More Apartment Stuff

On Saturday, Chris and I drove down to Kingston for his brother's graduation party. It was a lot of fun, but all the fun tired out ole' Miley. lol Here she is, sleeping it off.

On the way, Chris and I stopped at Howe Caverns and went exploring the large underground cave. Definitely recommend it. Our tour guide was really funny and odd. lol

So here is our beautiful new table when it's pulled open to be a little bigger.

Here it is in its smaller form. Cute, right?

Here's the couch ... in the middle of the room. lol Oddly, this is the best place for it.

Couch with the chest/coffee table.

Couch again. haha

Walking Tour of Syracuse

Chris and I headed out to Syracuse with directions for a self-guided walking tour of Syracuse. It had some odd choices for noteworthy buildings, but here's a few that I thought were pretty/interesting.

Below is a fountain that marks the spot where the first well in Syracuse was. Also in this square, the area's first hot air balloon launching took place.


This is a pretty church. lol

I think this is one of the city government buildings. Obviously, it's undergoing renovations.

This is Columbus Circle ... Syracuse style. lol Not quite as busy as the one in Manhattan, but it was nice, nonetheless.

Here's old Christopher Columbus himself.

Our walking tour was a but rushed at the end due to rain. We had planned on going to a outdoor jazz concert held in Clinton Square that evening, but something about standing outside in the rain didn't appeal to us. lol Oh well. It seems we've had rain almost every day for the last couple weeks. We have yet to visit Armory Square, but we hear that's the spot for nightlife in Syracuse.

The Apartment Transition Continues

Well, we finally made it out of the apartment for something other than shopping for furniture for the apartment. Chris and I walked down to the complex's pool, which is a very nice. They have a life guard on duty and plenty of fun apartment residents around to meet. Here's a picture of Chris enjoy pool, despite the fact that it was sprinkling that day.



The building behind the pool is the main office and also houses the fitness center.

In addition to exploring our apartment complex, we finally went to see the new Batman Movie. It was really good. Heath Ledger did an amazing job on the Joker character.

So after spending the last week on our butts--in our awesome new computer chairs--playing WoW and various other computer games, we were blessed with a slight burst of energy and got some more work done on the apartment. We began to hang some things on the wall. Below, you can see our diplomas and the square boxes my mom got us. (Still haven't decided what's going to go in the big one on the right).

Here's me. This is pretty much how I've been all week. I've put two of the chairs together so far, the drawers and cabinet for the storage unit and the pantry shelves. I am quite the handy-woman. (Ok, so there have been a few times Chris has had to step in and bail me out, but for the most part I've done pretty well).

I've even found time to cook us nutritious meals ... ok ... meal. One meal ... and it was Hamburger Helper. lol What can I say? Baby steps, right?

Here's the front of our building.

Chris's dad and stepmom, Lisa, were super nice and brought Chris's dresser from his old room over to us today. We now have two dressers and a night stand in the master bedroom and we still have plenty of room in there. :-)

Chris took his burst of energy and put it toward filling the closet in the guest bedroom. He was able to unpack a lot of the stuff sitting in the room.

As you can see here, the pile of boxes grows smaller. Below are the two units that I pit together last week. They stack together to save space, but they're certainly filling up quickly.

Chris's poster has found a home in our living room. Below it is the box containing two more unassembled chairs and the unassembled table. We figure if we do one chair a day, we're doing good. lol

Here is one of the chairs in assembled form. Nice, huh?

Earlier this week, we went to a store called "American Signature" and picked out our couch, which will be delivered Friday. The next day, we went down to the DMV and got new driver's licenses. Chris was in desperate need of a new picture, and I needed to let New York know that I live here now. Those should arrive in a few weeks. It seems like everything we do gets put on hold for days and weeks for delivery. Oh well ... I guess we'll just have to keep chugging along on assembling the chairs and table for now ...

Hope all is well where you are and that you are enjoying your already-assembled furniture. ;-) lol

Our Apartment

I know it's taken me a long time to get up some pictures of the apartment, but trust me, you wouldn't have wanted to see it much sooner than this. It turns out that two pack rats like us living in an apartment with hardly any storage or shelving units does not make for an easy move-in. We still have boxes everywhere, but we've at least consolidated them to the dining room and the spare bedroom. Before that, we had little paths cleared through the boxes just so we could get around. lol

But everyday we get a little more done. And as soon as we purchase some shelving units and check out our storage space for the apartment things will be much less cluttered (fingers crossed).

We did opt for the king size bed. We figured a bed was the one thing we shouldn't scrimp on ... so we went all out. It's an incredibly comfortable pillow-top mattress with a espresso-colored wood bed frame. See the picture below of Chris celebrating the fact that we no longer had to sleep on an air mattress ... or bunk beds ... or twin beds pushed together ... or boat cabin beds ... or train seats ... Basically, this bed is heaven. And surprisingly, we still have plenty of space around the bed to walk around. Turns out the bedroom is bigger than we thought. :-)
From the master bedroom, there is a walk-through closet which leads to the smaller bathroom. This is my side of the closet. Packed full ...
This is the view from inside the bathroom, looking through the closest into the bedroom.
Here is our ridiculously crowded guest bedroom. I promise that we'll get it cleaned up before any of you come to be guests here. ;-)
This is our pantry, just off the kitchen. As it turned out, the "pantry" was really just a closet with a shelf at the top. So we headed off to Target and found some shelves. I put it together myself. :-)
Here is part of our kitchen. We have a dishwasher, which is oddly exciting for me. Chris teases me about how I've been using it practically non-stop so far.
Other side of the kitchen. Pretty standard.
This is the built-in shelving unit in the living room. We're still working on getting it organized and looking nice.
The living room. The chair is the couch substitute for now. Chris and I have to fight to see who gets to sit in it when we watch tv. lol On the right is the beautiful espresso-colored bookshelf that we bought and put together. If you ask me, our handiwork is impeccable.
Our awesome tv and tv stand ... haha
Nice computer chairs, crappy computer table. Win some, lose some. lol
Chris and I are also exploring our options of how to be more green. We've replaced all of the light bulbs in the apartment with energy-efficient ones that use less wattage than traditional ones. Chris is currently using a wattage reader on everything we have plugged in to see what pulls the most energy. lol

More pictures to come as we furnish and organize the apartment.

Back in the U.S.A.: Camping at Moffett's Beach

After a month of almost non-stop travel in Europe, Chris and I played computer games for about two days straight . After that, we headed north to go camping with Chris's dad and step-mom, Lisa for the fourth of July weekend. It was so relaxing to get to just sit by the campfire and go out on the boat everyday. Tubing was not so relaxing, but a lot of fun. All in all, it was a great way to wind down before heading back to Michigan to pack up the 4x8' UHaul trailer with all of my belongings and actually attach a hitch to my car to pull the trailer. Good times. lol

Paris

Sacre Couer

L'Arc de Triomphe

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

The Louvre