getting to know our neighbors

today kevin did the unthinkable - he accompanied me to the divine trinity: bed bath & beyond, container store, and home depot, all in one trip! hahaha ... walked into bbb with the intention to pick up some pillows and sheets, and came out with those, as well as a red kitchenaid stand mixer. yay! last weekend when daisy and i made cookies, we used a mixer that i'd purchased straight out of college which probably cost me less than $15 and felt like it had the power of a construction tool, not a kitchen appliance. haha. time to get our bake on! kevin was grimacing the entire time - sorry hubbs! :) apple red, on sale, i basically SAVED him money by buying it.

also, CHA-CHING! found my bath waste baskets at containerstore! for some reason, public bathrooms (yuck) and waste baskets in general have a huge ick factor for me. so when it came to choosing a waste basket for our baths, i was having a difficult time. the opening on top has to be the perfect size! not too large or you'll be graced with a view of its contents and not too small because then it's impractical for nonchalantly tossing items in. no lid, because then you actually have to touch it every time you want to use it (ick), and to find a waste basket that's actually proportional with the size of the modern one-piece european-style toilets is actually not easy. it felt like everything we saw in bbb and container store were quite large - "american" style. most of the openings weren't much smaller than the toilet bowl itself lol.

anyways finally found these simple white plastic square waste basket from the containerstore. i removed the flip-lids and they go pretty darn nicely with the toilet brushes we got from muji too. done!! woohoo ~~~ mini challenge complete.

enough about baths and waste baskets. kevin and i spent the majority of the morning cleaning, setting up the guest bedroom, and stuffing packed boxes into every closet possible so we could make the apt somewhat presentable for friends in the afternoon.

oh and kev found time to make us this simple yet delish soba lunch :)

around 2pm, the doorbell rang and we were greeted by some cold guests: vadim, monica, john, sonam, thinley, and pema! kevin gave the adults the tour while i hung out with thinley and pema. they are so much fun to be with - not shy, very open and happy kids. afterwards we all naturally gravitated to the island (or perhaps it was due to the cheese, grapes, and olive bread), with the kids perched on the stools. it was really nice to see everyone, since the last time we really all got together was wow over the summer.

a little later in the afternoon, we had our second set of chelsea neighbors, kris and jessica, swing by for wine and yumm maison kayser desserts! they are about to remodel a loft just two blocks north of us so it was fun to hear about their process and hopefully pass on some lessons learned from our process (so that no one has to go through that again)! it turns out that jessica has a good amount of experience managing these types of projects in line of work and she seems much more level headed than me so i think they will be just fine.

rest of the night? pecorino, gouda, proscuitto, pears, apple, and gilmore girls. winding down and ready to start one of the last weeks of 2014!