apartment living

Since the day I moved into my apartment, one thing that I hated most was my oven. It was probably over 30 years old and rather disgusting. The hardest part was that nothing cooked right. Even when making pizza, we had to rotate it halfway through because the back cooked faster than the front. Occasionally the kitchen would smell like gas because one of the pilot lights would go out. Although I informed my landlord of this over a year ago, nothing was done.

And then the most wonderful thing happened…my oven broke. Last Tuesday night I went to make some blueberry muffins. I put them in the oven and came back twenty minutes later. They looked exactly like they did when I put them in. Batter. When I opened the oven door I could feel that it was trying to heat up but obviously not doing a very good job at it.

Josh immediately called the landlord and said we needed a new oven. Much to my surprise, they showed up with one on Saturday morning. The new oven isn’t anything special. It doesn’t even have a light on the inside. BUT…it bakes things correctly!! I tried blueberry muffins again on Saturday night and it was like magic. Not only did they actually bake, they puffed up on top like they’re supposed to. That had never happened when I made them at the apartment.

Josh and I danced around the kitchen we were so happy. Now I am so excited to bake again. It’s been three years since I’ve really wanted to bake. The frustration of the old oven just made baking, even cooking supper not very enjoyable. This makes my crappy apartment just a little more bearable.

I suddenly feel the need to redecorate our living room. I think now that our bedroom is redone and I love it so much, I have to tackle the other rooms. Of course the living room is a little more difficult to tackle than our bedroom. Mainly because our furniture sucks in the living room, except for Josh’s Poang chairs.

If we redid our living room, we would need to get a new couch, new coffeetable, side table(s), entertainment center, storage for books… Yikes! I think the couch and the entertainment center would be the big ones. I could probably do everything else for relatively cheap.

We like this idea from Blueprint for a coffee table. Although I’m not sure that our living room is big enough.

I love doing the planning for these things. Maybe if I start planning (and saving) we could redo the living room this fall. The funny thing is that I don’t really feel like it’s redoing because it’s never actually been done!

Josh and I got a notice from one of his student loan providers last week. The notice was to inform him that he would have to begin paying back his loans next month. I logged into the website to check out what the damage was. I added the payments up and pretty much hyperventilated. Uh, the monthly amount was close to a mortgage payment. We can’t afford a real mortgage, how could we afford this!? Once I started breathing again, I realized we could consolidate a few of the loans together. This lowered our monthly payment but unfortunately it’s still a staggering amount.

After receiving this discouraging news, Josh and I started a month long experiment where we do not spend any unnecessary money. This means no trips to Old Navy, no new shoes (like these that I really, really want) and no bike stuff. We decided that we couldn’t completely cut everything out so we figure that if we’re near a Starbucks we’d allow a coffee or two.

Basically we just want to see where we are at money-wise. This new monthly payment seems daunting, considering that some months we don’t have extra money for anything. (But we do usually allow ourselves dinner out or new clothes here or there.)

The funny thing about all of this is that Josh and I aren’t crazy spenders. We don’t buy ridiculously expensive items and don’t spend money we don’t have. Most of my clothes are purchased from Old Navy on sale, I’ve never bought a designer purse in my life, and our furniture is either hand-me-downs or from Ikea. Our hobbies (bicycling and photography) can be expensive but we don’t go crazy with them even though we’d like to.

Honestly I’m not sure how most people do it. Sometimes I think people look at us and think that we don’t spend our money wisely. Do people think, “Why can’t they afford a house?”. Believe me, we can’t! About once a month I look at our budget to try to figure out where the extra money for a mortgage could come from. You can’t save money that isn’t already there, am I right?

Most days though I really like the idea of living more simply. What can I do with more stuff? Do I really need more stuff? What good will it do me? I also remind myself that not having a house has it’s benefits too. Why do I even need a house right now? I’d hate to move so soon after redoing our bedroom! And really we have enough room for all of our stuff. Things that I don’t have room for and don’t need that often (like Christmas decorations) is in storage at my parents. If something should break (like our stove), the landlord would have to replace it. (Even if it took awhile to get a new one…)

So in Josh’s words, we’re trying to be “fiscally responsible”. Really it can’t be that difficult to not spend money… I mean, I’ve got an awesome husband who I could just stare at all night and we have a Wii. What more do you really need?

Friday night Josh and I hung pictures up in our bedroom. I really had not wanted to do it because it’s so hard for me to figure out where to put everything. This was the scene:

I cut paper the size of everything and taped it on the wall. I rearranged everything about 20 times but finally got something I was happy with. Here is the finished wall but with room for growth:

There are notes on that picture in flickr that tells what everything is. I love, love everything on that wall.

Last week I talked about redoing our bedroom. Well Saturday…we did it. Yep, we redid the bedroom in one day. Friday night we bought the paint and new curtains. We also got new sheets to go with the comforter. We found bamboo twill sheets at Bed, Bath, & Beyond. Bamboo is a rapidly renewable resource that doesn’t require pesticides to grow so we were thrilled to get them. (And even though they’re only 230 thread count, they feel better than our 450 thread count sheets.)

Saturday morning after working on laundry and Josh mowed at my parents, we started to paint. I think the Menard’s guy gave me special one-coat-only paint because he could tell that I HATE to paint. We were amazed to see how well it coated especially considering we didn’t prime the walls. By 12:30 Saturday night we had the new curtains hung and everything back in the room. It helps that Josh and I are an awesome team. By the time we were done we were so giggly about the whole thing. I just kept thinking “uh yeah, I have an orange wall”.

You can see some before and after pictures on flickr. I don’t really have things hung on the walls yet. I’ve decided to not put anything on my orange wall. But my blue wall is just waiting for an awesome art collage that I’m planning. I’m getting some prints from Etsy and I’ve got some other things to hang up. I can’t wait!

Here is one angle before shot:

And after:

I absolutely love how it turned out. So bright and cheery… It just makes me happy to have a room that is actually us.

Be Brave, Not Beige

Last week I randomly suggested Josh and I should make a trip to IKEA. Josh was thrilled; you would have thought that I just told him he was getting a brand new bicycle. He was so excited that he spent the next 2 hours scouring the IKEA website. We hadn’t been in forever and after all this talk of redoing our bedroom…well, I decided we should go.

I’m not sure why so many people turn up their noses at IKEA furniture and such. I guess because it’s cheap. I really like the style of a lot of their stuff. I don’t care that it doesn’t cost that much. In fact, that makes me like it even more! Come on, let’s bring style to the masses. It’s like Target doing the designer clothes. “Design for All”…way to go, Target.

We made it in about two hours only going about 5 minutes out of our way after missing the I-355 exit. Watch out for that construction, folks. It was nuts. We arrived so excited to get in there and started! I’m always floored by just how big that place is. And it’s amazing the number of people coming in and out of it…it is so busy.

The first thing we saw when we got there was the Poang chair that Josh has wanted for 3 years. We hadn’t really planned on buying it but it was added to our sheet, just in case. I had brought a list of things I wanted to make sure I looked at, like the nightstands. By the end of the trip, we ended up filling our cart and one of those trolleys.

I was so excited to get these three little vases. They were $1.99 a piece and so very Jonathan Adler, don’t you think?

Got this little teapot for $4.99. So cute and much cheaper than anything I had found around here. It’s perfect for heating water for our French press.

We also got three Malma mirrors for $1.99 each. I got just the naked wood ones so I can paint them white or yellow and put them in our bedroom when it’s done. And a few other things I found:

We did also get our nightstands and Josh’s chair (which he had put together in like 10 minutes because he was so excited about it).

One thing I was very excited about is IKEA’s new “Bag the Plastic Bag” program. For 59 cents you can buy a flippin’ huge reusable bag instead of using plastic bags. The bag filled up the bottom of the cart…it was that big! IKEA is starting to charge five cents for every plastic bag you use. Instead we just bought one of the reusable bags. For the first year of the blue bag program, they are going to donate all proceeds to American Forests. I think I’m going to start taking that bag to Meijer with us and just have them put our groceries or whatever in that. I’m a big fan of IKEA’s position on environmental issues.

It was such a good day and we felt like we really got some cool stuff. I really am a big fan of IKEA. (Few more photos on Flickr.)

Since Josh and I are talking about staying in this crummy apartment for longer than we expected, I’ve been looking at a ton of home decor websites. I think maybe if we just paint some of the rooms we’d feel better about this place. (And now that my husband has a full time job we can afford paint!) I wish there was hard wood under the terrible carpeting (I’d just rip it out) but unfortunately it’s just the dust that used to be the carpeting padding.

So I’m thinking first I’ll start with the bedroom. It needs the least amount of work since we have real furniture in there. Yes, it’s actual wood furniture that was not bought on a garage sale or owned by an old lady who liked orange velvet. We do have one piece of furniture, a chair, that was bought on a moving sale but it’s actually not too bad.

I decided that I’m going to redecorate our bedroom completely based on this comforter from Anthropologie. No seriously, totally based on that duvet… I just love it and Josh likes it too. After looking at loads of comforters we finally just decided to order this one. It should be here in 5 to 7 business days!

On to paint…yep, we’re going to be rebels again. These are the colors we’re thinking. Blue on three walls and then an orange on the fourth wall. The yellow would be an accent color for pillows, decorations and such. Pretty gutsy, huh?

All of this talk about redoing our room made us decide to take a trip to IKEA this past weekend. I got two tall skinny nightstands for our bedroom redo among other things. (More on IKEA tomorrow…)

I am loving the wall colors we picked out. Now we just need to buy the paint and do it. Too bad I absolutely loath painting. I’m so excited about doing yellow and white as accent colors. It’s weird because just on Friday there were two posts about yellow on decor8. [color of the month: yellow and yellow interior inspiration on decor8] How’s that for timing? Here are some other things that are serving as inspiration for the room.

Magazine Tote – Crate & Barrel
Hemnes Bedside Table – Ikea
Sphere Pendant Lamp – West Elm
Dekad Alarm Clock – Ikea
Fly Wall Decals (white) – Blik
Zinc Letters – Anthropologie

I’m not sure what to do about art and such for the walls. I really love this picture with the large yellow canvas. (from Domino) That would be super easy to do.

To Get List for Bedroom:
- paint
- duvet from Anthropologie – ordered!
- throw pillows that coordinate – we did get two bright yellow pillows from IKEA but I might need to find a few more.
- material to slipcover chair and find amazing seamstress
- nightstand(s) – check!
- lighting for nightstands (maybe wall lamps?)
- new curtains – white?

You can bet I will definitely be documenting the process. I think our room is going to look completely different and I am SO excited.

“If you have two coats, give one away,” he said. “Do the same with your food.” -Luke 3:11 (The Message)

I recently came across this photoset on Flickr. This young couple and their daughter sold their affordable house to move into an apartment. They went from 1667 square feet to 382, simply to pay off their student loans. It made me think that maybe Josh and I could stay in our apartment for a little longer to try to pay off our student loans more quickly. It’s hard because I’m so ready to have a place of our own but I love the idea of having the loans paid off.

I’ve just been thinking a lot about our spending habits. I think we do pretty well. I mean, we don’t spend money we don’t have (usually) and we don’t go on huge shopping sprees. I do know that we could save more than we do. Sometimes I feel like we just spend money on stupid things. It’s especially hard because we’re trying to figure out how to swing buying a Nikon D200 which would be a good investment for Knight Light. What’s considered a good investment for Knight Light can be hard on the checkbook for Josh and Kimberly… It’s really hard to find a balance and it’s even more difficult when you’re starting a business and need a lot of things in the beginning.

Josh and I are having a garage sale in May at my parent’s. I really am excited about purging and maybe making a little bit of cash. We’ve been through our closets a few times but I’m definitely going to go through them again. Sometimes I feel like we have so much STUFF. Things that we don’t really need but we keep “just in case”. Maybe it’s time to go through things, live simply, figure out how to pay off our student loans sooner…change.

Do you ever have a funny story to tell someone but when you type it out or finish telling them you realize it wasn’t that funny? Josh and I always have these really random conversations that make us sound hilarious. However, when I go to repeat them or write them on here…well, they’re not that funny.

from What the Duck

Josh and I are shooting a wedding on Saturday. The weather is supposed to be beautiful although slightly cooler than earlier this week. I’m looking forward to the wedding because the couple seems like they’re pretty easygoing. It should be fun to take them outside and get some pictures.

Loving these design blogs: desire to inspire and decor8. I’m planning how I want to decorate the house that someday we’re going to buy. After having the county sheriff stop by our apartment building three times in the past week, I’m even more anxious to move out. That and the embarrassing, enormous pile of junk that has formed out back…well, it’s pushed me over the edge. So ready to get out of this junk-hole…

Josh and I had a goal for the weekend. Watch a movie on our new computer while laying in bed. Sounds silly, I know, but we were really excited about it. We’ve never had a TV in our room but now that our monitor is just slightly smaller than our TV…we figured it would be perfect. Saturday night about midnight we put in Little Miss Sunshine. We laughed because we were so excited to get situated in bed for the movie! About halfway through the movie Josh pauses it (because our computer came with a remote) and said he was hungry. I thought about it for a minute and said that we had never eaten in bed before so we ran out to the kitchen for a snack. As we climbed back in bed with our cookies and started the movie I told Josh that we had a whole new world opened up to us. Lucky for us, we get excited about the little things.