tattooed southern belle

Well i’ve been here for a year now.

Whaaaaaaaat?

It’s all very shocking, even to me honestly, that it’s already been a year since my apartment became my home. I’ve done a lot of re-arranging since i first moved in, and i think i may actually have an entire new set of furniture by this point. (My house was furnished by the broken marriages of my close friends… how sad, but 100% true. And hey, I love cheap and or free furniture as much as the next girl.)

It’s all very exciting in here, since a lot of the reorganization and remodeling is coming from the awesome fact that i’m going to have a roommate soon. <3 My wonderful Zach is coming to stay and I can’t wait. We are planning this move in as a pretty much 98% permanent thing, but we’re not idiots, and maybe we will hate living together or something… doubtful, but possible. If that happens, he will take his cute butt, as well as Turkey’s cute butt and find his own place (I do NOT see any of that happening, but always better to think with a little bit of rainclouds in the sky you know?).

I’ve gotten packages of his stuff over the past few weeks, so moving him in and integrating his stuff with my stuff has been a nice slow progression, instead of one day of  ”holy shit… where are we going to PUT ALL THIS CRAP?!” which is nice. Also, holy moly… we are some kitchen centric people. With all of his stuff added to all of my stuff, there is a desperate need for some kitchen reorganization… which is how i’ll be spending my day…. woot.

I’ve gotten his stuff integrated with my stuff quite well, and I have to say, i’m really liking the idea of this being his (and Turkey’s) house too. I’m a sap y’all but holy crap, i just love him so much. Seriously. Ok… i’m stopping (for now) cause he gets all embarassey when i talk about him on the internets too much.

Lets take a little trip around shall we?

Let’s look at a few “before” pictures first… to see where we’ve come from this far:

Oh dalek TV, how you will not even kind of be missed….

Please try to not judge how insanely dirty my house was in these photos, just see the tiny red couch and placement of things. It looked like a teenager lived here at this point… i know.

This is the most recent example of how i had things laid out before my first big project of upgrading the house. I had the white (walls above the chair rail and ceiling) repainted by my friend Greg, because i simply couldn’t deal with the walls being so FUCKING DIRTY anymore. The man who lived here before me needs some serious assistance when it comes to keeping a house clean, i’ll tell you what.

These pictures just show that i had no idea how i wanted my house to look… I was so deep in the universe of Pinterest and Young House Love (Hi Sherry and John! I’m totally in internet love with you guys!) I think that now i have an idea and it’s all coming together …. slowly.

Today my house looks like this:

My living room… that i now love. You will be so wonderful when your walls aren’t salmon curry colored. I welcome you, giant couch that can fit more than one person comfortably, even if you are leather and will be sticky in the summer (before i make a cover). Flat screen tv, courtesy of Zach, is wonderful, and makes a delightful little noise when it turns on. I finally found a rug, gray even!, for only 11 bucks at Target on sale. Which is amazing, since all the other rugs i have fallen for have been around 200 bucks. Not cool.

My art is all up where i want it, as well as a bit of Zach’s Russian stuff has it’s own little corner of the living room. Notice my SUPER AWESOME DOCTOR boyfriend’s Doctorate degree is also hanging up there in the Little Russia section. (I really love that he’s such a smarty pants… makes me very proud.)

I’m going to be a full time student this fall (sonervousholyshizzzzz) so i needed somewhere to be studious that wasn’t the bedroom. I had a manic episode and spent a nice chunk of money and purchased a desk and a chair, and now i look like someone who actually gives a shit about their grades and organization and stuff.

It’s pretty awesome.

It also means that my handy dandy MacBook Pro is simply a desk top computer now, as i will have an iPad in the near future to mindlessly surf the internet in bed on (yay no sales tax in Oregon!)

The space between the desk and the dining table will soon be filled with a dog bed for miss Turkey, and the dining table will soon not be covered in books and junk… neither will the mantle or the chair. Zach and I are apparently book worms and our book collections are just simply taking over my apartment.

This is just a portion of my collection, including all the stuff on the table… and Zach’s is in the mail as we speak. I need book shelves. ASAP.  (sorry about the pictures, i just realized they are all just crapola… damn iphone.)

I love this place, still, and plan on being here for quite some time. Someone I know has already looked into buying a house in West Asheville, but that will have to come much farther down the road. I will keep everyone updated on the other remodeling projects (no, i haven’t finished my bathroom floor yet…) and please feel free to point me in the direction of other cute as pie blogs like YHL so i can be obsessed with other couples that i don’t really know.

xoxo

kenzie