The View from the Woodlands

It's a little after five o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon...my sixth Wednesday in Baltimore, living in our cute apartment, enjoying our gorgeous bay window view of "our tree". I am literally looking out the window as I type-- looking at the same tree you can see at the top of our blog, only today the tree doesn't have snow on it, although the ground still does. We have our couch positioned parrallel to the window so that it is literally the main focal point of our whole living room (and by living room I basically mean our whole apartment!).

After Brandon's 3 months of living in South Baltimore (see pics below: left top pic view of Brandon's old street, right top pic view from his old bedroom window, bottom loiterers on corner around from his house) we were 100% sure we didn't want to live in the city. We did look in some areas in the city-- and there are some that are quaint and have a tree or two-- but you pay a lot more for a lot less (and by less, I mean less space and trees, not less crime, trash, loitering neighbors, boarded up houses, bars, signs warning people not to deal drugs on the steps, etc. You actually get a lot more of that!)

But, let me focus on our apartment for right now because I am going to write about Baltimore another time and I'm getting carried away! This bay window is pretty much the main feature that sold us (and by us I mean me) on this apartment on the outskirts of what is technically B-more, just inside the Baltimore beltway, and just south of a college town called Towson. And I love it...the neighborhood is surrounded by all sorts of different housing (other apartments, townhouses, big mansion houses) and trees and everything you need on a regular basis (grocery store, gym, Target, a mall, Panera, Costco, easy access to all major freeways) is not more than 10 miles away. In fact, most things are only 2-4 miles away. And I love looking out our window...which is why I put a picture of it on the top of our blog...so that you can love looking out of it too!

Below are some pics from when we were moving into our place/ first living here:
A pic of the Ikea dresser I built one day while Brandon was hard at work. It took me something like 5 hours of very focused labor to assemble that beauty!
This is a pic of our awesome kitchen table that my friend Liz Walker loaned us. You can also see the edge of our couch-- also an Ikea purchase-- that Brandon and I carried from our car, up the pathway, and into our apartment!
On the left is a pic of our kitchen. It might not look very exciting, but compared with the other places we checked out, this kitchen has so much space AND all the appliances are new. In fact, our whole apartment is all newly renovated and we're the first to live in it since. That is really one of the reasons we moved to this place...but the bay window didn't hurt! On the right is a pic of Brandon in our kitchen (the other side of our kitchen...it is the second largest room in our apt aside from the living room!).

And, that's all for today...and maybe for this week, although I have to admit that I really liked posting my first post :)