alabama, arkansas I sure love my ma and pa, but not quite the way that I love you

totally just saw this on a friends blog and whoa! its super crazy cool. i am totally perplexed by these people but there is something folksy and nice about this love song. sort of reminds me of the whole juno soundtrack stuff ... just the good stuff of life and love.



this is the juno song i am talking about:



and this one too:



so yeah ... just thought i would share.

our first apartment!

We moved in a little over a month ago and unfortunately we are still a little unsure about what exactly to unpack. With our immediate future plans sooooo up in the air, we don't want to accumulate anymore furniture than we have. In fact, we sold some of our furniture right when we moved (it was the start of the term at the UO so it was the best time to sell.)

So basically I am trying to justify our little apartment's state of affairs. So yeah ... its not much, but it is ours and I have done my best to make it home.

BEFORE
(aka - moving in)

(remember that face from this post? yup, told you i saw it almost everyday)

Stuff everywhere! This is our living room and the doorway
into the eat-in kitchen.

This is the opposite view - from the eat-in kitchen looking into the living room.

The eat-in kitchen was our "staging area" and still sort of is at this point.
We can conveniently store our packing boxes and bins behind the wall
separating the living room from the kitchen.

Here is our itty-bitty kitchen which of course does not have enough counter space.

The disaster that was our bedroom!

AFTER:
(aka: a little decorating to make it home)

Living Room

More living Room

This is on the wall behind the sofa - my thrift-store found framed mirror
(I found it at a Eugene Goodwill when looking for milk glass for our wedding)
and my dear friend Ally's two screen prints of a photo I took back in my DC days
of a light post outside the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress.
I love these prints and I love Ally - she is soo very talented


Living Room Corner ... trying to hide our storage bins :) underneath a scrap
piece of curtains, a lamp, a watercolor of the temple frames - under our
framed marriage certificate.

The entryway between living room and eat-in-kitchen. Thanks to my
old roommate Tiffany, we have a kitchen table and chairs to eat at!
And of course to help Nate feel at home,
we hung his Henry Weinhard's Root Beer sign -
the kitchen area seamed the most appropriate for it.




Eat-in-kitchen! Thanks Tiffany!


Itty-bitty kitchen ... not much change there ...
but I did hang a LARGE frame I already had and it fits perfectly above the sink.


Have I mentioned that I LOVE owls ...
I also found these two little guys at the Eugene Goodwill -
they were unfinished white ceramics which I snatched up while hunting for wedding milk glass. I hung these on the hallway wall across from our bedroom on the way to the bathroom -
not the best picture, but you get the idea.

My refurbished window frame turned bulletin board
hangs on our bathroom door.


Our blue and brown bathroom.

No photos of our bedroom because its not much to look at. We don't have any bedroom furniture besides a bed and box spring on the floor and two mismatched side tables.
We don't even have a dresser to put our stuff in ... we are that sad :( but we don't
want to buy one for fear we may be moving in a few short months.

So, that is our humble first apartment! YAY for new roommates!

bat(s), owl, and spider - hanging on a tree ...

We are trying to get to know our ward better and so we try to participate in the activities. Our first major ward event was the Trunk-or-Treat at the ward building the day before Halloween. Nate and I decided to decorate our trunk - nothing fancy or expensive, we just used paper.

While buying trick-or-treat candy at Target I was admiring their cute Halloween decorations ... not overly scary and lame ... but not toooo cutesy either. Basically I fell in love with Skelanimals. Come to find out they are their own thing ... like website and all.

Needless to say I am hook-line-and-sinker in love with these cute little guys. I heart them like a 13 year old ... like the pre-teens they are targeted at. Sigh. Too bad I found out about them the day before ALL-HALLOWS-EVE!


So I decided this would be the theme of our trunk for the ward event. So I did some "grabbing" on my trusty MAC and printed me an Oliver, Timmy, and two Diegos.

Oliver the Owl

Timmy the Spider

Diego(s) the Bat(s)

So yeah. Next year (or some year in the future) I am totally gonna have a Skelanimal Halloween decoration extravaganza ... you know ... when all the hype has died down and they aren't at Target.

Muah-ah-ah-ah (enter creepy and lame laugh.)

All in all it gave me some good ideas ... but really, the trunk-or-treat was sort of a bust. No one else decorated their cars and in general it was a little anti-climatic. Here's to next year!