good morning!

I took some pictures of the interior of my new apartment yesterday afternoon. However, I have yet to set up my computer so you'll just have to hold your horses until this evening. Today, Blanca and I will be getting the last few items of mine out of the old and into the new. And then hopefully by the end of this weekend I can take some "after" shots for comparison. In the meantime (while I'm sitting at work, kind of working), I'd like to share some of my thoughts and ideas for the new place. I pull most of my inspiration from the many different images I see on the design blogs... I don't yet have too many ideas that come solely from the creative part of my brain, but hey, maybe that will come with time. I keep thinking about this David Hockney quote I saw in a book I was reading at my friend, Stonie's house... "The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist." Well, if he was right, then I'm an apple whose not as far from the tree as I thought!

Here are some of my favorite images that I've saved to my desktop in the past few months:


I saw this image in one of dominomag.com's many Galleries and just fell in love with the entire room... I doubt any room in my apartment will be quite this fancy, but I love the idea of an elegant, oversized gold mirror surrounded by a room full of brightness, playfulness and color.

I'm currently watching this mirror on ebay, but its starting to reach my price limit, so we'll see.



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I've had this quirky, little figurine of a girl's head for a few years now, and I've always just kind of placed it among some of my other figures on tables...

...but I came across this image a while ago while randomly browsing Flickr, and I think having a vanity set-up similar to this one from Flickr user and blogger, Kelly Loves Whales, would be fantastic...

I'll be using a darker color scheme, of course.


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I love simple bathrooms. But I also love all things girly. So this scene (which I cannot for the life of me remember where it was found) is exactly what I'd like to see happening in my quaint salle de bain.

I've got the pink walls covered (my landlord let me choose my paint colors before I moved in AND painted for me, which was super awesome), all I need now is a petite chandelier.

This is going to be a process... and of course my ideas/wants will probably change a lot, but its box-of-puppies exciting. Right now I just need to focus on not getting too far ahead of myself (I am just a lowly secretary, after all!), and just take it one day - and one room - at a time.

...because I'm such a good ebay coach.

Congratulations to my friend, Ashley! She just won this beauty on ebay!!!

It takes me three weeks to move.

So I was going to wait until I could take some pictures to write another entry, but I just cannot contain myself. For those who know me, this is pretty typical... no self-control whatsoever.

I haven't been staying at the new place yet because I still need to either move my old mattress over, OR buy a new one. I'm holding out for my parents to decide its a good idea to buy me a mattress, but we'll see. Another flaw of mine: I am a major procrastinator. As my friend, Blanca says, "Why do today what you can do tomorrow?" So with that said, you can imagine how this moving process has been going. This past weekend my Dad came over and helped me get two large loads of furniture to the Fenimore. But we had to quit before we could finish because his back started bothering him. Then, last night my friend Maia came over and convinced me that I need to get it all done as soon as possible... so we carried I think 6 heavy boxes of my junk and loaded it into her car. Thanks, Maia! Now, all I have left at the old apartment is a desk, a vanity, my old mattress that hurts my grandma back, and all my clothes. I think I have someone to help me Saturday.

This brings me to the point of my post... new bedding! What better way to make sense of a crappy mattress than to cover it up and make it look pretty? I have had my eye on a few different duvet sets over the last few months, and yesterday, I noticed that one of my favorites had gone on sale. I thought about it for a second... I mean, its adorable and all, but do I really need bedding right now? I typed in all my credit card info, closed my eyes and clicked my mouse. After all, if you can't see what you're doing, are you really doing it? In addition, if I hadn't blindly trusted my motor skills at that moment, I wouldn't have this waiting on my doorstep in a few days...

Its the Essex Saffron duvet from DwellStudio, and I purchased it from Design Public, one of my favorite sites to "window shop" (they have free shipping for orders over $50! Can't go wrong with that). I think it will go quite nicely with my antique white lacquered furniture. Again, I'll post pictures as soon as I can!

Thats all for now, I guess. If you're lucky, I'll post again this afternoon.

Here's to...

ME, duh. For starting this blog. I don't want to blow you all away, so for my second entry I just want to tell you a little bit (all I know, actually) about the building I'm moving into. It is called The Fenimore, and it has both one- and two-bedroom units. I am renting a two-bedroom on the first floor, and I'm a little jealous of the tenants in 2nd and 3rd floor units because they have a much better view of the river. The building was designed by Roy A. Benjamin, an Ocala-born architect who moved to Jacksonville in 1902. Mr. Benjamin also designed quite a few other notable Jacksonville buildings including the San Marco Theatre, the Riverside Theatre, the Elks Club Building, The Otis Elevator Building, San Juline Apartments... to name a few. He also collaborated with other architects on both the Florida Theatre and Memorial Park (neat!).

Since I just, on a whim, decided to start this blog, I don't have any Fenimore pictures of my own to show you yet... but thankfully, Metro Jacksonville had a post back in December containing photos of the neighborhood... and I just happened to remember it. So, here it is...



My only complaint is the overabundance of greenery outside the building. I'm pretty sure the owner is going for an "english garden" look in the common areas surrounding the building... and not that I know much about gardening, but it appears to be badly overgrown. Pictures of that to come.

Greetings!

For my first entry I thought I'd just share some pictures of my former apartment. Oh, how I'll miss it. It was really nice for a Riverside apartment. Everything had been renovated, it had central heat and air, the kitchen had all new appliances(including a stainless steel refrigerator with a filtered water spout that we didn't even notice until 6 months after we moved in, heh)... But alas, I just could not afford it on my own.









That little cutie in the chair is Baxter. He was about 4 months old.