Settling In

We have been in California for just under two months now, and there have been a lot of things we have had to do to make it feel like home. The first task was relatively obvious...we needed furniture. It's tough to call an apartment home when all you have is boxes to sit on and a donated end table. So we went to Ikea. The nice thing about Ikea is that the fun doesn't end when you leave the store. For every piece of furniture you buy, you need to plan on at least an hour of assembly. After about the fifth piece of furniture, we had it down to a science. We even considered starting our own business of standing outside Ikea and offering to assist others with their new purchases

Furniture helped, but we still needed to make our space a little more homey by hanging a few pictures. We both have hung pictures before so we got some small nails, a hammer, and set to it. We quickly learned, however, that our apartment was fitted with plaster walls, not the sheet rock we were used to. The instructions for hanging pictures in plaster vary slightly from hanging pictures in sheet rock. We ended up with three holes the size of my thumb, a few cracks running up the wall, and a frustrated Jaime before we figured it out.

Hanging a picture in sheet rock:
1. Hammer small nail into wall
2. Hang picture on nail

Hanging a picture in plaster:
1. Drill a small starter hole through the plaster back to where the wood begins
2. Drive a small screw into the starter hole and anchor into the wood
3. Hang picture on screw