Arghh.

I got dressed this morning and put on a brand new mail order shirt that is super cute and I feel cute even though my sinuses are killing me and the last thing I want to do is go to work. I feel so cute I decide to go the extra mile and curl my hair and put on make-up. I recently ordered some lipstick samples from my favorite make-up catalog so I could find THE perfect color. Well I go to open one of the samples and as I peel back the foil the lipstick splatters all over me and my new shirt! It kind of exploded out of the wrapper. What?!?! Of course the lipstick is "constant color" meaning it is like paint on your lips that lasts all day and wouldn't you know I can't get it out of the shirt. The brand new shirt! I tried water, soap, detergent, and even rubbing alcohol. And I mean it doesn't even help a tiny bit. Not one morsel of pigment has come out of that thing. I was so livid I got online and emailed the lipstick company to complain and to find out what they suggest for their lipstick on fabric. I then told them that if their lipstick is that permanent on fabric there is no way I want to buy it and put it on my face (and eat it. Let's be honest, that's what happens to it!).

I also ordered another shirt. Not a good start to my day.

Fry-day!

My brain is fried! It has been a crazy week and unfortunately I have to work all day tomorrow too (Saturday). My boss gets on a plane on Sunday so it will settle down after that but until then we are all working like mad.

I am trying to get my friend Suzan to drive me out to IKEA tonight. Unfortunately she is working on the figures for the grant we are trying to put to bed so getting away will be tough but I am determined. I want to get the desks for the office/studio tonight. It is the only room in our new place that is still all in boxes.

I promise to take some photos this weekend to share. Have a nice weekend!

I'm Back

Just a quick post to say I am back! Sorry to all my loyal readers for my lack of posting. My mom was here for a week and boy were we busy. She helped me unpack and organize the living room and dining room. I am glad to say the whole apartment is livable. I still have lots of organizing and fine tuning to do but it is totally usable at this point. Then mom came to the Bronx with me and we finished painting the living room of my old apartment and then we finished the cleaning. We are officially out of the old apartment and have turned in the keys. It feels good to be free of the old place and not be living in 2 places at once.

I have a busy work week ahead of me. My boss leaves for a month long vacation at the end of the week so I have a lot of projects to finish up before she leaves. I will try to be a good blogger this week. I really need to find the camera and some fresh batteries and show you some of the projects I have been working on around the house. I think I know where the camera is!

Heat Wave

Sorry, I have no new photos to share today. We are in the middle of a heat wave it has been pretty unbearable. When we're not at work we pretty much just sit in the bedroom and watch TV because that is where our air conditioner is. It is really annoying because I have SO MUCH to do and unpack in the apartment but it is too hot and oppressive to do anything. I did manage to do a little shopping at Target last night (where it was cool!) and got some things for the bathrooms. They are now stocked with essentials. I am still looking for some organizational fixes for the cabinets so my next stop is the container store.

I had hoped to start painting and cleaning the old place this week but so far it has been too hot. The heat is supposed to break on Thursday so maybe then I can work in the Bronx. Greg is going to buy the paint tonight.

The only other things I have to report are that I finally measured the new place and it is a couple feet shy of 1000 square feet. That is a 350 sq foot improvement over the old place. And my commute is significantly better in the new place running about 30-45min. Greg's on the other hand is significantly worse. I think it took him an hour and 45 min to get to work yesterday. He still has to optimise his route and connections. He drove today and it took 30min so he may just end up biting the bullet and driving to work and paying the tolls. We'll see.

Someday I hope to have my scrapbook studio set up and have some craft updates for you!

Out with the old

When we told our landlords we were moving out they asked us to take photos of our old place so they could advertise it. My mom asked me to post those photos so here they are.

First up is the living room. Things I will miss: The cute faux fireplace. The 13 foot high ceiling. The little steps. The massive amount of light. THE HARDWOOD FLOORS! This room has lots of charm and personality. Things I won't miss: The drafty windows. The front door that constantly popped open (it was hard to latch). The cords and phone lines running all over the ground because of the lack of outlets. Greg won't miss the metal shades we weren't allowed to remove.

Next up is our bedroom. It was originally the dining room and you can see that they built a fake wall out of cabinets to make it a room. Things I will miss: The ceiling fan. Uh.........that's it. Things I won't miss: The fake wall and crummy door. Being above the boiler room and always being too hot at night. The damaged molding from the previous tenants. The lack of a closet in the room. The fact that going to the bathroom in the middle of the night was a long way away around the fake wall. The desk (in the fake wall) that didn't fold down right. Keeping so much non-bedroom stuff in the bedroom. I couldn't photograph the whole kitchen because we had already started packing and there was a mountain of junk piled on the table and floor on the other side of the room. Things I will miss: The amount of cabinet space. The separate stove and oven was nice. The cute decorative shelves by the sink. The sheer size of the room. Hook-ups for the washing machine. Things I won't miss: The pink counters (really WHO chooses pink counters!?!) The really poor lighting. Having only one outlet to use (there were 2 more far from counters). The old cabinets that "weep" sawdust and little pebbles constantly all over our dishes and pots. The sticky grease that covers everything in the room from the ancient range/gas combination. The bathroom. I didn't even photograph the shower for fear it would turn people away. Things I will miss: Turns out the medicine cabinet was huge. Who knew! The radiator in the bathroom was nice on cold mornings. The separate tub came in handy as a utility sink. Things I won't miss: The "cave shower" as we call it. Small and enclosed and so dark you could barely see the soap. The teal tiles. The low flow toilet the landlords gerry rigged. The separate tub and shower. I know I said that was a plus but think how much room they wasted by separating them! The electricity going out when I tried to blow dry my hair (all the time!). The leaking shower that got worse when the landlord "fixed" it! Lastly is the hallway. Not really a room but we used it as an office and scrapbook room. The hallway was our favorite part of the apartment when we moved in. I will miss: The extra storage cabinets. The giant hall closet (the only closet). I won't miss: That when someone sits at the computer it is near impossible to get past them. Using the hallway as a room!

So there you go. We are still working on the old place. It was a great apartment for us for over 4 years and I think we will remember it fondly!

Housing Update

I hope you all had a nice holiday. We kept thinking it was Saturday all day on the 4th! Well there was no traffic so we were able to make 4 trips to the new apartment and moved about 70% of our things. That is 8 trips over the Whitestone bridge at $4 a pop but at least it is cheaper than a truck. The owners still had their stuff everywhere so we just piled our things in 2 of the rooms. We actually ran out of boxes on Wed so we had to take a break from moving. On a fun note we noticed there is a vegan bakery down the street from our new house! Don't you love those little confirmations that you made the right decision.

We collected over a dozen more boxes yesterday and packed a bunch more last night. We are pretty much down to essentials now so we decided that if they are done working on the place this Saturday that we will move in a week early and start sleeping there. Of course our furniture won't be coming until the 14th because that is when we have the truck reserved but that is OK. I can live without furniture easier than I can live without stuff (and without being able to cook!). We are borrowing an air mattress from a friend in the meantime. Then next week I can focus on unpacking a bit and also getting the Bronx apartment cleaned up and painted. Did I mention that we have to paint our super cute living room back to white? The landlords didn't like the color brown we chose. How can you not love this?

That is one of the photos we took for our landlord so she could advertise the place. She got over 20 emails the day she posted it on Craig'sList. They are showing the Bronx place to potential renters this weekend so I need to clean it up a bit. When we moved some of our furniture that has been in place for 4.5 years we found huge dust bunnies living in there. I wondered where those things bred! Apparently behind bookcases! On a side note, our landlords would love to find Christian tenants to take our old place. If you know of any trying to relocate to or in the Bronx please let me know.

A Sneak Peek

We visited the new apartment last night and took a car load of stuff over. The landlords are still working on the place. They have been painting the entire place pretty shades of pastel colors. Not my favorite but at least they are doing a really nice job. They still have lots of work to do so we told them instead of trying to do it all on June 30th to take their time and work all this week since we aren't moving in officially until the 14th.

We solved a couple mysteries last night. I had imagined a closet across from the kitchen that turned out not to exist and then we found a closet in the half bedroom that we hadn't seen when we originally walked through. It was hidden behind the door when it is open. A fun surprise! That brings the total to 6 closets! Wow, I am so jazzed to have lots of storage. We found out there is cable in most of the rooms. So now we have to choose between DirectTV or standard cable and DSL vs. Cable modem. Any suggestions readers? We haven't had any of them before so we are at a loss. The only thing I don't want is that stupid dish on the side of the house but Greg says they may be able to put it on the back side which would be OK. We also have more kitchen cabinets than I remembered which is great since we don't have that imaginary closet after all that I was going to use as a pantry. We also looked out back and there really is no place for our little table and chairs and BBQ. They use every inch as a parking lot so we will have to dump that stuff on Craig's List or something. There is a small planter in the kitchen window so at least Greg could grow a tomato or something if he wanted. There is also a mystery button in the kitchen. It looks like a doorbell and even the landlord doesn't know what it is for. Kind of weird. We met our downstairs neighbors, a young couple, who seem really nice. I think that is all of the discoveries we made last night.

I managed to snap a few photos but the landlords were there and when I whipped out the camera they started cleaning up all their stuff which I didn't want them to do. I want them to finish up and get out, not stash stuff only to have to get it out again. So I only took a few shots.

We are going to stay in the Bronx tonight to pack and then we will probably take a bunch of loads on the 4th and do some more planning. We want to get as much over by car as possible so that we can get by with a smaller truck and only 2 trips for furniture on the 14th. We'll see how it goes with our tiny little car.

It is so hard not to be in the new place but packing takes time and we don't want to rush unnecessarily. It is an exercise in patience for me.

First is the photo of the front of the house. We are the right side of the duplex (white building) on the 1st and 2nd floors.

The view of the dining room from the living room. I didn't get a shot of the living room for some reason but the 2 rooms are the same size. The living room has 3 windows and the dining room has 0. You can see our little staircase off to the left. We have 2 under the stairs closets. Lots of storage!

Next is the kitchen. Don't mind all the junk, it is for the painting and repairs the owners are doing. I wish the stove was a full sized one. This type is very common in NYC.

Across from the kitchen is the downstairs bathroom. It is really narrow. Just a toilet and sink. If I get too fat I won't fit in this room! Just a pit stop so you don't have to run upstairs all the time to pee.This is the back bedroom. We plan to use it as an office and scrapbook studio. I am not jazzed with the yellow and the striped wall paper. It has a large closet.I didn't get a picture of the "master" bedroom. It is on the street side of the house. It has a "step in" closet which is very nice and will hold all our clothes effortlessly. The photo is the view from the master bedroom looking into the half bedroom. We haven't decided how to use it at this point. Guest room, Huge closet, or pinball arcade. So many possibilites. You can see the closet that was hidden behind the door. This room has no windows.

And lastly the upstairs bathroom. It is completely new. Really small but super cute. All upstairs rooms are connected by a long hallway.

That is all for now. I probably won't blog tomorrow so I hope you all have a really nice 4th of July!

whirl-wind

I don't have time for a long post today but I did want to share that Greg and I found an apartment on Saturday and signed the lease. We now officially live in Sunnyside, Queens... and in the Bronx. Long story but we have both apartments for the month of July.

We are heading to the new place tonight and I hope to get some photos to share as well as take another look. It all happened so fast I can't actually remember how many closets or outlets there are or if it has cable or a dishwasher or what exactly is out back. Greg and I have different memories.

I can tell you it has 2.5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2 floors, and at least 5 closets maybe more, and it is 2 blocks off the 7 train (41st st stop).

I will have more specifics tomorrow for sure but at least the hunt is over!