As promised, I am back with more pictures of the house we stayed at while on vacation in the British Virgin Islands last week. These pictures cover the common areas of the house. There were actually 4 (yes 4!) other bedrooms in the house, 2 of which the owners rented out to us and 2 that they kept private. The 2 we rented were being used by our friends and I didn’t want to invade their privacy with my house tour. The other 2 belonged to the owners’ children and I thought it was nice that they didn’t let strangers sleep in their beds. If I was a kid and lived part time in another country, I think I would like to have my own little space kept private! Each of the 4 remaining bedrooms had their own bathrooms.

Once again, I’ll just let the pictures do the talking 🙂

The view from the upper deck by the entrance of the house, which had a mini-putting green. Master bedroom is on the right.

On the left side is the kitchen and dining area.

The kitchen had a few sets of double doors that led into it. We kept them open during the day and closed them at night, but since I took these early in the morning, I forgot to open all of them.

And there’s Mike checking his email! There’s another bedroom behind him and one on the floor below that.

The kitchen was in use for breakfast, so I only snapped a quick picture.

There was a small sitting area off of the kitchen.

The views from the patio area outside of the kitchen were unbelievable.

Down some stairs from the patio outside of the kitchen was a deck area with a small plunge pool. It was like a stunt infinity pool… sort of looked like it, but not quite the real deal.

Then on the opposite side of the pool was another part of the house that was a newer addition. It had a family room and 2 more bedrooms with bathrooms.

The family room had a big tv that we had no luck getting any good channels on (they had a satellite). So we only sat in there for a few hours one night.

The crooked cable box and wires are bothering me. Which is weird because we had a wire hanging from our TV for over a year and it didn’t bother me…

This room also had an awesome ceiling. AND it was painted a pretty blue color. I love ceilings that remind me of the sky. More about that another day 🙂 (hint: on the nursery list)

And the views! Are you seeing a theme to this house? All about the views.

There was a bedroom and bathroom behind the TV area and another one underneath it, which was accessible from these stairs…

Here’s the view from this portion of the house looking back towards the kitchen area…

The property was huge and had gardens, walkways, banana trees, papayas, a laundry area underneath the master, an outdoor shower and a library room. They were all hidden around little paths that I only walked down a few times (stairs are not my friends right now).

Here’s a video of some of the areas in the pictures. I tried to go down a few steps of the path to some of the more hidden areas so you’d get an idea of how big it was, but I changed my mind. Sorry for the shaky camera work, it ain’t easy walking and filming!

And that’s the end of our vacation posts (and our vacation) Thankfully it’s been pretty warm in NJ this week so the transition hasn’t been awful. It’s going to be a sad reality check when the freezing cold weather comes back though 🙁

ps- the downside to staying somewhere not accessible by car? Carrying your luggage up a hill to get home….

Which was followed by a taxi ride, a ferry ride to Tortola, a ferry ride to St. Thomas, a taxi to the airport and finally, a flight home…

I planned to share all of the pictures of the house we stayed at while on vacation in Jost Van Dyke, but as I started going through them I realized that I’m going to have to make this a 2 part post! There are just too many great parts I want to share without overwhelming you with a 50 picture/video post. For today, I will share the master bedroom suite area that we stayed in. I loved loved loved staying in this room. Sometimes I just layed in bed and stared out of the windows. It was like going to the beach, minus the maternity bathing suit 🙂

Our bedroom was the first one you came across when walking down this path from the entrance.

The house was actually made up of several different buildings, connected by patios with loads of outdoor living. Like, if I wanted water in the middle of the night we had to walk outside.

Hey look! I have a tour guide 🙂

The room started with a small sitting area.

Yes, I am kicking myself for not opening these shutters above the desk so you could see the ocean…

It just rained a lot at night and the water would blow right in through those shutters, so we kept them closed most of the time to avoid the random tropical storm.

The sliding wood doors lead to the main part of the bedroom…

Complete with king sized bed (we are now even further convinced that we want one) and Tempurpedic pillows. Do you know how much a Tempurpedic pillow costs? I can tell you. $129. I know this because I was so comfortable in this bed that I struggled when I came home. I figured hey I’m pregnant, maybe I should get myself a new Tempurpedic pillow! What could it cost, $40? The one I was sleeping on is $129. I shall suffer with my old pillow I’ve been sleeping on for about 5 years…

The bed only had light sheets on it because the temperature was perfect. Nice cool ocean breeze. No AC necessary in Jost. Could you imagine a climate where you didn’t need heat OR AC? It was wonderful and the windows opened completely to let the breeze in. It wasn’t so good when it would randomly start pouring, but such is life in the tropics.

Even more wonderful? The views from this room. Seriously the greatest views I’ve ever seen.

These hardcore binoculars were fun to play with too. I kept calling it a telescope…

Here’s the view of the bed area looking back towards the entrance/sitting room…

Besides the views, the first thing that caught my eye when we came into the room was this half wall thingy behind the bed.

The sconces above the bed each had their own light switch and acted as bedside lamps. This is exactly what we planned to do for our master. Equally as great was the wood planking behind the bed…

This wall acted as a room divider to the dressing area.

Oh and the wood planked ceilings! Another thing we wanted to add to our bedroom! The high ceilings in this room made it even better.

There were his and hers closets back there, a vanity area and open shelving full of baskets for storage. At first I didn’t get why they split the room in two, but then once I lived in it I realized that this was a genius idea. It allowed me to change while keeping the windows open (I figured if I have high powered binoculars and can see people lounging on the beach way out in the ocean, those people on boats probably have them too!) The room divide also allowed the bed to be that much closer to the view. If the bed was pushed back, it wouldn’t have been as enjoyable.

I loooved the idea of the mixed and matched baskets.

I’m that person that never unpacks on vacation. Not because I’m lazy, but because a) I have a fear of forgetting something and b) hotel dressers creep me out. But I unpacked here 🙂 I liked being able to throw my clothes in baskets and be able to see everything I had to choose from. Plus I could break everything down easily, like one basket for tanks, one for tees, one for accessories, one for pants, etc. I like being able to see my clothes and only use our dresser at home to store off-season clothing.

The door on the other side of the room led to the bathroom…

The room had a walk-in shower, sink, clawfoot tub and separated toilet.

The shower was tiled with slate and all of the floors were a natural stone that felt like you were walking outside.

The ceilings in here were amazing as well!

If only I could replicate the feel of this room here in NJ. We had a pond view from our bedroom for a few months, but then they built the house across the street…

I’ll be back to share some pictures of the common areas of the house and the views later this week. I don’t have pictures of all of the bedrooms, but I do have a video I can share 🙂

If you stalk my Facebook or Twitter pages, you already know that Mike and I were on vacation all of last week. We spent the week in Jost Van Dyke (pronounced Yoast, like toast, it took us all week to pronounce it correctly) in the British Virgin Islands. I planned to blog as usual from there at night, since I have yet to master the art of writing additional posts on weekends, but the internet connection was very unreliable and slow. The post I wrote about mobiles seriously took me 2 nights to get through because the photos took so long to load from Pinterest. Lesson learned: schedule your posts if you plan to secretly go on vacation.

Anyway, this vaca has been in the works for several months since we went with some friends of ours. With Darwin being sick, we were late to commit to the trip and didn’t get our passports renewed or buy plane tickets until about a month before. Mike surprised me with a first class plane ticket on the way there. We had to cancel our vacation in July because Darwin was so sick, so we had a hefty airline credit to use. I have never flown first class and MY GOODNESS. I never want to go back to coach. But I did, because we are too cheap to pay for first class both ways. So coach it was for the way home! And it was awful because we hit so much turbulance and I get motion sickness. Oh and no one handed me a warm cookie and a blankie…

We all rented an amazing house on the island, which I will share some pictures of another day. The island is very very small and secluded. The house we stayed in was not accessible by car and we had to take a major hike to catch a cab. And by cab I mean an open safari-like vehicle that doubled as the island’s school bus. We had a small boat that was included in the rental of the house, which the owners use to get around the island. But considering I’m nearly 6 months pregnant, neither option was really ideal for me. Non-pregnant me would have loved all of the hiking on this trip. Pregnant me was winded and swollen for a good portion of the trip.

There was a small beach within walking distance (a hike down a rocky hill) of the house and any other place we had to take a taxi or a boat to. We made our way around to most of the main areas of the island, so these pictures cover a little bit of everything. The views from the house were seriously unreal.

I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking! 🙂

View from the house

Beach by the house

Captain Mike on the boat that was included in the house rental

Bubbly pool, as it’s called 🙂

Just some rocks that I thought would make for a nice print around the house

Gingerly strolling along the rocks that kept poking through my flip flops

The pier for the house

Great Harbor

View from the house

Beach by the house

One of many rainbows we saw from the house

White Bay

I have tons of pictures of the bedroom we stayed in to sort through (as well as the rest of the house), so I will share them later this week. If I could have that bedroom for the rest of my life I would die happy. All it was missing was 3 cats. Don’t think we didn’t consider flying them down in first class to meet us… 🙂

Though this is a pretty sweet house…

…It still doesn’t beat being home. There was once a time where we looked forward to going to hotels because they were nicer than our own place, but now we have our very own suite everyday. With double sinks in our bathroom, which I forgot were so very important until Mike and I were bumping into each other while getting ready to explore Disney. Plus Macky is greater than Mickey 🙂

One thing the resort had that was better than our own castle was a king sized bed. Getting one has been on our to-do list and we’ve been talking about it a lot recently, but sleeping in one in Disney was heavenly. I did not wake up once in the middle of the night, for 4 nights. Maybe that was because Macky wasn’t screaming, or Mowie wasn’t sleeping on my head, or because I was completely exhausted, but I credit it to a larger bed. I could comfortably sleep in the fetal position (my legs practically horizontal) without kneeing Mike or hanging off the bed. Because of my sleeping preference, I normally sleep better when napping on our family room chair since I can tuck my legs up without injuring anyone. Plus at night I am usually sandwiched between Mike and Mowie and I end up sleeping in pencil position. It’s rough being the family body pillow.

We are BEYOND exhausted from running all over Disney, cross your fingers that we have enough snow tomorrow night to stay home on Wednesday! We need an extra day in our lil castle since flying home on a Sunday night was not our brightest idea. Is there such thing as jet lag when you don’t leave your time zone??

Cinderella Castle picture from Wikipedia. I wanted to post the one we took standing in front of it, but apparently my eyes were closed. Boooo 🙁

I finally got a hold of an internet connection here in Disney. This is what it looks like…

Seriously Disney?? It’s 2010 2011. My laptop doesn’t even know what that wire is. Oh and the lighting in this room is awful and we only brought our point and shoot, so please excuse the bad pictures.

Our room is much nicer than I expected and has some things I really like in it, so I figured I’d share. Like these awesome doors separating the bathroom/vanity area from the rest of the room…

Close up…

The pretty woodwork is also on the headboard, though it has some awful florescent light fixture above it…

That light is the only light in the room, besides a small fixture by the door that gives absolutely no light. And it’s blinding when you’re sitting in the bed.

Here are some cute little brown leather ottomans with some colorful striped curtains behind them…

The bathroom mirror has some nice woodwork on it too…

With a nice little added feature in each corner…

But don’t worry, we’ve been out and about too. Here’s me with Mickey at breakfast this morning…

And Mike and I with Minnie…

That’s all for now, we’re pretty bad with taking pictures of ourselves on vacation, but I’m determined to get a picture in front of Cinderella’s castle at some point! Now back to my vacation 🙂