having the couples over and spending some time just relaxing, Friday morning/afternoon was a little hectic.  Thursday night we realized that we only had 4 kitchen table chairs and only 4 plates...so another trip to Ikea :)  Paul was really excited for another chance to go do furniture shopping.  We also bought a coffee table which (as cheesy as it sounds) pulls the living room together and grounds the couch.  Having company over definitely gave us an extra push to get things cleaned up and organized.  We still don't have anything on our walls yet, but I think we're going to wait until we have bought a bookshelf/storage piece for the living room.  (I've also been eying some adorable tall wooden camels...we'll see if I am able to get paul's consent on those).

Eva my little green bird.

And yes, once again our living room has a green color palette!  I just can't resist :)  This is a little clay bird that I bought at Black Lion just before we moved out here because I figured I would need all the green in our apartment as possible to keep me from getting depressed by all the sand.

One of the other major changes to our apartment recently was the installation of new grass!  They called us at like 5:30pm last Saturday and said they were going to bring it in 30 mins--good thing we were here.  It was pretty comical.  The foreman spoke pretty good English, which was a nice surprise.  When the workers first got here, Paul convinced them to throw the dead grass over our wall instead of tracking it back through the apartment (the only way to get out).  The guys were having so much fun throwing it over the wall.  Then after they drank the water we offered them, they were so happy that they started throwing the grass higher and with more enthusiasm.  After they installed the sod, they pruned back our trees to let in more light for the grass (probably not the cleanest prune I've ever seen, but it was nice to have someone else do it!).  We've been faithfully watering the grass morning and night and just bough a little sprinkler attachment today to help us out.  We're looking forward to spending many evenings and weekends out on our little patio during the winter.  It's like our own green oasis.

 I wrote this post a few days ago, but I was waiting to post until I had photos of our "garden."  It's been getting dark so early here that by the time I got home from work, it was too dark for photos.  I took these in the morning before I left for work.