You probably guessed from the title that we up and moved to Australia!! If you didn't guess that, well then you were right. We did not move to Australia. Have you seen the fucking spiders there? I'll pass. We did move though, just instead of a different country we settled on a different street.
It's kind of a funny story, or at least we think it is. It was pretty spur of the moment, we were both just looking at what's out there because we were wanting to find a place soon anyway. Jeremy and I only looked at one place, and it was this one. We met our now landlord (for his privacy I will refer to him as 'Not Mike', Jer kept wanting to call him Mike and so 'Not Mike' was born) at the apartment and did a walk through. By the the end of it I think we had our hearts set on this place. However, we did have a another viewing with different landlord later that day. We drove to that apartment and dear god the speed bumps in the parking lot could make your airbags deploy. So already we had a negative view of this place, but we were meeting this lady and we were willing to continue. We got there early so we just hang out in the car for awhile and mostly talked about the apartment we'd looked at previous. People watching also occurred during this time to see what the people in this HUGE apartment complex were like. The time kept passing and we were looking for this lady who was nowhere to be found, and not answering her phone. So we thought maybe she was already in the apartment, you know sprucing shit up and whatnot. We knock on the door and we hear multiple dogs lose their minds. Okay so first of all lets give you a visual here, the way this place was set up there was one staircase that lead to two apartments one on the left and one on the right. We were looking at the one on the right. However the door to the left apartment opened and here are these insane little ankle biters and this little Hispanic women. She thought we knocked on her fucking door. So here she is not knowing any English, and here we are not knowing any Spanish and were both trying to communicate effectively which just isn't fucking working at all. We're trying to explain to her that were here to see the apartment next door and she (I assume) is telling us that no one lives there, and I'm like that's the point though. This went on for an uncomfortable amount of time. AND THEN I have no idea what she was saying, I don't fucking know Spanish, I'm from Canada, but she was talking and she said the word "Senorita" but the way she said it... It sent shivers down my spine, it was the creepiest thing I've ever heard and my Grandmas house is legit haunted, probably, so that says a lot. It was like the scene in Harry Potter where he's taking to the snake before it attacks the little blonde bitch, you know what I'm talking about? It was just Hella creepy. So at this point I'm like lets just get off these steps I don't want to do whatever this is anymore. The lady we were supposed to meet never even showed up and then texted us later the day saying she forgot... So we could've been possessed for literally no reason at all.
And that's the fun story about how we got our place!
Not Mike is super chill, he was doing a lot of renovations on this place before we moved in, but he let us move stuff over early. It's just him and his wife that own this place so it's not some huge property management company who lets squatters live in the building and then takes three months to get you new appliances... Not like we've dealt with that before or anything... He did an amazing job with the reno and we pretty much moved in the second it was over, literally as soon as he left we started unpacking. I think we were both just ready to have our own place together, and I was excited to have my stuff out of storage. I hadn't seen this shit in almost two years so I pretty unpacked everything in a matter of a days because it was literally better than Christmas. I ended up getting rid of a lot of shit because apparently my minimalist mindset flourished after I got my storage unit.
I'm trying to have an organic feel throughout the house so we've got natural and soft colors and we have a few plants so far but I want to expand the collection even more. So far we have an aloe plant, a spider plant, a snake plant, a Christmas cactus and a love fern ( I sincerely hope you got that reference). We have also started growing some things, right now we have; tomatoes, cilantro, basil, broccoli, spinach, thyme, rosemary, lemon balm, lettuce, celery, bell peppers, and I also have a Shasta daisy in progress. We tried growing chives as well but we got one little sprout that grew like an inch and then stopped, so we fucked up somewhere but we're not really sure where.
All in all I think our place is super cute and cozy, it's still a little bit of a work in progress because Jer doesn't have all of his stuff here yet, but it's getting there.
This is my kitchen, it's small but its perfect. There's just enough room for the two of us to cook together which is a staple in our relationship, we both fell in love with cooking when decided to go vegetarian. We are on the vegan track though and every day we get a little closer.
These are the fridge magnets that I made last year, I still think they are super cute! The paper is us keeping track of how often we take out the garbage, Since we are trying to go as close to zero waste as possible were trying to see how long we can go without taking the garbage out.
The coffee pot as retired since I took this picture. It belongs to Jer's parents so were giving it back. I got a pour over thing to make my coffee now and it's really neat but I'll go into more details about that when I do a zero waste swaps blog again, we've made a lot of swaps since we've moved out.
The metal tin is our compost tin, we put our scraps in there before we take them to our worm bin or to our neighbors city compost bin. Our neighbor is so cute! She's like 90something and she's the sweetest little lady. She told us pretty much as soon as we moved in that we could use her compost bin because it's huge and she never fills it herself. It works out really nicely because there are some things that you can't put in worm bins. I'll do a blog on our worms later on too, I think it's really cool. We put a carrot top in there a couple weeks ago and its currently sprouting in there right now, so I'm not quite sure what to think about that. I think if it keeps growing and the worms don't eat it that I'll just plant it and see if we can grow carrots.
That conclude the kitchen tour, next up the living/dining room.
My mom bought our dining room table for us which we super appreciate! It's so cute and just the right size!
That is our table set up, we have our placemats, the coasters I made and our reusable cloth napkins that I absolutely love! They make me question why I ever wiped my mouth with a paper towel.
This is one of my favorite hippie moment in my house. it sits cutely on the kitchen bar. I've got my hippie books, with my hippie plants, and I'm just living my best little hippie life here.
I got this sign for mother's day from my mom and I think it's the cutest thing. I've got my herbs and veggies around it.
And then this is our pantry, nothing too exciting, we've got some small appliances in here like the toaster and juicer, and then just some food which tends to be common is pantries. Imagine that. We're trying to cut out plastic so we've been utilizing the bulk bins that's why there is a bunch of glass jars. There's some cleaning supplies and paper towels that our landlord left for us but we haven't touched them since we moved in.
This is one side of my living room. I still have to put pictures in the frame but I'm getting there, I want the pictures in it to match or have a theme or something. Also the bottom glass piece broke so I have to find another one of those first.
Here's the side adjacent to the TV. We have a couch, we just haven't moved it over yet.
And then this is the little section between the living room and the dining room. The painting isn't 100% done yet, but I put it up there to see if I liked it there and I loved it too much so it stayed.
Next is the office.
The way we have it set up right now is it's basically split down the middle, so this is my half. That's my desk and my chair, and my random little odds and ends. I need to find a frame for that large painting (I did not paint that one) but I've been saying that I'm going to get a frame for it for years at this point so we'll see if I actually do it.
And this is Jer's half. He had a larger desk, but we moved it over here like a week or so ago, and I guess it didn't like the change in scenery because it collapsed on itself. So he had to buy a new desk. I like this one though it matches our theme better.
The paint wall has made a comeback!!! Most of these paintings were in storage and they were without a doubt the thing I was the most excited to get back. I have a bajillion paintings most of them are in the closet until I find a home for them. We haven't hung very much up yet because ewe have to go find some hooks to do it, but it's not a super big priority right now.
The almighty easel is also back! I haven't been able to set this up since I lived with my parents before I first moved out so this is huge for me!
Jackson sends the most time out of all of us in the bedroom. As he is here, although most of the time he goes under the bed to hide from the world and I'm just like I get it dude. He's a weird one though he just likes to be under things, he is under my chair as we speak. Also we have a bedframe! I haven't had I bed frame in years guys, like this is adulting right here.
This is the other side of the bedroom, it doesn't look the way I want it too yet. Once we get the couch moved over then the antique looking chair from the living room is going to go in the corner where the laundry basket is. Then I want to get another tall plant and a floor-length mirror to style with it. The bookshelf might move but I haven't decided yet. We are also getting a bookshelf for the office because we have a lot of books. Those two chewy boxes there are full of Jer's books and then mine are already in this book case. Also my kitty's ashes are on this bookshelf and that's noteworthy because she still means the world to me.
I don't know if you've noticed the owl trend so far, but they are in every room of my house because I have a slightly unhealthy obsession with them. It's fine. My color pop there was a gift from one of my besties Alex. It's a reference to the podcast 'My Favorite Murder', because we bond over that shit heavy. Who doesn't love murder right?
This is the love fern. It just hangs out in the bedroom and keeps us company. That concludes my house tour. I also have a bathroom, shocker I know. However, the position of the toilet brush wasn't right and band aid cupboard was just a mess so I figured we'd just skip it altogether.
All in all I love this little place, it's small and the traffic is a little bit loud sometimes, but its the perfect place to people watch and it's the perfect place for our little family to start our life together. as always thanks for reading!
-Courtney.
