New Home
We start moving in to our new place this weekend. There is a sneak peek at our empty living room. I honestly can’t contain my excitement. There are so many cool things about this apartment that we were missing in our current home. For one, we now have loads of windows. The lighting in our place now has always been a little depressing and not at all suitable for photography. Now we’ll have windows everywhere. (more…)
Apartment Therapy
In the past week we’ve done a bit of rearranging in our apartment. I’m rather pleased about it. It helps make our place feel more spacious and practical.
You may remember sort of what our dining / kitchen area looked like before. We had added the cabinet as an extra prep area but it was often cluttered, and always played home to my mixer.
It’s now found a new spot right under the window. I’m especially excited about actually getting to use some natural light in some of my photos (hopefully at some point, as if I’m ever able to take photos any other time than late at night).
The space is much more open and I love that it features our china cabinet. We have lovely heirloom china from Shawn’s mom and I can’t wait to display it even more prominently. It’s so beautiful.
Not to mention our china cabinet itself is pretty awesome. We actually found it on the street and salvaged it. With some cleaning and paint, it was exactly what we wanted.
We’ve also moved our kitchen table to a more central position in our living room. This is great because it allows for more seating, whereas before it was against the wall and could only seat 3. We added a big bench on one side which definitely draws guests into sitting at the table.
Since the table doubles as a work space for me, the move is also great since I can now be in the living room when I’m crafting or sewing. No longer shall I be cast out when working on projects. Equally awesome is that I can now watch movies while I work. Sweet!
We got some new mounts for a couple of our bikes. I love how they look and they take up much less space on the wall than the way they were hung before.
We have a bed in our living room, even though we have a bedroom with a bed as well. It’s a little odd, but it always comes in handy for our sleepover movie parties or when visitors are staying with us (which happens fairly often). Now it is sectioned off a bit more by the couch so it doesn’t feel like you’re in a bedroom when you’re just hanging out.
The leopard couch will probably be going in storage for a little bit, but the cats are awfully fond of it (as am I) so we’ll see.
I’m so happy with how everything feels, just by making some simple changes. Hope you enjoyed the mini tour of our apartment. I realized while writing this that there aren’t many photos of it online.
Happy Christmas
It’s Christmas Eve! While I’m not a religious person, nor do I particularly care for what Christmas has evolved into, but I am a huge fan of holidays. I love the excitement, the festivities, the specialness that holidays bring about. I feel that Christmas time has this feeling tenfold.
We tried to get a tree this year. It was a fake one, flocked and pre-lit. It was also the saddest Charlie Brown Christmas tree you’ve ever seen. But upon trying to actually purchase it, we were told it was not for sale. Major holiday let down.
Instead I decorated a branch I found by wrapping it in twinkle lights and hanging tiny glittered blue and silver bulbs. It was supposed to be hung from the ceiling but in the pre-holiday haste, it is merely dangling from a curtain rod.
It’s sweet and gives our living room a warm glow at night. Next year when we have our first home chosen together we’ll have a tree I’m sure.
Here is to putting away daily stresses, forgetting about emotional drama and being grateful for what you have. Here is to being present and appreciating your life for what it is today, not just what it will be or what it was. Here is to relaxing.
I hope your Christmas is filled with love and magic.
Holiday decorations
While it seems most people got the jump on their holiday decorations right after Thanksgiving, I’m a little bit behind. For one, the minimal decorations I do have are in our dreaded storage. Hopefully I’ll be able to dig them out this weekend.
To get things started I made these paper garlands to hang in our dining room / kitchen area (in a small apartment it’s all the same thing really).
I wanted to create a bunch of white garlands to give a snowy feeling. I used lined notebook paper, because I like it and thought maybe it would give it a tiny hint of blue, that snow has. I then just strung them up on a strand of mono-filament.
I think it goes really well with the black and white theme of our dining area. It feels festive and wintery. Even a little holiday elf came to check out the California snow. Have I mentioned that our apartment is teaming with winter creatures, like that little guy? I’m not sure where they came from but they’ve been multiplying. Luckily they’re cute so I don’t mind that they seem to be taking over.
I must confess there were a few more strands of garland just last night but the cats already had their way with them. They like to sit on top of our china cabinet and it was the perfect height for them to swat at the nearby garlands. I suppose the the Fargo
poster will just have to be part of the design…it is snowy, right?
meow
I haven’t cooked a thing in quite awhile. Nor made anything of significance. I’ve been awfully sick. That “I can’t get off the couch or do anything at all” kind of sick.
Luckily I’m feeling better, but not quite better enough to make something to share.
Instead, I’m going to make it up to you by sharing my cats. Because, well, they make me happy and forget about what ails me. And they’re damn cute. Also, since I changed the layout on Cute and Delicious they aren’t up on the header anymore and I think they deserve an appearance.
This is Mochi (the grey fluffy one) and Meeme (the white and stripey one) on the day we brought them home from the animal shelter.
I just want to say that if anyone ever tries to tell you that there is something wrong with shelter animals they are insane. These darlings are just precious and actually more affectionate, well behaved and friendly than many cats out there. Not to mention that adopting from the shelter was insanely easy and SAVES A LIFE (or two). In other words, I recommend it.
I poured over the LA animal services website for weeks in anticipation of getting these little critters. Ultimately we just went to the shelter and met a few of the cats. It wasn’t easy going into a room full of sweet cats that needed homes and choosing who to take home. We knew we wanted to get two though, so they would always have company. When we found out Meeme & Mochi were sisters, we knew they were the ones.
They are my little babies. Even when they drive me bonkers I just adore them. Meeme, likes to knock stuffed animals onto our heads around 5 or 6 am so I will get up and feed her. She’s a little bit of a crybaby and will sometimes follow me around meowing. Mochi likes to run around our apartment at lightning speed demolishing whatever gets in her path, including, on many occasion, me. She’s also amazing at sitting down in exactly the spot that will block the entire screen if you are watching a movie, usually right in front of your face.
But even those things that might irritate some people I find endearing. Not to mention the other adorable things they do. They both love to play fetch, especially with aluminum foil balls (or yarn pom poms in Meeme’s case). They love to snuggle on top of our china cabinet, or in their scratch lounge. They are the sweetest, snuggliest cats and I just love them. I love that they both have completely different personalities. I love that they’re always waiting at the door when I come home. I love that I can just scoop them up and give them a hug always.
Since they’re from the shelter, we don’t know exactly when their birthday is, except that they were about four months old when we got them on January 2nd. So that makes them two now! My little girls are all grown up! Ok, thanks for letting me be the crazy cat lady for a little bit. I’ll be back with some treats soon.
