Apartment tour

My mom has been anxiously awaiting pictures of our new place, and I think we finally got things cleaned up and put away enough to post some. This apartment is still a work in progress, so forgive any imperfections. Here is the floor plan that we made before we moved in to help you visualize the layout. We didn't end up putting all the furniture as placed on this diagram so don't let that confuse you. I know it's small and hard to read, but you can click on the picture to enlarge.

Here is a view of our door from the outside of the apartment.

This is what you see when you first walk in-- the door you see leads into the kitchen.

And here is a picture of our valet door.

It was made so that you could open it and place your clothes inside. Someone could then come by and open the compartment from the outside and take the clothes to be cleaned or pressed or whatever. Pretty cute.

You turn to your left and enter our living room, which is the largest and also the most charming of the rooms in our apartment.

It has wall sconces and detail, and the awesome wood floors.

Here's one more view of the living room.

And since I never did post a picture of our couch when we bought it, here it is.

We really wanted a couch with a pull out bed so we could have company stay with us more comfortably, but after shopping for some time, we realized that a couch bed was not affordable for us. Then we happened upon this little beauty. It matches our living room color scheme perfectly, and was on super great clearance because it had been a floor model in the furniture store and it has a very small rip behind one of the cushions.

So we bought it and we have been very pleased with it, and we have even put the bed to use a couple of times when we have had company.

Off the living room is the dining room

and kitchen.

We have never had a dedicated dining space before and we are just thrilled about that. It may be one of my favorite features about this apartment. We also love that there are actually drawers in the kitchen (so many that some are actually empty). We missed drawers in our last place.

The bathroom is small and old, but it serves its purpose just fine.

The biggest problem that the bathroom had was that it didn't have any storage besides the stuff behind the mirror. We ended up buying some cheap storage solution that just didn't work out. Then we bought this cupboard,

which is now hanging happily in our bathroom doing just what it should. We tried to hang it over the toilet at first, but discovered that the wall there was made of cement, so we moved it to another wall, and I am pretty pleased with it. So now the bathroom is fully functional.

Our bedroom is the least put together room of our apartment right now. We're still working on that. But here are some shots of it anyway.

From the doorway

and looking back toward the doorway.

And, just for fun, here are some shots of some of the charming details in our apartment.

The Melting Pot

We decided to try the Melting Pot for our date night just the other night. We've never tried it before because it's pretty darn expensive. But with a little research, we discovered that we could really keep costs down by going early in the evening during their happy hour, plus we had the help of a gift certificate, bringing it down into the affordable range. So off we went and tried it.

Yum yum.

We thought that the bookends were the highlights of the meal. We started off with a spicy cheese fondue (excuse the photo quality... cell phone pictures).

It came with apples, veggies, breads, and tortilla chips for dipping. So delicious. For the main course, we got chicken, shrimp, and steak, potatoes, and broccoli which we dipped in various batters, cooked in the fondue pot, and then ate with a variety of dipping sauces.

And then there was dessert. We got a chocolate caramel fondue with nuts. They gave us strawberries, bananas, marshmallows, brownies, cheesecake, and rice krispies treats for dipping.

Mmmmmm. We left there feeling stuffed to the brim. Pretty fun stuff. Maybe we can go again sometime when we have saved up our pennies enough to afford it.

Reader question #2

Brittney asked Where is your favorite place, and why is is your favorite?

I've been thinking about this one for a long time, and I just can't come up with one single answer. I've thought of the cliche but true things like that my favorite place is wherever Zack is. I've thought about family vacations I've taken, and different places I've lived. And I just don't know. I guess that my favorite place depends on my mood.

This is what I do know. I am a home body. I love to be home. I like vacations, but I love to come home afterward. I like to be surrounded by my own things and by my family (Zack, in this case). So I guess that when all is said and done, home is probably my favorite place. Boring, I know.

That being said, I LOVE LOVE LOVE Philadelphia. It is my favorite city. So I'm not really well travelled. Oh well. I love Philly. I love all the stuff there is to do. I love the abundant green space. I love the historical places, the old cemeteries, the charming old neighborhoods. I love the diversity. I know that if we move away from here after Zack finishes grad school, I will leave a chunk of my heart behind. There's nothing like coming over a ridge and seeing that skyline or driving the long way home just to see how cute a certain street is or just deciding to walk home instead of riding the train because everything is so walkable. Utah will always hold a special place in my heart with the mountains and the beautiful scenery there, but Philly is my kind of city. It's my home, and I would be content to make it that forever.

Thanks for the question Brittney.

Beach bums

And finally, to get all caught up on what we've been up to, last weekend was Memorial Day weekend, and I ended up with Memorial Day off. Tuesday is my regularly scheduled day off after I work weekends, so I got Monday and Tuesday off. We decided to take advantage of the holiday and the fabulous weather and reprise our trip to Atlantic City, but hit up the beach this time. And we did. We drove down there at around 10 AM on Memorial Day, and we didn't hit traffic even once, which I was surprised about. We enjoyed the day on the beach, checked into the same hotel we stayed in before, went to the spa at the hotel, and then did some more shopping at the outlets. We drove home Tuesday morning, which really worked out because we didn't hit any traffic again. Pretty much everyone else had to be back to work on Tuesday. So the timing really worked out for us.

We didn't get any pictures except this one

but we had a blast. We had a nice hotel room again, and it had a fabulous ocean view. It was even better than the last room we stayed in because it was higher up. 2 Atlantic City trips in 2 weeks... pretty fun.

So, we've had a busy couple of weeks and we are still getting settled in our new place. It has taken some time with all that's been going on. We finally got some air conditioners this week, which is great because it has been hot and muggy. Luckily for us, it has cooled down to the 70s for a couple of days while we wait for the maintenance people to come install them. We are to the point now where we are working on the finishing details of the apartment-- hanging pictures and such, so I promise that pictures are coming.

an ER visit

Yes, I'm still far behind.

To pick up where I left off...

On the Sunday after we moved, I was excited to get to go to church since I had missed it the week before because of those double I worked. So I went, but I started feeling kind of funny and was thinking I might need to go home sick. Then, out of nowhere, I got this excruciating pain in my abdomen and it just wouldn't let up. So Z took me home. The pain just kept coming and coming with no relief. I couldn't think about anything else. I was crying and vomiting and it was absolutely miserable. So I let Z take me to the ER even though I really didn't want to go. I thought my appendix might've burst.

Of course, probably 20 minutes after we got to the ER, the pain really started to let up. Go figure.

So I had a ton of tests run on me including bloodwork, a urine test, and 2 CT scans (one without contrast and another with). In the end, they basically decided that they weren't sure what had caused the pain, but they did find some things wrong with me that may have contributed. I had a urinary tract infection (but no urinary tract stones as they had suspected), possibly a cyst on my ovary that burst (although no one could say for sure if this had actually occurred), I was kind of dehydrated, and I had a stone in my appendix. I didn't even know appendix stones existed. They gave me the option on having my appendix removed but I decided to opt out since there wasn't really a whole lot of evidence of inflammation or anything. They wanted to keep my overnight for observation, but let me go home because I am a nurse and promised to let them know if I was having any more problems. When all was said and done, we had been in the ER for 10 hours, and I left with nothing besides instructions to come back if the pain came back. Dang. I wish I had been able to wait those 20 more minutes that it took for the pain to let up and skipped the ER. But, on the bright side, I got to stay home from work the next day to take it easy, which I needed since I still didn't feel good. So my epic 4 day weekend turned into a 5 day weekend with a not so fun ending. Here's some pics of my adventure. They are cell phone pics so not the best quality ever or anything.

Here I am chillin' in the ER

Here's my IV

Here's a bruise from a failed IV attempt. It actually got a lot worse than the picture shows.

And this is how I felt for most of the 10 hours.... I'm bored, can I go home now?

a flurry of activity

It all started on that weekend just over 2 weeks ago. I went into work on Saturday and they asked me to stay for a double shift. Usually I agree to stay on Saturday night if they will give me Sunday off, but they couldn't agree to that this time. I was going to refuse, but then they offered me the upcoming Friday off. I was already scheduled to be off on the Saturday and Sunday of the upcoming weekend. A 3 day weekend sounded pretty good. So I agreed to do it. So I worked my double, went home and got some zzzzzzzs, and showed up back at work on Sunday. And they called and asked me to stay for a double on Sunday night. When they offered me Thursday off and I realized my weekend would now be 4 days long, I agreed. So I worked my double shift, went home and got some zzzzzzs, and showed back up at work on Monday. No, they didn't ask me to work a double shift on Monday, thank goodness. I would've had to say no. I was downright pooped by the end of my shift that day. Tuesday was my day off, so I went over to the new apartment to pick up the keys and then I scrubbed the place so we would be ready to move in over the weekend. I cleaned the outsides and insides of all the cupboards. I vacuumed and mopped. I cleaned windows. I scrubbed the bathroom. (I should note that Zack came in the evening after work and helped me with all of this). The lasted most of the day. On Wednesday, I had to work again, so I did. Thursday was the beginning of my epic 4 day weekend. Even though we were moving in just a couple days, we decided to take advantage of my time off and do something fun, so we headed down the Atlantic City.

Although it's sort of uncool to admit you like Atlantic City, we admit it. It's only a little over an hour away when there's no traffic, there's tons to do, and you can get a room in one of the big hotel casinos on the beach for really cheap on a weeknight in the off season, which is what we did. We were more than pleased with the hotel room,

which was quite nice and included a fabulous ocean view.

It was nice weather, but not quite warm enough to be beach weather, so we spent our time shopping at the outlets,

eating at PF Chang's, walking the boardwalk (here's Z outside the Wild Wild West casino. We stayed at Bally's, which is attached to this casino),

and watching some of our favorite TV shows at the hotel. It was excellent and very relaxing.

The next morning, we got up and just went straight home. We had a lot of preparation to do because it was Friday and our move was scheduled for Saturday. So we got home fairly early and spent the day packing.

On Saturday, we had to go all over to find a moving truck, but we finally got one, we got some helping hands, and we got all our stuff over to the new place. It was sad to leave our old apartment, but we love our new apartment so far and we are excited about it. We are still working on some final details so no pictures yet. I still have more to catch up on, but this will do for now.

Zack's birthday

Yes, this was pretty much a month ago now. So I'm a little behind. Time for some catch up.

Zack's birthday just happened to be my day off work. He took work off too and we had a fun, low key kind of day. We went shopping and out to dinner. We tried a new restaurant called Xochitl (pronounced so-cheet), a little Mexican place in Society Hill. Zack got stuffed chicken and I had a black bean burger. It was yummy. I don't think I'd go there again, but it was fun to try. And we polished off the day with a Phillies game.

The Phillies actually won, which seems like something special these days with all the losing they've been doing. It was actually a very exciting game. We were ahead by one but then the opposing team scored so we had to go into extra innings. We won when Carlos Ruiz hit a walk off home run in the 10th inning. A real nail biter but great in the end.

And here's a picture of Zack on his birthday with his new pink tie from me, and his new ipod touch from his parents.

The weekend after his birthday, we had a little get together with friends. We did a Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs themed dinner party. Zack whipped up some of his fabulous spaghetti and he made some meatballs. After the delicious dinner, we watched the movie. I think Zack and I must be easily amused. We seemed to like it more than anyone else. Anyway, we had a good time at our little get together and hope our friends did too. Unfortunately, I didn't get a single picture.

So now Zack is 25. How'd we get that old so fast?

Reader question #1

Ashley posted the following question: Where do you think is the best place to eat in Philadelphia on the cheap?

I feel like I need to start my answer by once again proclaiming that I am not at all a foodie, I am very unadventurous in my eating out choices, and I like to eat the same stuff over and over because I already know I like it. Thus, my answer to this question may make some people cringe, but oh well. My opinion is what it is.

I say that if you want to eat in Philly on the cheap, you should go for a slice of pizza. Really. Lots of places in Philly really have that brick oven pizza thing down to an art. I love pizzas with thin, crispy crusts. Mmmmm. And tons of places will give you a really big slice for just a buck or 2. I personally am partial to Allegro, but that is not the only place to go. I remember the first time I came to Philly way back in the day, Zack took my to this little place on south street where we got huge slices of yummy pizza for ultra cheap. Top it off with a mango water ice from Rita's and you have yourself a delicious, satisfying meal for just a couple bucks.

Thanks Ashley