nyeh

There's a leeeeetle nerve inside my nose, near where my sinuses start that has decided that today is a good day to be sensitive and that it's going to make my head hurt and my eye twinge all day. It's super awesome.

We are getting the keys to the new place tomorrow evening, so I'm going back through my home decorating board on Pinterest and rueing the fact that we a) live in a small apartment where we can't/don't want to do that much demo/painting/etc. and b) don't have the money to buy all new beautiful furniture. Le sigh.

See, I'd love it for the bedroom to look like this:

Or maybe this?

Or something like Young House Love?



...minus the white ceramic animal head.

And then, there's the bathroom. Something along these lines:

Or maybe this?

So pretty!

In any case, they will look nothing like that, but a girl can dream right? And don't even get me started on the kitchen.

I took off the second half of the work day tomorrow to bring some boxes home and start packing up little stuff to be carried upstairs. I have a feeling we won't be doing too much big furniture moving until Sunay, but if we can have most of the little stuff already piled upstairs, then moving the big pieces and cleaning up the old apartment shouldn't take too long.

Hah. Famous last words.

But seriously, it's kind of my goal to have everything upstairs Friday night, except:

• bed, desk, TV & stand, nightstand shelves and living room chairs (we have three, two oversized and Ikea one with an Ottoman)
• a few cooking and eating items, for Saturday and Sunday morning
• a few wearing items, for Sunday and Saturday
• shower stuff

Everything else we should be able to get upstairs to the new apartment Friday night without too many incidents. We also have a few things we've decided we probably need to buy for this apartment. Namely:

• Curtains! (since the apartment gets direct sunlight, it might actually, you know, get warm? or be very bright? or people might see us, since it faces the stree?! this is all very exciting.) Fr at least the living room. The bedroom has a tree outside the windows, so we might actually be able to wait on those.
• A fan? For the bedroom, mostly. The living room has a ceiling fan! (This is something I've missed from the South -- the first place I lived in Boston had a ceiling fan in the living room, but not the bedrooms; the second place didn't have any, I don't think. You definitely couldn't put one downstairs -- the ceilings were too low. Someone would die. But seriously, ceiling fans are dope, yo! And effective.)
• New towels and bathroom rug. The ones we got from Target a while back leave red fibers everywhere and while I really do like my red/black/cream color scheme, I do no like having piles of red fibers gather in the corners of EVERYTHING. I'll have to decide on a new color scheme for the bathroom. Maybe black, cream and yellow? Or green? Maybe just buy nicer towels that don't shed. (what a concept.)

(mah shower curtain. i lurve it.)

• Arug?! for the living room. not that I don't enjoy walking around in my bunny slippers... (I need new bunny slippers, too, come to think of it...)
• Mybe a new mat for the kitchen. The one we have is getting kind of nasty. That probably means we should clean more often. Just...a thought.
• A vacuum cleaner? Problem is, we don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on one, and we need one that will do both hardwood and carpet effectively. I am taking suggestions! (we do have a 20% off one item from BB&B to use, so...)

That's all! Doesn't sound like that much, does it? It will probably feel like a lot. I'm psyching myself up. Moving, moving, rah rah rah! (Shark bait, ooh! ba..ba doo.)

Oy.

as promised

Here are the floor plans we came up with for the new apartment:

(the white space to the left is the door to the kitchen, the white space to the right is the door to the bedroom, and in the bottom right corner is the door to enter.)

Option 1:

We like the separation of the 'living room' from the 'dining area' using the loveseat.

 Option 2:

(on this one, the white space on the bottom left is the door to the bathroom)

We like the open space in between the bathroom and kitchen, because it means no moving furniture to put the air mattress down. We also like the separate "office" space the desk being perpendicular to the wall creates.

Option 3:

(there's a piece of furniture in the "wall" in this one, because there's actually a little inlet for the bathroom door that extends past where we put the 'wall' for the room, so that piece does fit there, we promise ;)

The more I look, the more I think I like this on the best. There's space to walk between clearly defined "rooms": office, living and dining space. The chair with the footstool being off to the side is probably the only thing about this setup that I don't like, but Nathan says we aren't allowed to get rid of it, so I'll just have to deal!

What do you guys think? Anything that I missed jumping out at you?

to need release

The good news: We're moving!
The bad news: We're moving...again.

After visiting the west-facing apartment again on Saturday morning to measure the whole thing from top to bottom, we went back to our current apartment, measured all our furniture and used a room planner to make sure the furniture that we really care about will fit in the space. It will be tight - especially in the bedroom, where we will have less than two feet on either side of the bed (unless of course, we decide to push the bed in the corner and I will use the window still for my nightstand, but we'll see about that!) The living room will be less of a struggle - mostly it's deciding which, of the three we came up with (I'll post them later-on,) way we want to position things. We started going through things on Sunday while we watched a barrage of Disney movies, to try and decide what we could throw out before we actually haul everything upstairs. Thankfully we will have pretty much the weekend (minus Saturday when we're doing our Treasure Hunt!) to move everything up. I'm contemplating trying to take a half-day on Friday to get more things packed and/or moved, so we have less to do on Sunday, but we'll see.

somebody just like me

So, my life is really boring. So boring that I haven't really had any inclination to write down anything that I've been doing in here. However, Nate and I did decide to explore and (gasp) go out to eat after he got off work last Saturday. We hit up one of the two wine bars/restaurants we've been itching to try downtown, The Purple Cafe. We had a local wine flight and a couple apps off their tasting menu (which we promptly destroyed before I got a chance to take pictures of them) before my stomach started acting up and we decided to head home (this was totally not the restaurant's fault, by the way. I chalk it up to the fact that I don't drink EVER anymore, and that I ate three pieces of bread with copious amounts of butter at around 8PM, and we went to the restaurant at around 10:30PM.) I have to say, unfortunately (and somewhat fortunately, because it's free!) my favorite part of the meal was possibly their fresh bread and whipped butter. Although, we had crostini and white bean spread and beef carpaccio as our apps, and the carpaccio was mui, mui excellente (I have no idea if that's how you spell either of those words.) I wish I had taken pictures of the inside of the place, because their wine storage/bar is this awesome column-esque structure in the middle of everything with a spiral staircase going around it alllllll the way up to the ceiling.

(pic credit goes to their website)

The rest of their menu was large, in charge and looked varied and superb. They have a little bit of everything, and we will definitely return at a later date (and an earlier time.)

We're planning on going to Sip (the second of these purported wine bars,) this weekend for the second half of our belated Valentine's Day celebration. I ordered some presents for Nate, but they haven't come in the mail yet (one of them probably won't, but I'm hoping the other will, since it's supposedly 2-3 day shipping and I ordered it Monday. But this is the USPS we're talking about, so...you never know.) He got me things on actual Valentine's Day, namely a box of chocolates -- the true way to my heart, no doubt -- and a lavender-scented massage candle. I had totally forgotten we used to have JimmyJane (yes, I know it's a sex site. But really? The massage candles are SO awesomely wonderful.) massage candle samplers I got from my old job in Boston, and we had just used up the customized fragrance bottle of massage oil I got free from Aveda last year for my birthday (they were not skimpy, it was a large bottle,) so it came as a welcome surprise! I can't write what I got him here, since he reads, but I'll post after I give him the gifts, and let you know how it goes ;)

Last night's dinner was brown sugar salmon, brown rice and roasted brussel sprouts. This is the first time I've roasted brussel sprouts, and I have to say, I enjoyed them immensely. The outer leaves get crispycrunchydelicious, plus, I bought parmesan cheese at Target the last time we went grocery shopping, and it makes all vegetables that much more delicious. Because it's cheese, and cheese is good. I also roasted some zucchini and yellow squash the other days (one time with and one time without parmesan cheese -- it was good both times,) and I enjoyed that also! And roasting is super easy, because you put them in and leave them alone and I like it. I'll start taking pics of things and posting recipes again when I start being creative and making things I haven't made a million times in the past several months.

We did some major grocery shopping last weekend, and yet still have nothing in the house for lunch. Ok, so that's not true, we just haven't been very good at portion control with dinner lately, so I haven't had leftovers to bring. And I'm too lazy in the morning to make a sandwich. Yeah, I really am. (I'm also too lazy, lately, to get up in time to put on make-up, but that's another story...) In any case, we got a (manual) juicer at Ikea when we were there a little while ago, and we bought a bunch of lemons and a bunch of oranges to make juice with (or smoothies, should be feel so inclined. I do love my Magic Bullet.) Unfortunately, we keep making our regular juice -- aka Crystal Light (knockoff) -- in our one and only pitcher. It will happen soon! Or I will buy a carafe at Uwajimaya. For serious.

In other news, I won tickets to go see Bobby McFerrin at The Paramount from Seattle Weekly via Twitter. Apparently, online social media is the only way I win things, because I have -- honest to god -- never won anything before in my life. Ok, so maybe that's a lie. I won a Vera Bradley purse from Project Graduation in high school. (But to be fair, there were only 300 other people. The odds are much better that way.) And sometimes I win things that I actually have te be vaguely skilled at something to win. But for realz, y'all, I WON! Plus, I won tickets to go see Bobby McFerrin, which is awesome, because he is the king of singing. Nate went and picked up the tickets, and we're in row H. It's gonna be pretty cool. So you should follow them on Twitter so that, if you live in the Seattle area, you can win things to.

One more thing for this morning: we sold most of our seating! The couch and coffee table were sold earlier this week! They even came and picked them up during the day, while I was at work, so when I got home, there was just this big empty space in the wall, since Nate didn't have a chance to move anything before he left for work. So I shoved our chair in the corner, moved the little Ikea loveseat to the wall where the couch had been and voila! We have seating for people other than ourselves. That doesn't smell like cat pee. It's ever so exciting. I haven't taken pics yet, because I'm still contemplating moving the furniture more. Plus, I want to get some accessories. Namely, a throw and pillows for the love seat, and something similar for the Poang chair, to tie them all into one color scheme. Because we have a (strange) gray chair, an off-white loveseat and a sage green over-sized chair. I will make this work. (If you have any suggestions, I'd be GLAD to hear them. I'll post pictures later, of all three furniture items together, because apparently the Klobo loveseat is the only thing that Ikea doesn't make a slipcover for, and I don't think they make this particular cushion for the Poang anymore. Oy vey.)

Ok, I lied, this is the last thing. We're trying to the sell the car, but we haven't had much luck so far. Some guy offered to trade us for a Mitsubishi Eclipse convertible. This is funny, because Nate sold his Eclipse so we could drive across the country (though, this is a 2G and his was a 3G and blah blah blah, I don't care about cars, so I'm pretty sure y'all don't care about cars, so Nate is the only one that cares about cars, sorry, Boo! If you really want the specific differences, ask him. He would be glad to discuss it.) It requires us to do some thinking, because it's possible that we could sell this car (now or later on) for more money than we could get for the Xterra, but we'd have to factor in (probably) higher insurance costs and feel we would need to garage it, because a convertible is more likely to get broken into, especially considering the number of cars we see smashed in near our apartment building. In any case, we're going to see it this weekend.

The Boo is meeting me for lunch in about an hour. But first, I have to sort through this pile of receipts to try and find one specific charge. Sweet.

-C

victorious

It is absolutely beautiful here in Seattle this morning, but they are -- of course -- predicting rain for later today. And snow/rain later in the week. Waaaaaaaaaah.

Last night, Nate and I decided to have an adventure, because you know...that's what you do on Tuesday nights, especially when you haven't had time to adventure recently. Because our trip to the market on Saturday in the POURING rain and our trip to Ikea on Sunday weren't adventuresome enough.

Let me first say this: we have a hallway full of seating.

We now own one ikea poang chair with footstool, one blue oversized chair that folds out into a twin-sized bed, one ikea white loveseat, one green oversized chair, and (not pictured) one ikea computer chair, one small wooden chair with an ugly cushion and an 8' brown microfiber couch. Ack! They take up pretty much the entire apartment.

We have all this seating because we decided to sell the couch and blue chair (and small brown chair with ugly cushion) for various reasons, along with the glass-topped coffee table and get different furniture. The blue chair was sitting the corner of our bedroom in a spot now owned by the desk, so it needed to be moved. Well, it isn't very comfortable, and before we moved apartments and inherited the couch, there were always fights about who got to sit in the green chair and who got the blue one. So we decided that we'll sell it off, along with the couch (because the couch is HUGE and kinda smells funny) to make room for some different seating. It has been ridiculously difficult for us to get anything we actually wanted via craigslist, so we weren't expecting to actually get the seating I found on Monday but...we did. And we got exactly the ones we wanted. Hence our hallway of chairs.

In any case, Nate picked me up from work last night and we stopped by Home Depot to grab some screws (forgetting that we also needed an extension cord. Boo.) before heading out to pick up the love seat. We got there, got the loveseat and put it in the car without too much trouble -- we did have to stop to take the legs off, but that was a minute detail. We stopped for dinner at Wendy's, then found the place we were picking the chair up from no problem. Grabbed the chair, headed outside to put it in the car.

Which we tried unsuccessfully to do for an hour. AN HOUR. During which time it was windy, cold and raining on and off. It just wouldn't fit in the Xterra with the lovseat in there, too. After about an hour, the husband of the woman who had sold us the chair came out to see if we needed any help. We needed allen wrenches (the favoritist tool of Ikea,) which he, amazingly enough, had (Nate has these too, so we could put the chair back together when we got home, but we don't usually carry the tools around in the car.)  We took the seat off the base and FINALLY the chair fit inside the car. We then spent another fifteen minutes or so trying to figure out why the back door wouldn't stay closed (as a sidenote: we have to ratchet it to the bases of the front seats, because the locking mechanism is broked and electric, so we can't even manually lock it. I've never more appreciated why my mom hates electric locking mechanisms on cars.) Then we managed to fit me and the frame for the footstool portion of the chair in the front seat and we went home.

Ok, so here's where the story gets kind of weird. We had been waiting  for a girl who had a rug listed for $5 (on the beloved Craigslist,) to get home from class at 9PM. We dropped the chair and loveseat off and home and headed out to find her apartment. It took a little finagling, but we finally got there around 9:45PM and buzzed her. A very confused voice came on the intercom and said, 'Hello?' Nate said, 'Hi, it's Nate, I'm here about the rug on Craigslist?' There was a very long pause and the girl said, 'I don't have a rug, that was a fake post.' Nate and I looked at eachother questioningly, and took a pause before Nate said, 'Oh, ok.' The girl goes, 'What?' and Nate goes, 'Oh, nothing. I was just saying ok. And sorry.' And she goes, 'Oh, that's ok.' And we left.

WHAT?!

Why would anyone put a fake posting, with pictures, of furniture on Craigslist and just pick a random address to be the butt of their practical joke? Like, seriously? Do people actually do that? We concluded that maybe she wrong someone and they wanted to get back at her. You know, by...selling all her stuff on Craigslist. And telling people to not come until after 9PM. Uhm...yeah. Sure. Ok.

So, our adventure concluded and we drove back home. Luckily, we managed to find a very-rarely-open parking spot right in front of the apartment. Here's to hoping Nate sells off the furniture today, so we no longer look like an orphanage for chairs!

Have any of you ever had any weird Craigslist stories? Or creepy stories? Ooh...I shudder at the thought.

-C

get ready

...cause we have FURNITURE!

King-Sized Hopen Bedframe! (From Ikea, purloined from Craigslist for $40) Did you know Ikea has all their instructions on their website? Unfortunately, the little pictures are kind of hard to decipher when you don't have all the pieces labeled with the little stickies. But we managed to put it together with only a few setbacks.

Bookshelf! ($30) To cover where the cable outlet comes out of the wall. Where it's positioned makes NO SENSE, so we figured we'd just cover it up. You can still see the coaxials running in either direction -- toward the tv to the left and the bedroom/internet to the right,) but Nate nailed them to the baseboards, so they are not so noticeable. It's also actually two smaller pieces, which we considered splitting up, but I forced  convinced Nate is looks better this way. Teehee.

Dresser! ($30) We decided we don't like it so much next to the bed, because it means Nate is sleeping almost up against the windows, so we're working on a plan to move it from its current location onto a different wall. We have to get one more power strip first, though. To Target!

Desk! ($30) Unfortunately the drawers are kind of rickety, and the pattern on the chair (conventiently covered by one cherokee blanket -- a present from my Dad) is HEINOUS and matches absolutely nothing, but it's at least a place to sit and do work on the computer that doesn't involve a couch. Or being in front of the television. Yay!

Ok, so the last picture is of stuff we've had -- our little key hooks with mini-drawers (under $10 from Ross. I freaking love Ross.) for coupons and our catch-all basket that came with delicious Wine Country treats for Christmas (from my Dad.) But this little corner is probably one my favorite decorative places in the house, so I thought I'd show it to you. (What you don't see is Nate's Patriots calendar hanging directly above it. I didn't want it there, but I really didn't want it in the bedroom, so it's a compromise.)



Pair these things with out free couch (in the apartment when we moved in and smells, so we'll probably get rid of it when we find a loveseat/oversized chair to replace the seating we'll lose) free loveseat, free oversized chair-that-turns-into-a-twin-bed, free coffee table, free mini-armoire and our free mattress/boxspring set and we paid $130 (plus an $8 decorative pillow and a $60 memory foam mattress topper, on sale from, like, $350) for all of the furniture in our apartment. It makes me feel accomplished. We win!

I made a variation of my Roasted Chicken with Sweet Potatoes and Onions last night, because we only have grains in the house, but the veggies looked and tasted delicious! We only had a half a sweet potato left, so I augmented with carrots. I was a little afraid they wouldn't roast up like the other veggies, but they were sweet and juicy and paired perfectly with the onion and potato. Noms!

With a little basil on top!

I baked it for a little too long, though, so the chicken was kind of dry and tasteless, because it was smaller than last time. There were also portions of it which tasted wonky, so we only ate about half the piece. But over tri-colored couscous, the veggies were delish.

It's is beautiful, sunny and COLD today. I'd much rather it be like this that kind of warm and rainy, though. So no complaining from me!

-C

sleep all day

I apologize for being a horrible blogger and not updating once since Friday morning. See me grovel.

Friday night the boy and I watched Magnolia, which was...uhm...weird? I didn't really know much about the movie, except that there were lots of big names in it, Aimee Mann's Wise Up is used for the soundtrack at one point and frogs fall from the sky. I did't know, for instance, that it was THREE HOURS LONG. At the end of those three hours? I still didn't really get it. Or the frogs falling from the sky. Or why everyone was just screaming obscenities at eachother. Oh well.

Friday we went grocery shopping and picked up our DRESSER!!!!! And there was much rejoicing. I forgot to take pictures of it, but now it's between my side of the bed and the closet, so not only do we get to put our stuff in drawers, I get to put my jewelry box somewhere other than the floor and I get a nightstand. Nate is using the window sill, since we had to push the bed over to make room for the dresser. My biceps are sore from carrying the dresser from the car to the apartment, which is probably just another indicator that I should really start working out more, because the dresser isn't that heavy.

The QFC that we wound up at for grocery shopping was kind of expensive, compared to the place we usually go, so we wound up only getting necessary things...and booze. For our Sunday pizza extravaganza. After QFC, we stopped by the shelter to look at kitties. The shelter here is very small, which might be a good thing. It also might just be indicative of other animal rescue efforts in the area, like the Humane Society and another organization I found called 'Paws.' We hung out with Stripes and Gabriella, and of course, Nate fell in love with Stripes and I fell in love with Gabriella. Maybe because all she wanted to do was sit on my lap. And I feel bad because she's so lovey, and she's been at the shelter for almost two months. Sad =(

Sunday was the Superbowl. I made sure to watch lots of Say Yess to the Dress and Sex and the City episodes during the day, in preparation for the football later. Also, we ordered this:

Yup, that's Pizza Hut's Big Dipper. For the two of us. It's pretty much all we ate all day, besides Lay's new Chili Cheese Chips, Tortilla Chips and Salsa (for Nate) and a tuna sandwich (for me.) It actually turned out to not be that much food, especially when we stretched it out over eight hours. It was kind of perfect, too, because it's basically cheese sticks with pizza toppings that you dip (if you want -- which I don't) in marinara sauce. Yum!

So to balance out all the pizza for yesterday, I have granola, vanilla yogurt and the rest of my blue. We got a whole box of fresh-made granola at QFC for 99 cents as a "managers special," which probably means it wasn't all that fresh, but it's granola, so who cares!? It's absolutely delicious. It has cashews in it and everything.

Delish!

In other news, we might be getting a bed frame tonight, if Nate doesn't have to work. It's like we're real people living in a real house. Fancy that.

-C

we can work it out

Yesterday was not a good day. My stomach hasn't been feeling great since Wednesday, but honestly, I was proud of myself for even staying at work all day yesterday. The whole day I was in kind of a haze, and my body never indicated that it was hungry -- I just realized at some point that me wanting to fall asleep in on my desk was probably an indicator that I should eat. I got home and had some pasta for dinner before passing out at about 7:30/8:00pm in my clothes, woke up about 10:30 long enough to get ready for bed, and passed out again. I woke up at about 5:40am feeling much, much better.

So I don't have any pictures of outfits or delicious dinners, because I've done nothing but sit and stare into space and/or sleep for the past 48 hours. Ugh.

In any case, I'm really glad it's the weekend soon because that means a) I get to sleep in tomorrow and b) we get a dresser soon! We contacted someone of Craigslist who actually hadn't sold theirs yet, so we get to pick it up either tonight or tomorrow. We are probably a little TOO excited about getting a dresser, but we've been without one for so long, it's become a far-off luxury. Oh, to have a dresser again...the joys.
-C

apple chips, pizza and WINNING!

I have a project today at work that won't take very long, but it involves a lot of hole punching. Good thing I have a brand new hole punch!

They kept saying this week was going to be nice, but it was kind of cloudy and gloom all week, and now it's supposed to rain all weekend. I've been trolling searching Craigslist this morning trying to find furniture -- namely, a dresser, desk and king-sized bed frame -- for relatively cheap. Because we don't have any of these things, and we decided that they were pretty much all we needed to complete our apartment, since we aren't going to be spending more than a couple years here. We don't really want anything that we'll fall in love with (I've already fallen entirely too in love with this oversized chair that we found for free on CL -- I'm having to tell myself we probably won't be able to bring it back to Boston with us, whenever we decide to go back there. Ooh, hoo hoo.) we just need furniture that works for now. For realsies.

Dinner last night was pizza. We contemplated delivery from the usual (aka Dominoes,) and Nate really wanted to get two feet of pizza from Pizza Hut, but instead we ordered from Mod Pizza on 6th Ave (about a ten minute walk from us.) We thought they delivered, but found out they didn't, so we picked up the pizza and ate there. It was SO GOOD. The pizzas are just enough for two people and only cost six bucks. We got mushrooms, onion, crumbled meatballs and cheese (asiago, parmesean and mozzarella) on ours. Plus, you can get an order of four garlic knots (or cinnamon knots, if you prefer) for a buck fifty. So we got a pizza and two orders of garlic knots...and ate everything. I was too full, but it was delicious. Totally worth the over eating.

I'm going to be kind of sad when I no longer have to take pictures of what I wear every day. TPTP only (technically) goes another week or so! Today is Friday, so jeans are a total go, but I did decide to wear one of my new tops I got at Express the other day when I got my sequiny scarf. I'm not much one for turtlenecks, but I couldn't resist the rouching on this baby:

We desperately need to go grocery shopping, because we have no proteins in the house. This is definitely the thing we run out of the fastest, because we don't buy anything frozen (especially since we found the $2, two pound chicken breast at our favorite market,) but it means we have to eat them pretty quickly, or they start to smell kinda funny. In truth, the chicken I made the sweet potato and onions with was already starting to smell kind of weird, and the fresh meats like that don't last for anything past a week from when we bought it. We have strong stomachs. I figure if it isn't completely rancid, we'll be fine. We gotta cook it all the way through, anyway.

Also, if you like WINNING things, head over to the fANNEtastic Food blog, where you can win a $50 shopping spree to iHerb.com (they have more than just herbs.) I like winning things, don't you? (Not to say I ever do win anything, but I still like it.)

Thinking about making Apple Chips with my new corer and Snow White apples tonight or tomorrow. I'm thinking baking them with cinnamon sugar or pumpkin pie spice will be super tasty. Got any suggestions for the best easiest apple chip recipes?