Anything Could Happen

My First Apartment 

So that moment. That moment when you are handed a key and suddenly you have a place that is all your own. Not everyone has had that moment yet but everyone will, at some point in there lives, experience this for the first time. I have had the great pleasure of experiencing this feeling a few months ago when, after countless calls and paperwork, I was handed the key to my first apartment. I could feel the importance of the moment as it happened which I have found is something I can rarely do. I tend to not notice important moments until they have passed. This is a quality I am continuously trying to improve on but that day at our apartment leasing office I had no trouble at all.

And now a little back story on my living arrangements since leaving home to explain why, at 21, this is my first experience with my own apartment. My freshman year of college I lived in a dorm with one of my best friends, she found a different roommate for her living situation sophomore year so I was left contemplating getting an apartment on my own or finding someone to room with. My closest cousin Ellie called my Mama around this time and told her she was not ready for me to be living on my own so she wanted me to come live with her and her family. A few weeks later I moved into their second bedroom at their home in Kyle, Tx. I lived with Ellie, her husband Corey and their children Ryan and Landyn for all of my sophomore year and fall of my junior year. They were wonderful and I was so grateful that my parents and I didn't have to worry about paying for my living arrangement. So I have been away from my parents for almost three years now, but it wasn't until my high school friend Tyler (who also attends The University of Texas) called me during the fall of my junior year and asked where I was living in the spring that the idea of actually living on my own really became a feasible option.

It all happened pretty quickly after Tyler called me at the beginning of October. He told me he wanted to look into the Hyde Park area and from there I simply Googled apartments in that area and we ended up moving into the first complex that came up in my research. We called and were told there was no available apartments for us in the spring, but the lady in the office was so sweet and told Ty about a one bedroom that's tenant was being evicted. She said there were no guarantees until after the trial but we filled out our paperwork and put down a deposit in preparation. December 5th was the date of the trial and that evening Ty got the call that the apartment was ours. They told us the move in date would be December 19th and that was the moment we officially had our first apartment. Our situation was far from ordinary in that most of the process happened very quickly and without trouble. Neither of us had ever even seen the apartment before the day we moved in and we got lucky that it was all nice and worked for us. I wouldn't recommend doing it the way we did but while all of the planning was happening we were juggling with my out of town schedule and our shared rehearsal schedule for a Christmas musical we were both taking part in. We were extremely lucky and blessed that it all fell into place so perfectly. I still think that it was meant to be.

Having my own apartment has been a wonderful experience. There are so many things I didn't foresee when we made the decision but it has been a lovely adventure. From the process of moving in to the daily requirements of cooking it has been full of new things to learn. Moving on its own is an extensive process that takes loads of planning and organization. Now moving into your first apartment can take even more because you are going from a place where you don't have any furniture into a place where you will need couches, a coffee table, a tv stand, a dining room table, kitchen items, even a shower curtain. If you are like me and have a huge family it is likely that you can get most, if not all, of these things from family members. My cousin Ellie was getting her in-laws old living room set so she was kind enough to give us all of her living room set. That took care of so much of what we needed. My mother had been collecting kitchen thing for me since I was in high school so we were set in that department. The thing we hadn't thought of in any way was the bathroom. We had this realization the first night in the apartment when none of us could take a shower. I guess I had always assumed apartments came with things like a shower curtain. We didn't even have towels! So at about one in the morning, after rehearsal, we had to make a Walmart run. It wasn't cheap either. Warning: apparently boys will grab any food that sounds good when you take them with you to the grocery store, for anyone living with one for the first time!

We have been living in the apartment for about five months now and are still settling in. It has felt like home for a while but we are still finding things we need to buy and adding to it as we go. There really isn't any way to move in with everything you will need, you have to just learn as you go. We are in a one bedroom that is 540 sq. ft and have found out that while we love each other we really need our own bedrooms. This is just something we had to learn from experience. So we will be picking up and moving four apartments down into a two bedroom in July. We are super excited for the transition!

This is our dining room area, we didn't have that table when we moved it, it is actually the only furniture that my parents had to buy for the move. We love it though and its a perfect size for an apartment. Of course we have a little longhorn decor to show our school spirit! 

This is the table again. When we moved in we didn't know that we would have so many windows and so much natural light so we hadn't brought curtains. This is another things I didn't realize it wouldn't come with, or at the pole was. I assumed that there would be curtain rods already installed but unfortunately that was yet another purchase we had to make. It really adds up after a while. Luckily my Mama had those curtains that matched the living room wonderfully. 

The space as a whole. We have to keep our trashcan in there because the pantry isn't quite big enough to fit it. This can be inconvenient when you want to be lazy but it is fine usually :) 

The bathroom is actually one of the largest spaces in the apartment. It is massive. That is our lovely shower curtain, the only one we could agree on when we went on our Walmart run that first night. I still love it and think its so cute. 

The counter is a decent size, not so small that I get annoyed on a daily basis but when my girlfriends are over and we are all trying to do hair and makeup it can get cramped very easily. There will be a double vanity in the new apartment and I am thrilled to have it! The toilet and shower will also have a separate door from the rest of the bathroom. Yay for no more having to wait to get ready!

I try to keep it as neat as I can but sometimes after Tyler washes his face or wets his hair he leaves a massive mess with the water. I has discussed this topic with my cousin and she says her husband does the same thing, so yet another warning when moving in with a man, they will leave messes on the bathroom counter :P I just make sure to wipe it up quickly because if I don't I will forget and set my phone in all the water. This has happened multiple times and never fails to make me aggravated, I'd much rather clean it up and not have to feel the negative energy! 

Our closet was one of the main worries we had before we moved in as we hadn't seen it and two people sharing one closet could have easily become a disaster. We were the luckiest when it came to this because when we got in there we found that the closet was massive! It is actually might be bigger than any I've ever had. Between the closet and bathroom you have half of our apartment! :) So we have plenty of room in here for all of our stuff. 

It can get a bit cluttered at times though, seeing as two people are using it and we both have a good amount of things. In the two bedroom we will both had a walk in closet that is actually (and I am not exaggerating this) double the size of our current one. The closets actually have two separate doors they are so massive. I have told my best girlfriends one of them could come live in my closet it's so big! What more could a girl ask for?? :) 

This is the living room. The dining, living, and kitchen areas are all just in one space and not really separated and I love this element. It makes the apartment feel much larger than it really is and lets you easily interact with guests when you have them over. Those built in book shelves we an awesome feature for storage but we have each hit some part of our body on there, so have our friends. Alcohol consumption doesn't help with this either! You can kind of see the big screen my parents (well I just took it from my room at home so they aren't really missing it) donated to the cause in the corner, I didn't really get a better picture of it and I'm not sure why :P It makes for wonderful movie nights and is always a wow factor when people visit for the first time :) 

Those are the couches Ellie was kind enough to give us, and the coffee table. They are so comfy and the back cushions can pull off so they are also really big, which is great when we need to sleep on them. I actually will sleep on them when I don't even have to because they are so comfy and the big screen is better for a late night movie!

We added those book cases back there a few month after moving in because we felt with that couch turned at an angle that we were losing some space back there. I think its a cute little addition back there to keep decorative things on. We also got that rug because Tyler insisted. He wanted a really large one that would take up the entire living room floor but I didn't want a rug at all so we compromised and got a smaller one. I actually will admit is comes in handy and really pulls the whole room together. 

That lamp was an extremely necessary purchase and I don't know how we were living in that apartment before we had it. There isn't any overhead lighting in the living room so it is so dark in there! I still don't even understand why a builder would not put a light in there, I mean what were they thinking? But the lamp helps a lot! 

This is my side of our bedroom. People always comment on how tiny our room is but its just as big as my dorm room was and that didn't have the living area we do. It feels plenty big :) 

My walls are still bare, but not because I don't have anything to hang on them, just because I am to lazy to actually hang any of it! At this point I think I'll just wait till I have my own room at the new place to even bother. I did finally put up my Taylor Swift calendar in March though, so I think I deserve some credit for that! ;)

My dresser top that has to double as a night stand since there just isn't any room for one. Again, like the bathroom, I try to keep it clean and organized but sometimes on a bad week it can get really out of hand. This is it all pretty though. I had all my Taylor Swift perfumes right under the calendar, how adorable! :) 

There's the closet door and Tyler's dresser on the opposite wall. That tv is the one from my room at Ellie's and the New York skyline poster is Tyler's. It is his dream to move there, mine too, but I want to live in Los Angles first :) 

Tyler's side over there is as clean as I could get it :) And again, there's a rug in our bedroom because Tyler insisted. I don't like this one as much because it slips around on the floor I almost fall on it all of the time. Tyler has his side all done up though, so he's doing better than me. Those curtains over the balcony door we had to purchase but it was so worth it to keep out the sun in the morning. 

Here he is in all of his glory, Mr. Tyler Michael Cullen! We have been friends since I was fifteen years old and known each other even before that. I am so lucky to have him there for me and so lucky that I can forever refer to him as my college roommate. I love him very much and love that we can just be ourselves through good days and bad. 

That's just a little story about my first apartment and a little tour as well :) The apartment's info is linked below if you're looking for a place in the Hyde Park area. I really enjoy living here and all of the people who work here are so sweet. 

http://www.rainiermanagement.com

http://www.rainiermanagement.com/oak_park_apartments.htm