Ramblings and Musings on a Sunday Morning

Last night, Shuky and I cracked open a rare (for our apartment anyway) bottle of wine and caught up on some of our shows. It was great! We drank our wine out of plastic cups, which I found quite humorous, to put it mildly.

Before we moved to Ames, we put all of our finer things in storage (read: my father's garage/basement). We figured there would be very little opportunity for fancy entertaining, or even casual entertaining for that matter. We also were quite unsure how much storage space we would have in our apartment. Needless to say, I wayyyy overpacked and had piles of boxes sitting in my living room for the first few months after moving out of Postville. Eventually, we got those boxes back up to my dad's luxurious storage facility (read: expanding throughout his house). Then, we moved to a bigger apartment, but fear not. Over our slightly-over-a-year stay at our first apartment, we managed to add enough to our belongings to fully fill our new apartment and our newly acquired storage locker (read: an actual storage locker in our apartment building!).
I'm getting off topic here. The moral of this paragraph is that we don't have our nice dishes/glasses/serving ware here with us.

We have been able to have people over here and there, be it a dinner 'party', a game night, or even our exciting menorah lighting. We have just proudly used our fine, cheapo, plastic Target specials on the table. Or our even finer, disposable, ugly Sam's Club goods! And I'm totally ok with that!!

I'm not going to lie, it is definitely going to be awesome when we move wherever it is we will be moving from here and have to pack trucks in two cities to move to some far off, exotic location (anything that does not have IA at the end is exotic to me right now) and unpack MILLIONS of boxes and mismatched furniture and amazing goodness. We are going to need a big place.

By the way, if it were up to Benny, we would already have put down a deposit on a place in Kansas City. Personally, I would love to be on the West Coast, *ahem Sherman Oaks ahem*, and, while he may not admit it, Shuky wants to be in Florida. Good thing we are all flexible and easy to please. We could probably live anywhere at this point! Although, I wouldn't say no to vacation apartments on each coast if we do end up somewhere in the middle. Just saying.

There are a few websites I love to browse when I have things to do but would rather ignore them. So, all the time. They are my version of window shopping and drooling and dreaming and planning. I am TOTALLY open to suggestions of more sites like these to waste my time, I mean research  for our future.

Ok, so first of all, there is a blog that used to have the most amazing weekly feature called Home Tour Fridays, among other awesome articles and whatnot. Every Friday, she would post some amazing, glamorous, fantastical home. Every Friday, I would wipe drool off my chin and add things to my 'Future Home Wish List'. For some reason, she stopped for a while but this past Friday, she came back with a BANG!! I mean seriously. This house just makes my heart beat a little faster, especially that  dock. Oh, what I wouldn't do to have that dock to read a book and drink some tea. Maybe spiked tea. Maybe not. But I want that dock. Go check out her whole slew of homes she's shared with everyone. There are even some Des Moines homes I brought to her attention. Find the shout out to me!!

Zillow is more factual and technical. But it does the job. It is a database of houses for rent, for sale, recently sold, being foreclosed on, and those with a 'make me move' option. It's searchable by zip code, by city, by cross streets. It's mapped out, with prices, stats, comps, pictures, descriptions. It's perfect. When we start looking into areas, this is usually one of the first places I go to determine cost of living. I even have the app on my phone. Don't question me.

Trulia is basically another version of Zillow. Same story, different style. I use both to make sure I don't miss anything. I'm doing important research here.

I check Craigslist if I'm more familiar with the area I'm looking into, as that is not portrayed on a map.

Pinterest is where I store ideas about everything. I'm talking everything. Fashion, vacation ideas, housewares, kid stuff, just everything I find online that intrigues me. I have that one on my phone too.

Anyway, those are my thoughts and whatnot on this fine Sunday morning. I'm currently house shopping on the West Coast. I have a mansion on June Street (hello Hancock Park) and a hillside home overlooking Ventura Boulevard (hello valley folks!) open for studying right now. Last week, I learned all about beachfront living in Miami. No idea where my research will take me next week, but I'm excited to find out!