Day 102: British themed

I bought some new British themed china, from TKMaxx and an awesome tray, from Myriad. Check it out!

Table

Here is a picture of our new accent table, with a nutcracker Benjamin bought us when he went to Germany and a cute Polish pottery vase I found on sale at the BX! SCORE!

Christmas presents

We've almost got all the Christmas shopping done!! Actually, wait, wait for it, WE HAVE ALL THE CHRISTMAS SHOPPING DONE!! Now I just have to stand in a long line to mail these packages off! Hopefully they will arrive before Christmas!

In other news, here is another thing I bought at the Mildenhall bazaar I mentioned earlier. It's handpainted and I LOVE it!! It was worth every pence I paid :)

Welcome to December!

...and so the countdown begins!!

EDIT:
So after I uploaded the blog this morning, I walked out to my car to see this:

Welcome to December in England...guess I need an ice scraper!

More of the house

Benjamin and I finally found a rug we could both agree on for the living room! Now the living room is complete! What a great feeling!

I had been looking online for quite some time for bar stools. I finally found out that Bed Bath and Beyond will ship to APO address! I ordered them and got them within the same week. I don't know how BBB got them here so quick but they did!

I also got our London poster framed. It matches the red theme we have going in the dining room.

This awesome candle holder is one of my Christmas presents (okay, so were the rug and the bar stools ;). We got this bad boy at a great store in the BX, called Myriad! We love this store because it's similar to a Pier 1 (which just happens to be OUR (yes, even Benjamin's) favorite place to shop). Once we put up the Christmas tree, we'll find a great spot for it in the dining room.

Just a few things

My phone:

And this is why I still haven't memorized my cell phone number...it's 10 digits long! That's how all the phone numbers are here. Ha! This is also why the equivalent of 911 has to be pre-programmed into your phone. To dial for an emergency on base you have to dial 10 digits! At the newcomers briefing, they joked saying if you could remember all the numbers to dial in an emergency situation, then you do not actually need 911.

The car I got is a Japanese spec car. All this means really, is that the steering wheel in on the right side on the car just like British cars. It also means that the car's speedometer is in kilometers instead of miles. This made for an interesting time, before we got a GPS to give us the correct speed in miles. You will also notice that there are 92,942 kilometers (not miles) on the car.

I love the bizaares here on base. Lots of vendors from all over Europe to come to sell their goods. Here a two of my favorite things I that purchased this time. This is a handpainted pitcher, that I think I'm going to use as a vase. It was only 15 pounds. My friend, Andrea, got the same one!

This is a serving platter that I've seen the British serve sandwiches and/or sweets on.

It was also only 15 pounds!

New Computer

We finally got a new computer!! Since Benjamin started graduate school, we knew we were going to need another computer. I got to pick this one out since Benjamin picked out the laptop. I wanted a computer with Microsoft on it, to make things a little easier on us. It has the CPU installed in the screen which is awesome! Right now it is still sitting on the kitchen table until we can get a desk.

More House Pictures

This is the dining room. You can see the living room to the right and kitchen to the left. The stairs are in the middle of the picture, behind the table:

Living room:

This is our kitchen:

Guest bedroom upstairs:

Guest bathroom

This is our future computer room/office. Right now we have our books and computer stuff: 

Travel Voucher!

We finally got our travel voucher back. As you may know, this alway seems to be a difficult task. I think Benjamin had to submit it four or five times. We've been waiting for almost two months for the money and now that it's here, we have a lot of things we needed or wanted to buy. 

   
This is the new runner we put in the entryway.  It was the only one we could both decide on but I think it looks fabulous here!

This is the new runner for the table. We want to do red and gold in the dining room.
 

We also found a great new store called Argo's. You walk in and begin looking at the catalog. You can see some people looking in them in the far left of the photo. You find what you want, we needed a lawn mower, then you check to see if they have it in stock by punching the number into a little machine. If they do have the item then you write the catalog number on a piece of paper and then you take it over to the man and he rings you up. When they call our your number you go pick up the item from a different counter. It's an awesome store and makes a lot of sense! Ben is holding the lawn mower!! 

Curtains

Ordered these curtains from amazon for $80.00. These will go in the spare bedroom. Can not wait until they get here so we can start decorating!

Furniture

Spain trip in 2 days! 

More new furniture:

No more eating on the couch!!

I also just ordered this set for the guest bedroom! We are getting ready for Randy and Sharon's visit in just about 7 weeks. We still have to get a bed but this set was such an awesome deal. I love getting stuff on sale, I get it from my momma :) It was originally 299.99 marked down to 149.99. It was going to be 169 with taxes and shipping but I found a discount code (I love those) and it ended up being 140.00!! 

New Furniture

Here is our new furniture set for the living room. We got it yesterday!

Now time to start decorating!! I want the living room colors to be chocolate (like the couches) blues and greens. Here are some pillows I just ordered:

I also just ordered these curtains. I got the blue and chocolate ones, they are called french blue:

Got the new license plate! Now we won't get funny looks anymore from the locals. In Texas, you did not have to have a license plate in the front but in the UK everyone has two license plates, one in the front and one in the back. Since we only had the one in the back, we got a lot of double takes.

Possible bedroom set

After looking at several places, we finally found something at Pier 1 we could both agree on.