Discoveries

We've lived in our apartment for almost 5 months now, but we've just recently discovered over the past month or two, several things that we didn't know at first, that make our apartment way cooler!

For example:

1. Our couch is a pullout.
2. We can hook our laptop to our TV with an HDMI cable.
These two things combined make movie night way more fun.  Watching movies on a laptop, anyone?  Sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the couch.  Don't slouch, or your angle will be off and you won't be able to see the screen properly.  Yeah.  Our decent-sized flat screen TV is WAY better.  And lounging on the pullout just makes it that much more luxurious!  :)

3. Under-the-bed storage.  On the bed in each bedroom, the mattress is connected to the frame along one side by hinges.  And then there's this spring-loaded mechanism thing.  Just haul up on one side of the mattress, and voilà - the base of the bed is like a box, and you've just opened a treasure trove of storage space.  O, Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, guess where you're going next week.

4.  We have a functioning fume hood and light over our stove.  Oh, we knew we had a fume hood and light.  We just couldn't see where the buttons were to turn it on.  A quick email to our "have-been-here-longer-than-we-have" neighbours, revealed that all we have to do is slide out the front facing of the fume hood a little to reveal switches for a light and a three-speed exhaust fan.  No more hazy kitchen while we're cooking.  Oh, I mean, we don't burn stuff...

We also discovered that if we turn on both the switch on the fluorescent light, and the random light switch on the wall around the corner, we can turn on the little light over the spot on the counter where the dish rack is.  Although this wasn't so great of a discovery, because who needs to shed extra light on a rack of wet dishes?  It was kind of nice to finally know what that extra wall switch operated, though.

5. The washing machine spin-speed adjustor.  The cloth diapers were never dry when we took them out of the dryer, even if we set it to "Auto Max Dry".  And it seemed to be getting worse.  But, if you just turn the dial to increase the rpm's of the spin cycle, the diapers aren't as wet when they come out of the washer, and then they're (basically) dry when they come out of the dryer.  As for it having gotten worse, I say Bethany probably spun the dial to lower than what it had been originally.  She has these two little hands that seem to be able to reach things now that they couldn't reach before... :)

6. One-handed door locking.  This one is the newest discovery (yesterday), and therefore currently the coolest.  We used to think that you had to turn the handle on our front door up, and hold it there with one hand, while you turned the key with the other hand, in order to lock the door.  We've both been blessed (so far) with two functioning hands, so this wasn't really a problem, but just think of a baby (or two), a stroller, some groceries, and you'll see why this was annoying.  But actually, you just have to turn the handle up so that it makes a grinding noise, and then you can let it go, and use that same hand to turn the key in the lock.  Hooray for getting in the door while still holding something (or someone) in one hand.

And so our cool apartment has been getting even cooler.  Thus ends my very lengthy commentary.

Stay tuned tomorrow for pictures of homemade cinnamon buns!