Quick note: I’m not a hoarder, this is what moving looks like. This is also a graphics heavy post.
In the deep recess of my mind I will always have the “I need to sit down and get this done” mentality. The reality of that, however, it just doesn’t freaking happen. I’ve deleted five posts that were sitting in drafts over the course of the past few months. I’m to a point in my life where I’m really just too bored with things to even care about them. I always find a way to side track myself just to get away from the task at hand. This is killing me on all levels because I feel like I don’t actually complete anything from start to finish in the usual time frame.
Last month Sean and I headed up to New York because he had an appointment in Manhattan, and we hadn’t been up there in well over a year so we were doing double-duty on this trip by getting my childhood bedroom packed up so we could move everything into the house. I wanted to get up there earlier, but I also wanted to get the new house settled a little bit before there would be complete and total chaos with new stuff. I’m actually happy I did it this way because the end result of unloading the truck into the living room put my OCD about keeping things clean into a tail spin.
As you can see from the photo below, the living room and dining room were covered in boxes and bags and just fabric everywhere. It took me a solid 3 days to get everything where it was supposed to go. Literally, three days, 8-10 hour days a piece. Books were put on the shelves, furniture was moved to the rooms they actually belonged in, DVD’s and Games were put away, shelves were hung in the hall closet to accommodate the extra jackets, winter gear, and even board games (that I had no idea I had a stock-pile of) and then all of the clothes somehow wound up inside of MY closet. This is primarily because it’s a 8-foot by 8-foot room and there was enough space on the floor, and enough height with the shelves that I could actually get the boxes into the shelves.
So this is ultimately how the house looked after a solid 3 days of busting my ass. And even though the mess of stuff didn’t actually wind up in the den initially, since I was on a cleaning rampage anyway – I went a head and not only rearranged the furniture in the den, but cleaned and organized it from top to bottom as well.
Bella now has her own little corner by the doors, I needed this to happen because I wasn’t able to close the glass doors with the way the furniture previously was formatted. So I had to move Sean to his own corner, which works out better for him because it’s right in front of the TV. Not many people believe that it’s a 70-inch television, but it is and it just looks super small up against the huge wall it’s on.
The closet was a different story. I think since it’s in an area that doesn’t get a lot of daily foot traffic, I was able to keep it at the back of my mind… as well as at the back of the house. I had no ability to even really access the closet, because three weeks of laundry kind of piled up in front of it. Of course, after the laundry was done I still couldn’t get towards the shelves because of everything on the floor inside of the closet that needed to be sorted through and thrown away. In the end, however, the final result makes me very happy. Note: The bathroom and closet are not green, they’re white…for some reason the tablet is randomly changing things to different colors.
Another area we’re tackling is the kitchen. I’ve been fairly unhappy with it since we moved in. The location of the island really cut down the proper use of the counter space. So, what we did was get rid of the island. Does this sound crazy? Sure, but we turned the island so that it is up against the wall instead of coming out from the wall. We then purchased two upper cabinets to hang above it, and cut the depth of the counter top so there is no longer the ability to put the barstools up against it. This isn’t something I’m worried about though, what we’re going to be doing on the other side of the kitchen is opening up the wall to have a picture window (that will allow for more light in the Living Room), we’ll be purchasing two lower cabinets to flank on either side of the bar stools that will now overlook the living room and fireplace. This area will more than likely be used for quick meals, or going through the mail, or just sitting down and having a cup of coffee. Maybe if Sean and I ever decide that we’re ready for children this could eventually turn into a homework space. I don’t know… I just know that by opening things up into the Living Room/Dining Room it’ll just make the kitchen feel larger than it actually is. In order to do the walls, however, I’ll have already needed to have countertops ready to go. We’re replacing the butcher block look formica with a slate black color, I’ll need to purchase two counter tops to replace the existing ones, and then an additional one to put against the new wall. I’ll be painting all the cabinets white, putting in new flooring, and going with a grey tone on the walls. I’ll have pictures of that in an upcoming post, this one was a little picture heavy and I’m personally not 100% happy with how the kitchen currently looks so obviously there’s nothing to show.
In any event, I actually finally sat down and got everything in my head written down. I am going to try for more posts, lord knows there’s enough going on that I want to blog about but at least for now the “I finally have 30 years of my life under ONE roof” post is finally complete.
#1 – A new pet…
While that can get a little annoying, it also worked to our benefit this year. All family members were well taken care of for Christmas, Sean and I did spend quite a bit of money on ourselves but it was on things that we both wanted (for a while) and desperately needed. We know the difference between Wants and Needs – unlike anyone under the age of 16 these days. We both were in desperate need of new desks. I had my Mac sitting on a Rubbermaid folding table and being as the 27-inch iMac (2011) weighs about 40 pounds, it was starting to sink down in the middle. To avoid it completely caving in, we went out and got me a new desk. It’s a super nice one, with plenty of storage and it’s even a little bigger than the previous folding table so I actually got the chance to organize things where I can still completely function without any issues at all. Obviously after Sean spent 7 hours putting this thing together (one warped piece was throwing EVERYTHING off) he gladly took a little nap. I decorated the drawers with dollar store shelf liner so that they can list a super long time without getting destroyed. There’s more than enough room for the work phone so my boss can stay on my butt too heh. I had it across the room next to the TV because we didn’t have a long enough Ethernet chord, but that was taken care of with the addition of a ZyXEL wireless switch that now sits behind my monitor. It supposedly boosts the Wifi in the house, but turns the Wifi into an actual plugged in connection as well, so I’ve got the phone plugged into it and if I needed to I could plug a printer in to it. It was actually strong enough of a feed to handle Sean’s XBOX 360 for a few weeks as well, so obviously it works how it’s supposed to.
Sean, after my desk was put together, began increasingly becoming annoyed with his desk. After drilling into him that he spends way too much time at his desk and needs a new one…. we headed back to Staples a little over a week later (this past weekend actually) to pick up a new desk for him. The one he’s been using for years was a typical students desk with the metal legs, the pull-out keyboard and the thin table top. One you’d see in college students dorm, basically. So it was creaking like all holy hell and we wound up replacing that one as well. He found a nice wide desk that he was in love with, but it unfortunately was not going to fit in the room so he went with one that was closer to size (in comparison to mine). He’s in love with it as well. It’s very nice dark wood with a nice sturdy base, some drawers – finito.
Either way, we both were playing with the Tablet for a little while and found out when browsing through the Settings to get all of the stats that it was now possible (with Android – Ice Cream) to have multiple users. This sparked our interest almost instantly, and we both looked at eachother and I was like “I want”, he said “Go get it” (cause he’s fricken awesome) and while I was pulling the car around (cause he was picking up his desk the same day) he paid for both. Turned into an expensive shopping trip on our parts, but we walked out of there with a want, and a need. 
While he was in the Bedroom for a few hours setting up his new desk, I was prepping the house for Christmas. I did more baking in the past few days than I ever thought possible. Everything from cookies, to breads, to brownies – you name it, I probably baked it. I went all out for Christmas this year, because I actually had more room to do it. I know that sounds a little weird but it’s true. A huge living room and a big footprint in reference to the front end of the house, things just kind of happened. The baking was really just phase two, we’d spent quite some time decorating prior to my even pulling the flour out of the cabinet. So the tree was decorated, the bulk of the outdoors was draped in white lights and the rest of the house had random little touches here and there. Thankfully, minus today, there was really no wet weather going on outside so my garland didn’t get all mucky and was nice and clean for Christmas. I was also really happy with the tree in the living room. With the combination of Karen’s ornaments and mine everything kind of came together that worked out really nicely.
I also got him some new Happy Feet, this is a brand that we were in love with long before Snooki put it on MTV. I’ve always had a pair, and so has he and his were worn to the point that his toes were going to start popping through the bottom. Knowing how comfy they are I changed it up a little bit and got him the “All Around” ones, they look like real sneakers and there’s about an inch-thick rubber sole on the bottom of them. They’re better than my usual outdoor slippers so of course I’ll have to pick up a pair for myself in the future but for now this was all about him and that’s what he got. So that was one pair, and instead of getting him the standard color variations I decided to take a look under the “Animals” section and got him the most ridiculous ones I could find – and his favorite animal – the Penguins. Watching him walk around in these is more amusing than the slippers themselves, but they bring a smile to just about everyone’s face so it was more than worth it.
The thing I was surprised about, however, was the ViewSonic 24-inch Monitor that was under the tree. I’ve been using a 17-inch monitor as my “Email Screen” for the past couple of months and it was working out pretty well for me. I kept my email completely on that window and when I was actually in Photoshop or Dreamweaver I would just load project free TV and watch television right on the desk, no complaints at all. So you can imagine my surprise when Sean upgraded me to a much larger screen. This was one of those items that wasn’t on my wants, or my needs – which then turns into a complete and total surprise. And that wraps up Christmas Eve.
The Sleeping Angel Killer provides the chilling focus to Spindler’s 12th bloodcurdling romantic thriller (after Killer Takes All). Kitt Lundgren and Mary Catherine “M.C.” Riggio of the Rockford, Ill., VCB (Violent Crimes Bureau) vow to catch a serial killer who sets the suffocated bodies of 10-year-old girls in their own beds, dressed like angels in frilly white nightgowns, hair spread out on their pillows and pink lip gloss applied postmortem to their mouths. Spindler’s setting of a “meat-and-potatoes” Midwest town provides a fresh background for two believable and very cool investigators. Kitt, a recovering middle-aged alcoholic, tried and failed to catch the murderer five years earlier, during a 2001 killing spree, while her own child was dying of leukemia and her marriage was falling apart under the strain. Now, when eerily similar crimes recur, someone calls Kitt, identifying himself as the original killer and the new perp as just a copycat. M.C., an ambitious, distrustful newbie, is assigned to help Kitt with the investigation. The detectives must overcome their personal problems in order to catch the monsters, a task culminating in a breathless finale.