I remember being 14 and daydreaming about my future adult life. I pictured myself living by myself in a stylish apartment in some big city and eating pizza whenever I wanted. Now 11 years later, I live that life. Well, Long Beach is more laid back than a big city I dreamed of but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love this city; it is even better when I get to share my dream life with my amazing boyfriend. We don’t live on the expensive part of town. I like to say we live where the real people of Long Beach live in; the people you hear about in the rap songs from the early 90’s. My one bedroom apartment is located on the historic Pine Avenue. We are a bike ride away from all of the downtown attractions which means you don’t need to deal with all the horrible traffic down there. It may not be the luxury condo that they have a couple of blocks away (for triple our rent), but this apartment is definitely my own and that is all I can ask for.
It is very important for me to create my own personal space that I love. The space we live in is kind of awkward but we make it work. When we moved to this apartment, I knew I wanted to utilize the space on the walls. I have a weird OCD thing where I hate when people put things on their walls and that is the only one thing on their big ass wall. I knew if I was going to put things up, I had to go all out. I didn’t want to shell out a ton of money for the art that was going to go up so I started creating my own art pieces before we moved and decided to put all the pieces up along with a lot of other art by some local artists we’ve met at zine events. All the art in different sized frames (mostly from thrift shops) creates a home feeling for me and it also helps my creative juices flowing when I can’t seem to do any work.
Our living room is where it gets tricky. We don’t have a garage so our living space triples as a bike lot/office/living space. I don’t mind this because our bikes double as an art piece as well as our transportation and I think it fits in well with our apartment. We put everything up against the walls so it works out for us. There is 4 bikes in our living room but it doesn’t really feel that way.
You might be thinking, “Where is the couch?” We have a little love seat I’ve had for years, but we are currently working on purchasing a new one that will be even more perfect for us. Everything we have is not too expensive (its mostly DIY art) and the furniture is from Ikea. Creating my dream living space is so fun and I hope it shows in this post. I will end this post with a picture of my new favorite piece that my boyfriend got me for Valentines day. I hope you all enjoyed this little tour of my tiny dream apartment. Would anyone would like to come over for some tea?
XOXO Vanessa Ro
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