Hey, thanks for visiting my blog! My name is Kimberly and I live in the lovely, flat land of Central Illinois. My husband and I have one child named Jasper. I get the lucky job of a stay-at-home mom and own a photography business.
I love photography, a clean house, meeting new people, coffee, paper, my fireplace in the winter, dance parties in my pajamas, all things Christmas, almost every kind of music, my hot husband and amazing kid. I hate squirrels, road trips, not having my cell phone on me, and dead batteries.
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- The smoke filled hallways
- Potholes in our driveway
- Alarm clocks going off for hours on end
- Bebo barking at doors being slammed
- Trucks with loud music pulling in at 1:30am
- Gross, nasty carpeting
- Not being able to keep anything dusted
- Having to use the spare room as storage
- Taking Bebo down a flight of stairs every time he has to go out
- Being concerned about having our TV/music up too loud
- Having to jiggle the handle when we flush the toilet
Last night was the first time I made Josh and I supper in the new house. I can’t explain how amazing it was to have so much room and counter space. And don’t even get me started on the dishwasher…I do believe that deserves a post of its very own.
We are feeling so lucky right now to have been able to get this house. I kind of feel like I’m living in a dream…one of those really good ones you don’t want to wake up from.
Although I don’t know that I will ever really have a studio, I think someday I’d like an office for Knight Light. Tonight I have a bride and groom coming over to look at my photography. The problem is that since Josh and I have both been sick, the apartment is completely trashed. After work I’m going to run home and hopefully clean, clean, clean. I just don’t want future clients coming into my messy apartment!
The one thing that is clean is our brand new coffeepot. We’ve needed a new one for quite a few months now. The coffee wasn’t so good out of our old pot and the warmer was peeling and scalded. Josh did a bunch of research (because that’s how he is) and picked out a new one. I had it on my Christmas list and it even went on sale for a couple weeks. We didn’t get it then and figured we wouldn’t be able to find it again. Last night we stopped at Starbucks and they had our coffeepot on clearance! Josh said, “We have to get it”. So we did.
Maybe I’ll make the couple some coffee and they won’t even notice the mess because the coffee will be so good.
I know you were all losing sleep over my dilemma of couch pillows. Well, I found some! I had totally resigned myself to just making my own. Jess called me last Friday because she knew I was in town picking up a few things. She said, “Hey, have you gone to Hobby Lobby? Because there are really cute gray pillows and they’re half off”. Josh and I drove right over, walked right to them and bought them! I didn’t even debate myself over them. I just knew that I should get them. Thanks, Jess.
The tunnel is apartment living. I see the light on the other end! Josh and I have been working towards the house thing F-O-R-E-V-E-R. We have been working our butts off paying as much as we can on student loans. The big one was a private loan we had to get to cover the rest of Josh’s college expenses. Our goal was to pay that off this year and then buy a house. Basically because we’ve been really good at budgeting and Josh is kicking butt with the overtime thing, we are hoping to pay it off this Spring. Holy cow! July is my month now. That’s our goal month for looking for a house. Uh, do you know how close July is??? I can’t even tell you how excited I am.
I have a feeling I’m going to have the apartment packed up before we even have a house. I am beyond ready. As much as I enjoy the new neighbors leaving beer boxes all over the parking lot, I think it’s time for us to go. Three or four more months!!
Over the weekend Josh and I finished revamping our living room. I actually really like the room now even though it’s still in our crappy apartment. I have “grown-up furniture” and things really came together. (I still need some gray couch pillows!) It’s nice to not have hand-me-down furniture. Josh was so thrilled to get rid of our old entertainment center. He took it apart in record time.
I had initially hesitated getting new living room furniture because we’re so close to house hunting. Now I’m so glad that we went ahead and did it. It will be nice to have real furniture to move into a living room. Plus it’s really nice to have a living room that I don’t mind being in!
For Christmas Josh and I decided to not buy each other gifts, to get a couch instead. His mom asked if we wanted them to chip in as our Christmas present from them. Yes, please! On Saturday we headed up to Ikea in Bolingbrook to pick it up. Luckily we were back before it really started to snow.
Right now we still have our old couch in the living room so things are kind of a mess. I’m anxious to get everything situated and get the rest of our new living room furniture. Ikea was running a special that if you bought an Ektorp couch (which we did), you got a gift card for 20% of the purchase. Josh and I are hoping to go back up in January and use that gift card!
I’m beginning to sound like a broken record when I talk about living in the apartment. It’s pretty much like one thing after another though… Friday night while playing the Wii we heard a knock at the door. The new downstairs neighbor and his dad came up to tell us our water heater was flooding the hallway and was creating a mini waterfall all the way downstairs. Well isn’t that just neat?
The guy’s dad turned off the water for us and they called the landlord. The new neighbor even vacuumed up the water in the hallway with his shopvac. Once the landlord got there I asked what was up. Of course, he acted like it was no big deal that WE DIDN’T HAVE HOT WATER. After he left we were pretty sure that it wouldn’t be fixed until after the weekend.
My dad to the rescue! He agreed that if he owned the building he would have gotten someone out there to fix it asap. He worked for two hours on that stupid water heater and pipe. Josh and my dad had to drain water in it, replace pipe, do something with a blowtorch…but they fixed it. I was so thankful for my dad and that he was willing to do that.
Josh called the landlord to let him know that my dad fixed the water heater. He got his voicemail so he just left a message saying it was fixed and to expect a bill for my dad’s time. I’m pretty sure that the landlord is going to be as happy as we are when we finally buy a house.
One of the things that I really hate about living in an apartment is that I end up disliking someone I don’t even know. We have a new neighbor that moved in below us last week. I haven’t actually spoken to him because he’s pretty much keeping to himself. But…I already didn’t like him before he moved in.
I loved not having anyone below us. (We haven’t had the best luck with people living in the apartment underneath us.) With the place empty, I didn’t worry about how much noise we were creating or my dog barking. I also didn’t have to hear anything from below like yelling or slamming doors.
The new guy seemed to be fairly quiet so I tried to keep any open mind. Yesterday morning, however, as his alarm went off from 6:15 until 7:15 I found myself not liking him so much. He also keeps his kitchen light on continuously. I want to tap on his window when I come home and say “Save electricity. Turn your light off!”. I don’t. And he must leave his TV on continuously because I hear it ALL the time (even in the morning while his alarm is going off!).
Honestly we have had much, much worse neighbors so I’m thankful. I think I’m really just ready to live in my own house. And I feel guilty for not liking someone that I haven’t even spoken to!
Knight Light had taken Saturday off so Josh and I went up to Ikea. We hadn’t been since April when we shopped for our bedroom. Although we weren’t getting anything major, we really wanted to look at certain pieces of furniture for the living room. Everything always looks different in person so we had to check it out to plan out the room. I had a list of items and we pretty much agreed on everything.
Josh and I always have a good time shopping together because we typically like the same type of things. Our big purchase on Saturday was five picture frames. As photographers, we should really have some of our work framed! Now I just don’t know how I’ll decide what to put in the others.
Yesterday was cleaning day at the Knight apartment. I definitely have been neglecting it for the past few weeks. It’s hard to want to clean the place when somethings you just can’t get clean. Living in such an old place with drafty windows and doors, makes dusting nearly impossible. Add in the cruddy carpet and basically within an hour of dusting, it needs it again. Yeah, that makes it a little discouraging.
But finally yesterday I got the motivation and luckily my wonderful husband agreed to help. Josh would ask me what he could do to help and away he’d go. He even cleaned the bathroom. What a guy. I always feel so much better after everything is clean. It makes starting my week a little easier.
