A Modern Beauty

Shortly after the newest eatery opened on campus, Steve and I went and got some tasty frozen yogurt.  To my despair, this was one of those moments where I regretted getting caught without my camera.  It actually happens a lot here, because there are just so many interesting things going on.  Like watching the maintenance staff clean windows on campus, with a cherry picker.  That's the kind of awesome stuff  I miss out on when I don't have my camera.

Thankfully, the beautiful decor at the froyo shop was still there the next time we needed our desert dessert fix.

I love the bright, bold colors contrasting against the stark white walls, and the light fixtures are gorgeous and artsy.

While the chairs and tables are all plastic, the colors are still strikingly beautiful.

How much do I love these lights!

This interesting snaking ribbon was used mostly to divide the space into the sit down area and the ordering area, but wouldn't it make a unique bookshelf/display area if the bends and turns were adjusted a bit?

Compared to our apartment decked out in browns and tans, I'm ready to move in with the froyo.

Why I Love Campus

I spend a decent amount of time griping about campus, so here's a little Valentine's Day antecedent about why being on campus is awesome.

Every week the cinema on campus shows two new movies.  Usually at least one is an American film, and this week they were showing Tron, which Steve has wanted to see since he found out about it.  At 5:48 pm, we checked the movie schedule online and realized the movie started in twelve minutes.  So we grabbed our new jackets (part of the amazing February Christmas miracle) and rode over to the theater.  We bought our tickets ($1.33 each), got popcorn and a drink for each of us because we hadn't eaten dinner ($2 each), and still managed to have time to go to the bathroom before the movie started.  So aside from only costing $6.67, we went from couch to stadium seating in twelve minutes.

That is exactly why I dread returning to the American commute.  My twelve minute bike and walk commute to class is just too nice.

Hope everyone had a chocolate filled holiday, and if you didn't the sales start soon!

Kitty on a Walk & Kitty Air Freshener

With all the terrible driving and feral cats around, we were very reluctant to let Algebra (our cat) outside at all. But we thought it might be good for her to stretch her legs, smell some new smells, chase some grasshoppers: experience the outdoors in general.

At first, we would just carry her outside and hold her the whole time. We were forced to do this two or three times due to fire alarms (false alarms). This was fun, but Algie really wanted to be on the ground, roaming and sniffing.

Abby wanted to train her to walk on a leash, which I thought was a bit silly. So we slowly introduced her to a new, tighter collar and a nice matching leash. She has picked it up pretty well, but she still refuses to be lead; she has to do the leading.

After her most recent foray into the wilderness, she started acting strangely, and we were worried that she might have picked up fleas. So I picked up some squeeze on flea and tick repellent for about $12 for four months worth. The only brand available was Sergeant's Green brand, which is all natural. It has peppermint oil, lemongrass oil, and clove oil and boy does it smell strongly. It is as pungent as those aroma oils that you are supposed to use with reed diffusers. Forget motion activated, fan powered, plug in air fresheners: we have an air freshener that follows us from room to room!

Now for some adorable pictures:

A little bit worried peaking around the corner of our apartment building.

Walking a kitten: very manly.

Kitty must sniff EVERYTHING!

Playing in the gardens outside the back porch.

She was very hesitant to walk out into the street.

Hopefully, she either doesn't have fleas or this new medicine will knock them right out so she can get back out into the wild!

Valentine Craft

Have I ever mentioned that I'm terrible at admitting that I've changed my mind?  I'm not terrible at actually changing my mind, given a convincing, logical argument, but fessing up to it is not my forte.  It never has been either.  The time I spent weeks sitting in my closet reading the Harry Potter series because I didn't want to admit that it was not in fact a dumb book about wizards comes to mind.

Lo and behold, it's happened again.  Bunting has been popular to say the least in the crafting world for a while now, at least since last spring perhaps longer, and it's only now that I'm willing to admit that my first instinct when I see bunting isn't "ick."  I have no idea why I changed my mind, but the Christmas star bunting I made back in December just tickles my fancy.

So, this brings us to decorating for Valentine's Day.  I didn't decorate because I'm one of those crazy/awesome new house decor at each holiday kind of people, but because our house is drab and needed some color.  The holiday simply offered a good color theme.

I got the idea for this stained glass hearts craft from Flower Patch Farmgirl and I just knew I had to try it out.

This started with me spending some quality time with the vegetable peeler.  Apparently, a pencil sharpener might have been more practical, but these were big crayons, and I'm working with limited craft goods.  After shredding all of the crayon colors I wanted, the rest was cake.  The only trick was to make sure not to put too much crayon shavings down because I wanted the light to shine through.  It was easy enough to move the crayon goo around between the wax paper sheets while using the iron to melt them.  Sadly, this was the first time I'd used our iron and ironing board.  If they hadn't been provided we really wouldn't miss them, but at least they've earned their keep now!

I used my two hole punch (there aren't three hole punches here and all the binders either have 2 or 4 rings in them) to put holes in the cut out hearts and then threaded and taped them to some red sewing thread.

Close up of the hearts strung across our living room windows.

I made some small hearts from the scrap pieces so I taped those to the thread instead of hole punching them.

The railing overlooking the living room.  The light comes through the hearts in the middle of the day and it does a good imitation of stained glass.

The hearts finally replaced the Christmas garland in the study.  The only problem I had with the hearts was some cracking around the edges where I cut out the shapes.  I suppose you could iron the hearts again to reseal the edges, but I didn't think it was necessary.

I can't wait until next year, because I've seen some really cute crafts out there that I just don't have the supplies to do over here!  Between the new paintings and these new decorations, I think the apartment is definitely starting to look more cheery and personal.

One Last Athens Update

I thought we had covered all of the highlights from our Athens trip, but then I realized that I forgot to show you what we brought back with us.

One of my main complaints about our apartment is that it doesn't feel like us. If I had to pick furniture, paint colors, and decor this place would look completely different. I'm so not a brown and tan person.

So we spent some time wandering around shops in Athens looking for some wall decor that would make this place feel more homey.

I really wanted something that would remind us of our trip and be pretty at the same time so, after much looking, we found this:

We also found another painting which I absolutely loved, so Steve got it for my birthday present.

When we get back home we'll have them restretched so they look like proper canvas paintings, but for now we'll enjoy them as is.

*Catch up on our entire Athens adventure by checking Our Travel Page, or our Greece tag.*