House Stuffs

I'm a little behind in my postings on all the fun things we have started with our house, so I have decided to take this time to update...

We began this process with cabinets over the peninsula in our kitchen, a blue wall around the fireplace, and your basic white walls.... Over the last 2 months we have removed the cabinets, changed the blue wall, and painted it a new basic white? haha.. But, it is so much more our style. It's a gray/blue/white instead of a yellow/cream/white... which makes ALL the difference. We have taken down old bronze chandeliers and replaced them with track style lighting... We have pendants and shelves... mounted surround sound, and wires hidden behind the fireplace. And some of the best part is that we finally have all of our furniture!!! How exciting, is that? We have a couch (which over the last 2 months we have broken in), a love seat (same color), and a chair (in orange!!!). The orange chair is better than I could have thought. Not going to lie.. I'm super excited. I was a little nervous to introduce so much color into our living room... and it's not so much a "small" chair. But, it makes it feel fun, funky, and makes me feel stylish.. whether other people think so, I don't know... :)

So I'll walk through the changes we've made - some of the fun things we've done.. and a very exciting surprise at the end!!!

The painting is beginning.... Everything is draped, and the blue wall is hiding behind the primer!

Our new fan!!!!!! I love it. :) We need a floor lamp to make up some light, but it's so pretty - and we can turn it on without the noise and unevenness as before.

Our ceiling paint.. :)

From this I'm standing in the living room looking at our modified track lighting. You can also see the new lighting under the cabinets.

We ended up rolling up extra chords on the pendant lighting so they aren't hanging down in some sort of nouveau art fixture...

These are our "flying saucer" light fixtures. They are great over the table and the bar.

The flying saucer over the bar...

Just a more updated picture of the kitchen with the lighting. I'm excited about it.

Our living room complete with all of our furniture. Our chair hanging out in all of its glory.

We finally were able to hang the shelves into the alcove and put our stuff up there. We had some interesting work to do with supporting the shelf with L brackets... 11" is apparently a little shallow for the new blue ray player.

A better view of all the shelves - we are going to reign in some of the cords, but that's for a different day.

Our chair with our new light fixtures. Awesome.

Oh... I guess I promised a surprise didn't I....

Oh yes... That's ME, holding my PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING LICENSE for the State of Illinois.... :) My application was accepted!!!!!!!!

So things are going good... Our living room, dining room, kitchen, and hallway are painted (walls and ceiling)... we need to work on trim but that's not too bad. We need to work on our bedrooms next and probably bathrooms.. but that's all in good time. We are now going to just enjoy living here a little bit. Try to get the motivation to get some more done.. All that jazz. :)

Official Residents

Wow, 2 posts in 2 days.. I don't know what's going on here! I'm getting into the blogging spirit I guess... But really, this will be short. I just wanted to share that we are official residents to our building!! They have put our name on the front door and on the mailbox. Super exciting :)

Yeah - that's our name on the buzzer! We are no longer Kindred.

Mailbox!!! I think I'm going to have to leave a note that Hoyt mail still comes here.. otherwise our mail person doesn't deliver... Or I could just finally get around to changing my name for everything...

So there you have it! It's like we own the place or something! Haha..

Random Thoughts

I have decided to take a break from my now "regular" postings on our house living and present to you a couple of random thoughts ... I know that I have promised more pictures of the condo, but those will have to wait as I am a bit busy (and let's face it lazy with getting pictures downloaded from the camera, to the printer, posted onto the blog)...

So here goes - the random things living in Chicago has brought to my life...

1. I have yet to understand why there are people sitting on the benches at the Washington/Wells platform in the morning after I get off the train... There is only ONE color that goes to that side of the station - so it begs me to wonder: are these people confused and trying to wait for the purple, orange, or pink on that side of the tracks? Or are they just enjoying the freshness of the morning next to the booming voice of the CTA trains saying "this is a brown line train to Kimball...next stop is Quincy.. doors open on the right at Quincy.." I mean, nothing relaxes me more than train operators screaming through overloud speakers in the morning...

2. Can I be jealous and judge skinnier/prettier/more put together women than myself if I am standing in line at the Walgreen's buying a Monster Energy Drink (roughly 5 million empty calories), a Kashi bar (a few hundred calories that would be acceptable had I not been buying a Monster), and thinking about lunch at Potbelly's or Chipotle? Knowing full well that I will not be going to the gym that evening because I am instead choosing to go to happy hour? I would say no, but if I really dig down deep, I don't feel that bad for judging them...

3. How many plunging necklines, hiked up skirts, and various other things that shouldn't be appropriate for a work day can I see before and after work? I know that it's hot.. I'm sweating more than most, but I'm still at least covering up what should be covered up and wearing what is at least appropriate, albeit not necessarily trendy or fashionable. It makes me think that 1/2 the people that work in the City must be high priced call girls (or in the case of many, very low priced ones judging by what they are wearing).... Is it so hard to wait until the weekend to wear those revealing dresses?? I certainly don't want to see it on my way to work....

4. I might have seen the best thing the other day walking home down Halsted Street... No, it wasn't a fabulous drag queen, or some "lady" adjusting her package walking down the street (these are common and not worth the extra blogging)... but a woman in stiletto sandals walking her BIKE across the street. She could barely stay upright on those heels (picture to be posted shortly)... so I don't know how she would pedal a bike.. but I certainly waited around long enough to see if she would in fact be getting on the bike (which would have lead to MORE pictures)... alas she parked her bike on a bike rack and presumably headed down Halsted taking little steps and hoping she didn't break her ankle.

5. Finally - this is just for good measure and to kind of top off my 5 random musings of the summer... Cub's fans that are in from out of town... I have heard multiple rather hilarious conversations while getting off at the Addison stop on the way home. I often don't check the game schedule which could allow me to miss some of the insanity that is the Addison Red Line Stop just before game time... but then I would miss things like these intelligent comments.. FIRST: A man getting off of the train right in front of Wrigley, looking at the ground, surrounded by about 300 fellow Cubs fans in Cubs gear - goes up to the Wrigley Field Ambassador at the train stop and says "Where do I go? I'm trying to get to Wrigley, which way do I go once I'm down the stairs?" To which the ambassador managed to suppress a smile and say "Sir, you'll go down the stairs, take a left... honestly, just follow the rest of the people and you'll figure it out." he could have also said "hey dumby - why don't you just look up and you can SEE THE FREAKING STADIUM FROM HERE"... and that's why I'm not an ambassador... SECOND: I was exiting the platform behind two girls who were roughly 18-19 years old. One was clearly from out of town (we'll call her OOTG - out of town girl) and learning about Wrigley Field and the other girl was from what I will assume had to be a northern suburb of Chicago (we'll call her NSG - north suburb girl) ... the NSG was explaining to the OOTG the ins and outs of where people sit and things... pointing out where people were walking up to the rooftop bleachers and said "ohhh, remember those when we get onto the street - those are the illegal bleachers that are on the rooftops here. there are real ones inside where we are sitting". The OOTG's response was "oh really? They're illegal? That's so crazy.. I think I've heard of those" .... And that's how viral lies start.. you know somewhere on a facebook page this OOTG took a picture of the rooftop bleachers and is calling them illegal and spreading this around to her 5 million friends...

6. I realized that there was another one... I know you were getting disappointed that I was at the end - never fear, there are far more weird/crazy/stupid things that happen in this fair city.. I just can't think of them all at once. But this one was pretty fantastic.. A new (read beautiful, life changing) Target opened about 1/2 a mile from us.. John and I went there on Saturday to return something and buy a phone (yes, we have a land line... it's bizarre - we reverted back to 1995). We were leaving the store and this girl was walking her dog down the sidewalk. This new Target for all it's shininess lives in a very UNshiny neighborhood... and this random homeless/weird guy walks behind the girl with the dog and goes "WOOF"... the dog keeps walking but the guy keeps talking now in his apparent 2nd language (aka English) and says to the dog "you know what I said.. you know what I said"... at this the dog pauses (presumably because he wants to protect his young female owner from the weirdo walking behind them??) and the man says "no, you go with her... it's okay... you know what I said".... and the dog keeps walking (the smell on the concrete that he was smelling probably lost interest)... and the man seemed very satisfied...

Hopefully you now either feel grateful for where you live and who you deal with... or jealous that you can't partake in some of THIS absurdity (while I'm sure you encounter your own)...