Where I Live Wednesday: Giddings Ave

"Where I Live Wednesday" will feature a different place in Michigan each week.  It will start out very local, with the immediate area in which I live (different areas of town, my house, stores and restaurants, etc. etc.) and expand over time to include adventures to other places in the great state of Michigan.

 

I live on Giddings Ave, SE.  It's a one-way street.

 And I get really agitated when people drive the wrong way on it.  I swear that they are ALL doing it on purpose.  Just to bug me.

 

You can only park on one side of the street... which is unfortunate.

But it's a really good area for walking.

 

And there's a big park nearby.

And Bella likes that a lot.

: )

(a day late) Where I Live Wednesday: Our House, in the middle of our street...

"Where I Live Wednesday" will feature a different place in Michigan each week.  It will start out very local, with the immediate area in which I live (different areas of town, my house, stores and restaurants, etc. etc.) and expand over time to include adventures to other places in the great state of Michigan.

Miss last week's "Where I Live Wednesday" post?  Go check it out!

I apologize for being a whole day late on this post... but life got the better of me.  Schoolwork was out of control and I just couldn't find the time to get this post up until today.

I knew that I wanted to talk about my house here in the Eastown community of Grand Rapids this week, and show you around it a bit.  As I was planning the post, I started having anxiety about the current messy state of the house and trying to clean it up for pictures.  Then I realized that I wanted to give you a true portrait of where I live - so I abandoned any extra cleaning and just took some shots!  I hope that's okay with you!  : )

Here is my lovely home... 

This picture was actually taken last Spring.

We moved into our FIRST (owned) home in October of 2008.  It is a 1920's craftman-style home on a one-way street.

It's not perfect, it needs some TLC, and its sometimes a lot of work, but it's ours and I love it.  I know that no matter where we go, I will always love this house.

This summer we turned our back yard mud pit into a lovely area for entertaining...

After living in an apartment for years, it was so lovely to have an outdoor space of our very own.

This is our (slightly fuzzy) living room... complete with sleepy dog on the couch, and shredded TP rolls (aso courtsey of the dog) on the rug.  One of my projects for this year is to completely re-do the curtains, I'm going to try and MAKE them.  We'll see how that goes.

Here is our dining room.  When schoolwork gets crazy I bring the computer downstairs and take over the dining room table, where there's more room to spread out than in the office.

I looooove this leaded glass built in, and the windows.  And I'm extra proud of the chair in the corner... I covered it myself!

 

We haven't made any changes to the kitchen since we moved in.  I plan on painting it yellow.  Eventually we'd like to completely remodel it.  It's a good size space, which is nice.

We call this the blue room.  It's technically a bedroom on the first floor.  We have a futon here that converts into a bed, the piano and all things musical reside in there, and this is also where we watch movies (the big TV is behind the door out of sight).

The downstairs bathroom is super tiny.  It's a jack and jill so it connects the blue room and the kitchen.

We're lucky to have this HUGE jet tub.  It was completely unexpected when we were looking at the house.  Unfortunately it hardly ever gets used, and we're currently discussing if we want to keep it or not when we re-do this bathroom sometime in 2010.  Taking a long bubble bath always SOUNDS like a great idea... but I hardly ever do it!

So that's it, the first floor!  Next week I'll share with you the upper floor, and some shots of our street and neighborhood.  In the meantime -- why don't you tell me what you LOVE (or hate?!) about your home?  : )  I'd love to hear about your place!

Where I Live Wednesday: An Overview

*** Pardon the interruption!  I'm doing some re-organizing here today, so don't mind my mess while I make some improvements to the blog!***

"Where I Live Wednesday" will feature a different place in Michigan each week.  It will start out very local, with the immediate area in which I live (different areas of town, my house, stores and restaurants, etc. etc.) and expand over time to include adventures to other places in the great state of Michigan.

For my first post, I wanted to give a general overview of both Michigan, and Grand Rapids, where I live.

According to Wikipedia...

Michigan is the eighth most populous state in the United States. It has the longest freshwater shoreline of any political subdivision in the world, being bounded by four of the five Great Lakes, plus Lake Saint Clair.  Michigan has 64,980 inland lakes and ponds.  A person in the state is never more than six miles (10 km) from a natural water source or more than 87.2 miles (140.3 km) from a Great Lakes shoreline.

Michigan is the only state to consist entirely of two peninsulas. The Lower Peninsula, to which the name Michigan was originally applied, is often dubbed "the mitten" by residents, owing to its shape. When asked where in Michigan one comes from, a resident of the Lower Peninsula may often point to the corresponding part of his or her hand. The Upper Peninsula (often referred to as The U.P.) is separated from the Lower Peninsula by the Straits of Mackinac, a five-mile (8 km)-wide channel that joins Lake Huron to Lake Michigan. The Upper Peninsula is economically important for tourism and natural resources.

Although born in the UK, I moved to Michigan when I was in 8th grade, and lived with my parents and brother in the small city of Tecumseh (I'll introduce you to Tecumseh in another post!)  I now live with my husband Travis and our small zoo of animals in Grand Rapids.

Again, according to Wikipedia...


Grand Rapids is located on the Grand River and is approximately 30 miles from Lake Michigan. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 197,800, making it the 114th largest city in the United States. It is the  second largest city in Michigan (after Detroit), and the largest city in West Michigan. 

Nicknamed the "Furniture City", the major industry in Grand Rapids once was furniture production. However, the city and surrounding communities are more economically diverse today, and contribute heavily to the health care, automotive, and consumer goods manufacturing industries, among others.

You'll have the opportunity to read lots of posts about Grand Rapids in the future, there is a lot going on here and plenty to photograph and introduce you to!  But for now, take a look at this video.  It is a little cheesy, yes, and some of the footage is a little dated, but it's nice all the same.  The accompanying song "My Giant Little Town" is written and performed by Brian VanderArk, of The Verve Pipe fame.  Grand Rapids is pretty proud of Brian and takes to using him in promotional things whenever possible it seems!  : )

Enjoy!




Come back next week Wednesday to start exploring my life in Grand Rapids!