Category: At Home

Moving in.

Oh man. Here it is Thursday, and I’m getting out my first post of the week! Is it really Thursday? I don’t even know what day of the week it is. I know you guys will go easy on me, though, because other things have been more pressing… you know, like moving in, job interviews, grocery shopping, etc. I hope you really enjoyed the guest posts last week! If you ever make it out to CA, I hope you look us up or at least take some of their tips under consideration!

We should have wi-fi at our place early next week because it makes more sense to get signed up now (even though we remain jobless) than pay the same price in 3G overages on our iPhones. Yikes. The thought of it gives me cold sweats.

The drive was long and boring as I knew it would be, since I was alone (well, with Mosey) in the small car while Doug and his dad tag-teamed the big moving truck and trailer operation. Due to the trailer we made the whole trip (approx. 1500 miles) under 65 mph. That added on some time but I admit it helped my peace of mind knowing that our earthly belongings weren’t careening around the country at break neck speed–also we totally killed it on MPG. Here’s my protip for the day–if you really, really wanna save money on a cross-country trip, drive 60pm the whole time.

Here, some first glimpses of our apartment:

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Yes! It is seriously basic! Light brown carpet and white walls. All 824 sq feet of it. You know what? I am seeing this as a real opportunity to be taken. Let’s be honest: not a lot of design blogs have to deal with apartment-complex imposed restrictions. They either own their place and can do whatever they want, or have a really laissez-faire landlord (like I used to, especially when we lived in our loft) and pretty much get free reign.

I’m going to embrace these limitations! White walls and light brown carpet? Bring it on! Know what? The vast majority of people like me (early twenties, living in larger apt. complexes) have the same parameters we have now. And as my tagline says, I want to prove that any home can be made fabulous.

Here’s to the new phase! 

Two Flops

I would be remiss if I went around here on blogland and pretended that everything I try to do to beautify my space went 100% according to plan, 100% of the time. So, as a kind of “wrap up” of my final week living here, I thought I’d finally get around to sharing two things that I thought were going to be totally cool and turned out to be totally meh…

  • A gallery wall full of frames and postcards featuring places we’ve traveled or places friends have sent us back notes about:

I was going to jam-pack the hallway full of color and interesting things (described above). Part of this was because I was getting nagged about wall-items hanging around on the floor of the guest room (when we first moved in) and part of it was because I had a vision of awesomeness–I wanted to evoke a cool, eclectic bohemian cafe or something. Well, once we put some stuff up on the wall, we kind of reached a standstill because Hobby Lobby is about 100,000 miles away and I was working too much to think about shopping at the end of the day. Isn’t that  the irony of having a good job? You make more money that you’re too tired to spend?

Anyway, that’s where we ended up. Some cool stuff on the wall with some stupid awkward blank space. So when we decided to move out and the in-laws decided to list the house, instead I hung some rad art painted by my great-great aunt in the 1930s. So, still awesome.

  • Secondly, an awesome mini-dresser turned “landing strip.”

I nabbed this bad boy girl in Lawrence, KS for about $10 which made a very, very, awkward ride home for the person in the back seat (3 hours). The bottom drawer was in pieces so I decided to just chuck it altogether, and salvage the hardware to put into the top drawer. Let me tell you… this little dresser was filthy. I cleaned it with some hardcore chemicals and it still didn’t feel clean. I scraped about a zilion Hello Kitty stickers off of it, but my ultimate goal was to paint it anyway.

Finally, one day during a huge tornado warning we were stuck inside and I decided to crack open the paint cans. For a bit of fun, the drawers were painted teal and the outer was painted dark gray. And it looked fantastic! Then I had to go ruin it by filling in the scrollwork with gold paint. I hate how the gold turned out. I was going for a bright, brassy gold leaf effect and it totally turned out wimpy, cold, and pearlescent. Then I lost motivation and it brings us to where we are today.

I admit that it looks better in gray, but also that it’s half-finished and not worth the effort to move with us to CA. But, I’d like to point out that lacking one drawer does not need to be a death sentence for a dresser like this–it held shoes famously in the bottom section–a much better alternative to piles of dirty shoes clogging up the entryway. So I call this one a half-win, half-lose. If you live in town and want this, it’s up for grabs until Friday.

We’ve all been there–right? Got any stories of DIY-gone-awry? 

Don’t forget to like My Friend Staci on Facebook! 

Reflections on Yard Work

The most recent photo of our exterior

Living in the hacienda marked our first year of taking care of a yard of our own. So here are some reflections–including a few contributions by Doug as well.

  • Raking leaves is the worst.

One good thing about this winter is that it was comparatively mild. We didn’t get any blizzards or snowed-in days. Unfortunately, this meant that the leaves took forever to fall, little by little. Our street is filled with old houses and mature trees– this translated into LOTS of leaves for a long time, since each species of tree dropped leaves at different times. We must have taken a pickup-bed full of leaves to the dump at least five times throughout the fall and winter!

  • Mild winters are awesome

One–we didn’t have to buy a snow shovel since the previous tenants had left one in the garage. WINNING! Two–we only had to use the snow shovel but once or twice since the winter was extremely mild. I was expecting the worst since in February and March 2011 my car got totally buried a couple of times.

  • Doug loves mowing the lawn.

I’m so happy for this fact. If it were up to me, I’d mow once a month. However, beginning in March-April, Doug started mowing the lawn when he got home from work every Friday (to get it over with before the weekend). Being a sports buff, he liked mowing it on the diagonal to make it look like the sports fields he’s seen on TV since he was little. To mow our “back forty,” the section beyond the wire fence) he had to awkwardly/sneakily cut through the neighbor’s carport so he only mowed that every 2-3 weeks. That section of the yard isn’t used at all, and is mostly weeds, but chopping everything down to an even level every so often really made it look nicer.

  • Related to the above: Edging really makes a difference.

Chalk it up to laziness, but I never saw the reason Doug pulled out the weed-whacker every time he mowed as well. (Eventually, the edging was reduced to every 2 weeks–once it got ridiculously hot). Again, if it were up to me, I would not have edged a thing! Truthfully, I could tell a big difference after edging and I’m glad he took the time to do it (even if he had to buy two extension cords to get all the way to the sidewalk!).

  • Planting seeds works!!

Back in March, we were shocked when a bulb came up all on its own. So I got all excited and planted a few packets of seeds I picked up from Wal-Mart for just a couple bucks each. Much to my surprise, around May, flowers started coming up!! I had seeded really really heavily since I was suspicious of them being picked up by birds or not beginning to grow at all. Big mistake. I really should have put them down with more thought and purpose. Turns out, lots of them grew and eventually ended up crowding each other out. We had to pull out all the poppies in August since they were yellow and withered, and eventually pulled out the cosmos and zinnias too.

  • Mulch makes a big difference–at first.

You can read about our (not-so-exciting) mulching adventures here. The bed looked fantastic until the cosmos and zinnias went crazy, got insanely tall (the zinnias over 5 feet!) and the bermuda grass started coming back through as well. If we had taken the time to weed a few times a week, we might have been able to keep it at bay, but temps were regularly over 100 this summer–and didn’t cool down in the evening like this California girl is used to!! I was not going to spend time out there. Oh, and did I mention how my body overreacts to mosquitoes? No, thank you. I’ll stay in and let the bermuda grass come through.

  • Watering is a huge pain.

Growing up, my parents always had underground sprinkler systems (that they installed themselves!) that made watering a no-brainer. To be honest, I didn’t notice a huge jump in the water bill like I’d been expecting, but hooking up the hose to the sprinkler and moving it around the yard was a huge pain. Not to mention, forgetting it was on at all! Some sections of the yard really benefitted from our forgetfulness. Doug and I had a standoff regarding how much/often to water, and we eventually compromised with watering most days–but not until the sun had started going down. Being a drought-conscious SoCal girl, it is heresy to water during peak/daylight hours (but people in our town do it all the time!!).

Do you remember any impressions you had from the first time you had your own yard? I’m glad we had this experience but, honestly, it’s a relief that we’ll be moving into an apartment complex with professional gardeners!