The apartment is starting to feel more like Connecticut just in Hawaii. The movers came back and picked up all our boxes. I am missing three big glass mixing bowls and a coffee pot. TBD if they are hiding somewhere or if they went with the boxes…
I don’t really do budgets anyway… but this time in particular I allowed myself to spend on whatever to make this our home. We’ll be here three years, the longest I’ve ever been in one place since living with my parents, so may as well invest like it.
I love supporting small businesses, particularly military spouse owned. The wreath is made by SubVine Design. They are on hiatus for now, they only opened orders for a small window. I can imagine it’s a lot to handle and they might be PCSing. We also purchased a mat from Amazon that’s supposed to help collect dirt (sand). I have learned it’s just a perpetual problem, but we do take off our shoes on this main level to help. I also added a bath mat to the left of this picture to dry our feet. We have a hose outside the front and back doors to rinse our feet off, but then you walk around with wet feet… so I am trying out a bath mat by the door.
When were we officially ready to have guests? Was it when we received the second mattress? No… was it when we received the frame for that mattress and extra sheets? No… It was when we received this welcome mat also from Etsy. You can see another bath mat just inside the door again to wipe off feet.
This was our second big purchase after arrival, a Traeger grill! Dad and mom got this for us as a housewarming gift. The food we have made has come out really delicious every time. I love how easy it is to operate; I’m cooking on it most of the time because Brian doesn’t get home until late. My favorite part, beside the delicious result, is the temperature probe which will alarm when the meat is at a certain temperature.
Related side note. We live in a condominium complex which comes with a condo association which, you guessed it, comes with rules. The first set of rules we were given were very generic. As I bet you imagine, put yourself into a rich peoples’ neighborhoods with high and mighty opinions and those rules start to get more and more strict. We happened to move in two weeks before a new set of rules were released. The rule changed from “allowed to have one grill on Lanai” to “allowed to have one gas or electric grill on the Lanai. No smokers, wood fired, or charcoal grills”. Well… this is a wood fired smoker, technically. I mean are we grandfathered in by two weeks? We dropped a pretty penny on this before we saw the new set of rules. I am just not causing any drama in our complex and praying no one says anything. We think they’re really talking about those stand up smokers and like fire pits… but we don’t know. Please don’t tell our condo association…