Friday, March 21, 2014

A98


Because I cleaned the past couple days, (kinda), and because I have committed to be as real as possible, I'm going to post some pictures that display some of the beautiful things I love about our apartment, even though they show some of our mess too.

Keep in mind, we are on a SUPER limited income, and have mostly had to rely completely on things we already had, were gifted at our showers/wedding, inherited from generous people. There are lots of things I want to do, buy, make, etc., when I become rich. You too? Oh good. :)

Welcome to apartment A98!


The view of our dining area from our kitchen. Yes, that is a couch as a kitchen table bench. We inherited this high-back love seat and I am totally attached to it and we didn't have anywhere to put it. I had the inspiration to put it in the kitchen, and we love it. It's cozy, country-chic with the gingham fabric, and that is totally accidental because we inherited it! Also, hanging on the wall is our coffee cabinet. When we have more money, I want to put a cute yellow, or red, or navy, little cabinet underneath it on the floor as a mini beverage cart/stand. Coffee pots take up so much counter space! We love coffee. Also, wood linoleum floors. We weren't promised our apartment would have them, but the model we viewed did and I was obsessed with them. Alex and I wanted the wood look because it adds SO much character to this cookie cutter, pre-fabbed, suburban apartment. We opened the door the first day, saw the floors, and cried. (Of course). God's little confirmation that He was taking care of us all along. 







Turned, facing the opposite direction. Galley kitchen, per standard of every apartment in a 10 mile radius of us. I thought I would hate how closed off it feels, but it's not too bad. I hung my aprons on the far wall for a pop of happy. We have a decent amount of cupboard space, and A DISHWASHER! The. Best. Oh, and we just bought that succulent on the table, and every time I see it, it reminds me of my bestie, Jacqui. 







Here is one of the walls of our family room. Still a little messy (note the random stuff on the floor under the shelves), and the shelves are a little busy with stuff, but for now it's how we have it set up. Makeshift bar on top, DVDs, photos, collectibles dispersed below. Alex and I went on a date to the Getty in November, and stopped at a WholeFoods in Hollywood on the way back, and saw those citrus crates out back, to be thrown out. We swiped 6 of them in a total Bonnie and Clyde moment ("You get the car running... I'll throw the crates in! ...Wait! They're too heavy! Come back and help!" or something like that...) and were able to use 5 (one had a warped board and the other boards split upon trying to nail it back down). We set up the crates as a tv stand. I have to be honest, crate furniture is all over Pinterest, and I sort of felt like it just was the trendy thing to do. When I nabbed the crates, I still kinda felt like I was just chasing a trend, but now that we have them in, I'm converted. These were already stained, and are the perfect blend of rustic and, uh... not rustic? On the wall above the tv is a wooden key, from Target, a terra cotta our lady of Guadalupe from Cozumel, MX, and our family clock- a wedding present from Alex's brother and sister-in-law. It says "Odicino Family est. 2013" and I cried when we opened it. What a lovely gift!







This is the main decorative stuff over the main couch which sits opposite of the tv you just saw. It is so special to us for many reasons, and we find it fitting that is our "art piece" in our family room. The icon of St. Francis was a wedding gift to us from our marriage prep couple (who also happen to be dear friends of ours). It is a print of an icon written by a woman from my parish, an icon written in honor of Pope Francis, taken to an audience with Francis in Rome, and "confiscated" by him to be kept for his personal property! I love it, and I love the colors. On the shelf below it is a gold cross, a votive candle, a picture of our favorite little Lucy niece (the same one that was on our table during our wedding reception), a Madonna and Child statue from St Patrick's Cathedral in London, and on the wall, a wooden Immaculate Heart from our honeymoon in Xcaret, MX.


Our home is a work in progress, but it is ours, and it is warm, and it is "us" and we are so blessed and grateful. 

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Home.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am recently married. One of the fun (and simultaneously terrifying) aspects of being newly married has been getting settled into our first place together and becoming "domesticated." Of course, who doesn't LOVE decorating? And who doesn't LOVE getting to put new toys (in the form of kitchen supplies) to work for the first time? And who doesn't LOVE trying new recipes and cooking for the people you care about? It. Is. All. Awesome. I have lots of stories to share about becoming domesticated (I think it will be a life-long journey for me), but for today I want to start by telling you our process of finding a home. 

One of my goals for this blog is to make sure that I portray myself and my life honestly, mess and all, because I struggle with perfectionism and comparison and I find that the world of social media has a way of making me feel like everyone I know is perfect, meanwhile I'm over here failing at life. I know that is my own distortion of the truth, but I do not want to contribute to that in someone else's life. And if I can actually help make someone else feel better about themselves (even if it's through my lack-of-having-it-all-together-ness), then I will be grateful.  

So here's the truth: the first several months of marriage have been AWESOME and at the same time, also AWESOMELY DIFFICULT! Yes, we smiled, and laughed, and were grateful through it all, but it's been a wild ride. Yes, I know we will look back with fond memories (we already do), but that doesn't minimize the experience as we were living it. Here's what happened with the housing "sitch", so you can feel sorry for us:

Housing Arrangement 1: 
About one month before we got hitched, we found a teensy-weensy apartment to rent that was the perfect location, and right in our (really small) housing budget. The apartment was newly built into the garage and part of the first floor of a two story house. We would have our own entrance, laundry, parking spot on the driveway, and cozy little first home. Did I say little? Yep. We approximate that this apartment was about 550 square feet. Though it was not a studio (the bedroom was separate), the kitchen setup was small and similar to studio style. My personal favorite part of the apartment was that the bathroom opened up to the "patio" / laundry room via a sliding glass door next to the toilet. It was quirky, but we were excited. We moved Alex's furniture in so he could live there until we got married, and as we did so, my father-in-law (a contractor by trade) noticed multiple not-to-code construction and safety issues, causing the apartment to be unsafe to inhabit. I cried. Our little "first place" was not happening and we had nowhere to go now just three weeks before the wedding. 

Housing Arrangement 2:
A close family friend came to the rescue and offered us the last month available on the lease of the apartment of their late father. Let me tell you, what a life saver! I was able to postpone fretting about where we would live, and we were able to have the first month of our married life to ourselves, to get adjusted and figure it out (or begin to, it's a HUGE adjustment!) This wonderful apartment was fully furnished, and my mom moved all my clothes over and organized the closet for us so that it would be settled when we returned from our honeymoon. I cried. We LOVED this apartment, in fact, we contemplated staying there permanently, but the commute for Alex was about an hour and ten minutes without traffic and the schedule he was working made the commute even more unbearable. Oh, I forgot to mention, this apartment was part of a "Mature Adult Community" aka Senior Living Center. Oh, and it was 450 sq feet, max. It was a 1 bedroom apartment, with a walk in closet, bathroom, family room and teensy tiny kitchen with a 1/2 size oven. I felt a little like I was living in a dollhouse! We lived super simply and had all of our stuff in storage (we used the furniture etc. already there), and I can honestly say, we both wish we could still live as simply as we did in that apartment. When we moved out, I cried. 

Housing Arrangement 3: 
After asking Alex to commute for over an hour (one way), it was only fair that I take a turn at commuting. Though both our parents gratuitously offered to take us in until we could find an apartment, we moved to Costa Mesa to live with the Odicino parents because they had more space available for us. I have to take this opportunity to say that I know that a majority of people would not be excited about or even be able tolerate living with their in-laws, but that couldn't be further from the truth for both Alex and I. We are at home in both families. I am so very grateful that Alex's parents were willing to let us live with them, were so wonderfully accommodating and caring, and welcomed me into their family as a daughter, not as a guest. Yes, Alex and I grew anxious to move into our own place and figure out who "we" were as a married couple and how "our" life would take shape together, but at the same time, we reveled in being "us" in the greater context of a family that loved us every day. Alex and I still miss watching tv with them in the evenings and chatting about the day over a glass of wine. We will both hold that memory close to our hearts. They took SUCH good care of us! We lived there for nearly 2 months, and when we left, you guessed it- I cried. 

Housing Arrangement 4:
Home. On September 25th, nearly three months after our wedding, we moved into our first apartment. We moved way too much stuff from two separate storage units into a 750 sq ft one bedroom apartment in Fullerton (and the overflow into our garage). In many ways, coordinating the move was more stressful than planning the wedding, but it's done and I don't ever want to think about how awful it was again. Now we're here, and we love it! The layout of the apartment is really great, the complex is shockingly quiet considering we're about a mile from Cal State Fullerton and we assumed we'd be surrounded by wild college students. The complex is beautiful and we feel like we live in Central Park. Everything is roses and rainbows! Ha. The truth is, it took 3 months to unpack our living space enough to be comfortable inviting anyone over to see it. We still have boxes and things tucked in corners until we figure out where we want to put stuff. Our bedroom is not organized AT. ALL. And as a result, is always a mess. I mean, embarrassed for anyone, including my mom who knows how messy I am, to see it MESSY. I still don't feel like I am caught up on life, or have completely set up our home, but most days I still love it. 

Stay tuned for my next blog with some sneak peaks into our humble abode. 

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Dear Diary... (A Personal Blogging History)

Welcome to my first post on my new blog!

Although this is my first post here, it is not my first blog post, nor is it my first blog. I'm actually a little embarrassed to discuss how much "experience" I have with blogging because it's A. Lot. I figured it made sense in my first post here to recount my history of sort-of-blogging and blogging. So buckle your seat belts, folks! Here we go!

This is where my obsession began... 

I was just 10 years old and in the fifth grade when I received this journal for Christmas.

So young, so innocent, so embarrassingly awkward! I think my signature on the right (above) is from 5th grade when I first received the diary, but the writing to the left is from Jr High. "JC" stands for Jesus Christ. Duh... What else would it be for? (Sarcasm)  "Holichild" was my aim screen name from around that time as well. (I later invented an edgier handle: "pinkmotherpunker" #noimnotkidding #imsoembarassing). 

But wait, there's more!

My husband Alex and I got married this past June, and finally moved into our first place in September (that's a story for another post). When I was unloading the box of all my journals (I have a ton. Don't judge me) I thought it would be super fun to "journey down memory lane" with my new husband and give him a "glimpse into the mind of little Maegan." Dear reader, please, I beg you: if you ever feel inspired to make this nostalgic journey in your own life... DON'T. And if you, because of some over-romanticized lapse of judgement, think it might be a great idea to share that reminiscing with someone you love... STOP. Just don't. 

I mean sure, like my journal above, the page might begin with the sweet, so-naively-stupid-that-it's-kind-of-adorable reminder inside the diary, where the key is hidden in case you need to find it, but then it turns into pages and pages and pages of oh-my-glob-I'm-so-painfully-awkwardly-embarrassing. 
I mean... So many feelings!

Alex was riveted and I was gouging my eyes out.. Not an ideal "date night". 

So, thank God (I think?) my writing evolved over time. And when I got into 7th grade and graduated from just feelings to feelings and insecurity and hormones, my journal became this weird psycho-experiment. The girls in my grade started passing their diaries around and giving them to other girls to write them mushy mush mush "you're so great" letters in them so they could "keep them forever." The catch was you weren't supposed to read the "diary" part of the person's diary which you had in your possession, at home, with no one else watching. Yeah. Interestingly enough, I was so honest that I never listened to the rules and totally read everyone's journals. I mean, come on! (Also, in retrospect, can we say, "cry for attention?!")

Once I got to the high school phase of feelings and insecurity and hormones times a bajillion, I just oozed awkward journaling all over the place. I went through a letter writing phase, where I would write letters to people in my journal of all the things that I really was thinking and feeling and wanted to say to people, and then kept them safely in my journal so they would never have to know. I mean, where did I learn I couldn't tell people how I felt? Weirdsies. Then, the paper couldn't contain my emotions so it oozed all over the internets on my LiveJournal. Any LiveJournal-ers out there? Talk about throwback, that was before MySpace! (Had that later too).

Anyway, most of my early online blogging was a super melancholic, insecure, longing to be seen teenager and then young adult. I wrote way too vulnerably for the public eye, and gave away far too much of myself into the abyss of the interwebz. 

Then I became an older young adult, in my 21-24 years, and I wrote a little more cautiously, but still vulnerably, about faith, and my prayer life, and my insights of the world. 3 words: MEL.AN.CHOLIC. like woah. I remember I used to think of experiences in terms of blog posts. I would construct new posts in my daydreams and not be able to feel relaxed until I unburdened myself of those posts. And then, it all slowly died away. 

At first, I was too busy to post. I wanted to, I thought about it, but I didn't have the time. Often I'd forget my posts before I had an opportunity to publish them. Multiple times I wrote these elaborate, detailed, emotional posts and then lost interest or "got stuck" half-way through and then never rescued them from my drafts. I also wasn't quite sure who my audience was anymore, and even less certain of who I wanted it to be. 

Then I got engaged, and 9 months later got married, and I had nothing to say - not because I wasn't buzzing with insights and experiences (I definitely was), but because, for the first time, I wasn't desperate to be seen. I was seen, and known, and loved, in every day of my new life, and I didn't need to seek out that validation anymore. And so I sort of, dried up. 

That was a weird transition. 

I never stopped craving the artistic release and satisfaction of composing a good blog (you can't get rid of melancholic... It's there forever), I just didn't have any words to say. The only audience I needed to share with was my husband. 

That hasn't changed, my husband is my forever audience of one. But when my beautiful best friend began her lovely blog over at Mexican Domestic Goddess it ignited a desire in my heart again to create something beautiful. I realized, my husband gets the deepest parts of me, and he always will, and that is good! But I still have beauty to share with the world, and I still have the desire to write, and I still can celebrate the glory of this life with people in the blogosphere. 

So, here I am. Starting anew, again. 
This time as a married woman, renewed, and so different from who I used to be, and yet, more myself than when I began all those years ago. 

I hope you enjoy this journey with me. Hopefully, I won't be as awkward, but no guarantees.

All my journals.... I told you there were a lot....