Showing posts with label roomie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roomie. Show all posts

Saturday, October 31, 2009

10/31!

HApPy HaLlOwEeN

I've been excited about this holiday for weeks. I love Halloween. I love dressing up and seeing how creative people can be. I have been planning my costume for 2 weeks! I pulled out all the stops to put my costume together. I had some arts and crafts time and even eBayed to get the right accessory pieces! Here is my inspirational photo. I'm going as the Hamburglar tonight!

Laina and I have had some mini festivities at home with kitchen craft time. She loves looking at baking blogs and I came home from work to find her hard at work baking (and burning) cookies for a spiderweb treat we'd bring to a pumpkin party. I sought out looking for carvable pumpkins for our party and wandered around our neighborhood unsuccessfully to over 6 places only to find out pumpkins are SOLD OUT.!!? I managed to find 2 little pumpkins that I wasn't sure we'd even be able to carve. We decorated our cookies and went to our party! So fun!

Her best decorated cookie

My best decorated cookie


My pumpkin was carvable! And he liked our cookies too :-)


Halloween turns me into a little kid!! I'm pretty sure I embarrassed Kilali in the costume shop and just now jumped into Laina's bed with spooky hands and said
"oohhh happy halloweeeeeeeen!!" Her response: "yep. your favorite holiday."

Can't wait to steal some burgers from McDonald's tonight!

Saturday, October 3, 2009

what I've been missing in my life

One thing is driving me nuts... literally. Nutella. We all go through stages of cravings, but this one is getting bad. I come home from work and eat this for dinner.
It all started awhile ago when I started mentioning to Laina that I was really missing Nutella in my life. Then it really opened a can of worms when I ordered vanilla Nutella panini ice cream sandwiches last Friday. It was pretty much the best thing that's ever happened to me. Now I can't get it off my mind or off my spoon! I bought myself a jar last week and then Laina came home with one to surprise me! Now we have 2 jars in our kitchen and I've lost all self control and begun trying to incorporate it in every meal. Here are a few images that make me happy and want another spoonful.

yum. Hey Laina--Halloween costumes?

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Värnamo ho!

Once upon a Saturday afternoon, roommates Jamie and Laina ventured to the Brooklyn Ikea. They were on a couch hunt. They wandered through the maze of couches doing their comparison shopping Goldilocks-style: "this one is too hard, this one is too expensive, this one is juuuuust right!" The girls found a very plush, perfectly sized brownish-with-a-hint-of-purple couch for a very reasonable price. Jamie wrote down Värnamo and its location in the warehouse. The girls meandered through the course of Ikea and selected various other necessities--wineglasses, frames, a cantaloupe colored flower.

The girls finally made their way to aisle 18 bin 52 where the couch was located and come across nothing. Not one purpley-brown couch in sight. Feeling defeated and learning that the store will not receive another shipment until Tuesday, the girls hesitantly headed toward the cash registers. Instantly the other purchases seemed meaningless without having a couch in tow.

Laina chose a cash register line and Jamie followed. Suddenly the next thing Jamie saw was Laina jumping and grasping something in front of them.

"It's the couch! You took the last couch!!!" She exclaimed to the redhead in front of them.
"It was the last one? There were two when I saw it there." said the redhead as she draped her denim jacket over the couch, staking her claim.
"There weren't anymore..." Laina said sadly as she turned to face equally saddened Jamie.

"Bitch." Jamie whispered to Laina.
"Seriously, give us the couch" Laina and Jamie made some quiet banter back and forth.
"I'll buy you a Pinkberry if you give us the couch"
"Jame, we dilly dallied too long! We would have gotten one of them!"
"It's because we spent way too much time searching for that stupid lamp. UGH I am pissed!" Jamie said as she stomped her foot in the same bratty way she did as a kid.
"I think she's swiping her second credit card for it. The couch might be ours afterall!" Laina said as she gave the redhead a death stare.
"she looks like she's nervous, she's getting flushed. Just hand over the couch. Your credit card is declined!" Jamie said as she hoped for the credit card to decline.

After the redheaded couch taker left with the couch, Jamie was rung up at the register. "Those girls took the last couch and we wanted it and now we want to hurt them!" Laina told the Ikea cashier who laughed.

..."Did you see a sticker for this? Or remember how much it was?" Asked the Ikea cashier as she searched the cantaloupe hued faux flower.
"No, I have no idea." Jamie said annoyed.
"hmmm..."
"Damn it Laina! You chose a flower with no tag! This is the worst Ikea experience ever! Forget the flower." Jamie whined with another stomp of the foot.
"Well, why don't I ring everything up, put it all on hold and then you can run back and get another flower and then you can cut the line and come pay for it all." The cashier offered.
"Ok."

Jamie headed back through the warehouse where she instantly laid eyes on THE couch!! Something snapped inside of her and she tried to call Laina. No answer. She sprinted back through the maze of customers and yelled while flailing all limbs "LAINA THERE IS AN ABANDONED COooOOuuUCH OVER THEeEeRREeeEeEEeEE!!!"

"GO GET IT!" Laina and the cashier exclaimed in unison.

Without another word Jamie was filled with a surge of adrenaline and weaved back through the sea of customers to stake claim on the unclaimed sofa. After slyly scanning the area, Jamie slowly began pushing the couch in the direction of the registers, waiting for someone to protest her couch theft. Nothing happened. Jamie successfully pushed the couch all the way to the front of the line where the cashier's smile was just as big as Laina's and she was motioning to cut to the front of the line.

Being a smarty pants, Laina had to ask "aren't you glad now that I chose a flower with no tag?"
Jamie gave her a dirty look completed with an eye roll.

"Does this make it your best Ikea experience ever?" Asked the cashier.
"Yes! I am so excited right now!" Jamie grinned. Her bratty mood completely vanished.
"So no flower I take it?"
"Yeah no flower. Over it."

The two girls had never been happier. They got in line for home delivery, filled out the paperwork and were again united with the redhead from before.

"So what couch did you end up getting?" Asked Red.
"Same one as you." Laina stated proudly.
"ohh... I hope its not the one I saw with the big scratch on it" Said bitchy Red.

"yeah whatever, redheaded ho-bag. Why do you have to be such a bitch?" Jamie and Laina again had a whispering bashing session.
"How about you fix your ponytail?!"
"How about you don't wear two shades of kelly green that clash?!"
"and that scarf"

The couch was delivered the SAME DAY scratch free! Stupid redheaded biznatch. Hers better be scratched.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Apt #31 part II

I know the anticipation has been killing all my faithful readers and I just got my internet turned back on, so here it is. Drum roll please!We're going on week two in our new apartment now. Yay! We've had some minor glitches, but so far so good. The move went well; we ordered a pizza, propped open the doors of #32 and #31 and made the many arm-load trips into the new place. And just in case there is any confusion, we LITERALLY moved next door. Please see the visual aid I have prepared for anyone who may not understand what I mean by next door.

I deep cleaned the fridge in the new place which had some black dog hairs stuck inside the fridge door. eww. They let their dog look around in the fridge? Laina scrubbed out the kitchen cabinets and we each cleaned our new rooms. While cleaning her room, she discovered massive amounts of dustbunnies residing in her radiator. This set her off into a focused cleaning mode in which she began poking and prodding into her radiator using chopsticks, our dustbuster and salad tongs to remove the dust clumps. I peeked in the room to find her playing her own solitary game of Operation on a quest to remove all dustbunnies before hitting the metal edges.

In the end, our super removed the radiator from her room entirely which gave her 5 more inches to her room and wasted her long and thoughtful dust extraction efforts. Just to be sure she was safe from a future "water attack," I assisted her in stuffing the exposed pipe with papertowels and wrapping Saran wrap around it several times. No floods here.

Laina went to Ikea over the weekend and thankfully bought some furniture. Coming from such a tiny apartment to a more normal sized one, it is pretty empty. No table, no couch, no TV stand. Laina bought a kitchen table and a TV stand this weekend among the other gadgets from Ikea that you just can't help but toss into your blue and yellow bag.

We carried the stuff up our 6 flights of stairs and then got to work putting the furniture together. This was no easy feat. I realized how bad my screwdrivers are, how bad Ikea's instruction manuals are, and how Ikea furniture has to be done on a buddy system. While Laina was working on putting together the TV stand, her instructions were only this:

A hand screwing in a screw and then twisting the table leg onto it. She began screwing in the screw with her bare hand like the picture shows. She said it was hurting so I tossed her an oven mit. I was busy with the kitchen table at the time, but turned to look at her and she is now screwing in the screw with her oven mitted hand cursing at Ikea for the horrible instructions and terrible hole placement causing our furniture to be flawed. Gotta love what girls use as tools to get things done around the house. Oven mits, chopsticks, salad tongs and saran wrap.

Slowly but surely it is coming together. We may be watching TV while sitting on folding chairs but it won't be like that forever. Hopefully. Our most difficult task is probably the kitchen. This is a picture of how it looked when we first moved in.

So much white I feel like there should be a blood pressure machine mounted to the wall. The drawers seem like they should be filled with syringes and cotton balls. My arm hurts in flu shot anticipation.

There is still a lot of white in my "after" pic, but we have added a few things and its beginning to look a bit better and less like a hospital.

Please see the beautiful exposed brick, my very chic and lovely cactus and the super cute red cushioned chairs. And yes, obviously I realize this is not the same view as above and that's because those clinical cabinets unfortunately still look like that. We're toying around with some ideas: contact paper, new handles, etc. We're open to suggestions.

I'm very enthusiastic about this move and excited about my new home. There will definitely be more to come once we get some more furniture and more stories of our silly girly household tool choices.

Friday, February 6, 2009

Apt #31

Laina and I live in the tiniest space that can probably legally be called an apartment. We have no living room, no dining room and no kitchen drawers. To watch The City and Grey's Anatomy, we both sit on my bed together. We live down a 19 foot hallway (the bowling lane) that leads to mini-me living in which we utilize everything IKEA makes for quirky apartments. I fantasize of a living room and a couch and a kitchen drawer to put my spoons in.

My fantasies are on the brink of real life. Since living in our building, Laina and I quickly discovered that with every vacant apartment, they don't lock the doors. Every time we've discovered a vacancy we shamelessly let ourselves in and snoop around, sizing up every other apartment ("ohh that one didn't have a dishwasher," "I didn't like the light fixtures," "wouldn't it be nice to live on the 2nd floor instead of the 6th?"). Well, one day we noticed the apartment next door to us was empty... apartment #31. We walked in to a large kitchen, exposed brick, a living room, an extra closeted two bedroom apartment. I. WANT. IT.

Laina called and emailed the guy we signed our lease with and he told her the price--out of our price range. Dang. I started some Craigslisting at work and found the apartment for $5 less than what we pay now! So now I begin emailing and calling. No response for 2 days. They have open houses on both days for the apartment we have clearly stated we want. Someone calls me back and says it shouldn't be a problem to transfer us over to a new lease. AWESOME. Dream move here we come. We will be propping open both doors, cranking some tunes and enjoying the easiest and best move anyone has ever had in no time.

After a few phone calls with the management, I am told a variety of different things. We need a $500 certified check, no we don't. We need to fill out the application again and provide bank statements, pay stubs, W2's, I-9's, letters of employment. No, all we need to do is fill out the application and provide 2 pay stubs--their computer system is down so come in on Monday to sign the lease.
Monday: their computer system is still down. Come tomorrow.
Tuesday: computer system is still down; email the documents (how can email be received if the system is down?) hmm....
Wednesday: Laina decides to lay down the law; she calls them to tell them this is unacceptable.
Thursday: We sign the lease
Friday: We're (supposed to be) moving in but can't get in touch with the super to get keys....

....to be continued....