Haiku

I'm still alive, just
Busy making adjustments
Without internet.

Inspirational Design!

Www.ApartmentTherapy.com is one of my all-time favorite blogs.  I was introduced to it when I started working at my company, because the site has featured our products several times (like here and here if you are interested).  Basically, it's a blog that features inspirational design, DIYs, good use of color, etc.  They also focus a lot on space-saving solutions, which is obviously a concern for most apartment dwellers.   Anyway, so I am making a BIG move in the next few weeks.  I am going from a condo, where I fully furnished and filled my bedroom, living room and kitchen with stuff.  I am moving into a one-room studio, and if it’s 250 square feet I will be surprised.  The studio is very nice, newly remodeled and in a good area, and I am just relishing the idea of living alone.  But, besides being small, there is hardly any storage room! I have no access to a garage, or even a deep closet (like I have now) so I am trying to be extremely strict with myself in downsizing my possessions.  The idea of surrounding myself with ONLY the things that I cherish and truly love is so appealing to me, but proving to be difficult!  So, today I turned to apartmenttherapy.com for some inspiration.

 

This studio in Santa Monica is bigger than my place is going to be (if you can even imagine that!) but the woman that lives there did a truly WONDERFUL job with not only space planning, but with her use of color and minimizing her stuff.  Nothing there looks cluttered or overwhelmed.  I can only hope that I will be able to minimize like that!  Not surprisingly- it's the top rated house tour on the whole website (and they feature one a day!)

 

This house in Austin, though not similar to my situation in terms of space, is my DREAM color scheme.  I LOVE the white/green/orange/yellow that she used.  Love love love.  I also love how she took the pattered material from the table by the window and then has 2 picture frames framing the same material across the room.  It is a great use of repetition- but I don’t think I could ever do it.  I have so many pictures that I would rather hang- and I don’t want to cover every single inch of the wall!

 

So, I hope I will be able to get to this level someday.  Until then, I am ruthlessly categorizing my stuff into 5 categories:  KEEP, SELL, DONATE, STORE IN PARENT’S ATTIC and GIVE TO FRIENDS.  

My fun Saturday Night :(

Saturday afternoon I was minding my own business, in bed reading an amazing book (called The Shell Seekers) when I get a call from Bret.  I answer and he said "can you come over and take care of me?" and I thought he was just being a baby so I was like, yeah ok sure, do you want frozen yogurt too? (I wanted some for myself, so I thought I'd offer).  So I went to get him froyo, and went to his house.  I go in and low and behold, Bret is sprawled out on the couch, with his whole left arm covered in ice packs.  I asked what was wrong and he said he fell playing basketball that day and felt it pop and now even the slightest move hurts like hell.  His mom (who used to be a chiropractor) was in a movie and couldnt get back for 2 more hours.  As soon as she got home, she looked at it and immediately called Bret's dad (who is also a chiropractor) and talked it over with him, and they decided Bret needed x-rays.  LUCKILY I didn't have to take Bret to a hospital- we just drove to his dad's office in Santa Monica and Rick (Bret's dad) met us there and took the x-rays.  He took tons of "pictures" as he called them and concluded that Bret broke one of his forearm bones and will have to get a cast this week :(  I feel sorry for him but the Big Baby is milking it for ALL ITS WORTH!  "Suuussiiieeeee can you make me some teeeeaaa???  It hurts too much to get up."  Good thing I love him!

And yes, he made me feed him his froyo since he couldnt hold the bowl himself.  Such a baby :)

Tahoe!

I tried to upload pics of my Tahoe trip, but YET AGAIN it didn't work.  So, no pics.

Long story short:  Weather on Saturday was perfect and we had an amazing day, complete with a gondola ride and cocoa on the gondola sky deck!!  It snowed like CRAZY on Sunday so we quit early and Bret and I went to Harrahs and gambled.  He lost all his money in craps and I slowly lost $20 playing slots, but it took me like 3 hours to lose so it was actually almost fun.  On Monday it was snowing again but it wasn't very cold, so we toughed it out, to be blessed with about 1 hour of beautiful sunshine.  As soon as we went in for lunch it started snowing like crazy again so we called it a day around 1pm.  It was snowing so hard we couldn't even see 30 feet in front of us.  Monday evening Bret and I flew from Reno back to LA.  Taking off, we had really bad turbulence and I almost lost my MIND.  It was SO SCARY!  But, it was fun flying into LA for the first time since I've moved here.  Now I know what everything was that we were flying over, and I even saw my apartment (literally the last building you fly over before you are over the airport- pretty nuts!).

If maybe someday figure out how to upload photos to this thing, I will show you some of the amazingly beautiful pictures.