God’s blessed us with an apartment! It’s a two-story penthouse 😉 We’re the top floors of the building–floors 23-24. We joke that it’s a true sokol’s nest– “sokol,” our last name, means “falcon.”

It’s a new building, which is wonderful, that it’s not the standard, soviet fare apartment but one with a newer design and fresh floor plan. It has TWO larger-sized bathrooms that are one room– the bath and toilet in the same room instead of separate, as usual.

It’s 1,378 square feet (128 sq feet).

With it being a newly built building, we design and install every. single. thing. (Well, the windows and radiators are already there. and electricity for lighting and outlets. But otherwise, it’s brick walls.

Our first steps are to decide … everything! We have to figure it all out in a very detailed way so that we can know right where we electrical outlets, what ceiling lighting and where, light switches– all that will have to be wired into into the walls first. And we decide what inner walls we want to remove or build new ones.

Vitaliy downloaded this cool program so we can do all that. It works in 2D and then switches to 3D, too.  IItItsIt is such a load of brain work. I’m exhausted! and exhilarated! It’s going to take a lot of stamina to get it all done, but it will be a huge blessing once it’s all ready.

I have a great sense of intimacy with Vitaliy while we plan this. It’s such a joy to do it together, to have ideas, not yell, fight or criticize each other.

The kids enjoy it, too.

I might do something like this in a corner of my kitchen:

And studying the science of well-organizing a small space has really helped me with the apartment we live in now–to clean and organize it better.

Thank you, God.