New Apartment

I am deep cleaning our new apartment! (Which you can see more pictures of by going here). My weekends have been strange (Tuesday/Wednesday), so I spent yesterday and today scouring the place. I LOVE it. It is really vintage and cute. But the person who lived there before us must have been pretty messy. Yesterday I took apart the whole stove and found tons of food underneath, so I had to scrape that all out and de-grease all of the parts to get the burners to work properly. Even now, only two of them light without being lit with a match. Today I've been scrubbing everything with ammonia to make sure it's actually clean. Still need to do the floors.

I REALLY disliked the cupboards:

I found a blog post online talking about how to use fabric as a temporary solution for ugly cupboards and ran with it. I'll be scotch guarding them as soon as I get the chance, to help keep the fabric clean. A lot of people seemed to think this was a really gross thing to do in a kitchen, but the people who have actually done it say that if you are mindful of what you are doing, it actually doesn't get all greasy and stained. We'll see :) If it doesn't work out, I'll just buckle down and ask for permission to paint them.

This is what they are looking like as of now:

Not so bad! I would like to add knobs to them. The ones that are still ugly wood will be covered with cream fabric and then will have elastic strapped across them so they can be used as sort of bulletin boards. That's the plan, anyway.

I'm not a terribly crafty person and I've never made a real effort to interior decorate before, so I am overwhelmingly proud of Andrew and I for this. I'm really excited to see it when it's all done.

Exciting things have happened!

First. . .*drumroll*  Andrew got into the U of U's Philosophy graduate program! Somehow all of the applications he sent off to grad schools ended up getting messed up one way or another (misentered names and addresses, professors not sending their recommendation letters to all of the schools, etc). But after wading through the confusion, the U has offered one of their Masters program slots to Andrew and he will be starting up there in the fall. This is particularly exciting because one of the professors there specializes in Ancient Philosophy, which is what Andrew would like to focus on right now.

Second, we are officially moving! Not out of state, of course, but we are leaving our endearing-but-too-expensive apartment in Sugarhouse and moving into a nice one bedroom duplex a few blocks away. It has a little shared backyard, is two blocks from the TRAX station that runs right up to the U and is a 2 minute bike ride away from the Aviary. It is still within our trend of vintage-y places and should work out really well for us. Pictures pending :)

Other than that, Andrew got a raise at work, my job is currently incredibly hectic and wedding planning marches on to the beat of its own drummer. It's shaping up to be everything we've been hoping-- heartfelt and a damn good time. Sue and Will, Andrew's parents, came into town to meet up with my parents this weekend and we had several awesome meals and covered a lot of ground in terms of wedding logistics. I feel a lot better about everything now that the 6 of us have hashed out details that have been stressing me out up until now. And even though I actually worked Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it has been a really, really awesome weekend.