The Apartment Year 3

Wow. Oh how time flies!
Dan and I have been living in our rented apartment for over 2 years now, we just signed on for another year - so we're good until January 2016.

During that time the apartment has housed three (or very, very briefly four) of us at any point in time.
Our first flatmate was with us in the first year, and when her and her girlfriend got engaged they decided to move in together. Since then we met Tom from Invercargill, he's a real character!
The three of us get on quite well and we're lucky he said he was keen to sign on for this year too, so we don't have to do the flatmate find any time too soon!

Special shout out to Tom as it's his birthday today.


If I made a list of all the things I've learned about Apartment life and decorating it would be huge...

1. Blank space makes a place special.
Seriously Taylor Swift's songs make cleaning up a lot easier; I just flick on a few of her tracks and get to the tasks at hand. When I'm vacuuming I listen to music louder through the TV (thanks to the Edge TV ) or through my iPod.

2. Less is more!

• For coconut oil in hair masks.
• For life - clutter is a P.I.T.A. to clean up and keeping one space clear is apparently impossible for me right now. I'm working on it.

3. I need to keep myself organised a lot better - I had the three piles of stuff to clear out, and two of those piles are still sitting in the lounge part of our apartment. (Not cool on my behalf!)
It's on my to-do list though, so it has to be on the auction site in the next couple of days/ this weekend at the latest. (I said that last weekend and got busy). I did get the things down to Eva's Attic and to the Salvation Army though, so the donations were all dealt with. Now the Trade Me stuff has to be done and the pile of Files etc from the "new desk / Lisa's Office set up" just need to be sorted and stored.

4. I'm in the process of setting up a Neighbourhood Support group in the building too. It's a difficult process when the Body Corporate won't get in touch with me - I've tried many times in a variety of ways. I'm currently getting the landlord involved to see if they can get in touch so I can push for this group to be formed, and then I can also write up a frequent Building Newsletter (probably quarterly) to allow tenants to know what's happening in and around the building.

5. I did the Apartment Therapy Style Cure a while ago and blogged about it, so I'll add that tag into this post, and you can look into the posts I made back then - including old photos of the apartment when we first moved in. There's a number of chances from then to now.

On top of all the changes I'm making there's the decoration changes I have done since we moved in a mere 2 years ago. We upgraded our couch - Dan bought this new one at Farmers a while ago now, it's grey and I love it. It folds out into a bed as well, which is perfect given the lack of "sleepover" space we have in our apartment. 

Since I set up my desk in the corner area by the windows and door, we now have an even smaller 'lounge area' as I had to move everything over to fit the desk in. It's cosy.
Everything will look even more amazing once I've sorted out the filing and things that aren't put away at the moment! *Definitely a work in progress....

The original desk set up...

Teeth and a weathered frame...

The current set up... all those things to sort out.

Sylvester, is that you?

Valentine's Day 2014 photo-booth photo from Dan and I's date at the Zoo.
The taller bottle is a family heirloom. The one on the right I bought online.
Of course an Owl has to feature...

The kitchen, with more owls.

Today's quote is from an image found online:

"Take a chance you never know what might happen."

I'm just sad that I can't attribute this quote to someone-

every search online seems to draw a blank on who actually said it.