Shop till you... have no more money left

Things are getting better. More stuff is being added to the apartment. I'm getting used to commuting from Queen Anne to Downtown, cooking in my kitchen, and shopping at the QFC around the corner. My place is slowly beginning to feel like a home.

So now that I've gotten over my initial feelings of nervousness, I can concentrate on the things that I love to do: decorate, craft, paint, draw, sew, hammer, and paste. My latest endeavor? Hanging curtains.

That doesn't sound too difficult, right? But hanging curtains here is much, much easier said than done. My ten-foot ceilings prove to be a bit of an obstacle when it comes to doing anything that is too dependant on the vertical direction. I tried to hang them myself last week by standing on a dining-room chair. When that didn't work, I pushed two of the chairs together, stacked my suitcase on top, and climbed up. And I was still too short. I could mark the place, 86 inches above the floor, where I was supposed to drill the holes. But that was the top of my reach, and I was unable to manipulate a drill to install the brackets. So my drapes remain on folded in a corner on the floor. Along with the curtains, I've also purchased a folding screen for my closet and fabric with which to re-cover the rocker. Both of which are doing me no good, being either in-transit or part of an incomplete project.

I just need more time. More time and more money and more tall friends.

Warming the House

The move has taken place, many of my possessions have been put away, and I have now spent three nights in my new apartment. That being said, it hardly feels like home.

The floor creaks and sometimes scares me. The plumbing in the bathroom has been a challenge from day one. The door to my room is sometimes difficult to slide, especially in the morning when it has been closed tight all night and my muscles are weak upon waking. The kitchen feels like a white box. And though I continue to burn incense, there are moments when my nose is tickeled by the smell of carpet glue.

I know that this will get better, that the reason all of these things bother me so much is because I'm not used to them, and because the place just doesn't feel like mine yet. I've not yet cooked a real meal in the kitchen - so far, all I've done is boil water for tea. Oh, and I made break-and-bake cookies our first night there. I've not gotten to sit down and eat a meal or watch a movie with my new roommate. I haven't had friends over, besides those who helped us on the day we moved in.

I am going out this afternoon with my mother to buy a few more items that might make the space feel immediately homier - curtains, bathmats, a colorful shower curtain, maybe a print for the wall. I keep attuributing the cavernous feeling of the new place to the lack of these items. So I'll buy them and hang them. But I think that what's really going to make these feelings go away is some living in the living room and cooking in the kitchen. So I invited some people to come over on sunday night. Not a housewarming party, though. For some reason the party is really important to me. Most of the time, I scoff at those who do things merely to impress others. But with this, I feel the need to impress. The need to show people that I am capeable of choosing a place and making it beautiful, to show people I was right when I moved in here.

But before that, I need my house to be warmed by others, to have them bring positive memories and energies with them. A true housewarming.

Clearing the Air

So I've had something of a rough year - not terrible, exactly. But there's been a lot to deal with, between my mysterious illness, quickly followed by my mother's extended illlness, my friends leaving the area, and a general dissatisfaction with my place in life. And none of this is caused by my living space, I know. However, I do sort of believe in energies. Not exactly in the hippie-dippy sense - but I do think that negative people and events give off a negative energy, and that that energy can be absorbed by a place.

So before I move into my new place, I want to cleanse it of any negative energy that might be lingering there from the previous owners, so that I can start afresh in this new place. The idea of cleansing a space is present in many cultures throughout space and time. Many folk cultures within the Muslim world have traditions of space-cleansing, wherin incense is burned and prayers are said. Wiccans often burn incense or herbs to clear a space and make it sacred before performing rituals. And some Native American tribes use white sage to cleanse objects, space, or people of negative spirits. In the Native American tradition, this is called "smudging."

So I've decided to use white sage for my own version of the ritual, since that is what is available to me and what was recommended by the woman at the incense shop around the corner from where I work. Also, from a purely practical standpoint, white sage has a very fresh smell and should chase away any lingering odors of paint, sawdust, or adhesive that the workmen may have left in my apartment. Or anything else that might linger.

Cardboard, Cardboard!

Packing-related notes:

- Thank goodness I work at Starbucks and have a near-limitless supply of nicely-sized cardboard boxes at my disposal! During last year's move I had to visit both the QFC and the Safeway near my house and sneak into the storage rooms in the produce department to steal cardboard boxes.
- Packing takes a lot longer than it should, both because I am lazy and because I am curious. I keep finding things in my room that I haven't seen in a long time - books, photos, documents - and leafing through them. It makes the packing process very long.
- Already have several cardboard-related cuts on my fingers and arms.
- As excited as I am to be in my new place, I am even more reluctant to pack up the old one.

Just Sketchin'

Couldn't sleep Thursday night after work, so I started sketching some of the ideas that were tumbling through my head. Though they're not the best, they're a good way to illustrate some of the things I've been thinking about for my place.

So this is the floorplan of my new apartment. At least, I think it is. I've drawn this from memory, so I may have gotten some part of it wrong. Also, the relative spatial areas might be just a little bit off. But hey, you do what you can. The one really interesting feature about this floor plan is that it could potentially be a one-bedroom. That's because the bedroom next to the kitchen is equipped with an accordian door leading to the kitchen and double pocket doors leading out to the living room. The previous tenants, a couple, kept both sets of doors open all the time and the space functioned as a dining room. But I figure all I have to do is shut and lock one set of doors (probably the living room pocket doors) at all times, and the space becomes a bedroom. More on how I plan to accomplish this later.

So this is a rough sketch of the bathroom. Unfortunately due to my drawing ineptitude, you are not standing in an actual space in this view. It is taken from behind the east wall, in a place where it would be impossible for a human being to stand. But whatever - you get the idea.

So, one wall of my new bathroom has already been painted black by the previous tenants. At first I thought about painting over it and covering all the walls in a bright orange color. But then I thought better of it. I think I want to go with the black and white and get a black-and-white photo shower curtain. Something tasteful, like this one I found that's a picture of the gondolas in Venice. And then I figured I could get a couple of storage units, maybe those rattan drawer sets that they have at World Market, to store toiletries. And then I'd just accessorize with really brightly colored pieces. Oh, and there's this Moraccan lantern with orange glass in a little shop in Pike Place Market that I just love. Somehow I feel that it would go really well in a funky, eclectic little bathroom.

Somehow, I'm having the hardest time deciding what to do in the living room. I've been throwing around different floor plans, but my biggest hurdle is a color scheme. I don't really have a lot of things that are going in the living room that predetermine the color palette. And there's nothing that really jumps out at me, like the orangey-red in the bathroom. I do know that I want to group some bookshelves together on one wall to give it sort of a mini-library feel. And I think I want a little desk in the east corner, and the couch should be used to break up that big space. I think the living room will just have to happen organically. Hopefully it will manage to look at least a little bit cohesive.

And that's about where I am right now. I have some ideas for the kitchen and for my bedroom, but no sketches yet. I'm sure I'll soon have another night when I won't be able to sleep, and I'll draw more then.

Getting Ready

Who knew that getting time off work to move would be so hard? Because my apartment-status has been up in the air, I never thought to request a few days off to move. I didn't know when or where I was going to move until last week. But I have quite a few things to move, and I would like to get a bit settled in after trucking everything across the city. You know, so it's mildly liveable. So ideally I wanted to have both Saturday and Sunday off, to give myself a full weekend to move things and set up the new space. But when I mentioned this at work, Melissa (my incredibly abrasive assistant manager) said, "Well, can't you just move and work? Like, work around the shifts?" Really? I work two pm to ten-fifteen pm on both Saturday and Sunday. So you expect me to move everything in the morning? And then what, just go back to my place where nothing is put away at the end of a long day of work? No.

But trying to cover these shifts has been close to impossible. Everyone who is available to work is already scheduled, and everyone else's reasons for having the day off are apparently much more important than mine. Nevermind that it took me two months to find this place. Nevermind that I've had exactly two weekend days off since the store opened in March. Nevermind that I help everyone else out when they need shifts covered. Ugh. Moving is so stressful. I just want that time off so that I can concentrate on moving and not have to worry about stopping at a certain time to put on my black polo and rush off to work.

So yeah. No matter what, I'm NOT working on Sunday.

Finally, a Place!

So I realize now that I should have started this blog months ago, when I first started searching for an apartment. Because that was an interesting - albeit frustrating - process. Two months of combing Craig's List. Two months of unfamiliar bus routes to far-flung Seattle neighborhoods. Two months of nasty-smelling carpets, doors that won't close, too-small kitchens, and low basement-level ceilings. And three different landlords telling me that I'm too late, too young, too unattached, too poor to rent the beautiful place with which I've already fallen in love. That might have made an interesting blog.

But no matter. I'm DONE looking. I finally found my place, an apartment in Lower Queen Anne in a building called the Century. And it's mine. Truly mine. Like, I've put down the deposit, no one can take it away from me, MINE.

And, almost since the moment I signed the papers on it, my mind started working. What color will I paint? Where will the furniture go? How will I make those sliding doors not slide? And Charlene, after patiently listening to me go on about all of this, made a suggestion: you should blog about this.

So thanks, Cha. I will. So here I will chronicle all of the things to do with my new place. A lot of these will probably be interior-design related, since this is where my passion lies. Some posts might be about silly home-making things, like putting dryer sheets in the linen closet to make the sheets smell nice. And I imagine I'll just ramble about anything - about what having my first real place really feels like, about living with my new roommate, about cooking on my new gas stove. I will chronicle my joys and my frustrations - and hopefully, you will read.