The Apartment - Dining and Living

There really isn't a way to break these two rooms into different posts, so this blog will probably be a bit longer. As I said before, we do live in a rather old building. It has the older building charm, and beautiful dark woodwork that I love. I was actually really impressed when I first walked in the apartment, because it holds so much potential, and is actaully really nice. If you pay attention, you will notice the many flaws, but just don't look up or open closet doors. We have leaks from the ceiling in closets, and somehow, some previous tenant got something that looks like pasta sauce all over the ceiling. Shortly after moving in, I took a mop to the sauce. That was awkward.



The room has really fantastic south-facing windows, and I am excited to start filling up the whole apartment with plants one day. I tell the fiance all the time the the apartment is going to be so filled, its going to look like a jungle in here. Unfortunately, my plants aren't growing as fast as I'd hoped. Anyway, the best feature in this area, I think is the really great built in shelving. I'm not sure really what they are made for, but I've been attempting to fill them up with photos and picture frames. It's kind of sad how little photos we have of us, I need to be more motivated to get more pictures.



This is the sofa that we bought together. I wanted some kind of sofa chaise look, but our space between the sunroom door and the radiator is so small, there's not much space to do much of anything. A furniture store sent out an ad in the paper, which was $699 for this. I loved it right away, and we went to get it. It fits perfectly in the space - although we can't move the sunroom door, it's a perfect fit. The ottoman, was from a chair we previously had in the living room (which now sits unattractively in the sunroom), and doesn't match at all. I want to get a coffee table, but the fiance needs some convincing to get rid of the ottoman. For now, I try to hide it with folded up blankets.



Dining room is a bit cluttered, isn't it? It's a bit awkward, especially when one of us is on the computer, and the other needs to walk by, we have to go all the way around the table, but meh. It works. I'm not sure where else we could have placed the desk, this seemed like the only logical solution aside from investing in a laptop.



In addition to the dining room table, and the desk, we also have a bookshelf and a fishtank in there. These photos were taken a little while ago,we mounted a hanging lighting unit to the ceiling since this photo was taken. It's a powerful light, and really blue. We really don't even need to turn on the overhead light when we eat dinner because the fishtank light is so bright. We also started to spackle in this room, getting it ready to paint. We decided on Valspar's Green Tea Leaves for the color in both the dining room, and the living room.



I love fresh flowers. Tyler regularly goes out to the local grocery store and picks up a cheap little bouquet of flowers for the table. I just use an old glass pasta sauce container for the vase. Why go out and buy something fancy when the flowers are fancy enough? There's something about how fresh flowers on the table makes one feel, it feels a little happier, I think. Sometimes when he buys a new flower bouquet, there are still a few live existing flowers in the glass jar. I like to take a smaller glass jar (usually one that once held jelly in it), and put them on the computer desk.

Starting a Shawl

I think it's time to take a small break from blogging about my apartment, what do you think? Well, for the past couple days, I have been pretty sick. I think it might be a cold, but I'm feeling worse each day, so I'm thinking it might be something worse than a cold. Because I don't want to just lounge around doing absolutely nothing, I wanted to knit something. I'm not interested in knitting another pair of socks, considering I haven't even worn the 3 that I knitted previously. Also, I kind of wanted something bigger, something more of a challenge to complete. Something that wouldn't just take me a couple days to finish. Shawls seem to be popular for knitters on ravelry, so I started looking at a Haruni shawl. The more I looked at it, the more I loved it. After looking through the pattern, I realized: Hey, I can do this!

It starts with a provisional cast on, which I had no idea how to do. Several YouTube videos, and an hour later, I finally had my 3 provisional cast on stitches. Somehow, I came out with something that I'm actaully proud of. It's still in the works, and I think this is a fabulous pattern to knit. It's easy-ish to memorize the lace repeats after doing them a couple of times, and it's quite fun, even for a beginning shawl knitter.



I got a bunch of this yarn in a variety of colors for my last birthday, and I made a pair of socks out of one. I was unhappy with the way the yarn looked in the sock, it looked almost self striping. However, the yarn used for this shawl, looks fantastic... Almost like it was made for this project. And it's pink, who can complain? I love it so far.

Knitting something this large is really helping with me not feeling well, it helps pass the hours, so while I'm sniffling, blowing my nose, and nursing full body aches, the days don't seem as long.

The Apartment - Bathroom

Bleh, I have been sick the past few days, haven't wanted to do anything other than lay in bed and knit. Who gets a cold 3 times in a single season? I do! I guess I've just gotten a really weak immune system. Today is a rainy, dreary day, so instead of just staring off out of the windows in the apartment, I thought I'd get up and do a little more blogging. Today's topic: the bathroom!



We have this really tiny bathroom. It's dingy, and has some really weird wall colors and textures. The bottom of the walls are yellow, and really sloppy done. Also, they are textured to look like brick, although, they are not brick behind the paint. The top half of the wall, is some even more strange textured plaster-like thing, painted white... I have no idea what's going on with the walls in here. We bought the paint to repaint this bathroom, but haven't gotten to it yet - painting is so much work, especially this bathroom! I wanted to go a really dark blue, but Tyler didn't want so dark. We compromised on a lighter color (Misty, from Valspar), and we intend to do a white stripe around the room. It will be fabulous, and hopefully, relaxing.

The lighting - what's up with those? The mirror, is useless, for the most part. We have a full length mirror in the bedroom that I use for things like applying makeup, and the like. I'm not even sure its a real mirror, it looks more like that paper mirror-foil type stuff.



The best thing about the bathroom, however, is the bathtub. I've never been a girl who likes taking baths. I'm a little to chubby to fit comfortably in one of those shower/bath combinations and before I moved here, the fiance informed me that the apartment had NO shower. All I could say, was: "WHAT?!" But, he purchased a kit that you can hook up to a clawfoot tub, and it creates a wrap around shower. However, he had no bolt cutters to install it, and when arrived... I still had no shower. After a couple times of being forced to take a bath, I've come to the conclusion that I LOVE them. I can lay in there for hours, just soaking and listening to a couple of my favorite podcasts. It's larger than any other bath I've been in, and is a much more comfortable shape.

The accessory I am the most grateful for buying before I left California - is that little rack on the bathtub. When I seen it up at Ikea, I picked it up and marveled at what a great idea it was, but left without it. I kept thinking about that little rack, and convinced myself to go back and buy it. Seriously, it was the best $9.99 I have spent on this apartment. You don't really think about it, but where else would we put our shampoos and soaps? On the side of the tub? The windowsill? I don't know, but I adore my bathtub rack, it fits perfectly and has enough room for everything we need.

The Apartment - Kitchen

The kitchen is probably one of the worst rooms in the apartment. Honestly. Women, by nature seem to be drawn to rooms such as the kitchen, but this apartment was chosen by Tyler. It's super small, no counter space, and really strangely laid out. But, it's our kitchen, and we seem to make it work.

It was insanely difficult to come from a kitchen in California, that had a half bar, tons of cabinet and pantry space, a garbage disposal, dishwater, and enough counters to put several appliances on. Here, we have no upper cabinets at all, I have to hand-wash dishes, and we have only one area for counter space. Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner at our place? Forget about it.



It's really small. Our back door leads out to some really creepy stairwell, that we have to take our garbage down to, and where we go to do our laundry at. The stairwell is narrow, uneven, and terrifies me. I refuse to go down there, honestly. The door even makes me nervous when I'm by myself in the evenings, it rattles, creaks and sometimes I feel like someone is trying to get in. All in my head, of course (well, at least I hope it's all in my head). Anyway, the sink is what I call... vintage. The label on it says "American Kitchens", and I've never seen a standalone sink unit like this, in my life. Do they even make things like this anymore? That semi-open door, doesn't close all the way, either.

The tap water here tastes horrible, it seems to make me feel very sick after I drink it, so fiance went up to the local store one day and picked up one of those fancy Pur water filters. It tastes slightly better, but, I can't seem to drink it right out of the tap still. I have to put it in a pitcher, and then stuff it in the fridge for a few hours to make it cold. Can't seem to drink it without it being cold. Strange.



Ahhh, the rest of the kitchen. Not much to say, really. We literally have only enough space for a microwave on the countertop.  I keep the boxes of other small appliances, such as the toaster. If I need the toaster, I pull down the box, take it out, use it. When I'm done, I put it back in the box and back on the shelf. The paint on the cabinets is peeling, looks old, and is generally pretty nasty. One day, we will probably repaint them, but it seems like a whole lot of work right now. And I found myself unamused and bored with painting in general. Maybe even change the hardware on the cabinets?

To what I'm used to, it is the crappiest kitchen ever. I'm pretty sure it could be worse, but still, it's really hard to live without the kitchen things I loved so much in California.

The Apartment - Bedroom

Last post, I blogged about my trip to get here to Iowa. Now, I'll take a couple days and show the small apartment where we live. The fiance picked this apartment out pretty much by himself, I didn't even see it in person until a month after he finalized it all. The apartment has it's problems - it is an old building, but it has charm, beautiful woodwork, lots of windows, and tons of potential. We don't plan on moving any time soon, we intend to stay here a while, and we are in the process of making it our own. A lot of our furniture and things are passed down to us, but we are slowly replacing furniture that we pick out ourselves. It's a slow process, but we are getting there. We pretty much started with just a few pieces, considering I only came with whatever I could fit in luggage.

Anyway, I'll start off with the bedroom for this post. We are allowed to paint the walls, just as long as it isn't a "funky color". Pink isn't funky, right? No? I didn't think so. The bedroom actually has this really ugly dropped ceiling, which I didn't photograph. I have come to the conclusion that a smoker lived here before us, because literally, all the tiles on the ceiling are brown. The little bit where they sit on the metal piece? Perfectly white. Eventually, we intend to replace the tiles. They really don't look good with my pink walls.

A quick story: Shortly after I arrived here, I was alone in the house and laying in bed reading a book. All of a sudden, there were LOUD flapping noises, which seemed to be right above the bed, then heard it move (or fly?) across the room. I just knew it was something like a bird that was trapped between the dropped ceiling and the actual ceiling. I ran out of the room and didn't go back in until Tyler came home and poked at the tiles with a broom handle. But of course, nothing moved. I still think something is living up there, but am too afraid of what I'd find if Iput my face up there.



When we were deciding on wall color, I told the fiance that I wanted pink (jokingly), and he agreed. We went shopping for paint, he was intent on the pink color and wouldn't take any other color considerations. We grabbed a bunch of pink swatches and taped them to the walls at home. We eventually decided on a lighter pink called "Pink Breeze" by Valspar, because it matched perfectly with a pink on my comforter. It is very pink, and hits you as soon as you walk down the hallway into the bedroom. But, it looks fabulous with the dark woodwork of the apartment.



We have a teensy little closet. Ironically though, it isn't the space of the closet we have issues with, it is the hangers. For some reason, we keep running out of them. We buy more packs of hangers, and somehow run out of hangers again. We don't get more clothes, the hangers don't leave the house. It's like... the closet is eating them - maybe it's the mystery creature in the ceiling?  And, that ridiculous white laundry basket serves no other purpose than to put our decorative pillows in before we go to sleep.



The bedding that inspired the wall color. This was one of the first things I bought to come with me, back in California. I knew I was moving, and I was wandering around HomeGoods. Iowa does not have a HomeGoods, so when I saw this set, I knew if I didn't get it then, I would never get it. So, I purchased it, and stuffed it into a SpaceBag in my luggage to bring on the train with me. The stuffed Wall-e, was a gift from Tyler the first time we met in person. He's been on my bed for years. We all have our emotional attached stuffed animals, right?