Making Home!

Home! That has been the primary topic on Kristin's and my mind this past week. Pretty soon our focus will have to turn to different things: Kristin will be Learning (and Teaching), and I will be Job Hunting and Networking. But for now, we are happy to be spending our energies on our living space.

Unpacking was the first and most difficult portion of our work. We did our best to not only maximize our space, but to also pack things in a logical way. I think we might have been a little naive from the outset; unpacking took a lot longer than we initially expected. Had we less time to work with, I think we would have been more comfortable cramming things into crannies. But, because we had the time and because we wanted to get it right the first time, we've spent about a week and a half arranging and rearranging our furniture. We've done our best to keep the living room and bedroom simple. We've maximized the closet space in our 2nd bedroom/office, and we have compromised on the closet space in the master bedroom. (Honestly, I'm just happy to have my wardrobe in the same room that I wake up!). In all, we have one of the best problems a couple can have: we have more furniture than we need. So, we have no worries about being under furnished, but, just yesterday we had to make a mercy run to Goodwill to give ourselves some elbow-room.

Now, you might be surprised that after detailing our problems with 'extra' furniture, we've actually made to (rather major) purchases since we moved our stuff in on the 13th. Our first purchase was a headboard for our bed. It's something that we've wanted for a long time. Luckily there was a small, mom 'n pop, furniture store just a couple miles away from our apartment that had the perfect headboard for us. It has a nice dark wood 'board' with black slats that attached pretty well to our frame. As an additional bonus, it also fits a Queen, so if we ever decide to upgrade, we aren't out another $120. The only bad part was that our bed frame was a bit low, and after attaching the board, the back wheels would not rest on the ground. We didn't want all of our weight to rest on the headboard, so we went out and purchased some booster cones for the bed. We are very happy with the result. The headboard and taller bed makes our bedroom look much more adult and less 'college'.

Our second purchase was quite a bit bigger: We bought a Sofa, along with a Coffee Table and two End Tables. A couch is something that Kristin and I have looking into for some time now, and with our new apartment, it was a very real necessity. Before deciding on our couch, I think we visited about five or six different furniture stores. There is an interesting dichotomy between the outlet places and the show-room places, but, honestly, the prices weren't that different, and we had our best luck at an Ashley Home Furniture store. We found a couch that was small enough that it wouldn't dwarf our living room but long enough to lie down on. One that was firm enough to sit up and read a book but also comfortable enough to really relax on. We deemed ourselves very lucky in these regards. Lastly, it's color is a pleasant beige with green undertones. It is a lovely muted tone that works very nicely with yellows and browns (heck even a Maroon might work with it...). Oh yes, and the coffee table has a wonderful two layer appearance that tapers at the bottom: kind of like a larger rectangle suspended over a smaller rectangle. The end tables are pretty much the same thing, but we are going to be using them as night stands in the bedroom to maximize our living room space.

Ok wow, so a lot of info there, but I think that you can see that we are very excited by our recent furnishing work.

Alright, once we got the bones of our structure up, we finally got to enjoy filling in the gaps. Art, photographs and pottery are great for fleshing out both tight and wide spaces. The kitchen has been receiving a lot of attention: We've found excellent ways to display some of our collected paintings and pottery on the walls and in the open cabinets. Luckily, the Kitchen has a lot of space for both cooking and eating (very different from our last place). We recently converted our old DVD holder into an open tea cabinet, and we have our tea pots and other pottery displayed in the open cabinets right above it. Sadly, I don't think we'll have as large of a pantry to use, but the appliances are nicely sized, and found room for all of our pots and pans!

Overall, we have been trying to make this place feel like home. And it a lot of ways, we've made a great deal of progress on this one. However, it never feels like you are done till all of the options are exhausted (or at least discounted). I think we've still got a ways to go until we are satisfied, but we are, at least, on the 'home' stretch. :)

Alright, I think I've just about covered our indoor adventures. As for outside the home, I think we'll have to save that for another post. Thanks for reading! We are truly blessed to have the encouragement and support. Thank you so much for your time, energy and love. If there is anything that you want to hear about, please leave a comment!

DJC