A Toast

Most of you know that we have been living in a very small condo on the beach for the past 3 months. Well, almost 3 months! We are in our last few weeks of living there so I wanted to do a little tribute to all 400 sq. ft. of it.

Top 10 Reasons I Love the Condo:

10. An Extended honeymoon - Austin and I spent our honeymoon in Jamaica and we had a great room with a view of the ocean. Well, that room was about the same size of condo and they both had  a view of the water. How many people do you know that get to go on 3 month honeymoons?

9.  Club 400 - That's right, Austin and I joined the Club 400 meaning we lived in a space that was only 400 sq. ft. I don't really think there is a club, but hey there's always a first for everything!

8. Walks on the beach - Our condo was about a mile down the beach from the U.S.S. Lexington and we were able to walk the boardwalk to it. Have we done this often? No, but we still had that as an option! 

7. BIG BOATS - For some strange reason, I love driving home over the Harbor bridge and watching the oil tankers come and go!

6. No lease - Because Austin knew the owner of the condo they rented it to us on a month-to-month basis so we could move out as soon as we found our own place. The shortest apartment lease we could find was 6 months. Oh, and did I mention that it was fully furnished so we don't have much of our stuff there and won't have to pack much? That is a good thing!

5. Bad Boys, Bad Boys - During Memorial Day weekend, Austin and I witnessed a HUGE fight between about 25 adults. It was crazy, but quite entertaining watching them fight in the parking lot. Bad news is that they all split by the time the cops got there. I felt like I was on an episode of cops!

4. Valet parking - No, we didn't have valet parking, but we did have to search for spots sometimes. Apparently people sneak in to gated communities to use the free pools and hot tubs and sometimes it was hard for us to find a spot. Pretty soon though we'll just pull right into our garage. That will be such a new way of living for us! On the 4th of July there were no parking spots, NONE in the entire place!!

3. Laundry - This has been an exciting challenge. We have done ALL of our laundry at Tony's house and then carried the baskets back up to the third floor. Have I mentioned we lived on the 3rd floor and the elevators are typically broken. :) 

2. A good story - We'll always be able to remind our kids (if they ever complain that their room is too small or something) that we lived in a tiny place at the beginning of our marriage. It will be our "Up hill both ways in snow" sob story! HAHA!

1. The SPIN CYCLE - My kitchen is so small that when I cook, I never move...I just spin. Ex. Need to chop onions: Pull out of fridge, Spin to right, get out cutting board, spin more to right, take out knife and chop, spin back to left to wash cutting board or swing to right to throw away unused onion! The kitchen picture below will explain!

Ok, so many of the reasons are sarcastic, but the condo experience has been fun and we're glad it's almost done! The following pictures were taken by the owner a few years ago. The place looks the same, except a few minor things. 

Our bedroom, it looks a little different because we used our own sheets and comforter. That window is our only window in the condo besides the back doors and the hot tubs are right outside it. Makes for difficult nights trying to go to sleep with crazy people laughing inside it!

The bathroom. I didn't take these pictures, but I'll take some of my own and show the drain pipe from the ceiling that drains to our tub. WEIRD!

Our dining room/living room/kitchen

That's it, Mauve...that's the big kauna! Well, this is the mini kitchen complete with mini stove, mini refrigerator and mini cabinets. Don't spot the microwave? Don't worry, it's below the counter on a shelf. There is no pantry so I have food stacked with dishes. 

This is the view from our condo. 

A few things that the pictures didn't show were the crazy bunk beds in the hallway (also used as storage for clothes!) and the funny things that happened while we lived there. When we first moved in our oven didn't work and it took a few days to get maintenance out to fix it and then our light in the kitchen fell on one side so we had a stool with a box on top of it with a mop on top of that holding it up. It was quite a sight! Needless to say we are very excited to be moving!