furniture for the apartment

Thanks to our good friends the Bintz family we got some great furniture for our apartment.  We got a great little table from them which we were glad to find that it had a spot in our home.  Upon first inspection of this piece we noticed that it had been painted four times.  In keeping up with that tradition we painted it again.  We went from this:
To this:  
Then this: 
Then moved to this:  
And finally this:   
It wasn't really meant for blankets to be stored under there, but we needed a place, and that spot seemed handy enough.

Then here's the big project.  We also got a dresser from the Bintz's. It was a sturdy piece so we took it. There were some water marks on it, so we decided to re-finish it. This was an experience.  :) First we took all the drawer pulls off, and put this finish stripper on it.

We waited a few hours, scrapped that off...

We let it dry out over night, and then sanded down the whole thing.  My hands hurt just thinking about that.  Then I bought some "stain and polyurethane in one" and painted that whole thing.

By the way I do NOT recommend the two in one product.  It was thick and sticky, hard to get even, etc.  Definitely worth the money to buy the products separately.
Here is the piece in our living room.  It's our TV stand.  We didn't need a dresser, so we figured this would work just as well.

Our plans include drilling a couple holes in the back of the top two drawers, and putting the drawer fronts on hinges so we can put the DVD player in there.  That's another project for a different day.  We'll get there eventually.

Dental School!

I know it's a little late, but here is my sweet husband on his first day of school!

We're now two weeks into it, and Dane has felt the pressure.  A typical day includes Dane leaving for school somewhere between 6:45 - 7:45 to catch the shuttle or bus to the T.  (For those of you that haven't been to Boston the T is the Boston public transit trains.) His schedule is different pretty much everyday.  His classes include gross anatomy, nutrition, dental anatomy, bio-chem, operative dentistry, ethics, and introduction to clinical experience.  After classes finish, he typically stays at school to study until about 7, then makes the trek home.  He usually gets home about 7:45 or 8.  Busy day! Dane told me that during dental school I'll probably get some hobbies that I enjoy doing without him.  It made me get emotional when he said that.  I'm such a baby. It's a hard pill to swallow that I'm not going to have my husband around much for the next 4 years.

In his anatomy class they spend some time in the classroom flying through labeling things and then essentially "drop them off" in the lab where they have been divided into groups.  Each group has their own cadaver that they are supposed to dissect and identify all the nerves, arteries, muscles, etc.  Because BYU has a good anatomy lab Dane was used to cadavers and was able to jump in the first day and start working on their cadaver.  There were some group members that did fairly well, and others that looked a little pale.  Two days later this girl, that was pale faced initially, showed up to lab and told the group that she had skipped breakfast.  This is never a good thing to do when you are going to be in the lab.  After a little while Dane was noticing that she had lost her color and was looking a little clammy.  He told her she should probably go outside the lab and sit down for a little while.  She finally agreed and Dane decided to follow her out the door to make sure she would be alright.  She got to the door and tried to pull it open.... and that's when she fainted for the first time.  Dane caught her and helped her get outside the door.  She came to about 30 seconds later, and rested for a couple minutes.  The teacher by that time was there to help Dane.  The teacher, having gone through this every year says, "well get up, and let's get going." She stands up again only to take two more steps and faint again.  Dane was there once again to catch her.  The teacher got her to come to again with smelling salts.  After another minute of resting they tried to help this girl up... She took about three steps again and fainted for the third time.  By this point they decided she had better go get some breakfast.  A wise decision.

Here's Dane in"Pre-Clin" - which really means pre-clinic.  Working on his head.

Unfortunately his sits behind a pillar and can't see the teacher but, he can see two TV's that show the feed from the camera that is on the teacher, and what the teacher is working on.

Our Second Apartment!

We finally got our apartment set up! Here is our dining area and living room. 

This is the table my mom found at a yard sale! We'll take it.

Our Craigslist couch!!! :) You can also see our nice big kitchen in the back there, and our front door. 

 Our bedroom.  This is all the nice furniture that my mom is letting us use! We put our bed on 7" risers, and now we have a little more storage under the bed.

 We were so happy when we realized that our new bed spread (found a killer deal and it was hard to pass up) and our old curtains from our kitchen matched... both circles!

And this is our bathroom! Dane arranged the "guest towels," he's very good at these things!

So there it is! Our new apartment.  Dane keeps telling me, "I really like our new apartment," "I think we have a great set up here," "I don't think I'll like another apartment as much as this one," "Our place looks really great babe."  Several other things like that.  We are loving having a dishwasher and washer and dryer. We did 4 loads yesterday! I was loving it, and thinking the whole time how easy it was to bring the laundry bins around the corner in our apartment ant just pop a load in! :) haha.  It's the simple pleasures right!

Summer in review via movie!

So I've been reading the series Uglies, and yesterday I was reading the final book just chilling on our couch, and Dane says, "Hey Aimee, want to come take a look at this?" Why, yes I do! So I slide on over and he had whipped this together while watching football that evening.  Here is our summer in 4 minutes. It has been so much fun, and tomorrow is the first day of dental school.  I'm sad our partying has come to an end for a while, but with any luck we'll still find time to have some fun. 

Unfortunately, in order to load a 4 minute video we had to put it in lower resolution, so it actually looks better if you keep it small.