Archive for "Home Ownership"
I’m So Ready for Summer
Posted on April 12, 2013 by Ching under Home Ownership, Wishlist.
I can’t wait until summer so I can start laying out and sunbathing in my backyard. Kind of like this… (Brian says I sleep with my arms folded up like in the photo and that’s why my back is always achy. I only started doing it recently. I must already be dreaming of sunbathing. LOL.)
BTW, we finally assembled our new patio furniture. We had to retire the old one that we got from Bed Bath & Beyond three years ago. Well, we didn’t really retire it. We just moved it downstairs in the walkout pit. It’s our smoking area. Just for the record, Brian and I are nonsmokers, but we had to create a designate a specific smoking area for our friends who do.
We love, love, love the new patio furniture except we kind of overestimated the size of our deck. Mostly Brian did. I knew that the walkout pit was larger than the deck and I kept telling him that, but he kept insisting that they were the same size. It wasn’t until after we put the new patio furniture out on the deck that he conceded.
These chairs are a lot bigger in person than they look online. They make Brian look like a little kid. We could almost both fit in one. LOL. They are super comfy, though. I can’t wait to start hanging out on the deck. Now, if the weather would just cooperate…
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What Does It Mean?
Posted on February 3, 2013 by Ching under Home Ownership, Life.
Ever since I named our Facebook place Casa de Felitaciones, I keep getting asked what it means. A couple of people have asked me, “Don’t you mean Casa de Felicitaciones?” I had thought about that, but the word felicitationes means greetings or congratulations and doesn’t quite convey the feeling I wanted to evoke; so I decided to make my own word: felitaciones.
Felitaciones is derived from the Spanish word felitacion, which means wishes. I had to add the “es” at the end of the word because it just wasn’t quite exotic sounding enough for me. LOL.
Anyway, one could also think of it as wishes = dreams. However, Casa de Felitaciones isn’t so much a “dream house” — although it is the best house that Brian and I have ever lived in — but a house where all of your dreams and wishes come true.
Unlike our previous house where there was so much work that needed to be done, this house requires no work. There are no projects to consume our time so we can focus our energy on making ourselves better. We can spend our time and effort on achieving our goals and making our dreams reality. I realize that this explanation is long overdue, but that’s what the name of our house means to me.
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The House Cleaning Workout
Posted on December 2, 2012 by Ching under Home Ownership.
I skipped Zumba today to help Brian clean our house. It took several hours, but we got it done. Brian thought he got more of a workout cleaning house than he normally does going to the gym. I had to disagree. Amie’s ab workouts are pretty intense.
I normally feel like a bum when I skip the gym. Not so today. I truly feel like we achieved a lot. In case you were wondering, I did more than just take photos of Brian working. I did all of the vacuuming and much of the dusting. It was pretty much a team effort all the way.
After all was said and done, Brian was like, “Today made me realize how big our house is.” I told him that I knew that already. What I realized today is that we are fully capable of cleaning our own house, we’re just too lazy to do it.
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Reorganized the Closet Yet Again
Posted on October 21, 2012 by Ching under Home Ownership.
I can cross off another item from my wish list. Brian got me a hanger hook
Our current closet is the size of an average bathroom. However, that’s apparently not large enough to hold all of our stuff so for the next house that we move to we will need a closet the size of a bedroom so that we have enough space to hold all of our clothes and shoes in one place and not have to spread them out all over the house.
The closet in the master bedroom barely has room to fit my workout clothes, work clothes, dresses, and regular clothes so we had to get a couple of dressers to put in the bedroom. I have a dresser drawer of just workout socks and then a drawer of non-workout socks and then a drawer for bras that I don’t wear all the time and a drawer for sports bras (because there wasn’t enough shelves in the closet for them to be stored in the workout clothes section), a drawer for t-shirts, a drawer for tank tops, and then Brian had to divide my underwear between three different drawers based on the style — thongs and g-strings went together, regular/everyday type underwear, and special occasion were the three categories. I would have had a special drawer for teddies also, but I got rid of all of my teddies when I got fat. Anyway, he tried to organize by color but, despite how boring I am when it comes to underwear, there were more colors than just beige, black, and white (even I was surprised because I usually get just the basic colors these days when shopping for underwear). But I digress… I did manage to fit my jewelry armoire in the closet and a couple of storage ottomans so Brian has somewhere to sit while he’s helping me decide what to wear. Even though the shelving is limited, there’s actually ample room in there.
Here’s what one side of the closet looked like before we moved some of the winter stuff in. There’s third rod at the very top that we couldn’t use it because of the height issue. After Brian got me a hanger hook (we got it from Bed Bath and Beyond instead of going through Amazon, which would have been cheaper, but we didn’t want to wait), we were able to move most of my winter jackets.
The longer coats (hanging on the left) had to stay in the closet in the guest bedroom.
I was down to only a couple of coats last winter, but I reacquired some of my old jackets and coats from mom and Jenni. I used to have a gazillion, but I got rid of most of them of when I got fat. I’m so happy that I gave some of them to mom and Jenni because I got most of those back. I think there’s only a couple that Jenni wanted to still keep. I got many of my favorites back, though.
I was thinking of going through all of them again, one at a time, to make sure that I get rid of the ones that are now too big for me. We usually have a coat drive at work so I can donate it there. Although, I think mom is bigger than me now so she may be able to use some of these. Not that she needs them. If you’ve seen her closets (yes, that’s closets with an “s”) then you know that she is ten times worse than I am.
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My Reading Chair Got an Upgrade
Posted on October 14, 2012 by Ching under Home Ownership.
When we moved in to the new house, we weren’t really sure how to configure our living room furniture. Our living room set consisted of a couch, a loveseat, a chair and matching ottoman, a sofa table, an end table, a media table, and a large storage ottoman that we were using as a coffee table (because Brian and I aren’t coffee table kind of people). We like the tufted storage ottoman because that’s where we store most of our toys and board games (to keep them from cluttering up the place), we can prop our feet on it and our guests are welcome to do the same (next time you’re at someone’s house, try propping your feet up on their coffee table and watch the look on their face), and it doubles as seating when we have more people than we do chairs. We love, love, love our ottoman. We’re actually going to opt out of the coffee table thing when we get around to furnishing the basement a year or two from now.
But I digress, all of our living room furniture was pretty much clustered together as you can see in the photo below. It was a little tight, but it worked for us. (You can’t see the sofa table because it’s behind the couch.)
With all of the space we have at the new place, you’d think we’d have enough room for everything in our living room but our formal living room area is actually quite tiny. We were able to put the couch and the loveseat facing each other (perpendicular to the window so that no one has their back to the front door and the window/view of the pond is the focal point) with the storage ottoman (that serves as a coffee table) in the middle. The end table is next to the couch which is along the wall that separates our bedroom from the living room. We couldn’t put the sofa table behind the couch so it’s now against the short wall that separates the kitchen from the living room. The wall and the sofa table are the exact same length so it worked out well.
After getting most of the big pieces situated in the living room, we didn’t have a suitable place to put the chair and small ottoman but I had this idea of putting it in front of the fireplace in the hearth room and turning it into a reading area. I actually love going out there to read or play on my Mac when Brian’s still sleeping (so I don’t disturb him). Here’s a picture of my special reading chair:
We got a soft, 5′ x 8′ rug (we probably should have gone with a 6′ x 9′ rug, but we already spent more than we actually wanted to — I budgeted only for a 4′ x 6′ but we agreed that would be too small for the space) from Pier 1 last weekend to make the space more cozy, but we kept thinking that there’s something missing. We didn’t have a table to put your drink on, whether that be a morning coffee in Brian’s case or a mimosa in my case. LOL.
Lucky for us Slumberland still carried the same line of tables that we got almost three years ago. They don’t carry our living room set anymore, but they still had the Kenwood tables. We agreed that the small “chairside” table would be perfect, not only for its function but it would actually match the rest of our living room furniture. So we got one. Here’s an updated photo:
It’s no longer just a reading chair, it’s now full fledged reading area!
Speaking of Slumberland, I’m done buying furniture from them for a while. Besides the fact that I’m now completely broke, I just wasn’t impressed with the level of service they provided this time around. I’m not sure what happened in the span of three years, but it’s like dealing with a totally different company.
When we bought our living room furniture and our counter height dining table for our townhouse in February 2010, I was so impressed with the service that told Brian we would have to return to Slumberland for furniture for the new house when we moved. So we went back there to get furniture for our master bedroom and our formal dining room, but the experience wasn’t the same. I’m not grumpy because I didn’t get a thank you letter from the CEO this time around (even though we did spend more money than we did a couple of years ago — maybe they raised their cap — who knows?). I don’t know if I’ve changed (I think going through customer experience training with Roy Barnes has ruined me for life — I had high expectations before but now I’m really paying attention to all of the details) or if it is Slumberland that’s changed. It may be a combination of both.
There wasn’t really anything major that happened this time around (except I didn’t get that thank you note from the CEO — maybe that’s it — ha!). Delivery delays are not out of the norm when you’re buying furniture. For instance, we had to wait a really long time for our living room furniture to be delivered because we wanted it a specific upholstery fabric instead of the green color that they had in the showroom. Yet I was still happy and more than willing to give them my money again almost three years later. This time around I think I was paying attention to all of the little things that made me realize it’s time to give my business to someone else that is more proactive and attentive to their customers’ needs.
When we purchased this last table, we told them that we wanted to pick it up on Saturday (rather than having it delivered) because it’s only one item and it’s relatively small. We were told that they got their deliveries a certain day of the week and that it shouldn’t be any problem, “but call us later in the week to make sure it’s here.”
I didn’t get this at all. I’m giving them my money. Why am I doing their work? If the table doesn’t arrive at the store as planned, shouldn’t they be the ones to call and tell me that? Whatever. It’s not a big thing, just annoying especially to a couple of busy people such as Brian and me.
We follow instructions really well so, like clockwork, Brian calls on Friday to confirm that our table is there and ready for pick up and to tell them what time we will be by. They told him that our table is there and ready for pick up, but we need to call an hour before. Why can’t I tell you know what time I will be there? Why do I have to call again? Are all furniture stores like this? I guess I had no idea that this was their process because I’ve always had my stuff delivered to the house. Although if they kept good customer records, they would realize how much I’d spent with them in the last three years (and how much more I’d be spending in the next few years — I still have an entire basement and two more bedrooms to furnish) and probably would have offered to deliver the table at no charge. LOL.
Again, nothing to really complain about, but enough for me to take my business elsewhere. I guess I expected a little more. Surely there are furniture stores out there that can meet my expectations. Thank you, Roy Barnes, for ruining my life forever.
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