New Acquisitions

Hello all! Today is Tuesday which means Matt and I have officially been in our apartment one week. This is exciting but would be more so if our stuff had come in and I could announce that we were all settled in the new place. In reality, we are less than settled with the only furniture we have in our apartment being a folding card table, two folding metal chairs and an air mattress.

Over the weekend, we added a small bookshelf and two lamps to that short inventory! The book shelf only cost us $10 at a yard sale and is in great shape, one lamp was new from Fred Meyer for $6.50 and the other lamp base is gorgeous but doesn't have a cover or light bulb yet (which is why it was only $2 at the yard sale). I love buying items secondhand. It makes me feel better to know that these things get a new lease on life and won't end up in a landfill, especially when they are still in good working condition!

This lamp has an 80's electrical
cord which makes Matt unhappy.
He says apartment fires are bad
even if we have renters insurance.

We had a decent amount of furniture in our last apartment (most gotten secondhand) but we were not attached to many of those items and did not bother to ship them across the country. The few furniture items we did keep were our bed, our bed side table and a folding card table (that came with us in the car instead of traveling in the moving van).

Of all the items we do not currently have, the things I miss the most are from my kitchen. Over the past few years I have grown very fond of cooking and baking. I was originally intending to bring some kitchen items with us in the car for the two weeks we would be here without the bulk of our stuff. Unfortunately, I never got around to it because I knew when it came down to choosing which of my beloved kitchen items would stay in storage and which would be free to come with me, I would panic. I wanted to bring them all! So instead I chose to bring none of them.

Here is a picture of the $4 tea kettle I bought from good will.
When I realized I didn't have any way of boiling water
to make tea, I almost fell over. This was my first household
item that was purchased when we got into our apartment!

Call me crazy, but it seemed the only fair thing to do (I didn't want to hurt the feelings of any of my kitchen supplies!). Currently, we are living off of microwaveable and no cook foods (like fish sticks, sandwiches, granola bars and cereal). Before we left, I nicked a few pieces of mismatched silverware from our old set and we bought some paper plates and compostable cups.

I sure do miss me some home cookin'. Warm and cheesy baked casseroles, mellow melange soup with squash and coconut milk, quesadillas from the george foreman, homemade pizza hot from the oven, birds nests for breakfast, etc, etc. Oh food! I think the first dish I am going to make is this baked blueberry oatmeal recipe I became obsessed with over the summer. It is so good and good for you.

I originally read about this recipe as a peaches and cream casserole but it is so excellent when made with blueberries! It is super easy to tweak for personal tastes too - for a sweeter casserole add more sugar, for a different texture vary the amount of oats/liquid, for a different flavor add a different fruit, for a less creamy version use water instead of milk! I have made all these changes and was never disappointed with the results, but I might be biased by my love of oatmeal!

Sigh. All this writing about food I can't make is making me feel gloomy. Therefore, I shall end with a picture of the flowers I bought to cheer up our new apartment. Enjoy!

This obviously wasn't taken today because there is awesome sunshine in the picture. Today is all clouds .