Afters, Part I

It’s official.  We got snow.  And though they said we would get somewhere between 8 and 14 inches, it is my belief that we got closer to 8 than to 14.  Either way, we were “snowed in” for the weekend.  So, what better to do while we sit locked in than post some ater photos to the blog?

I decided that, since I haven’t cleaned the bedroom yet, I am going to post after pics in two posts: this one of the living and dining areas and another of the bedroom and bathroom.  So, without further ado, here’s the “after” pics of our little apartment. 

(Disclaimer: Keep in mind that we were decorating, or should I say arranging, mostly hand me down furniture so it’s not incredibly well put together, but it’s at least a peak at how we’re living today.)

We’ll begin with the view from the front door:

And follow that with a couple views of the kitchen.  The first pic is our dining area.  Right now, it’s home to a grill with nowhere else to go, as well as our table and chairs and a bag of dirt that is waiting to be used to repot plants.  So, if it looks a little squashed and messy, that’s kind of how it is.  We don’t exactly eat at the table right now. 

The second pic is looking into the kitchen.

Next we have two of the living room, first from behind the couch looking at the TV and smaller seating area, and then from the other side of the room, looking at the couch.

Then we have our “home office” which is just a corner of the living room.  The original plan was to face the room the other way and have the desk back up to the couch but we felt like it left too much distance between the couch and the TV so we decided to flip the layout and put the desk in the corner.  Perhaps one day we’ll put up the pictures of the process, before we got the lay out correct. 

That second pic is of our “reading nook” though we don’t really use it for reading.  Instead, we just kind of use it to store the Packer pillow.

Our final two pictures are of our bathroom hallway and “Reggie’s area”.  Speaking of Reggie, he has graduated to sleeping on his bed in his mom and dad’s bedroom so he only uses his crate when we’re out of the house. 

 So that’s where we live and dine.  We’ll show you more about our sleeping and pooing arrangements another day.  And before that, we’ll have some photos of Reggie’s big date coming up so stay tuned.

And, as always, until next time, here’s a pic of our boy.  He’s so playful and cute!

Cheers,

Amanda and Steve (and Reggie) 

A New Toy

A-hoy, hoy! 

Back with some news though the apartment after pictures are still forth coming because I feel the need to clean everything before I take pictures of it and put it up online.

Anywho…

Here is the news: Steve and I have a new toy. 

It’s a doozy.  And I’ll give you three hints about what it is:

1. It’s something we’ve been thinking about buying for a long time because it can help with Reggie.

2. It’s mostly gray but there are a few purple and red parts on it.

3. It makes doing something I despise slightly less irritating.

Any thoughts?

How about a final clue.  I took this picture of part of the packaging the day our new toy came to live with us.

 

Guesses?  Anyone? 

I bet you thought it was a treadmill.  At least, I tried to lead you all in that direction.  But, alas, I will continue to run outside with dear Steve while he strains against the force of nature that is Reggie.  No, not a treadmill. 

But better….a DYSON!  Whoot!  For those of you scratching your head in confusion, a DYSON is a super powerful vacuum that is ridiculously expensive but built like a rock, lightweight, efficient, and allergy and asthma approved.  And not just any DYSON, but a DC28 Animal, the biggest and baddest DYSON you can get.  Here she is:

 

I love her.  Her name is “Mama”.  She makes me joyously happy.  So happy, in fact, that I even vacuumed the apartment the day we got her.  Chew on that.  Anyway, Steve and I had some Kohl’s store credit and gift cards lying around (from Christmas and the like) and then, lo and behold, a 30% off coupon comes in the mail!  And 30% off of $600 is a big friggin’ deal!  So, we high-tailed it over to Kohl’s and our new friend came home with us.  Luckily, the vacuum was already $50 off and with our coupon we had a total savings of $218.  And, with the other gift cards and credit, we got that lady for a little less than $300 out of pocket.  Rock it.  (I’m a poet and I didn’t even know it.)  And, fancy power and hoity toity accessories aside, Mama comes with a 5 year warranty to boot.

Needless to say, we brought her home and put her to work right away.  And for our litmus test, we vacuumed a moderately traveled hallway in the apartment, first with our standard vacuum:

 

 

And then with Mama:

 

And the clear winner?  Mama, of course, as she picked up nearly a half cup more dust, dirt and debris than the regular vacuum did.  

I then proceeded to vacuum the rest of the apartment and, let me tell you, Mama did it again.  She picked up about as much fur off the floor as Reggie currently has on his body.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of that dustball but to prove that we didn’t shave Reggie for the sake of the accuracy of this post, here’s a recent pic of our guy and our new friend.

 

Much Love,

Amanda and Steve 

 

The Apartment Before...

Hello again!

Back to write a new post since I can't snuggle Reggie today.  Tonight, Steve and I are going to a party with some of his work friends and, since Reggie has been having some very putrid gas today, I can't snuggle my boy.  Oh, well!  A good reason to do something productive.  But seriously, they smell like hard boiled eggs.  Bleh...

Now that you're thoroughly disgusted, I thought I would share some better news with you. We officially have most of our stuff unpacked.  As a matter of fact, we only have one small box of random stuff remaining and a pile of things we've put on Craigslist that are waiting to be purchased.  That means that it is almost time to put up pictures of our home for you all to see. But first, I thought it pertinent to give you some before pictures so you can see what we were working with and what a masterpiece I turned it into.  Yes, I know.  Save your applause until the end please. 

So, here we go.  When you walk in the front door, this is the view you see: 

The doors straight back open onto a small deck that is supposed to have two Adirondack chairs but the landlords have not yet given them to us.  In fact, according to our lease we can only have those two chairs out there so we can't even move something else onto the porch.  But, once we have them, it will be a nice place to sit.  It overlooks that parking lot but gets the sun in the morning so we like it anyway.  To the left is a little dining area and to the right is the kitchen and washer/dryer room.  Here's the dining area: 

If you were to stand in the living room and turn to face the front door, this is what you would see: 

And here's another view of the kitchen: 

The door that was on the left in the picture before this last one is the washer/dryer closet.  It's actually more of a little room but I won't bore you with a picture of it.  To give you the idea, though, it has the washer, the dryer, and a shelf on two walls about 6 feet high that holds some of our laundry supplies, our recycling, and some of our small kitchen appliances.

This next photo is the view of our bathroom.  If you were to walk into the apartment from the front door, take a right after the kitchen island, and walk straight back you would hit this bathroom: 

It's a pretty nice little bathroom.  We like that we have two sinks and a large linen closet.  The only problem is a slight lack of hot water.  In fact, I tried to fill up the bathtub once and you can't even fill it halfway before you run out of hot water.  It has been training us to take much shorter showers, however. 

And finally, if you walk in the front door, turn right after the island, and turn left as soon as you pass the living room, you would find yourself in our bedroom.  It looked like this before: 

Though it looks slightly different now, I can tell you that a few things have not changed.  For example, do you see that black blob in the lower left hand corner of the picture?  That's a fleece blanket that Steve had been tacking up over the windows before I moved in.  Unfortunately, that blanket is still functioning as our curtain in the bedroom for as we don't have any other curtains yet that are long enough to cover the windows and dark enough to drown out the floodlights that are scattered throughout the parking lot.  So, we've kept the blanket up for now.

We have a few other little areas in the apartment including a utility closet, a small hallway to the bathroom, and a walk-in closet in the bedroom.  We'll try to put those pictures up when we get the "after" post of this "before" up. 

Until then, here's a sneak preview of the finished place.  What you're seeing is Reggie sitting in his favorite place.  From this position, he can watch out the front patio doors into the parking lot and bark at whatever residents, garbage men, and workers are out front that day. He's not so used to being able to see what's going on outside but he seems to like it. 

Hope you enjoyed that little tour through our new apartment.  Can't wait to share the finished pictures with all of you!

Amanda and Steve (and Reggie) 

We made it!

Hello Everyone, 

We just wanted to write and let you know that Reggie and I made it to Virginia safe and sound!  

We had a nice trip and only encountered a few hours worth of snow.  Our first day went smoothly with a stop in Ohio and an overnight in Pennsylvania.  Staying in a hotel with a dog by myself was quite an experience.  Every time I left the room, Reggie would bark uncontrollably until I returned.  And, he heard some boys in the hall around 1:30 am and jumped out of bed to make his own presence known.  Imagine my surprise when a kick to the chin is followed by loud rumbles of barks!  In my sleepy stupor, I flailed out of bed and hollered like a banshee and finally quelled Reggie's barks by wrapping my fingers around his muzzle.  He did not like this.  And I did not like that after coaxing him into bed again, he heard the same boys in the hall and repeated the spectacle.  At least the boys quieted down by about 2:15 and Reggie fell back to sleep after that.  

Day two was much less eventful.  We started off with some snow in Pennsylvania but it cleared out before we were out of Pennsylvania and I was able to enjoy some of the views of the Pennsylvania countryside.  It's very picturesque, with rolling hills and farms dotting the sides and lots and lots of trees.  It's a place I'd visit again.  And the scenery in VA isn't bad either.  After the mess that was Washington DC, the tree lined highways were a welcome respite. 

Reggie enjoyed seeing his daddy, as did I.  And he even cooked us dinner that night.  What a guy!  The days that followed were filled with unpacking and reorganizing and cleaning and la

undry.  More on that later.  Until then, here is an after and after for you.  That is, after our trip, my car looked something like this:  

Needless to say, I felt like a jackasshole driving around with a snowy, salty car in a place as balmy and tropical as VA, so I had to get my car washed.  So, Wednesday, I took it upon myself to venture out and find a car wash.  I decided to drive North on the street our apartment is on so I would be able to find my way back.  However, short of driving my car directly into to Chesapeake Bay, there really isn't a place to get it washed North on Granby St.  So, it had to wait until Wednesday night when Steve could direct me to a Pep Boys Car Wash.  In the end, it all turned out well, of course, and the lovely car now looks like this:  

And, for posterity sake, here's a picture of Reggie from this morning:  

Stay tuned for our apartment before and afters, as well as a rousing recount of our weekend. Hope all is well in WI (and wherever else you all might be)!  

Amanda (and Steve and Reggie)