Making home

I am in love with my new apartment. I have so many plans for the space, and so many ideas about how I will live here. I love love love it. When I moved in it was immediately obvious that the landlord had done absolutely nothing to make the apartment any cleaner than it was when the previous tenant left. They were not planning paint the dirty walls, or cleaning the nasty kitchen floor, or wash the bird poop covered windows. They were not going to replace the burn in the carpet or even clean (or vacuum) the carpet, or even rid the shower stall of some mildew. So I have my work cut out for me. Some of this is already taken care of... some of it is still to come.

Changes coming up...
1. There is a yellow wall in the living room, which matches the yellow in the bathroom. Both will be painted a light greenish blue that matches my living room lamps and bathroom floor rugs. It will be lovely.
2. Blinds in my room. Currently there is no covering on the window in my bedroom, but I purchased blinds today that match my bedside tables.
3. Blinds in the kitchen. There is also no window covering in the kitchen. I wouldn't normally care about that, but I'd like to get something to block out the heat and the sun. Since my apartment is on the 3 floor of a 3 floor building and has eastern facing windows, it can get relatively warm in there. I wanted to go with curtains, but the ones I liked for the kitchen wouldn't keep out the heat.
4. I need to hang all of my art. So far the Naked Lady has gone up, and of course the first thing to go up was my crucifix, but everything else is still leaning against walls. I haven't decided where everything will go yet. All the furniture is in place, but now I need to arrange and decorate my walls - after I wash them of course.
5. I have to finish lining my shelves with new contact paper, the gripping kind. I like the gripping kind.
6. I need to clean my carpets with a carpet cleaner... you know.. the kind you rent at the grocery store.
7. I need to grocery shop... to fill my new cupboards with lovely food.

I am also making myself at home with this whole residency thing. Well mostly, I should say my boyfriend is freaking fabulous and is doing everything he can to make this seem normal and easy for me. And it's working. It doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore. I know we'll make it and that is wonderful.

PS. My birthday is in just 10 days. I'm pretty excited about that.