out back

I took some photos of the back of my apartment building this afternoon. It was a slightly grey day today and drizzling a bit, but I really love the lighting and the way they turned out. I took  A LOT of photos, but here are just a few of my favorites.

The doorway in the photo below leads to the laundry room.

It’s certainly a unique laundry room…

Yes, that’s a tray in the ceiling. Why? I have no idea. Makes a fun picture though.

I love all of the greenery out back. It’s just lovely.

I love this place so much!

the new apartment

My new apartment is still a work in progress, but I took some pictures of the main room today. I’m pretty happy with how it’s looking so far 🙂 So come on in…

Stella really likes hanging out in the front window 🙂

Caught mid-yawn!

The telephone nook is the perfect spot for my rabbit, right? Also, it’s a bit hard to see, but the photograph hanging above the nook is a telephone 🙂

And now for the piece de resistance… the mantle!

I’ll post pictures of the dining area and kitchen soon!

dream catchers

My neighbor has a dream catcher hanging out back, and I just love it. I can see it from my kitchen window.

I’ve wanted a dream catcher for a while, and I’ve been searching for one on Etsy, but all the ones I like are fairly expensive (of course). My friend Raquel brilliantly suggested that I make my own, so I did! I went a little bit nuts buying supplies, and I’ve made 3 dream catchers so far. They’re really fun and fairly simple to make.

The first one I made was kind of a practice one, and I’m going to “edit” it and post pictures of it later.

The second one I made for my friend Ivana. Here it is:

And this is the third one:

update on apartment & things

(This is Marwan’s facial expression every time he realizes a camera is pointed his way. It cracks me up so much! He just freezes and stares at himself.)

It’s been a long day. I usually don’t work Mondays, but the backup driver is out of town, so I took his shift (extra hours! yay?). Antonio left around 6 this evening, so I got to close again (YAY). I really like closing. There’s something so peaceful about being the last person at the store, counting and writing the deposit slip, closing out all the tickets, and locking up.

Anyway. Apartment update: sent my application and authorization to check my rental history to the owner of the building. I was meeting up with Raquel at Press Coffee (It was my first time there and it’s so cool! If I get the apartment, it’ll be in walking distance from me!) when and my phone rang. It was the owner of the apartment building with some interesting news…

[On a side note: I absolutely love spending time with an old friend and how there is NEVER enough time to discuss everything. That can’t be just me. I think every time I hang out with Raquel, we talk and talk and talk, but there are always more things to discuss. That must be a true sign of friendship :)]

One of his tenants from another property has had some sort of emergency with her apartment, and because she’s a long term tenant, he offered her the apartment that I was shown. He said he would hear back from her by the evening and would let me know. If she does decide to take the apartment, there’s an upstairs one bedroom coming available at the end of this month, and he said he would rent it to me for the same price as the efficiency, even though it’s larger and he typically charges a higher rent for it. Well! I really had my heart set on that efficiency, but he sent me a couple pictures of the upstairs apartment, and it’s gorgeous. As long as I get an apartment in that building, I’ll be thrilled.

I am so excited about all of this. Not only do I just love this area of San Antonio, but I have a very sentimental attachment to it. I started going to SAC when I was 17, and I’ve wanted to live in this area ever since. It’s been 6 years, and I think my dream is finally coming true.

A big part of my attachment to this area is due to Colton. I met him the summer before I turned 18 in an English composition class at SAC. I remember the first day of class when I first saw him. I was immediately crushing. It was a summer evening class, so we met once a week (if I remember correctly – it might have been twice a week). As the weeks went by, I noticed that he was gradually sitting closer and closer to me. Then, one night, at the end of class, he came up to me and handed me a slip of paper, then rushed off Napoleon Dynamite style. Six years later and I still have the note he handed me that night. He lived near SAC (only a few streets away from my hopeful apartment), and we spent a lot of time at his place that summer. It was one of the happiest times of my life. We were so young and silly and hopeful about everything. I actually remember us making plans to elope when I turned 18.

Obviously, those plans didn’t come to fruition, but I have nothing but fond memories of that time. Actually, I have nothing but good memories of my time at SAC. I loved it. I loved the area, the people, the classes I took, the weirdness of it all. As odd as it may sound, I think attending SAC won me over to San Antonio.

So. That’s why I’m so excited about this apartment and so anxious to hear “Yes, you’ve been approved! Let’s sign the lease!”

Sorry for getting all sappy. I just can’t help it. I’m too dang excited that my dream of living in a wood floored apartment is most likely coming true.

apartment hunting

The apartment hunt has begun! (And hopefully ended… more on that in a minute.)

Apartment hunting in and around Alamo Heights is a nightmare. If you find a decent apartment, it’s probably way too expensive. If you find a decent apartment at a decent price, it’s probably in a slightly sketchy area. If you’re on a budget, you just can’t win.

So I was shocked when I saw a Craigslist listing for a studio apartment smack dab in the middle of Alamo Heights, only three streets over from my work, for only $500 a month. On paper, it was perfect. It was too good to be true! And yes, it turned out to be too good to be true.

I called the realtor on Thursday afternoon, and she told me the apartment was open and that I could just go in and check it out. I took my coworker, Valerie, along, and we went through the apartment.

It was very cute. The building was built in 1965, and it had a cool retro feel to it. But the longer we looked around, the more things we found wrong with it. Valerie pointed out the cracks in the wall near all the doors and windows, and said it was probably an issue with the foundation (she lives in AH, and her house is old and has foundation issues, so she knows all about it). Then we noticed that the floor seemed to be sinking in a bit towards the middle. She pulled out a tube of mascara and set it on the floor, and sure enough, it rolled toward the middle.

(I love this funky paper in the bathroom medicine cabinet.)

We left the apartment, walked downstairs, and started going around to the side of the building to see where parking was and all that. Well! We turned the corner, and oh yeah, there was definitely an issue with the foundation. The back half of the building appeared to just be floating there. I’m serious. It was propped up here and there by concrete blocks, but there were huge gapes of just… nothing. I honestly don’t know how that building is standing up. It looked like it could have fallen over at any moment. So, we solved the mystery of the super cheap rent!

Then we decided to stop by an apartment complex in Mahnke Park. The neighborhood in that part is a bit sketchy, but the apartments themselves looked like they were newly renovated, and I figured we should give them a shot. We walked up to the leasing office, but there was someone having a meeting inside, so we just hung around outside waiting for them to get done. We’d been standing there talking for a few minutes when an apartment door near us opened. A man’s head appeared in the doorway. He looked at us and said “ohhh”. Valerie took charge and asked him if he knew about the leasing office. He said he did, and came out of the apartment. We couldn’t quite tell if he was just a resident or someone who worked at the complex. Valerie told him that there was someone inside the leasing office and that we didn’t want to be rude. The man said, “Well, I’ll be rude”, then proceeded to open the office door and stick his head in. The woman waved him away and said “I’ll be with you in a minute”. He shut the door, turned to us and said “There you go!” and returned to the apartment. Valerie and I exchanged glances. “Do you want to leave?” I asked her, and she gave me a look. So we sauntered back to my car and took off.

Needless to say, I wasn’t feeling very optimistic about the apartment situation.

Later that evening at work, I was glancing through Craiglist housing ads on my phone, and I found something. Something too good to be true. An apartment fairly close by, in my price range, with gorgeous pictures. I emailed right away asking to see the apartment. The owner emailed me back today and I went to see the place before work.

OH MY GOODNESS. I can’t believe this place. It’s perfect. It’s absolutely perfect. Everything about it. Wood floors. A fireplace. It’s in a charming old building in a nice neighborhood. Covered parking in the back. On site free laundry. A ten minute drive to work. I filled out an application, and I’m emailing it to the owner tomorrow. He told me that I’m the only person he’s showed it to so far, and since he’s going to be out of town all weekend, I’ve definitely got a headstart on any competition. I really really really want to live here. I took a few pictures, but they don’t do it justice. Hopefully this is the end of my hunt!