Finally, Some Photos!

I took some photos to give you the start of a tour of our apartment! But not all of the apartment was ready for photographing, so here is just a brief introduction...

We live above the clubhouse in one of four units.

To get to our apartment, we go up a set of stairs and through a few doors to this strange hexagonal room. Behind those windows is a chandelier inside the clubhouse, which we can see down into. The door on the right is our neighbor, but we only share part of one wall with them- in the kitchen.

We live in 203! When you open the door, there is a small foyer. The kitchen is directly to the right, and ahead is the carpeted living area. I will take photos of these on a day when it has been straightened up. To the left is a coat closet, and a hallway that leads to the bathroom, bedroom, and laundry.

Here is the doorway to the bathroom! To the right is a set of double doors that houses our laundry, and to the right of that is the bedroom. Our bathroom is fairly large...

Here I am! This sink is a definite upgrade from my last several apartments, which only housed small sinks with no counter space. The building is relatively new, which means all of the fixtures and so forth are in good condition.

The shower. I'm glad it has a tub, but it is rather small (narrow). I did take a bath in it, however, and it was decent.

The entrance to our bedroom!

There is a lot of space and we don't have a lot of stuff. Auree likes to sleep on Snuggie at the foot of the bed. My bedside table is on the right, Travis has the big lamp on the left.

Our little bookshelf! It houses our "to-be-read" books, as well as my jewelry and photos of our families. We haven't filled it up in case we acquire things that need a place to be kept.

The side opposite of the bed currently houses this green chair and our internet modem! This space is a work in progress, and I hope to add some artwork to the wall in the next few days. Auree spends many hours sleeping on this green chair, and luckily you can't see the fur on it. But as you can see, there is plenty of floor space here!

We have a big walk-in closet! Travis has the left and I have the right. The middle houses our socks and undies, as well as our bathing suits (which we use several times a week!)

Finally, a view of the pool! This is taken from the perspective of sitting on the bed. Auree is often seen lounging in this window when he's not doing so elsewhere...

A few of my favorite things about our place so far include the amount of sunlight and the amount of space we have. It is so bright in our apartment, it really cheers you up just to step in from the hallway! We keep the blinds down much of the time (with a few open for Auree to sit in the window) but the sunlight still pours in. Not good for watching movies during the daytime though...

Since this apartment complex is so new, everything has been designed for modern individuals. There is plenty of room in the kitchen for both Travis and I to cook at the same time (which we do almost every day!) as well as a lot of storage to keep things put away. I will finish taking photos in the next few days and post them, so look for my next entry!

Kansas Living

We spent a lot of money that first few days here. We stocked up on groceries and bought all kinds of furniture. A few of the noteworthy pieces include our desk (photo to come) which we got for $40 and our coffee table (photo also to come) which was also $40. The desk is L-shaped, so we both have a work space and the corner houses one of our printers. We bought it off of Craigslist and it was in fairly decent shape, but once we started to assemble it we realized it was missing some important screws as well as a foot! We spent another $6 on parts at Home Depot, so it technically cost us about $46, but not bad for a very usable desk!

Our coffee table was an awesome fluke. We kept checking places like Goodwill and Salvation Army for used furniture, but a lot of their stuff tended to be overpriced and really worn/old. We happened upon a store nearby, called Aaron's, which sells and leases furniture. We asked the sales lady for a "cash-and-carry" coffee table, and she surprised us with something incredible. It was a glass-topped table, almost brand new (it had one previous owner who leased it I think) and she needed to get rid of it because someone had wanted the end tables that matched it but not the table! The retail on a table like this runs close to $180, so it was a huge steal at $40. I know you're excited to see the photos of our place and cool new stuff, I just have to remember to get my camera out of the car!

On the downside, sales tax down here is 8.8%! So even though things are relatively cheap, we feel it with the taxes. Our cable/internet (which we got hooked up yesterday) has a sales tax of close to 10%, which adds $8 onto our total bill.

There is a "Back-to-school Pool Party!" happening downstairs right now, which we will be going to later this afternoon. The flyer says "Join us this Friday by the pool with your new neighbors and friends! Free food, refreshments, and games! Come relax as we hand out gift cards and much more!" So we definitely need to check it out.

Travis and I are headed to Best Buy and the bowling alley now though, so I will write more later.

Kansas!

Since I've been keeping most people who really care posted by other means, I haven't posted on this blog. However, as things down here start to settle down, I figured it would be a good time to start up again.

Our move down here was relatively uneventful. We drove for about 5 hours, stopped around 1 am to sleep at a rest area, and took off around 6 am to Lawrence. Auree did a great job in the car, only crying for a little bit but mostly just being a good co-pilot.

It was fantastic to get to our apartment, but the task of unpacking lay before us. Although all of our stuff had been moved in, we had a maze of boxes throughout the living room to go through. We also didn't have very much furniture, something we needed to fix in the first week before Travis started class.

Travis was ready for a nap, so we put some sheets on the bed and he rested. I was too excited to sleep, and wanted to get unpacking. I started with easy stuff, like the boxes labeled "bathroom stuff" and "clothing". Our place has a huge walk-in closet (photos to come) and Travis and I picked sides.

The first week of unpacking and shopping went by really quickly but also really slowly. I can't believe we've been here almost two weeks already, but I'm also anxious for school to get started! UWM doesn't begin until September 6th.

Anyway, Travis is calling me to come watch Law & Order SVU so I'll have to finish writing later.

The Hats Just Keep Coming

We made a lot of headway on our clothing project at the Marquette County Historical Society last week! One Tuesday, we finished work on the shoes and started on the actual clothing. We sorted everything out of these plastic bins (which are very bad for storing clothing- I will show this later,) into several different groups.

First, we separated out the Men's and Children's clothing into separate spaces. Both of these are easier to identify and there are smaller quantities of each. As we went along, we divided the women's clothing into three piles: Pre-1950; Post-1950; and undergarments that are Pre-1950 (petticoats and the like.) Below is a photo of Joanie holding up a woman's top/coat. We noticed how very small people were back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

As I said above, the plastic bins the clothing has been stored in for who knows how long are very bad for the clothing. In order to be properly preserved, clothing needs to be stored in special acid-free boxes, stuffed with acid-free paper to maintain shape and avoid creasing, and be allowed to breathe by not being stored in air-tight containers and being taken out every so often. Below is a fur coat that has been severely damaged by the plastic bin. We had to throw the coat out due to its poor condition.

Bits of the destroyed fur coat left in the container

By the end of the day, we had gotten through all of the plastic totes and sorted everything, as partially seen in this next photograph. This bed holds women's clothing dated before 1950.

On Wednesday, Joanie and I decided to start making some more appropriate hangers for some of the pieces we are working with. The hangers needed to be padded, so we used a bit of quilt-lining, those sheets of cotton/polyester found at sewing stores. We cut strips and stapled them on to the metal hangers, seen here:

We then covered the entire hanger with acid-free paper. When metal comes into contact with clothing, chemical reactions can occur over time (including rusting) which damaged the material. These makeshift hangers will provide a much better home for many of our hanging pieces.

We spent the rest of the day going through all the dressers, trunks, and closets and sorted the clothing inside. It is very important to have everything out so we can see how much we have and to determine if a piece is really worth hanging onto. Many items, from being improperly stored, have been damaged beyond easy repair. Luckily, we usually have more than one of each item. The next photo shows all of the pre-1950 undergarments sorted by type. As you can see, we have at least ten of each item (and often much more) so we will be able to make a few sacrifices, as well as pick out extras to be sold at a fundraising auction. In the center of the photo are long undergarments; on the left are petticoats; the right front is a stack of more than a dozen bodices, and behind that are roughly 10 pairs of pantaloons.

Each of the items we have needs to be photographed, cataloged, cleaned (if applicable) and properly stored. We have at least 300 items (probably more, this is only a rough estimate) and I only have two more days to work! They certainly have a lot ahead of them in the coming months...

Also, as you may have noted by the title of this, we found more hats! And more shoes! They were tucked away in drawers and boxes with the clothing. About 15 more hats and 4 pairs of shoes, just when we thought we had finished with them!

Hats Again

Here is the Marquette County Tribune snippet of the hat project!