domesticity

Living in Alaska, I could probably take pictures all day every day for the rest of my life of all the gorgeous scenery up here. But sometimes I have this strange desire to take pictures of random everyday things around our apartment and share them with you all. Maybe because for most of you, I can't just tell you to drop by and visit us anytime. (Of course the invitation always stands, if you can make the trip...) We are slowly making our apartment more home-like, though we are still searching for some major items (a couch being the most dire need right now). It's been fun and painful at the same time to start from scratch. Fun in that we can buy exactly what we want, and painful because it involves a long decision-making process and it's usually expensive. It makes us feel old to have real furniture that we picked out and bought as opposed to something worn and not-exactly-beautiful that was given to us! Through this furnishing process we are discovering we have definite likes and dislikes when it comes to interior decorating. A few things so far have been a definite success, so here they are:

What is this strange photo, you ask? Well, it's my version of a spice rack (with apologies to Ken and Carrie, who gave us this idea). Those little silver jars are magnets stuck to the side of our fridge, each one filled with something delicious. I love how easy it is to grab a spice, twist off the lid, grab a pinch of something, and put it back on the fridge. Now, the presentation would be nicer if we had a magnetic board hung on the wall, and the spices displayed there for all to see (the way the fridge is in our kitchen, you only see these if you are standing at the sink). Sadly our kitchen doesn't have the wall space for that, so we make do with this. The little jars are from Bed Bath and Beyond and the spices I buy in bulk in the organic section at Fred Meyer.

This lovely thing is sold as an assemble-it-yourself shoe bench at Fred Meyer (if you could see it up close you would see spots of wood glue), but my magazine-loving husband saw it and thought, "coffee table!" And it's perfect. We store our piles of magazines below and someday, when we have a couch, we will put snacks on top while we're watching a movie. The only problem: it would be nice to reserve one spot for each magazine, but we get more than 8 magazines, so we'll have to have some share with each other. I'm thinking of putting The Mennonite in the same spot as Gourmet (see title of this blog...groan). :)

This is my lovely coleus plant, given to me by my Aunt Betts. I just repotted it and I think I should have bought a larger pot....it takes up the whole thing! It's our only houseplant so far and it's doing so well. It just started popping out little purple flowers, which I think you can see in the next picture, even though it's bleached out by the flash:


It's so nice to have a green thing to share space with. We'll be buying more plants soon. Our apartment gets a lot of natural light, which I'm grateful for.

Ah, domesticity. Having a peaceful, beautiful, practical space to live in makes life happier, I think.