The Garbage Disposal Ate My...

First let me start by saying that I have the best baby boy kitty in the world... and that I love his fearless and  curious spirit... but he gets into all kinds of trouble, especially in the kitchen.

He dropped my keys in the garbage disposal.

I have one of those key chain slinky-like stretch cord things? He likes to paw at it... and I can imagine that I left my keys on the counter, he pawed them a bit and they fell in the sink/garbage disposal. The worst part was how I found out. When I heard that horrible noise I tried turning it on and off ... three times!

"What the hell?" [on] [off]
"What is that?" [on] [off]
"What's in there?" [on] [off]

Yeah. Luckily, all I lost was my apartment gate remote.

We'd actually had a garbage disposal strainer in there before (a similar looking one than the one pictured) but the top of it had broken so I threw it away -- thinking nothing of it because if I found it once I can find it again... right? Wrong! Two weeks later I was still digging out avocado seeds, bottle caps, unpitted olives (why do they even sell those? Don't they know people don't read the jar?!). Anyways, when you can't find it in stores (hell, when you can't be bothered to look in stores) just search online and save your sanity keys!

I highly recommend this Disposal Genie if you have curious kitties or small utensils you always worry about loosing. Nothing but food is getting past this cover and although your kitty might try to lift it it's too heavy and long to simply drag out. 

This thing is indispensable (indisposable? haha)!

Rent or Buy? That is the Question

We've been living here in our apartment for five years (since 2007 when I met my husband) -- and actually, I lived in the building across from ours for three years before that so that's 8 years combined! Crazy! 

Honestly, we never thought we'd be in Georgia this long -- but when the economy went in the crapper we decided it'd be wise to stay (and keep paying cheap rent), and luckily the job turned out better than we'd hoped, too. So yeah, we're staying in Georgia, for a while.

So the question is: should we spend that time owning or renting?

(source)

We already know the pros and cons of renting, but for us the negatives of renting are outweighing the positives. When we weighed our options we focused on the good and the bad of owning and we didn't let every renting nuisance influence the positives of owning. For example: We didn't add "we could grill outside" or "we wouldn't have to carry groceries up three flights of stairs" to the pros of owning a house because renting a place that doesn't have stairs and that does allow a grill can solve that. Renting nuisances are not a good enough reason to take out a loan for hundreds of thousands of dollars!

Not a day goes by that we haven't weighed our options. We've been asking ourselves this question for two years! We've been like anxious kids on their way to Disney Land. Ok, most kids are excited to go to Disney Land. But you get what I'm saying...

(2010) Are we there yet? No.
(2011) Are we there yet? Almost!
(2012) How about now? Yes! We're here!

We're here! We're going to buy a house! We're going to buy a house! It makes sense financially but most importantly we feel it will improve our quality of life. There's so much reward (and work, but nothing worth having is easy) in owning your own home and we're ready to reap those benefits! Renting this apartment has been good to/for us but it's time to move and move on. We don't know what house, yet... but we're so excited (and anxious) to be starting the search! I'm one of those people always preparing for the worst -- I have a Plan B and a Plan C all the way to the bank! But the amount of deep thought, time and research we've put into this decision makes me feel really good! We're keeping our budget modest, expectations reasonable and most importantly we have patience. We've submitted both a 60-day notice and a month-to-month lease agreement just in case we don't find a house in time. There's no looming time line to pressure us!

So far we've done tons and tons of drive-bys and only looked at a few houses inside. But I hope to write about the contenders when the time comes. In the mean time, driving around new towns and touring homes is really helping us pin point the most important things to us in a house and our favorite areas as well. But more on that in a later post! Right now I have about a hundred search results to go through! ;)

Enter the Hall Table

Back in November I got a shoe cabinet for our entry-way/foyer to help wrangle in shoes and helps tidy things up. Well, the wall across the way always looked messy because of a coat rack I had hanging up. I was trying to hide the thermostat but all it did was look messy -- and mess with the temperatures. Lesson learned.

I don't have a before picture of the wall -- bad blogger, bad! Whatever. It changed in only two ways,

Forgive the lighting. I have no natural light from here. 

1. The table is new
2. I moved the coat rack

I've always wanted a table to go against this wall but the large in-take vent cannot be blocked. So it had to be a table that was open at the foot, and it needed to be small enough for that wall (which is only 34" wide x 19" deep).

I found this one at Home Goods a few weeks ago:

The coat rack is now hanging in the tiny hall to the left, where our second bath and spare bedroom are. I like it much better there! It's just as easy to grab our coat from here, but it's out of the way (but not out of sight).

The vent is clean, btw! It just looks like shit.

The table is actually really light -- I was able to carry it out of the store by one hand, so moving it out of the way when we change the air filter is no biggie. I still have to decorate the area a bit (what will I put on the bottom shelf?) and somehow camouflage the thermostat, but for now I'm happy to have a place to drop my keys and kiss the kitties on the head.

A Couple New Dish Towels

I'm picky with dish cloths, are you? I like them to be all cotton (for absorbency) and I don't like them to have anything printed on them. The plainest ones are my favorite, I guess you could say :)

Recently I found some good ones at Big Lots. They're 100% organic cotton and they are so soft and absorbent!

I got two dish cloths, one in cream and the other in olive green (not my favorite color but those were the only two colors they had). I also got a 2-pack of dish cloths in Dijon yellow. All for $6!

I might hit the Big Lots by my mothers and try to find a few more in different colors. I really like them.

Nightstand Knobs

This is just a quick and easy update. While I was at IKEA last week I picked up a couple of knobs for our nightstands. I didn't like the ones that came with them. They're a little too modern for me.

I've replaced the knobs on our matching dresser too, but I didn't have the patience to go back to Lowes and look for the same exact ones we used. 

I didn't really care if the knobs matched in design, just in color...  and I found these that I liked.

FINTORP Knob, stainless steel color $4.99 / 2 pack

They turned out really well!