Apartment Update

It seems I've been neglecting Peasblossom for nearly the past two weeks! Shame on me. I've been ridiculously busy unpacking and organizing and somehow it seems like I haven't accomplished much. I haven't even really been knitting, let alone sewing... no where to put the sewing machine yet! Despite all the work, I still haven't finished moving into the apartment; I only have three boxes in the living room (plus two full of Curtis's things) and two boxes in the bathroom and then I can return all of the cardboard to my mom.

But at least the kitchen is all done! We even have clean dishes, as you can see on the right.

Last weekend Curtis and I renovated our closet. I wish I had taken a "before" picture. It was basically unusable. Our closet is a walk-in that is approximately 5' by 5' with the door (a single fold-out) off-center. Whoever lived here before us must not have had much in the way of closet-fillers, because he/she installed a single shelf at shoulder height (using a plethora of anchors and approximately 8-million screws and plastic clip things... a mega-pain to uninstall) along the left wall and the back wall. The way the shelf was set up, there was no where for folded clothes at all and Curtis couldn't even fit all of his hanging things up. There was absolutely no room for anything of mine... Everything I had was piled up along the wall in the bedroom.

Now we have five shelves along the left wall, two shelves with hanger rod things on the back wall, and a shoe organizer thing from Ikea on the right wall. [Pictures coming soon.] All of my clothes fit in the closet and Curtis gets the top hanger rod thing plus the dresser that is out in the bedroom. I am pleased. With that installed it really feels like I might actually be able to finish moving in. All of my knitting stuff and sewing things fit in the closet too, which is a much better place for them than in the hall closet. Now we can hang our coats up too. It's still kind of a mess in the bedroom closet, but at least the clothes have somewhere to go now.

We have a magnetic knife rack now and two towel rods in the bathroom (all installed yesterday). Curtis fixed the toilet paper dispenser, the smoke alarm (it had come out of the ceiling), the dining chairs, and the toilet seat.  We have one large load ready to go to Goodwill (a shelf thing, the shelves from the closet, two bags of clothes and knick-knacks we don't want/don't fit), and a medium load to go to storage/Curtis's aunt's house.

Other than unpacking and cleaning, I feel like I've spent most of my time in the apartment cooking. I've made a whole bunch of meals and tried several new recipes and made several tried and true ones.
- crock pot macaroni & cheese (new)
- french onion Salisbury steak (new for me, but mom has made before)
- black bean burgers (new, not all that successful)
- spaghetti bake
- stuffed bell peppers
- freezer-to-oven pizza (haha)
- brown lentil & pasta soup (new)
- lamp chops with Greek yogurt & mint sauce (new)
- baby argula salad with chevre and walnuts and vinegar-y dressing
Pretty good for $60/week for groceries for two people (went a little over for the lamb chops, which yielded no left-overs) and only having been here for about three weeks.

I'm going to go putter around the apartment and see how much I can get done in an hour. I'm pretty unmotivated (I don't get much done on Sundays, it seems) so I'll probably just get sucked into playing DDR again... best/worst present ever.