It's taken a full five months for this apartment to start coming together (and there's still a long way to go). I've developed a bit of a love/hate relationship with Ikea (mostly love though, let's be honest) and came home the other day with this awesome Kallax shelving unit that I wanted to turn into a bar. I'm totally obsessed with it.

I'm always amazed at what a small investment can do to a space--just 65 bucks and a couple feet of empty space becomes a really nice place that starts to make an apartment feel like home. I also finally hung a vintage wine rack that my parents' neighbor gave me and I love the way it looks when it's filled with bottles (and it's become the perfect excuse to stock up on La Crema's Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, my new favorite).

I'm sharing some organization tips I've collected over the past few years of apartment living over here, so check them out and leave me your own tips and tricks while you're at it!

This post is brought to you in partnership with La Crema. Photos by Justin Smith for Freckled Italian.

This is a recipe that I originally posted in January of 2012 and it's since become my most popular, both in my life and here on the blog. I wanted to update it with new photos and edit the instructions a bit, since I've made them quite a few times over the past three years and have learned a thing or two while doing it. I decided to leave the original post introduction below (written when we lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, in our first real apartment together) because I'm nostalgic like that.

There is laundry all over my living room floor. It's clean, but it's taking up space because as I write this, it's still a little damp. The dryers in our apartment complex just don't do their job, and every time we end up with damp laundry. For just one more dollar, we could have dry laundry, but I don't want to encourage bad behavior. And sometimes, I'm out of quarters.

But it's okay, because there are things like bacon and avocados in my refrigerator. And that's really all you need.

Make these when things are acting a lot more complicated than they need to be.

Ingredients:

• One avocado
• Six to eight slices of bacon 
• Salt and pepper
• One or two wedges of fresh lime
• A sprinkle of cayenne powder

1. Slice and peel your avocado. You should get 6 to 8 wedges from each.
2. Wrap a slice of bacon around each wedge! Feel free to use a toothpick to hold them together and retain your sanity. (If you're short on time, you can use pre-cooked bacon: assemble them as usual and simply warm them up in a pan or in the oven for a few minutes before serving.)
3. Cook in a hot pan until they're nice and crispy. You'll have to turn them a couple times to get it cooked on all sides.
4. Finish them off with a tiny sprinkle of salt, pepper, lime juice, and cayenne. Serve warm.

Eat these for lunch. Make them again for an appetizer before dinner. Fold your laundry.

PS Because this is an old post re-published, some of my replies to the original comments are in weird places. If you leave a comment from now on, I'll respond to it right there in the thread. 

Rob and I had such a great trip to Minnesota this weekend--we got home late last night and are spending this Martin Luther King Day relaxing at home and getting unpacked before another week starts. I wasn't sure how visiting Minneapolis was going to feel--would I miss it more? Would I feel like Charlotte was finally our home? (The answer ended up being a little of both.)

I didn't take too many photos with my camera while I was in Minneapolis, but here are the few that I did! It was so nice catching up with my lovely friends whom I haven't seen in almost six months. We went to almost all of our favorite restaurants, drank great coffee, attended a sweet baby shower, and enjoyed a few really warm days (by Minnesota standards, of course). It was such a nice trip and I can't wait to get back again--hopefully in the summer next time!

How was your weekend? I'm headed back to the airport on Wednesday to catch a flight to Salt Lake City for Alt Summit!