Harmony's Nook

We sign our lease tomorrow! I’m so excited to exit this apartment and to enter a new space and quite frankly a new chapter in my life. I’ve been a starving artist for so long, and while I’m not going to be rich by any means, things seem to be working themselves out. I’m re-reading Apartment Therapy and Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan says that when you square away your living space the rest of your life starts to fall into place. I’m a firm believer of this. I think the way you live and how you maintain your surroundings is a good indicator of where you are and how you’re feeling in your life. Especially with me….I’m a Libra after all. We have to be surrounded by beautiful things or we start to get panicky.  My surroundings affect me so much, and I’m so excited to be in a new place with a new positive energy.

One of the habits I’m trying to leave behind is my tendency to hoard things. It runs in my family, and while I am one of the milder cases, I definitely have trouble giving up things. My fear that I “might need it later” leads me to hold on to things that I absolutely do not need.

I’m dreaming of a place that is full of light, clean, and cozy. I can’t wait to start cooking again. We’ve been living off easily made dishes, since I packed most of my kitchen months ago back when I thought my move date would be June 1st.

This is close to the color that I will be using for the common areas. I’m deciding between Benjamin Moore’s Quiet Moments and Benjamin Moore’s Birds Egg. We have to buy all the paint and give it to the contractors next week and they’re going to paint for us. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It’s getting very exciting!

***All photos are from Sunset Magazine…my new obsession!

When THIS LIFE gets too much for me, I always have interior design. My mother, to this day, says I missed my calling. She’s very proud of me and loves seeing me onstage, but she still thinks this. And maybe I did.

When I was growing up from a very young age, I was obsessed with interior design. I used to spend hours decorating my barbie house and then I’d stop playing. While all the other kids bought comic books, I would have my dad buy me  a book of floor plans at the supermarket checkout and look at them and dream for hours, days even. I made the most elaborate lego mansions complete with canopy beds and toilets in the bathrooms. My favorite game to play with my brother before I’d go to bed at night was “design a hotel.” We’d pick a locale, a name, and we’d design all the rooms. My brother just played along because I was his big sister, but I LOVED it. I got really lost in the fantasy of it. I still remember THE DOLPHIN. It was a hotel I “designed” that sat on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea complete with an underwater tubed escalator that brought you up to the beach. It brings back such happy memories to think about that.

I remember telling my mother that I wanted to be a dentist when I grew up. When she asked why, I told her it was so I could afford the kind of house that I wanted. That was the ONLY reason. My favorite movies were also design-inspired. I was OBSESSED with the tree house in SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON, and only liked to watch the parts of the movie where they’re IN the treehouse. Pirates, riding ostriches, and all that was nothing to me compared to that amazing structure. I LOVED the Californian villa in PARENT TRAP. That house was amazing. You get the idea, I was a child completely obsessed with design and it looked like that was where my life would lead me.

All of that changed on that fateful day when I turned 14 and my grandmother took me to see Les Miserables on Broadway. To quote another huge musical…”I saw the lights and I was on my way.” And since that day, with a few detours, theater has been my life. I don’t regret it necessarily, I just wonder sometimes if I went the right way. If in another dimension there is a high-powered architect or designer named Harmony? Maybe she even has kids and actually knows some straight men. BAH! But I digress. I guess in the end that this is how it should be. Design is my solace. It brings me pure joy. It isn’t my job. It can’t break my heart. It can’t disappoint me. It’s there to comfort me when I need it and it is a cause for happiness in my life. And really anything that makes us happy in life should be celebrated.

All photos are from Desire to Inpire which is a gorgeous blog. You should check it out.

I feel like all I’ve been doing on here lately is complaining. So today no complaining. Today is about dreams. I used to dream about being on Broadway or in movies. It’s what I thought about all the time. If I daydreamed, that is what it was about. I don’t really daydream about that  anymore. THIS is what my daydreams consist of now….

I’m obsessed with our Pacific Northwest.

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I want to live on a ranch or a vineyard. I’m sure this is mostly due to readingPIONEER WOMAN everyday.

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I want to live in a houseboat in Seattle. Okay this is COMPLETELY due to watching Sleepless in Seattle and also me being OBSESSED with the house boats that I saw in Amsterdam this summer.

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Or maybe a darling cottage on a lake in Oregon.

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I’ve sunk so low in this obsession, and I’m ashamed to admit this, I subscribed to Sunset Magazine.

I’m ashamed to admit this because of the magazine’s tagline.

Sunset: How To Live In The West

It’s ridiculous I know. I live in Chicago, but this is my current guilty pleasure. Dreaming of the West. Please forgive me.

Just look at this goodness:

This is the stuff that dreams are made of.

So we have this cat….

I know I’ve never talked about the cat in detail, just in passing. His name is Manji. He’s not REALLY a cat. He’s more like a snow leopard….or a LION.

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This is him with his lion cut. Okay everyone, get it out of your system. Awwwwww! SOOOOOO CUTE! I would like to point out that he does NOT look like this now. He looks more like this:

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He is a long-haired cat, need I say more?

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Eric LOVES this cat. It’s his baby. Do you see the evil look in Manji’s eyes? You are not imagining this.

Among Manji’s favorite activities are:

Sitting in the sun.

Spreading his food to all the corners of the apartment.

Laying on Eric’s belly.

Leaving me presents in places OTHER than his litterbox.

Randomly trying to climb the wall.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND puking on my rugs!!!! Yay! Cat puke! Yay! I love it!

Anyway, I have grown slightly more fond of this creature than in the past, but one thing that still makes me crazy is him puking on my rugs. Now, we have wood floors. The rugs only cover 10% of the apartment, if that. Does he puke on the other 90% of our floors? No. He seeks out my rugs. every. single. time.

Eric, has promised to replace some of them, which of course I will not hold him to UNTIL the move is done and everything paid for. BUT for when it IS finished, here are some suggestions for him. You paying attention Eric?

This is an indoor/outdoor recycled rug. It’s made of plastic bottles. It’s completely stain-free. They have many styles and sizes and they are completely DURABLE. And they’re PRETTY! You can find them HERE

Thank you for indulging me. I’m sure I’m not the only one with this problem. Am I? Oh please lord let me not suffer alone!!! Okay. I’m done being dramatic now. I hope this helps others too.

P.S. This post is meant to be tongue-in-cheek and is not in any way an attack on my cat or my roomate, who I love very much…

Okay Harmony. Shhhhhhhhhhhhh. Just look at the pretty pictures.

See isn’t that nice? Nothing to worry about.

Just relaxing lovely interiors.

Peaceful. Light. Lovely. Problems? What problems?

Oh is that not working? How about a lovely cabin in the woods?

No? Okay. An ocean view?

NOPE. NONE OF THIS IS WORKING. MY MOVE DATE HAS BEEN MOVED BACK ANOTHER FREAKING MONTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

…the GREAT apartment I mean. I’m not sure why I haven’t written about it. I’ve been really down. Have I mentioned how much I HATE moving? HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE it. Anything that uproots me makes me all emotional and crazy. Then of course there are the money issues.

Moving is so expensive! Depending on how it works out, and this is how it worked out for us, you have to pay rent on the old place. rent on the new place, and an extra month’s rent for a deposit. That is 3 months of rent! That isn’t including moving costs, activation fees, etc. For anyone who lives paycheck-to-paycheck this is a challenge. No wonder I’ve languished in my current tenement (I’m being a TAD dramatic) for as long as I have. 

So because of this and various other personal variables my mood has been like this:

Isn’t this picture stunning? I would like to design an entire room around it. It would look something like this:

In this room I could stare out that window at the rain, read my Edna St. Vincent Millay poetry, and listen to Leonard Cohen. It’s the perfect “dwelling in your bad mood” room.

Don’t worry I’ll snap out of it. Really I should be deliriously happy, and I will be. Once this is all over, it will be so worth it. So let’s forget about my bad mood for a minute and I’ll tell you about my place!

1) It’s BRAND NEW. That’s right! It’s being built as we speak. That means a NEW kitchen with NEW appliances, NEW bathrooms that have never been used. NEW everything. After living in a falling apart, pre-war unit for so long this is very appealing to me.

2) I have my own bedroom AND bathroom! I’m going from really having neither to having both. Oh the bubble baths that I will take! I’m so excited. I’ll have my own zone where I can escape from anything and everything.

3) There is a dishwasher. People that can get by without a dishwasher are better people than me. It doesn’t help that in my current apartment the water pressure is so bad that it takes a half hour to fill up  the sink. I’m not kidding! Washing dishes by hand is a time-consuming nightmare right now.

4) IN-UNIT WASHER/DRYER. This is it. This is the promised land. This was the dream item. We didn’t expect to actually get it, but we did! This changes lives. I’m not kidding. I had an in-unit w/d once, and I still dream about it to this day. I can wash my sheets every single day if I want to, and I just might.

5) An Office for the roommate. Somehow we managed to pull off getting two bedrooms AND an office. I’m not sure how this happened, but it did. Since my roommate works from home this is a big PLUS.

So there you have it. I have to get in there and measure so I can see how much of my furniture is coming with me and what has to go. I just have to get through this rough patch. The reward will be SOOOOOOO worth it. Thank you everyone for your encouragement.

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We’re so close I can taste it. We’re just waiting for the owners to get back into the country so that they can APPROVE our application. Yes, I’m thinking positively now. We’ll know for sure by late this weekend.

I haven’t told you guys about this apartment, because I don’t want to jinx it. I got so attached to the first apartment and then my heart broke when it fell through. I don’t want that to happen again. Suffice to say that it’s everything we were looking for. I will talk about it IN DEPTH if we get it. For now I’ll just dream about having my own bedroom and BATHROOM! (Damn it! I let a detail slip!) Please don’t jinx me powers that be!

BEDROOM PLAN:

My expedit shelf unit won’t fit into the living area of the new place…too many windows and doors on the walls of the room. But, I can’t lose my expedit! I love it and I NEED the storage. So this photo from Country Home really inspired me to think about putting the unit behind my bed. I’ll lose some of the shelf space, but it’s better than losing all of it.

If I don’t have to have my expedit shelf unit behind my bed, then I’d like to do something like this from the late Domino Magazine. (May she rest in peace.)  I have a mosquito netting curtain like that and have never used it.

I LOVE this Ruched Voile Duvet from Pottery Barn. I’m definitely using my white duvet cover and will use a colorful quilt folded up at the bottom of the bed.

I want a vanity area, but don’t want it to be TOO girly. I think the bedding and curtain are girly enough. So this rather simple square desk with just a mirror leaned up against a wall is what I’m looking for. I love the yellow and I love that it isn’t a “traditional” vanity.

My vintage Vogue Prints. Gotta use those!

That’s it for now!

So I’ve decided to snap out of it. One of the biggest upsets is that we’re waiting an extra month to move. That’s an extra month in limbo. I don’t do well in states of limbo. I’m too much of a control freak. I like to know what’s happening, when, and how. I ask a lot of questions in every aspect of my life. I like to be “in the know.”

Anyway, so I have to wait an extra month to move. It isn’t going to kill me. I’ll survive. In the meantime here are some things I’m thinking about for the new apartment.

Living Room/Common Area Plan:

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Why YES Ikea, I AM thinking about getting a sofa bed. Thanks for asking!

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Especially one with storage underneath!

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I’m leaning towards getting the tan one above, although we’re planning on painting the common area robin egg’s blue in the new place. The sage green one looks pretty great with the blue wall behind it, but it also has to go with my existing blue chairs.

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These are my blue chairs! Well it’s only one of them, but I have two!   They’re a little darker than this. I’m getting rid of a lot of stuff, but THESE are non-negotiable. I think they’re so incredibly gorgeous. I can’t wait to display them properly in the new place.

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There is room for my stainless steel hutch! I don’t have to get rid of it. I’m going to put it in the eating nook off the kitchen and use it as a bar. I’m going to FILL it with Bombay Saphire Gin, because it’s beautiful and my roommate won’t drink it! He hates gin. SCORE!

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A little art for the room.

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Some more art.

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I know what you’re thinking. That’s a lot of blue! I know it is, but I’m leaving most of the walls white with one accent wall of light light blue. My tv stand and new tv are both white. The drapes will be white. The floor is wood and will ground everything. The couch will probably be neutral too…unless I decide to go with the green one! Hah! I can’t wait to put my plan into action.

Next up: Bedroom Plan!