Apartment Therapy January Cure: Assignment 3 - 10 Mindful Minutes

You know how at the end of a yoga practice, there are those 10 glorious minutes where you get to just lie there and take a little nap? That's sort of what this reflection was like. Granted, I didn't actually get the vacuuming done (surprise, surprise), but it was still nice to just sit and relax and think very specifically about one small thing.

For today's assignment, we are supposed to just sit somewhere in our apartment where we don't usually sit and think about that space from a new perspective. I sat right in my doorway, looking into my pantry. I actually spent most of it with my eyes closed because looking at it is sort of stressful. If you recall from my Assignment 1 post, it looks like this:

 
So instead, I imagined how it looked when I moved in and how I would like it to look.

Okay, really, I want it to look like this...

Maybe in a dark wood?

 ... but given some significant spatial and financial limitations, I think that is perhaps not very realistic.

I would like to get the cleaning supplies organized and the vacuum cleaner out of the way of the shelves. I would like the food to be organized and straightened up. Most importantly, I need to know what is actually in there, get rid of the old food, and make it easier to find what I am looking for. My spices are disorganized and I frequently come home with expensive bottles of spices that I already had or without the spice that I need that I thought was in the pantry, but wasn't. Right now, this space is just barely functional and it makes cooking more challenging.

You can't see it from the picture of my pantry, but the back and left of the closet is stuffed full of sweatshirts and coats and craft supplies (sewing mostly, but I have a light table back there too). To get to them, I have to climb over the pantry area at the front and crawl under all of the coats that are hanging up. It's a mess.

On the plus side, my flowers still look nice!

Apartment Therapy January Cure: Assignment 2 - Flowers & Floors

I had three assignments this weekend: buy flowers for the apartment, clean all of the floors, and stock up on cleaning supplies.

1. Buy Flowers
Arranging flowers is not one of my talents. When I have bought flowers in the past, I've always just bought a bunch of tulips and stuffed them in a vase. After reading Apartment Therapy's guide to picking out flowers from the grocery store (available here) I felt inspired. How did I do?

Besides the tips on how to pick fresh flowers from the store, there was also some advice for how to pick out a good combination: pick out the prettiest flowers you can find, something green, and something spiky, edgy, or slightly offbeat. For my main flower, I picked those purple fluffy ones. I thought the colors was really rich and pretty. Those leaves are my something green and the white flowers with all the petals in bunches are my something slightly offbeat. I also liked the white with the purple together, bright and colorful without being too summery.

2. Clean the Floors
Well, I cleaned the floors before Christmas...

I canned instead.

Lemon & Herb Garlic anyone?

I'll vacuum next week. Or at the end of the Cure. It seems like a lot of people prefer to do their floors last anyway. Maybe I'm one of those people?

3. Stock Up on Cleaning Supplies
I already had just about everything that I need, but I bought a scrub brush to scour my tub and some of Mrs. Meyer's surface scrub. I've never used her surface scrub, but I like her all-purpose cleaner, so I'll give it a shot.

I peeked at the Cure's agenda for tomorrow (calendar PDF here) and it looks like tomorrow is going to be pretty light in terms of workload. Maybe I'll vacuum then... Or try to get a jump on my schoolwork since tomorrow is the first day of my last quarter!

Apartment Therapy January Cure: Assignment 1 - Make a Project List

Okay. Every few months, Apartment Therapy does a "cure" program that helps guide you through updating your apartment's look, organization, or clutter in some way and ends with a party. I have signed up the last three? four? times and wussed out. I've been too busy, too cheap, too tired, or fallen too far behind on the program and given up, but NOT THIS TIME.

So, here it goes.

Date: Thursday, January 2
Today's Assignment: Create a Project List

Trouble Spots by Room
Highlighted problems are the ones I'm going to focus on fixing for this cure.

Hallway
- Nowhere to put stuff down when I come in
----- Solution: Apartment Therapy calls this a landing strip. I don't know. My apartment is tiny and the entryway is virtually nonexistent. I'm not sure how practical dedicating already limited space to a landing strip really is.
- Hall closet/pantry is a total disaster
----- Solution: This is the big one. I'm just going to have to go through everything. Organize the craft stuff that is stored in the way back and go through all of the food. I am really tired of this storage area not being usable. I suppose I could also take the packaging off of the wire shelves on the door.

The closet extends several feet to the left as well and is even harder to get to.

Kitchen
- Cupboards and drawers are unorganized
----- Solution: Organize cupboards. Throw out/donate food that is either old or I am never going to use. Tupperware drawer especially needs attention.
- Fridge and freezer need to be emptied, cleaned, and reorganized
----- Solution: Throw out old food, wash containers, wipe out fridge and freezer. Restock as necessary. 
- Tea collection needs to be organized
----- Solution: I need to get some nice containers for my loose leaf tea. Dust the shelves. Make labels for the tea. This has been on the mental to-do list for ages.
- Get hook for birdcage thing
----- Solution: Go to the grocery store and buy one of those sticky 3M hooks so I can hang up the birdcage topiary thing. Even though this is low-priority, it is so easy it will probably get done. We hope.

Dining Room
- Shelves underneath bar could be more organized
----- Solution: This is an "if-I-have-time" project. I need to go through my cookbooks and the small appliances that are stored here and figure out if there are better places for things or things I can get rid of. Also, I have a small shelf full of books on tape under here.. maybe a new home? It might also be nice to get a curtain or something to cover this area up... This area just isn't very nice to look at.
- Burned out light-bulbs
----- Solution: Replace light bulbs. There are two out in the overhead lighting.

Living Room
- Cable box needs to be set up
----- Solution: Get help moving shelves so I can actually plug the cable box in.
- Wires need to be organized
----- Solution: Get help moving shelves so I can actually organize the wires. This can be done at the same time that I get the cable box set up.
- Burned out light bulb
----- Solution: Replace light bulb. There is one out in the sofa back table lamp.
- Christmas stuff needs to be put away
----- Solution: For the decorations I need to buy some storage tubs (x3 for garlands, x1 for decorations and ornaments) and presents and stuff from my parents' house need to get put away.

Staircase
- Hang new frame from Pete & Britt
----- Solution: Make the paper art to go in the frame. Then I will need help actually hanging the frame.

Bedroom
- All the stuff on the far side of the room that is hidden by the bed...
----- Solution: Go through it and either put away or give away. There isn't that much really...And getting a new, sturdier and nicer bedside table would be fantastic. It's a really narrow space so I'll need to do some serious hunting to find something that will work.

Stuffed animals, iPad, clothes for Goodwill... Just needs tidying! A new bedside table would be nice too...

- Hang wooden art thing above bed
----- Solution:  Get picture hanging stuff (hooks and wire and nails) and get help hanging it.

That thing is currently perched on top of the bed frame.

- Do something about plants
----- Solution: Get the plants back from Mom and try not to kill them. Get a new plant for the small round container.

Bathroom
- Shelves could stand to be reorganized.
------ Go through shelves and throw out what I don't need or use and tidy up.

Eh, good enough... This project is on the long list.

Porch
- Tear out dead plants (dead from natural causes; I didn't kill these. They are annuals, I swear!)
----- Solution: I'm going to wait until it is warmer. It's cold outside. Then tear out the plants and see if Mom will help me pick out and plant new ones for spring.

To sum up, I want to organize the pantry, replace the light bulbs, hang up some art, and get the entertainment center fully functional and organized. Okay? Okay!

Wanna play along? Sign up for the cure HERE.

Apartment Therapy Style Cure: Day 2 (Weekend)

https://www.etsy.com/listing/117157676/peace-queen-annes-lace-looking-glass?ref=col_view

The weekend's assignment is to go out (or online if you're busy) and get some inspiration photos. In all their glory...

http://pinterest.com/kristinemarie54/style-cure-august-2013/ 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/97858571/set-of-three-seed-head-candle-lights?ref=col_view

I'll probably keep adding to this pin board through out the project, but this is what I've got now. You'll notice that there is jewelry and other non-home stuff on this board too. I figured I'd just pin anything that I liked and liked the idea of my apartment having a similar feel.

Let me know what you think :-)

https://www.etsy.com/listing/116079210/sugar-bowl-jar-aqua?ref=col_view

I'm also planning on updating my bedroom. Maybe not so much updating it as finishing it...

Apartment Therapy Style Cure: Day 1

I have been so busy I can't even remember the last time I posted here. (Apparently it was April. And then before that October...) I am still working full-time at Nordstrom and have accepted a second, part-time job as a librarian at a retirement community and I am in my last year of library school. I'm also trying to have some semblance of a social life... This past month has been especially challenging because of the Nordstrom Anniversary sale. Very exciting, but also means increased stress and increased workload for the reporting team. I am really looking forward to a morning where I wake up and the first thing I do *isn't* log onto my computer.

As a treat for myself and to help make my apartment a little more filled in and finished, I've signed up for Apartment Therapy's Style Cure. Apartment Therapy is a neat little website full of great ideas for your home, whether a teeny tiny apartment or three bedroom house. Every once in a while, they do these "Cures" that are essentially month-long intensives that help you focus on one or two problems in your home and fix them. Last January, the Cure was focused on de-cluttering and organizing your home. I was busy moving then and some of the steps were out of my budget so participating didn't really work out. This Cure has to do with finishing up those unfinished areas and working towards a unified style in your home. I'm looking forward to coming home to a more put-together space.

Each day, there is a new post from Apartment Therapy with instructions on what to do that day (or that weekend). Day 1 was pretty easy. I just had to fill out a little "style quiz". While some of the questions seemed a bit silly and I left blank (favorite restaurant?) I get that they were on there to help hone in on what style I really like best. I thought the most useful questions were focused on what rooms I already liked best. Anyway, here's the quiz and my answers:

• List your favorite in each category: (This part was tough! I don't really have favorites...)


• Actor: George Clooney?
• Actress:
• Artist:
• Writer: Connie Willis? Guy Gavriel Kay? Neil Gaiman? Jane Austen?
• Music: Singer-song writer?
• Restaurant: New places! Gastropubs especially.
• Automobile: Classic Bentley (Or, you know, anything from the first half of the twentieth-century that probably comes with a chauffeur...)
• Movie or TV Show: Downton Abbey? Buffy the Vampire Slayer? American Beauty? Bridget Jones' Diary? Pride and Prejudice? Dr. Who?
• Clothing:
• Furniture:
• Choose three words to describe your personal style.
• Clean lines, feminine & occasionally floral, classic
• Think back over all the homes you've lived in. Which rooms would you choose as your favorites and how would you describe them? 
• The basement in Walla Walla: cozy, organized, everything went together, distinct spaces, room to entertain, tidy, no "junk" just hanging out
• Whom do you consider a role model? What three adjectives describe the qualities that you admire in this person?

• Kate Middleton? Put together, Classy, Infinitely presentable
• Every home as areas that are "just right". Which three spots or things in your home do you feel are beautiful and feel proud of, right now, as is?
• Couch, sofa back table, votive candle holder, and mirror
• Porch (but maybe needs lights?)
• A month from now, at the end of the Style Cure, how would you like your friends to describe your home?
• Put-together and classy, but not stuffy and too formal. I still want people to feel like they can sit on the furniture.

I'll work on getting some Before pictures up here as well. Looks like I'll be doing some cleaning...

Spring Cleaning?

It's finally stopped being completely miserable in Seattle! The sun is shining; the sky is bright and blue; it is even warmer than 50 degrees. Curtis has been hard at work planting things in our urban garden (read: the 8 square feet of porch we have and part of the living room is covered in pots and dirt). He's already got beets sprouting and tomatoes, peas, thyme, chamomile, basil, and green onions are on their way! I'm hoping that next year we'll do some carrots too.

Alyssa went to Thailand and hung out with sleepy tigers.

My best friend Alyssa is graduating this May and until she figures out exactly what she's going to be doing (working, living, sleeping, eating, you know, basics) she's moving in with Curtis and me. I've already got the closet planned (Curtis and I are going to Home Depot later today to get all the stuff we need like support arms and.. screws.. I don't know what else yet) and I'm working on cleaning everything up so there is somewhere for her to land. She's going to be sleeping in my office so I need to get my school and craft stuff put away so she can actually move in. We're even getting a futon so when she's not sleeping on it, the room can be a hang out/work spot too.

What all of this really means is I've spent about three hours organizing my yarn and craft supplies (and I'm nowhere near done yet). I've updated my Ravelry stash page with photos and accurate information and I'm bagging, re-bagging, and de-bagging my yarn as per my new yarn strategy. I can't find my memory card for my little point and shoot camera (boo) so I've been using my new iPhone I got for Christmas (thank you Daddy!) to take pictures and I'm pretty impressed with the images it produces. I'm doing this the slow, more difficult way of course so it's taking me forever but it's nice seeing and touching all my pretty yarn! I'm hoping to get all of the yarn into one bin (plus the WIP (WIP = Work In Progress) basket)... but we'll see if that actually pans out.

ETA: Two bins required.

Strawberries!

Today Curtis and I went to the Strawberry Festival in Bellevue! Despite my sunburn, I had a lovely time.  There were all sorts of neat things to look at and live music and, of course, strawberries!  Curtis and I left with 12 pints of strawberries.  Not surprisingly, I am quite pleased.

We also got a caricature of us done (by Over the Line Productions). Since I forgot my camera (how could I possibly forget my camera?!?!) I think it's particularly fun to have. Check out Gumshoe Curtis and Femme Fatale Kristine!

I am a little uncertain as to the accuracy of our 1940's apparel, but whatever, it's still fun.

No camera also means I didn't get to take pictures of some of the things people were making for the festival.  I got a lot of neat ideas (without stealing others', I promise) just looking at the work that other people were doing. Knitted applique flowers on sewn handbags? I think so. Also, I've been thinking about making little knitted flowers to wear as hair accessories, but I wasn't quite sure how the best way to wear them would be. I was thinking of maybe wrapping them around bobby pins and gluing them in place (have I mentioned yet that I desperately want a glue gun?) but didn't think that was going to last very long. A woman at the festival knitted in a hair tie (rubber band thingy) into her flower. No glue, no pins, just a hair tie with a flower! Genius.

Apartment box countdown: 1 in the living room (small, full of cleaning supplies); 1 in the bedroom (small, full of things I don't know what to do with... my diploma??). That's it. So close! Curtis just has the curtain rod in the bedroom and a bathroom cabinet left to install and that's it! YouTube video of the apartment coming soon!

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.

New Apartment! (And Some Graduation Photos)

Here I am in Bellevue, huddled at my desk while the sounds of battle rage around me. Swords clash, guns explode, and everyone is shouting, grunting, groaning.

Curtis, supposedly trying to get some work done on his
accounting class.

Or it's Sunday and Curtis is playing some role-playing monster-defeating game on the PlayStation.

Either way, I'm mostly moved into the new apartment in Bellevue! I officially moved out of Walla Walla last Monday (May 23, 2011) and have been moving into the apartment since then. It's been a very, very long week. My mom came and helped me on Tuesday and we plowed through almost all of the boxes, but now I'm stuck with all of the things that I don't quite know what to do with. And the closet. It's sort of a disaster area, but it's obvious (to me) that a lot of progress has been made.

Also, as I'm sure you guessed, the blanket for the apartment that I hoped to have done so I could move in with it... not done. I'm hoping by July 4.

Once everything is set up, I'm going to try to make a little video of the apartment and I'll upload it to YouTube. For now, you'll have to be satisfied with these pictures of the mess.

Kitchen. The sink is in the middle of this island. Can you see it? Me neither.

Living/Dining area.

Living/Dining Area.

Front Door and Kitchen.

Bedroom. We now have a bed frame, bedside tables, and the nice bedding. New pictures later.

Bathroom. We desperately need some shelves.

I suppose I should also put some graduation photos up here, though I think my dad has most of them on his camera. But here I am, in all my graduation glory:

Whitman! Here's to You!

I'm the hat second from the right.

I'm the hat second from the right. Again.

Aaaaaand.... Diploma!

So that's all my news for the past two weeks. I've been packing and cleaning in Walla Walla (I get my whole deposit back!), graduating, and unpacking and cleaning in Bellevue. I'm sure there will be more graduation and apartment pictures soon.