Renovations

I know it's been a while since I posted, but I've been quite busy with my latest project: renovating my apartment! I guess renovations isn't quite the right word since I'm not knocking anything down or making many major changes. The painting that I had planned to do in the living room/dining room area is done. I wanted to take this week to paint the living room/dining room area and my bedroom, but it wasn't meant to be. Instead, EVERYTHING is getting repainted! My bedroom will have to wait until after I choose fabric for curtains, however . . . boo! This is what's been done so far: We've selected and purchased fabric for slipcovers and throw pillows, the paint has been purchased and put on the walls in the living room/dining room, and new light fixtures have been purchased for the kitchen and hallways. The exisiting light fixture for the dining room is going to get painted to match the decor. Eventually we'll paint the table too. Oh, and I purchased a new showerhead and a new towel bar and toilet paper holder for the bathroom. It's been an expensive week already! Anyway, once everything is done I'll be posting pictures of before and after! Stay tuned . . .

Hello out there in blog land!

Hello fellow bloggers (or at least the ones not currently too addicted to facebook to keep up with blogging)! How is everything with you? I'm fine, but pretty tired these days. No specific reason I guess, just life catching up with me. My students have been fine, work is fine, blah, blah, blah. I'm closer to choosing my paint colours, but I was rather disappointed today when I stopped by Home Depot for some sample paints and discovered that it would cost me nearly $50 to get the 3 colour samples I wanted. FORGET IT! I picked up some more paint chips and plan on taping them up around the room in order to make my final decision.

Went to a re-gifting party last night hosted by my lovely sister. The basic idea was that people brought over stuff that they no longer wanted (either new or gently used stuff, not garbage) and had the opportunity to take other people's stuff. The stuff that was left over at the end of the evening was being donated to charity. It was a really cool idea and worked quite well, for the most part. There weren't a ton of people, and the stuff that people had brought was good stuff. I think in the future though, there should be a few "rules" or procedures set up so that choosing items is fair. There weren't any problems or anything last night, but I could see problems arising if more than one person really wanted one particular item. Anyway, I got rid of the stuff I really didn't want anymore, and came home with nothing. There were a couple of things that I would have taken if nobody else had wanted it, but the items were taken after all.

Last night before the party my purse strap broke. Has that ever happened to you? It happened to me about a year ago, which is what prompted me to buy the purse whose strap broke yesterday. Had the fabric not been so thick, I probably would have been able to sew the strap back on, but I didn't have the best needle for the job and there were about 4 layers of fabric to sew through, so I couldn't get it back together. The purse was starting to get a little worn (it wasn't overly expensive to begin with) so I decided to use the opportunity to get a new purse. I ended up splurging and getting two purses - one black and one brown. Both are Roots purses, and the black one is really similar to the one I was replacing, so I'm happy.

Back to work already again tomorrow - yuck! I love my job, I really do, but I'm looking forward to having a week off next month! Anyway, I'd better get back to those paint samples.

Paint, paint, paint

Have to decide on paint colours. I would do like Dianne did and post my options, but I'm not feeling so technical right now. I have taken the enormous step of taping up some paint chips to the wall to see what I like. I took the chips to work yesterday to get some advice from some of the lovely ladies I work with (well, those still in the building past 3:30 anyway). They had a multitude of opinions, particularly after I showed them some pictures I had on my e-mail of what my place looks like. They were so curious to see what my place looked like that they crowded all around me and my computer. Discovered that I'm still claustrophobic . . . I thought I was going to die at one point when all 5 of them were standing around me! Luckily the feeling passed quickly. Unfortunately their opinions were very diverse and didn't bring me any closer to a decision! Laurie did suggest taping up the samples I liked the best, which I was planning on doing anyway, and that was about as helpful as it got.

I thought I may get some more guidance last night when my mom came over. Yeah, not so much. I mean, she did have lots of ideas, but they didn't really involve paint colour. One thing she suggested which I liked was to paint the dining room area a darker shade than that living room area to define the two spaces. Still no closer to choosing actual colours though. All my life I've had trouble making decisions about what colour to paint things. It's happened every time I've had to choose colours for my bedroom when I was younger. Luckily I have a little bit over a month to decide. If I stare at these paint chips long enough, I may actually make a decision!

Looking back

Seriously don't know what has prompted this post, but I was just sitting here in front of my computer thinking about the upcoming holiday season and how different this year is from last year. At this time last year I was suffering under the regime of "Dragon Lady" and pretty much just miserable at work. Now I have a wonderful boss and an awesome group of coworkers and the laughter is back in the school! There are a lot of new teachers, but as a staff we have managed to bond really well and have an awesome working relationship.
At this time last year I had just recently moved into my condo and was trying to unpack and organize. Haven't made a hell of a lot of progress in that area over the past year, but I don't really give a damn.
Right around this time last year I commented in a post that I was actually enjoying all the early holiday advertisements and things because it helped to lift my mood. Now I have a confession to make. It's probably as a result of all the subtle brainwashing by marketing experts over the years, but I really rather enjoy seeing all the holiday commercials after Halloween! It helps to build anticipation for the Christmas season!
I was reading some of the posts I made last year around the time I moved and I realized that I never posted the story of how I knew that I was meant to live in this apartment. My realtor had already shown me a few places and I wasn't really seeing anything I liked. I was getting a sense of what I definitely did NOT want in an apartment or an apartment complex though. I didn't want to live in a huge, impersonal building. I didn't want to live on the other side of the city close to Delta, and I didn't want to live on the first floor. One day after school my realtor picked me up from work so that we could go look at this place. I was quite interested in seeing it because for the first time after reading the address of a place I was going to look at, I could envision it being my address. When we pulled up in front of the building, I just knew. It looked exactly right for me. When my realtor realized that she didn't have the right keys for the front door and that we'd have to go to her office to pick them up, I was very disappointed. I actually wanted to say "hurry up! I have to see my new home!" We retrieved the keys and came back to the building. We came up to this suite and looked around inside. Since it was vacant at the time there wasn't a whole lot to see, except the giant dehumidifier set up in the kitchen to clean up some water damage left by the previous tenant. We walked around and my realtor said "so, what do you think?" I said "I love it!" She said "do you love it enough to make an offer?" I said "let's do it!" A couple of days later, it was all mine! I have not regretted the decision one bit over the past year. Interestingly enough, almost exactly a year to the day I moved into the place, a few of us were talking at work one day about buying property. The topic of conversation had to do with those home improvement shows and how there was one of HGTV that talked about how to set up your house to sell it. Pretty much all the stuff that they said was in the show about how to set up your house to sell it (new coat of paint, furniture in the house to help people envision what their furniture would look like in the house, etc.) was the exact opposite of what this place looked like when I bought it! I. just. knew. I knew that this place was meant to be mine!
I hope you have a lovely weekend my fellow bloggers!

If I Could Turn Back Time . . .

. . . I would have remembered to turn back my clocks last night before I went to bed! I woke up this morning and merrily started my laundry, thinking it was 8am. I watched a Star Trek DVD that my sister loaned me, and then prepared to watch Judging Amy at 9. That's when I discovered that I had forgotten to turn back the clocks! All I could do was laugh . . . and be grateful that I got an early start on my laundry.

Plans for today: head over to Penningtons and see if I can find some more long-sleeved shirts and sweaters (at reasonable prices) seeing as my classroom is really, really cold these days, and outside is cold too. Wish me luck!