Just a bit stir crazy

As anyone with a internet/cable/newspaper/not living under a rock knows, the federal government is shut down.  Since I work for the Federal government I was deemed "non essential" and have been sitting at home since October 1st.  I had never had a stay at home vacation so I was a little excited at the beginning to be able to do some house stuff as well as stuff that I always wanted to accomplish once I had more time.  The one catch was that Federal employees didn't know if we were getting paid during the shutdown or not, so I wanted to make sure that I was being fiscally responsible while still getting some things around the house done.

I definitely have fallen into a bit of a routine: wake up, read in bed, watch the news for a couple of hours, try to be productive, then go back to TV and catching up on shows then eventually figure out what to make for dinner out of things I already had on hand - I'm currently determined to not go to the grocery store while we are shut down (I did go to a market to get fresh produce, have to be healthy!)  I managed to clean the house, including cleaning out the fridge, vacuum, work on organizing my room, decorating for Fall and Halloween, and reorganizing the bathroom.  Needless to say, I'm going slightly stir crazy - there's only so many times I can vacuum such a small apartment, but I haven't resorted to watching soap operas yet!

During the shutdown you can definitely tell that this city bans together, there's a certain "us against the world" for those of us who are furloughed.  Walking around the city there are countless restaurants and bars that are offering discounts and deals to anyone with a Federal Employee ID, many of those same places that are offering discounts to employees also charge Members more for their meals :)

When I moved here I didn't expect to find a great sense of community however I have been greatly surprised that there is a huge sense of community.  The bonding together of those of us who are furloughed and the business owners trying to help ease the burden is astounding and absolutely wonderful.  Even though I'm going stir crazy I know I'm not the only one and that sense of community keeps me reassured.  I never thought I would be able to write about the bond of community in this large city that I moved to a little over two years ago, but while this shutdown is awful for a number of reasons, the silver lining is getting able to see the great community that Washington DC really has to offer for all it's residents.

 (Because remember the people that shutdown the government don't actually live here...)

Cardboard, Duct tape and scissors

While this next project is certainly not the prettiest thing I've ever made, it makes an order-loving person such as myself smile.

Let's start with the problem:

See how if you wanted anything behind the closed doors of storage, you would more then likely make something fall and/or jump out at you?

Well, after searching a multitude of stores (Ikea, TJ Maxx, Homegoods, Target, etc...) for a small basket or something to help me corral the mess to no avail, I decided to take matters into my own hands and make a basket out of cardboard (from my Ikea shoe storage purchase) and some leftover colored duct tape (from labeling moving containers) and create and organization basket for the bathroom cupboard.

I started by measuring the space which ended up being 7" x 21"  And immediately went to work cutting out my cardboard for a basket.  I tried to use the bendable sides and corners that were already in the box I was cutting up.  This resulted in 4 pieces of cardboard that I Frankensteined together to create my base.  (This is where I later discovered I immediately went wrong.  I forgot to compensate for the thickness of the cardboard which meant that the basket ended up being almost 1/2" too big for the shelf.  Luckily the shelf has an open back so I could manipulate it enough to make it work Tim Gunn style.)

Next I said to my self, "self, you should totally create compartments so everything can have it's own space and then when you move something nothing will collapse or shift"  So I ended up cutting pieces of cardboard for dividers.  Now, this is where if you were even more detail-oriented then myself, you would take everything off of your shelf, put it in the cardboard box and move it around so you know where every divider should go.  I wasn't feeling that step, so the only thing I measured was my contact solution so I would know that a bottle of it would fit in one of the sections.  The rest of it I made up on a whim.

I used two different bright colored duct tape because 1) it's what I had, 2) I ran out of pink after doing the entire outside so I had to move onto orange, 3) no one will see it unless they open my cupboards.

And here's the final product being put to good use!  It cheers me to no end since I can now find everything with out digging through the mess and having random toiletries jump out at me.

I absolutely love all the function it offers and the fact that it was entirely free to make!  Now, I just have to wrangle the extra bath towels as well as make everything on the open shelves look pretty.  I'll keep you updated!

Small tweaks courtesy of Ikea

**I was not paid or perked by Ikea to write this post, I just love Ikea and was excited about my purchases to add some more pretty function to my small abode.

When I moved out to DC about 2.5 years ago I didn't bring a car with me and in the 2.5 years I've lived here I've gotten along pretty well without a car.  But something I've learned about not having a car is that when you hear one of your friends is going shopping with their car you immediately ask if you can go with them (only if you like the location they are going).  When my friend mentioned that she was planning on going to Ikea and then some outlet malls I jumped on that like white on rice and asked if I could accompany her on the excursion.

I looked through the Ikea catalog online, measured spaces in my apartment and then created a shopping list using Ikea's shopping list feature on their website (I am obsessed in love with lists).  We managed to go early on a Saturday morning so we also splurged and got breakfast there. Yep, I know how to party.

An hour and a half later we left Ikea, and I was immensely proud of spending only $60, especially since I only get to Ikea once every 6 months or so, so I tend to stock up when I do go.  Here are a few updates to my place featuring some of the things I bought at Ikea:

First up, I really, really needed to organize the clutter on our table.  The table is in our entry way/living room/pantry/only space to hang out and it has become a dumping ground for mail and a bunch of other stuff that makes a neat freak like me want to scream every time I see it.

 Luckily I found these Kassett magazine folder, at Ikea 2 for $3.99.  Good, easy solution for under $4?  Yes please!  I got to label both of them, one for me and one for my roommate Katie.

Next up, also in the entry way/living room/pantry/only space to hang out, was our shoes.  Being two young women in one apartment we have a ridiculous healthy amount of shoes between us.  I have brought these wire racks with me from my first place in DC and have always hated them and hated how cluttered they make the entry way look.  I could ignore it in our last house since as soon as the door was opened it was behind the door - here it just screams "DISORDER & MESS!" Anyone else hear it? No? Just me?

 At Ikea, I wasn't sure what I was going to find but I know I needed to find something because I was sick of our shoes being all over.  Luckily, when I was in Ikea my friend and I spotted this shoe cabinet, Bissa, after considering some recycling bins that I thought could work - but this was so much better.  At $24.99 it wasn't too expensive, and after living with wire shelves for over 2 years, I was ready to commit.

  So much better, right?  I love how it also provided a table top space to relocate the key bowl, sunglasses and a happy plant (which I may need to water) so I could free up space on our mail dumping ground shown above.  It's so beautiful and fits both of our shoes really well.  I can see us having issues with tall boots in the Fall, but to be honest, the tall boots didn't work in the wire shelves either so I'll just have to live with those laying out - or maybe tucked to the left of this beautiful guy.

Side note: I love the shoe holder so much that I would love to use a few of them in the bottom of my closet to wrangle my shoes, instead of cheap plastic bins like these, which I like but Bissa is so much prettier!

Pillow Problem

I can totally admit it.  I have a pillow problem - if you look at the post on curtains, you maybe counted 7 pillows on my bed.  Yes, I love pillows and I love sinking back into them and burying myself in them while reading a good book. I have had a pillow problem for about as long as I can remember (my dad was not amused that he had to help me pack 5 pillows for my tiny dorm room for my first day of college.

But, getting back to the point, I love pillows and I wanted to recover my family room pillows.  The year before, my roommates and I decided to do a Maroon and Gold color scheme to honor the University of MN Golden Gophers, since we were both Minnesota natives.  This time around we decided we want to go a bit more "girly" because there were only two of us (both females) in the apartment.

First step was getting the fabric, washing it, ironing it (which I always hate doing, but have enough experience to know that it makes a difference) and then drape it over the couches to see what colors I wanted with what.  Now, I bought the fabric so that it had the same color palette so it could, theoretically all go together.  But since I have different sizes of pillows I wanted to see what worked best.

The Winning Combinations:

And, just for fun - the combinations I tried but didn't like as much

I got my materials ready, and then my sewing machine broke - womp womp.  Then I took apart my sewing machine, cleaned out the broken thread as well as ordered jean needles to get through the thicker uphostery fabric and tried again.

 I first sewed the hems, so I would have nice clean edges

 Then I folded it into a envelope - I wanted to make removable pillow covers so I could wash them if needed.  After folding it then I sewed the two raw edges to make a pillow case. (here is is inside-out and folded, ready to sew)

Flipped it back so the nice side was out, and had some pillows:

I actually ended up covering 11 pillows but apparently only took pictures of these four, I'm sure the other 7 will make appearances in upcoming posts!

Not everything goes as planned

There I was, sitting on my couch in front of my sewing machine. I had washed and ironed my fabric and talked with my roommate about fabric combinations. I cut out the fabric for two pillows and pinned the first hem. 

I then started to sew. "Whir click click errrr..." Not the right noises at all. This happened a few more times before realizing that I was getting no where fast and becoming increasingly frustrated. 

Decided to call it quits for the night and then began to tackle it the next day. An hour or so later with my machine in pieces. I discovered some pieces of thread that were probably the stem of my problem and managed to clean them out with a combo of seam ripper and tweezers. Since this took another 2 hours I decided to end my evening with my machine in pieces. 

On the third day I managed to put my sewing machine back together (although it took a few tries) without any leftover screws! 

Needless to say, my pillow project is taking a lot longer then expected. All in all I've spent over 4 hours on this issue when I thought I would be sewing pillows. Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow, with my functioning sewing machine, and some finished pillow cases!

Anybody else went to tackle an easy project only to find out you had to repair something, delaying your project?

Bright Sunshiny Day

Most people, myself included, absolutely love bright sunlight.  However, in my last apartment my bedroom was in the basement and the two windows faced west.  Imagine my surprise when the first morning in my new apartment I woke up at 6:30am to a sun-filled room and completely unable to fall back to sleep!

I quickly realized that I would need to update my room with curtains in order to block the sunlight in the wee hours of the morning, and then I would be able to sleep past 6:30am (I don't function well at that hour).  Curtains should be easy, right? right.

Anyone who has shopped for curtains knows how untrue that statement I just typed is.  Curtains can be expensive and there are a ton of options and places to look for them.  After much blog reading as well as pinterest looking I decided to use tablecloths from Target as curtains, discovering them to be much cheaper, washable and they added a nice texture into the room.

After buying the tablecloths, curtain rod and curtain rings with clips (in order to attach my curtains with no sewing needed.  I recognized the second part of my problem.  My ceilings are incredibly high, I'm talking at least 10 feet, closer to 12ft. I know, I know, everyone wants that in their abode - myself included.  What you fail to realize is that being a renter, and having zero closet space in all 3 of my rentals I have failed to acquire a ladder, so how was I supposed to hang my curtains?  Ingenuity. (note: I do not in anyway endorse my method for others, since it's not the safest option out there - I just tried to use what was available to me)

This is my window before I did anything to it, with my supplies on my bed and all my pillows off.  Note the gigantic window, and even though it's the afternoon the sun still streams in.

 In my last place my windows, ceiling and floor were not level at all.  While this made for some great office chair racing, it meant whenever I tried to hang something in my last place it always looked crooked, so this time I made sure my window was fairly level before proceeding.  Also, I was too short to actually see the level so getting this shot meant holding the camera above my head and crossing my fingers.

This is where the ingenuity comes in - I grabbed the ottoman from the family room and put it on my bed platform (my bed is higher up because it has drawers under it) and used this method as a makeshift ladder.  You can see the level up at the top!

The part that wasn't pictured was me using a tape measure to measure 3 inches down from the top of the molding and marking the screw openings with pencil on the molding.

The reason I screwed directly into the molding is because in my last house the walls that I tried hanging curtains on were solid brick with plaster spread directly on top of them.  I didn't have the tools to drill into brick, nor did I want to put unnecessary holes in my walls to see if it was brick underneath.  

 Note: make sure your drill is not in reverse!  I accidentally stupidly switched it to reverse and then had a screaming fit with the drill when I couldn't hang up a bracket for longer then I'd like to admit before finally figuring out what was wrong...

 I was trying to abide by the rule of curtains espoused on other blogs "high and wide" but I didn't want my curtains at the top of the ceiling because that would be a lot of curtain, and my tablecloths were that long.  So I hung them as high as my arms could reach and then extended the curtain rod for the "wide" part.

 I'm also going to encourage everyone to iron their curtains before hanging them up, I hung up one panel and realized it was waaaaaaay too wrinkly and had to take it down to iron -- this is one place where ironing matters.

Yes, the curtains are short.  Right now I like them that way because they don't get all tangled in the pillows while sleeping.  Perhaps I'll decide a bit further down the road that I want longer curtains.  But these were $14/tablecloth and do a great job of blocking out the sun, so I'll stick with them for now.

And that's my latest update to my room - that I've wanted to do since June.  It not only makes it look better and homier in the room but it also allows me to sleep in much later on the weekends.  Win-win situation for everybody!

House Necessities

My friend will soon be embarking on living in his first apartment that he needs to furnish by himself.  It's a one bedroom apartment and we were talking the other day about the "necessities" versus the "wants" and I decided to help him out by creating a list (room by room) of what I think is necessary/definitely want to start with in a new place and what he might want to take awhile longer to acquire.

BEDROOM

Needs	Wants
Mattress	Nightstand
Pillow	Lamp
Sheets	Bed Frame
Blanket	Dresser
Trash can	Hamper
Hangers	Chair
	Desk

BATHROOM

Needs	Wants
Shower Curtain/liner + shower rings	Towel hooks/ extra towel bars
Toiletries (shampoo, soap, toothpaste, band aids, medicine, etc)	Over the toilet storage/other storage
Towel	Extra bath towels and hand towels
Soap dispenser
Trashcan
Bathmat

KITCHEN

Needs	Wants
Pots and Pans - baking sheet, 13x9 inch pan, skillet, saucepan/pot	Toaster
Plates, bowls, cups/glasses, utensils, coffee mugs	Coffee Maker/ French Press
spatula, mixing spoon, whisk, can opener, measuring spoons, measuring cups, corkscrew/bottle opener, sharp knives	Blender
Microwave	Crockpot
Table and chairs for eating areas	Muffin tin, other sizes of baking pans and cooking skillets/saucepans
Trashcan and recycling bin	Food processor
soap dispenser	Mixer/ hand held mixer
Dishrack or dish drying mat	Specialty glasses: wine glasses, shot glasses, beer pints, etc
Cutting board

LIVING ROOM

Needs	Wants
Seating	Couches and armchairs
	Tv stand/ entertainment center
	TV/dvd player/ xbox
	Storage ottomans
	Bookcase
	Lamps/ lighting

MISC.

Needs	Wants
Vaccuum, Swiffer, Broom and dust pan	Decorative items (ie throw pillows, candles, blankets, etc)
Toolbox - hammer, screwdrivers, pliers, level, wrench, allen wrenches, scissors	Artwork
Duct tape, masking tape	Area rugs
3M hooks/ hanging materials
Ironing board/iron
Clorox wipes and window cleaner
Paper towels
Variety of batteries (AA, AAA, etc)
Extension cords and power strips
Extra light bulbs

This is more of a preliminary list - any one else have anything to ad?  If you were moving into a new place what couldn't you live without?

Color, Color, Color

In the attempt to move farther away from the college years of unframed posters, I'm desperately grabbing for a room/apartment with a cohesive color palette to work with in order to establish a cohesive concept.

The first one that has appealed to me is this palette, "Eroded Brights" from design-seed.com

It's bright, fun and just a touch girly, which is fine since I have a female roommate.  I think combined with some silver and black it's more mature but not too reserved/mature, we are only in our early/mid-20s

My second choice would be this palette, "Pear Brights" also from design-seed.com

Still nice and bright but slightly more gender-neutral when it comes to the overall palette - pretty easy to tell that I gravitate towards blues, huh?

The goal would be to have this overall color palette in the family room and then carry aspects of it throughout the kitchen and bathroom so the spaces all flow together instead of being choppy.  I don't need my apartment to feel any smaller then it actually is!

What do you think?  Too bright for you? More neutrals?  Remember I'm working with a very neutral apartment base, so these will be more in fabrics and accents that I choose (hoping not to paint too many walls since that will be a pain to repaint whenever I move out...)

Unpacked at last!

Finally got all the tubs and boxes unpacked so here are some photos for you to enjoy.

Essentially this is the apartment at "stage 1"  I've figured out (more or less) where to put all the furniture and the basic layout of everything and will start to tweak and improve upon what I have.

My Bedroom

Kitchen - hard to believe I got all the dishes to fit!

Family Room (excuse the darkness, there's no overhead light and I shot these at night)

The Bathroom

Again, I'm working with only what I brought with me so nothing new has been acquired yet.  Still working on figuring out what to buy or DIY to save a pretty penny :)  But really, right now I'm just celebrating the fact that I have no more boxes to unpack!

Gotta love a list

Taking a page out of Young House Love's book, I decided that in order to help me focus I should come up with a room - by - room list of things to accomplish or what I would like to do with each room.  Since I am a renter I can't do any major changes ( I would like my security deposit back), but here are my plans for making the apartment my own, and still getting my deposit when I move:

The Family Room

• Hang Curtains - I have curtains I would like to use, I just need to hang them
• Build/create a bar area
• Devise a better pantry system - since there's very little space in the kitchen our pantry and food storage needs to be in this room
• Baskets for blanket storage - instead of the (clean) trash cans I've been keeping them in
• Slipcover for sofa and arm chair
• Recover pillows
• Gallery wall
• Add some plant life

The Kitchen/ our "Galley"

• Spice storage above the burners of the stove
• Storage above the fridge (shelves?)
• Storage above the washer/dryer
• Organize under the sink
• Go through dishes (again) to create more space to move some food storage to the kitchen
• Paint the back wall or stencil?
• Add some type of back splash

The Bathroom

• Paint the walls - when I first saw this, the other renters had painted it a wonderful blue so I was sad to see the tan
• Devise some sort of towel storage
• Hang shower curtain high (and get new, taller shower curtain)
• Hang art
• Above toilet storage

The Balcony

• Add lighting, perhaps solar lights?
• Seating is a must, currently scouring Craigslist for wicker furniture that is in need of some loving
• Rug
• Outdoor coffee table
• More plants

*I haven't forgotten the bedroom, but I'm attempting to whip up an inspiration board and take a better "in progress" picture to convey some of my ideas.

So who else has a list of what needs to be done around their place?  Any other renters out there who struggle to make their place "homey" while still getting their deposit back?  

Blank Slate

Moving day finally happened, it's here and boy did everything move quickly!  From the time everyone showed up to the time we were all sitting among boxes in the new place eating pizza was a little under 3 hours!

More on the Moving story later but for now I wanted to show you some "blank slate" pictures of the apartment.

When you walk in you are immediately greeted by a large family room with a wood burning fireplace and a door that leads out to the balcony.  Right now I'm thinking that the nook to the left of the fireplace will be perfect for a bookcase and the nook on the right will be great for the tv (the cable hook up is also there)

This is the other side of the family room.  Currently I'm thinking of a big gallery wall on that large white space.

Here you can see a picture of our front door as well as the hallway off the family room.  The first door on the right leads to the kitchen, the second door to the bathroom and the door at the end of the hallway is one of the two bedrooms

We are affectionately calling this kitchen the galley because it is so tiny - the door to the fridge doesn't even open all the way.

Second half of the kitchen, yes kitchen storage will definitely be an issue, I'm looking forward to that challenge.

Bathroom - again, not a ton of storage but not a tiny size like the kitchen

 Bedroom 1

Closet and door of bedroom 1

Bedroom 2 - apparently I needed the flash to be on...

Closet and door of bedroom 2

Outdoor Balcony - quite large and spacious

Other half of outdoor balcony.  Con of the balcony - that black metal floor is going to get really warm in the summer, time to look for an outdoor rug!