exposing my apartment

I'm taking another leaf out of the book of Eddy again today...

You've seen my favourite things, and what's on my bookshelves.... what's in my DVD collection and then where I blog...

Today I'm exposing my loungeroom/kitchen...

Since Ma and I have busted a proverbial gut over the last couple of weekends cleaning all the filth out of the kitchen, I figured now was as good a time as any to take a photo and blog about it... granted that also lead to me reorganising one of my kitchen counters on Monday night so that the stuff that has been cluttering them up (although it was still tidy) is now away in one of the cupboards.

And while this shouldn't come as a great shock to anyone, I will say up front that I am so NOT all about clean lines and surfaces (unlike some people I could mention... you know who you are)... I'm all about the tchotchka baby! Although I have to say, that what I have now is a totally stripped down version to how it used to look...

I actually shot these yesterday morning, which was good, because the last two mornings have been very sunny and pleasant, but today was a world of grey (although still pleasantly warm, which was good)... and much less worthwhile for taking photos...

My apartment has three rooms... my loungeroom and kitchen are one room, my bedroom is the second room, and the bathroom is the third. So the loungeroom shot was taken with my back (literally) up against the shelf on the back wall of the kitchen (I was half sitting on the countertop actually, since I was using the tripod)... and the kitchen photo was taken from just in front of the teevee and stereo.

This is my loungeroom...

the living room 2006Most of the stuff in here that would fall under the interesting banner has already featured in the other Expose posts I did... but you can also see the painting J did for me in it's new home atop the bookcase...

The poster for A Midsummer Night's Dream is actually from around the time of BlueDragon's visit... I got tickets to the preview upstairs from where I used to work and they gave me the poster at the same time... it also serves a second purpose in that it covers up a hole I made in the paintwork when I pulled down the previous poster (damn that sticky BluTack). It's set at exactly that height because I used to have another four foot bookcase in the gap between the six foot ones, and it came exactly to the bottom of the poster.

The skinny dark brown thing on the wall above the DVD bookcase is an "African" dagger... I don't know if it's actually from Africa or not, or even, really, how it came to us, I think it was sent by some random relative to somebody in my family, and it ended up with me. I've always had a fascination with it ever since I was a kid... it's bound in leather and has a little leather tassle at the bottom... the blade is as dull and rusty as all hell, but I still like it.

And the thing hanging in the top right corner is a wooden model (one of those build it yourself kits actually) of a pteranodon, that I've now had in all four houses I've lived in, which would make it about fifteen or so years old... he's hanging by fishing line from the top of the curtain rod, and only has enough wing space to rotate about halfway around fortunately, otherwise I'm sure I would spend all my time looking at dead-dino-butt...

For the record, my bedroom door is between the walking staff in the loungeroom photo and the three photos on the wall in the next photo... it just didn't actually feature in either of the photos properly...

And this is my kitchen...

the kitchen 2006The freshly cleaned, newly organised, incredibly spotless kitchen...

Unfortunately there isn't really a way to get a well lit photo of my kitchen (although I did think later that I probably should have switched on the kitchen light when I took this shot... d'oh), since it's not really possibly to get a full shot from inside the space, since it's less than a metre wide.

I've mentioned the matching yellow countertops and door knobs before... the wardrobe and dressing table (which is also topped with the same yellow top) in my bedroom have the same knobs, and my showerhead, toilet seat and bathroom mirror surround are all the exact same yellow colour...

Well, what do you expect, there's a date stamp inside my wardrobe that tells me that the place was built some time around 1965...

Just to the left of the shot is my front door... you can actually catch a glimpse of all the crap that hides behind my front door at the extreme left of the image, although I did spare you the full view.

And the dragon that sits on top of the counter on the left is supposed to be good feng shui... supposedly, it's good to have a dragon to the left of your front door... but since my whole apartment is basically to the right of my front door, this was about the best I could come up with...

On the short wall of the shelves you can just make out my Joe Phillips calendar (the other one is actually inside my wardrobe)... and on the fridge you can just see my 2006 Wish List...

You will probably also notice Blossom and Cartman in amongst the clutter on the shelves... and very sharp eyed viewers may notice that the glasses between the pasta jar (possibly the gayest pasta jar ever, since I stuck a rainbow flag sticker on it) and the Grolsch bottles (mmmm... Grolsch) have superheros on them... god bless Nutella (although the last two have Donald and Daffy Duck on them, and were actually presents I got for my 21st from a girl I worked with at the time)... what you can't see from that angle are the Snoopys (in random "native dress" from various places around the world... I did have most of the set, but culled it down to just the places I liked the look of) and a couple of the X-Men and the small handful of Mister Men... oh hush...

If you look carefully over the top of the microwave, you can just see the top of the magnetic lion I mentioned on Monday...

And, for the record, there aren't strange things sticking out of the top of the green chair... there is actually a small bookcase (that I keep all my photo prints in) behind there... and, like all other bookcases in my house, it has stuff on top of it.

So that's my house...

Current Mood: ta-da!

7 comments:

S said...

Your shelves are so full, I wonder how they stay up. Are those suckers reinforced with steel?

Also, you have Powerpuff Girls stuff on one side of your kitchen, and naked men on the other.

I can hear the song now...

"You take the good, you take the bad, you take 'em all and there you have..."

Oh, and do I see a bottle of Stoli on top of your shelf? God, I so need a drink.

yani said...

Trust me, this is the least amount of stuff I've ever had on those shelves...

If they were ever going to fall down it would have been years ago...

I have naked men on the wall, on the calendar, on the fridge...

And yes, it's an empty bottle of Stoli... the Absolut is in the "chiller" section in the top of the fridge (I don't have enough room in the freezer), although there is only a little bit left... granted there's been a little bit left like that for at least two years...

Tom said...

I now have that very annoying tune in my head... there were two green bottles, sitting on the wall...

yani said...

"And if one Grolsch bottle should accidentially fall... there'd be one Grolsch bottle sitting on the wall..."

Course if a Grolsch bottle fell off the wall when it was full yani would be very upset!

Larry said...

So... I love the pics but... how on Earth can you make out on a sofa that small?

:)

Sunshine said...

Cool place!! Reminds me of a shop. Can I come over and shop??? :P

yani said...

Larry: Honestly, I usually don't keep then in the loungeroom for that... :P But it is possible... kinda...

Sunshine: Do you know how hard I'm trying not to make a crack about the fact that the shelves are quite high up... and, well, you being.... you... damn... and I was trying so hard not to make short jokes... :P