Introducing Apartment 103

What a weekend it has been. Last Wednesday was our move in date to our new apartment. {Apartment 103} The apartment is a HUGE downsize for us! Going from a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, IKEA kitchen, 2 car garage and full basement house.....to a 742 square foot apartment - WOW!!! Moving day itself was fun. A friend and my uncle helped Cody & I move. I had really gotten rid of a lot of stuff. They all teased me all day about all my "bookcases" and furniture. They did not see how I was going to manage to put everything into a 1 bedroom apartment. I kept telling them to trust me.


{Boxes at the house before we loaded the moving truck}

I had a layout of the apartment that I had been studying for 2 months! I was well prepared. What I wasn't prepared for was all the unpacking. With the apartment being so small, once everything was in it there really wasn't any room to walk! The first few days were very stressful. Tripping on each other and everything. We kept losing our car keys and shoes. I just had to make myself focus and do one room at a time.

The one thing I forgot to do was bring my camera with me! I wanted to take photos of the apartment EMPTY. Sadly I didn't get to do that. So, I have pictures with just a bunch of stuff and boxes. Here is a photo of the hallway taken from the living room....



The hallway was blocked with boxes for the first 2 days. We would just walk around into the dining room and go through kitchen when we needed to get to the other rooms. In the picture above you can see my MALM dressing table that I had in my bedroom at our house. I actually did give that away. We ended up really not needing it. It wasn't functional enough for me to justify losing a whole wall in my bedroom for it. We also gave away our treadmill that is in that photo. I had high hopes of running on it a lot while Cody went to boot camp! Again, I couldn't justify losing space in the walk in closet for it. Those were the only 2 things that we didn't keep.

As far as decorating the apartment, this is a lot different then anything I have done before. When we purchased our house I bought all new stuff and had a design plan for each room. The apartment is just a combination of all the things I have collected over the years and the things I felt were worth keeping. As I unpacked the last few days I basically decorated the rooms as I went. I have not decided if I am going to paint or not. Now that I am here and my stuff is in the apartment I would love to paint it all a light shade of pink. With all that said here are pictures of the apartment as it looks today! We'll start with a photo taken from the entryway looking into the living room...





I plan to change my painting that is over the sofa. It reminds me to much of the house and I really don't want a lot of black & white in the apartment. Basically I decorated the room with Cody in mind. Okay, not all the pink and girly decor, but I have a lot of photos of us together and my love print on display. We are going to be apart for 8 months and I want to feel like he is still there. {Even if its just the 50 thousand pictures I have of us plastered everywhere!!} I love my bookcase from IKEA! I displayed my favorite vases, Marilyn Monroe books and photos of Cody & I in the bookcase. It took me almost 2 hours to arrange everything in a way I finally liked...


End table & Billy Bookcase display

Here is a picture from the corner by the bookcases looking into the front entryway...


Another shot from the bookcase corner, looking at my "office" wall...


As you can see I am using a end table as my desk. I will be purchasing a desk in the next few days. Unfortunately the desk I had wouldn't work on this wall. Below is a photo of the wall we put the TV on. It is directly across from the couch. We may hang our wedding picture above the TV. {Again, another photo of Cody & I! lol}


Lets move onto the Dining Room Area. I found a place for my vintage pink cabinet! I placed it in front of the window because I wanted my plants to get a lot of light.




Cody hates my pink cabinet, but now is happy that I kept it! Since storage is limited in the kitchen the cabinet is giving us extra space! It is functional and decorative! Woo-Hoo!


I ended up not using my vintage round table in the dining room. It took up way to much space. It will be put in storage for now.



Above is my $20 bookcase from an antique mall. I am not really happy with the way I have things displayed. I plan to redo it. I kinda just threw everything on the bookcase. I think the bookcase would be pretty painted pink or yellow. We'll see!


Here is a photo looking into the kitchen from the dining room...


I did not intend to have a "Hello Kitty" kitchen, but the kitchen ended up being a perfect place to display my hello kitty collection...


I used vintage vases to hold my teabags and the pink canister holds doggie treats!


That is the tour for today! I will share pictures of the bathroom & bedroom another day! I am still working on unpacking stuff in the bedroom.