Movin' on up ( movin' on up...) to the East side.. (of I-045)

{notes from the past...my future home}

It's official!! After 2 wonderful years in Montrose, as of Monday November 29th, Ryan and I will be residents of Tennison Lofts. We even get a shiny new zip code! 77002 downtown whaaaaat! We're vurrrry happy...but this whole process wasn't without it's "hairpulling" moments, I kept telling myself it would be worth it. It's such a cool old building, originally the Tennison Hotel, built in 1921. From the Tennison family site "Henry Booker Tennison commissioned architect Joseph Finger to build the Tennison Hotel at 110 Bagby Street in downtown Houston, TX.  The Tennison Hotel opened for business in 1922, and was among the closest of all hotels to Houston's Grand Central Station"

I'm super in love with the fact that the original brick is exposed in the loft:

View from outside, facing the Northwest:

On top of the parking garage is a fantastic, huge patio area with a beautiful view of downtown. I can't wait to see what it looks like at night.

Tennison Hotel:

Found this newspaper clipping regarding the funeral of H.B Tennison!

"When the boxes are gone and you've cleaned up the mess you'll make a home of the house that was just an address". -John Bratton.

It's-a-movin'-time! You may think it's sick...but I love moving. I typically don't stay in one place for more than a year, and I've been at the Fargo house for almost 2, which is bizarre...but that just means I'm a year overdue for "the purging".

I love the process of going through drawers and closets, sorting, throwing things away, absolving the nooks and crannies of things I've held onto for absolutely no apparent reason. Carrying bag after bag to the trash can feels like dropping pounds. One trash bag = 5 lbs and y'all I'm gettin' skinny! (not literally...I'm throwing back boxes of nerds candy down my gullet as I type..) It just feels so good, in the immortal words of Outkast, I feel so fresh and so clean, clean...

After spending countless hours on the HAR site (Houston area real estate), and touring 7 units on Saturday, we applied for an apartment in this bad boy on Kipling near Dunlavy in Montrose. The house is broken up into 4 individual units, we're looking at the one on the bottom left. The neighborhood is fantastic, in super-short walking distance to Brasil, Poison Girl, Anvil, Boondocks and so many other coffee shops, bars and awesome vintage/ retail shops on the Westheimer curve....aaannddd they're building a big HEB at the corner of West Alabama and Dunlavy so that would be ridiculously convenient.



The unit comes with stacked washer and dryer, we get our own private garage with storage space... It's almost perfect... almost.



[ we've agreed that the bathroom is a little snug with no counter space and the bedroom may be about 3 feet too small ]

 So here it is:

View of front




View of living room from front door

 

View with back to living room windows looking at front door, tiny view of hallway.

 

Dining room painted a dark red color with original vintage hutch (hello, bar area!) Would probably use this as office/craft space.

 

View of bedroom, looking at closet doors.

View of bathroom with accent tile.

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All of the above are realtor shots, except for this one....

 I took as Ryan and I were leaving... after our apartment locator guy drove us around for about 2 hours, Ryan was patient enough with me to go back, hours later, to the two properties we liked the most and walk around for a while. Thinking. Talking. Comparing. Contrasting.

Saturday was a stressful day. It's so hard to decide because there are so many good things we loved, and a few things we didn't and it's just... hard, you know?

This will be our first home together so maybe I'm letting that weigh on it more than it should...a home is.... it's where the heart is, it's where you hang your hat, be it ever so humble, there's no place like it... in the words of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, it's where ever I'm with you.

So with that attitude, I'm awaiting (not so patiently) a call from the realtor to see if we got it (we were competing with one, possible more people for it..).

I'm promising myself that if he calls to tell us we got it or if we didn't that it's meant to be and that if it means we keep looking, that's A-Ok.

city series: pretty houston

Yesterday after running a few errands and having a little sushi date, we decided to ride on over to the Galleria and check out the Water Wall. I've been hearing about this thing for years but I had never seen it and decided that.. yesterday was as good a day as any to see what it was all about. Its located behind the Williams Tower, which at 64 stories and 900 feet it the3rd tallest building in Houston, 4th tallest building in Texas. We roamed around the grounds for a little while (it was a really pretty day) and took these photos. Nice little park...

Friday afternoon, after work, I went downtown to do a little shopping. I found parking on the corner of Clay and Main, right in front of this beautiful Methodist church. As I was walking down Main, the noon bells started, I think they played music for a good 5 minutes. It was so pretty. Sometimes I wish I worked downtown so I could walk around at lunch and discovery little Houston secrets, like lunchtime serenades from old churches. This year marks the 100th anniversary of this First Methodist church, the first service held on December 18th, 1910. Video: Lunch time bells:

polaroids, ice sculptures and warehouses

It was a very chilly weekend in Houston, but that didn't stop anyone from bundling up and heading out. Friday night I went to a little photography exhibit.

From the Caroline Collective site: "collaborative art exhibit exploring the 3800 through the 5800 blocks of Caroline Street, located at the edge of Houston’s Third Ward, Museum district, Midtown and Montrose sections. Each of the 12 participants of the show has selected one or more blocks along Caroline Street as their focus and has presented the experience of that block through the photographic medium. The result, is a location-specific installation depicting multiple visions of one group. Each of these 21 blocks is photographed with Polaroid grid film, then installed linearly to recreate the street."

Was pretty cool to look at all of the photographs and then actually pass the subjects in the car as we were leaving. One of the photographers, Shannon Duncan, said she took approximately 650 polaroids. She was lucky to have had the film donated by an imaging lab that's gone digital, because it would have cost over $3,000 otherwise.

Saturday was clear and cold. Grabbed lunch @ Lucky's pub in the warehouse district and drove around a few blocks to take some pictures with my new Holga (Christmas present from my love!). Also took a few digitals:

Saturday was the Magnificent 7 Ice Carving Competition at Discovery Green downtown. There were 7 artists, carving 7 tons of ice over 7 hours. I didn't see the actual carving but went by in the evening to see some of the sculptures.

Pretty, nice little weekend. Hope you stayed warm!

absolutely lovely weekend in the <3 land...

..filled with leaves falling, pumpkin carving, spooky movies, warm drinks, delicious late night snacks, smooches, window shopping, warm pubs, picture taking, the reading of scary stories while curled up on the couch and discovering secret, overgrown high-walled gardens in the middle of busy downtown Omaha.

I know I shouldn't be greedy, but I'm excited to have these kinds of things all the time. soon. (soon.)

kitchenlust

I long for a kitchen with a floor just like this where exciting cooking experiments are a daily occurance.

Downtown Houston- Preston @ Main St

sunday was a perfect day for brunch and a walk around downtown.