This is the sixteenth day of 'Lacey's More Funner 30 Days of Blogging' which I talked about here. I'm more than halfway through....DAY 16: WRITE ABOUT EACH PLACE YOU'VE CALLED HOMEI've called 6 different places "home" in my 28 years. 2 childhood homes, 3 apartments, and our now townhouse.
My first home I don't remember all that well. I lived there from birth until I was 4. I only remember what I've seen in pictures and also I remember the next door neighbor's playhouse out back. And that's about it. Moving on.
The next house I lived in is the one I always have dreams about still living in, and the one my parents still live in.
(old picture, but the first one I found so I went with it!)
I lived there from the age of 4 until I was 22. I could tell you lots about this house. Like how the bathroom floor remained unfinished for the first 6 or so years....unfinished as in just a piece of plywood. And when the bathroom was painted, some paint dropped onto the plywood and made a perfect duck face right there on the bathroom floor. I really missed him when they finally put some real flooring down.
I could also tell you exactly where 2 sections of wall were patched: my head made a hole in the hallway, and my brother's head made one in his bedroom on two separate occasions. I have NO idea how that happened! (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!)
Or I could show you the exact path through the woods to get to the dirt road, or the way through the woods to the big creek.
I moved out with my (gasp!) boyfriend when I was 22. You might know him; his name is John. We were low on dough and our first apartment reflected that.
We had a cute little one bedroom apartment on the 3rd floor in an apartment complex that is not in the best area. It's not the worst area either, but given the choice we would've been elsewhere.
Anyways, I remember that the nicest part about this apartment was the view. From our balcony, we could see the water...also known as the beautiful drainage pond in the middle of the complex. Beauty, I tell you. It was even more beautiful when illuminated by the spotlight of a police helicopter circling it one night.
Since were on the third floor, every single time we walked past the apartment of the woman directly below us on the 2nd floor, we could smell the strong aroma of
real Mexican food...and the smell was not too appetizing. Bleh.
We stayed here exactly one year, and then moved into a nicer apartment in a better area.
The next apartment was on the second floor and we upgraded to a 2 bedroom. Moving up in the world.
This apartment would let you paint which was a really big deal to me. I can't stand white walls, so painting was a must. We painted the bedroom sage green, the office a pale yellow and the rest of the apartment a taupey tannish color. This was when I started to love to decorate and fell in love with Kirkland's. This entire apartment was decorated from that one store.
We got our first Christmas tree in this apartment. When Christmas was over and it was time to dispose of the tree, we dragged it into the small strip of woods that separated our apartment complex from the road.
We planned on staying in this apartment until we bought a house because we really loved it and had made it our own. But then one night it started raining in our apartment. We woke up to water dripping in our faces, and once we turned some lights on, realized that not only was it dripping in our faces, it was pouring in the entire apartment.
The apartment upstairs was vacant and had flooded from a busted pipe and was now seeping down to ours. After all was said and done, this apartment was no longer livable and we had to move (after only 9 months) to another apartment across the complex.
This apartment was on the 3rd floor so that made for a really fun move: down two flights of stairs and then up three, when we had NOTHING packed since it was an impromptu move.
We upgraded once again because not only did this apartment have 2 bedrooms, we now had two bathrooms. We were big time now.
This was the apartment where I finally figured out how to take care of plants. I had attempted some in the past, but never succeeded. I only had two hanging baskets of petunias, but my neighbors would always ask how I got them to be so big and beautiful. Ahh, my first gardening compliments!
And this is the part where I kick myself because in the 11 months we lived there, there are no pictures of the actual apartment. The best I can come up with is one taken right after I had finished decorating the Christmas tree. I was so excited to have (fake) hard wood floors in this apartment so I could just sweep up the Christmas tree needles instead of having to vacuum them.
And then finally, we made our first purchase and bought our townhouse. (Well, it's just John's technically because we weren't married when we moved here and didn't want to have that headache to deal with in case we didn't last.) But we did last, and now what's mine is mine and what's his is mine. Mwahahahahaa.
We upgraded a tiny bit since we now own instead of rent, but we are both ready for a real house. And ready SOON. But the economy and blah, blah, blah. So I suppose we'll stay put for a while.
But we have definitely made this house our own. We have had our first home improvement projects here, and our first landscaping fun, our first garden, and our first grass seeds sowed. It's a little tiny yard, but it's like a training yard for the big huge yard we dream about having one day.
So, are you in the market for a townhouse? I know just the place!
(not that I wake up in the literal sense at my desk, but definitely in the figurative sense.) 
